Baby Got Backstory

By Marc GutmanBusiness Entrepreneurship Arts Marketing Visual Arts

Baby Got Backstory episodes

December 23, 2020BGBS 053: Shawn Parr | Bulldog Drummond | How Can We Make a Difference?
BGBS 053: Shawn Parr | Bulldog Drummond | How Can We Make a Difference?
Shawn Parr is the Guvner and CEO of Bulldog Drummond, a design and innovation company with the purpose of helping leaders unlock the best in their organization, solve a series of challenges, and define opportunities through the lens of brand. Shawn brings 20+ years of business-building experience to the table and ensures there’s an “Uncommon Sense” methodology at the center of everything the business does to assist executive teams at companies including Adidas, Hilton, Taco Bell, Samsung, and H&R Block, among many others.
Over time, Shawn has developed a commitment to finding sustainable ways to make a measurable difference in the world through helping companies realize their full potential to initiate change. He is the co-founder of YouSchool and Y-Malawi?, and sits on the board of The Honest Kitchen, along with his other engagements in impact. As an optimist, Shawn reminds us that the roaring 20s bloomed with creativity and innovation after a dark time, and believes that the years moving forward will mirror our past. Things may never be “normal” again, but the new normal will be beautiful, nonetheless. That being said, how can we all contribute to the new way forward through our own curiosity and intent?
In this episode, you’ll learn…
The name Bulldog Drummond was inspired by a fictional detective from one of Shawn’s childhood books
Shawn didn’t always have a burning passion for art in school. He discovered design as a passion through trying on many hats until he found a path that felt right
In the search for where he could add value, Shawn considered being an officer in the English army or an accountant.
The reason for Shawn’s move from London to California was love! He met his wife of 30 years in London and followed her to the States.
Moving to California back in ’91 opened Shawn’s eyes to a world of energy and possibility that he had not previously experienced in the UK.
A driving force for Shawn’s work ethic is that nobody is entitled to anything and respect is earned through discipline.
Shawn believes that a brand has inherently human characteristics that when defined and unlocked, will transform teams and customers to become more invested and engage in a relationship with it
One of Shawn’s most meaningful projects was developing a traveling exhibit representing the lives of people who contracted HIV/AIDS to raise money after a life-changing trip to Africa in 2006
Shawn is most looking forward to is participating in the connectivity, and the joy, the humor, the music, the art, and culture that is to come (a second roaring 20s if you will)
With some curiosity in intent, design can be the tool that furthers our purpose.
ResourcesShawn Parr
LinkedIn: Shawn Parr
Instagram: @the_guvner
Twitter: @GuvnerBD
Bulldog Drummond
Website: www.bulldogdrummond.com
Facebook: @BulldogDrummond
Twitter: @BULLDOGDRUMMOND
LinkedIn: Bulldog Drummond
Quotes
[29:28] Any service business is like having a bucket with a hole in it and you’re constantly filling it up because you’re not selling a product per se, that people are buying. But I would say that anxiety was what certainly fueled, drove my energy to keep moving the business forward.
[33:20] I think one simple way that I like to think about brand is a brand is like a person, meaning we’re searching for a reason why we exist, we have a purpose in the world, we go out and live into that purpose, we have a personality that is distinct, we have a set of values that guide how we think about things and how we operate. And then we have relationships with people that, you know, we’re either in positive, negative, or non-relationship with. And I brands are very similar. They have a strategic or dimensional core to them. They inherently have a human characteristic.
[37:08] I and we as a company, we are forced to be relevant and curious and students of what is now. We are also challenged with our clients to solve big business challenges. And so in doing that, you’re collaborating with team members, inside of organizations and your own, so that you’re always learning, you’re always moving forward.
[42:08] Our position as a company is, we get up every day to try to help leaders become a force for good inside of their organizations. So we believe like many people today, that businesses, companies, and leaders in companies are the biggest change agents in society. We have the ability to move culture. We have the ability to move systems and not necessarily have to rely on government…What’s in our heart is actually moving the world forward through the work that we do, and making the world a better place through the work we do.
Podcast Transcript
Shawn Parr 0:02
I think the learning that I got was working collaboratively with creative people, with designers, with writers, with art directors and photographers, illustrators. And again, bringing a different perspective but really respecting what they did. I got a lot of joy from that. What I realized was, not only will my people but that’s where I, their creativity fueled mine, if that makes sense. So I bought a business perspective to their creativity. And that felt really good.
Marc Gutman 0:43
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, we are talking with Shawn Parr of the design and innovation consultancy Bulldog Drummond. And while I have your ear, if you’re listening, I’m assuming you like our show. And if that’s the case, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over at Apple podcasts or Spotify, Apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. Better yet, please recommend this show to at least one friend you think well like it. That’s what really good friends do. And if this is your first time listening, please consider subscribing. It’s your subscriptions that make the show possible. All right back to our show.
As the governor, you like that kind of weird British accent that I just failed miserably at and CEO of Bulldog Drummond Shawn is responsible for strategically directing each of Bulldog’s key engagements, ensuring there’s an Uncommon Sense methodology at the center of everything the company does. This approach maintains that the most complex challenges can be solved and the biggest opportunities can be realized. By using a powerful combination of simplicity, common sense and determination.
He brings 20 plus years of innovation design, brand and business building experience to companies from fortune 500. To purpose-driven startups. Shawn helps leadership teams transform large multinational companies in passionate entrepreneurs launch new companies, products and brands. He’s worked with executive teams at companies including Adidas bolthouse Farms, Campbell’s CMT, Dr. Yeoh, Hilton, Heineken, h&r block, IDEO, and TV, MTV, Mattel, nyck, perch, Starbucks, Samsung, Tata Harper, Taco Bell, Wd 40, Westfield and World Vision among many others. Those of you listening Do you recognize any of those brands? Wow. He writes for Fast Company psfk as a sought after speaker, Shawn lives in San Diego with his wife and three children is a DOM patrol surfer, wannabe photographer, an avid cultural for air. And this is his story.
I am here with Shawn Parr, who is the governor and CEO of Bulldog Drummond Shawn, thank you for joining us. And Shawn if you wouldn’t mind just by starting off by letting us know what is Bulldog Dummond and what does the governor do.
Shawn Parr 4:00
Mark, nice to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to chat. Bulldog Drummond is design and innovation company. We’re based in San Diego. And we get up every day to help leaders unlock the best in their organization, solve a series of challenges unlocking opportunities through the lens of brand. And the governor is a title that I sort of inherited a few years ago. It’s an English title for a leader and it stuck. So I’m the CEO and Chief Strategy Officer of the company and on the journey for about 23 years here, just a mere 23 years.
Marc Gutman 4:49
And I like that and when you talk about being a design and innovation company, if you would if you could just clarify that because I think a lot of people associate the word design with pretty pictures imagery, logos. And I have a hunch, and we don’t know each other that well, but I have a hunch that you mean something a little bit different when you say, design innovation company. What is that?
Shawn Parr 5:12
Yeah. So for us, design is a way of looking at the world to solve challenges and problems to create value. So thinking through the lens of designing solutions, and sometimes it can be a strategy. Sometimes it can be a service, sometimes it can be a visual manifestation can be a logo, it can be an identity, it can be a look and feel. Yeah, it’s an orientation towards solving challenges.
Marc Gutman 5:41
Thanks. In preparation for this interview, I was very curious as to what was Bulldog Drummond. And when I googled it, I get a it’s a fictional character created by hc McNeil, which I’ve never heard of, and I’m an English person, English literature person and love to read and think of myself a bit is, you know, a well-read individual, but I’ve never heard of this book. And so is this the inspiration for the name of your of your firm?
Shawn Parr 6:11
Yeah. So I got here from London in 1991. And launch photo drowning in 97. And I wanted to build a brand. I wanted to create a platform that gave us permission to do certain things. And there were two names that I sort of come to the US with, one was bought on drum and the other was mad dogs and Englishmen, mad dogs and Englishmen was taken and bought out. Drummond was a fictional detective, but I was given the book as a kid. And they were terrible books. There’s a reason you didn’t read them. There’s a reason nobody studies them because they’re terrible. But he was like, I don’t know, an ugly James Bond. And he solved problems. So really, the, the inspiration was that he was a detective, he solved problems. And that was sort of the center of who bought our drum and was, you know, in 97, and is Today we’re in the business of being given a challenge, we solve a problem, we come to the table with a level of energy, personality and sense of ourselves. And back in 97, it was a license to behave badly. And today, it is truly a brand that lives in a meaningful, deep way.
Marc Gutman 7:40
And so, you touched on this a little bit. But you mentioned I think you got the books when you were, you know, younger, a young boy, and you were first exposed to them. So when did you grow up in the UK? it? Yeah. And so as a young boy in the UK, you know, what was Shawn like, were you into these things like brand and discovering, you know, identity and designing the way forward? Was that who you were as a, as a young boy?
Shawn Parr 8:10
No, I mean, I yes, in that I was fascinated by music, I was fascinated by fashion and personal identity I was trying to figure out was I was I’m not was a modern, romantic, you know, I didn’t see myself as a punk rocker. I loved the aesthetic of the mob movement. I love that type of music. I loved the liberation of you new, new romantic music. So I was fascinated by design and culture. As a teenager. My father was a very creative individual. He was a, he owned a produce store he was on. He owned a power beyond an antique store. He owned an import business. And he was extremely creative with Merchandising, and customer service in a very unique way. So I that’s where I suppose my exposure to design and aesthetic came from interior design, retail design, but not in a sort of a formal way.
Marc Gutman 9:16
Yeah. And so were you exposed to any of that kind of design in school? Or was it purely through your father and, you know, exposure to his entrepreneurial businesses? Were you— did you take on any sort of art or creative interest while you were at school?
Shawn Parr 9:33
You know, art was a subject, but it wasn’t a total fascination. And so, for me, you know, the thing that I was fascinated by was, was literature writing. You didn’t bite, the literary debating society was something I was stoked on. So no, not in a formal way. You know, I think when you look back at the influences you have, I definitely look back on the way you know, he went presented his store the music, he put on the way that he was involved with, you know, charities. So it was just it was sort of, I don’t know, design school of life if you like.
Marc Gutman 10:12
Yeah. And so why was that path? Not for you Why? Or maybe you did. But I’m assuming you didn’t get into the family business. You didn’t you didn’t go that path. Why not?
Shawn Parr 10:27
Well, I, you know, I used to get up at four o’clock in the mornings as a teenager on the weekends and go to the Covent Garden with him to buy vegetables, and load the van, unload the van and set the store up. As I got a little bit older, I worked around the power bit in the background, I went to antique markets. And, you know, again, I learned a lot from him. But, you know, for a couple of different reasons, didn’t get involved in the family business and wrecked his marriage, and didn’t make him a particularly happy man. You know, it was hard work in a different way than we did a lot of hard work, if that makes sense.
Marc Gutman 11:07
No, for sure. And so I imagine that you had probably set that worldview or that opinion of where you wanted to be, which was not in that business, by the time that you were in high school. And, and so what did you think you wanted to do with your life? At that point? What were you thinking, the future was gonna hold for Shawn, you know, when you’re getting ready to, to prepare to go out in the rest of the world,
Shawn Parr 11:30
I, I actually thought that I wanted to be an officer in the English army. And I was solely rejected with that one, because my, my grades were not, were not strong enough and in the sciences, and so I there was a period of time where I actually didn’t know what I wanted to do. And, you know, a one point I thought I wanted to be an accountant. So I was in that little chapter of sort of searching for perhaps, where I could add value, or where I could be inspired or whatever. And it took a little while to figure that out.
Marc Gutman 12:07
Yeah. And so what was that? Like? I mean, you know, sounds like, you might have been heartbroken to be rejected by the English army and realize that, that that wouldn’t be for you. So what was that process? Like of figuring out, you know, what was your Muse? or What was your calling?
Shawn Parr 12:24
As I look back, it was very frustrating not to know exactly what you wanted to do. It was it just, it made you pick up things and turn them over and try them. And, you know, I think a little rejection is is good, it shapes your character and moves you in a different direction. If I go back then and imagine, like what I’m doing now, what I’ve had the privilege of doing for the last year, 20 plus years, I could never have imagined, that’s what I want. That’s what I wouldn’t be doing. So I think there’s, you know, we talked about how you design a path, and you just follow it, some people are lucky to do that. Some people like they just have that burning passion. I think my path has been trying early on trying a lot of things. And then, you know, by luck and by relationship, and by, you know, sheer well at times, getting on a path that I absolutely love.
Marc Gutman 13:21
Yeah. And so, how old were you when you were in this stage of experimentation? And what were some of the things that you tried that you realized weren’t for you?
Shawn Parr 13:32
So I was in my early 20s, I thought I wanted to be an accountant. I actually worked in a, it was probably the precursor to David Brent’s office, I worked for tower crane, and, you know, construction comp hire business. And I worked with an incredible guy who was just very organized, and he ran all of the tower cranes that were rented out through London, but he was he was in finance, and, you know, everybody that was in finance in this organization where they have responsibility, they, you know, they had influence, they had an interesting what looked like an interesting existence. So I thought, okay, it’s gonna be an accountant, and I can go down that path. And, you know, started down that path and wasn’t wasn’t for me.
Marc Gutman 14:25
And so when you realize it wasn’t for you, then what you do?
Shawn Parr 14:29
So there was a fantastic company that was in the real estate and finance space. And it was a brand its do that all it had, it had a level of consistency and uniformity and service. I had a sales position and I applied for it, got the job and very, very quickly, you know, moved into a direct sales director position sales and marketing director position, you know, running a team, it was a pretty rapid path to responsibility. And it was that was the sort of the beginning of connecting the dots back to the design.
I didn’t at the time, I didn’t think of it as brand. I didn’t call it brand, I didn’t call it strategy. I didn’t call it design, or customer experience, it was just being part of something that was cohesive and different and had energy and was useful, and it was successful, and it was making a difference in people’s lives. So that was that led me to a situation where I was responsible for our ad agency, and was the client and had a great relationship with them. And so they had no maybe six or seven months into our relationships that we want to grow our business. You know, we’d love to offer you an opportunity to come join us. So I moved from technically being a client, a young client into running an ad agency with the responsibility of growing it. And that sort of was the beginning of that sort of formal transition into appetizing design, innovation consulting.
Marc Gutman 16:28
Yeah. And so it sounds like to this point, other than learning on the job with your father and learning on the job at the real estate company haven’t had any real formal education around brand advertising any of these things you’re learning, you know, you’re learning on the job. So you go and you take this larger role at an advertising agency. Man, what was that? Like? I mean, were you well suited for that? Did you just struggle at first, like, what was what was that experience like?
Shawn Parr 16:55
So I think I bought a lot of perspective where I had been the client. So almost having a client inside of this agency, this these team of people that had been pure agency, people that was a design studio, production studio and media buying team. So I had a different perspective. And I really respected their different perspective and approach. So I think we learn together. And I think that was a good example of, you know, different areas of expertise or experience coming together can actually be better. And, yeah, it was the thing that, you know, I was schooled in and prior projects, works, responsibilities with what juggling many expectations, many projects, many deadlines, many complexities. So I think that piece was easy, if you like or wasn’t complicated. I think the learning that I got was working collaboratively with creative people, with designers, with writers without directors and photographers, illustrators. And again, bringing sort of a different perspective, but really respecting what you did. And I got a lot of joy from that. I what I realized was, not only were my people, but that’s where I I like their creativity fueled mine, if that makes sense. So I bought a business perspective to their creativity. And there was just that was that felt really good.
Marc Gutman 18:36
Yeah. And is this where kind of that light bulb that proverbial light bulb goes off? where you’re like, oh, maybe I found it, maybe, you know, maybe I found the thing that I’m supposed to be settling into. Was this. Was this the time?
Shawn Parr 18:50
Yeah, I think that to some degree, yes. The ability to build and create value, but I think that didn’t really come until I got to California. There was still a the UK or London, you know, while it was dynamic, it still had sort of this, rather than Yes, you can it had this Well, maybe you can. And, you know, on Sorry, no, I don’t think you should do that. Maybe don’t maybe no, I’m sorry. No, no, that’s not possible. Whereas I got to California and it was like, wow, everybody’s got this energy about them. This. Just this optimism, this, there’s nothing you can’t do. It’s full of possibilities. So it was coming here. That just gave me that sense of Oh my gosh. And you know, I think with the the rise of the design movement, if you like the rise of entrepreneurs in here, with the advent of you know, the web, it just was I was like, became I realized I was like a kid in a candy store.
Marc Gutman 20:02
So what brought you to California? So you’re, you know, you’re in the UK and coming here is, it’s not like it’s impossible or anything, but it is different. And it is a big move. And you know, what took you from London to California.
Shawn Parr 20:16
So I met a California girl who was at school in London. Just about to graduate, Matt fell in love, basically told her wherever she went, I would go, and it just so happens that she was from San Diego. And that’s not a bad place to live. But so yeah, love fell madly in love. You know, I’ve been married to her for 30 years. Next year, we’ve got three kids. So I didn’t come here for business. I didn’t come here for, you know, what America offers. It’s like, love.
Marc Gutman 20:56
That’s a good reason. Probably the best of all, and congratulations on 30 years and three kids. That’s a great accomplishment. Yeah. So that’s amazing. And so, you know, you come here and, you know, I used to live in Los Angeles and kind of know that whole California area really well. And I still don’t even think of San Diego is like an advertising kind of hotspot. You know, I know there’s a big economy there. I know. There’s a lot of people but no, I think if you’re coming to the US for advertising, you’re looking at you know, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, all these bigger metro areas. And so what was it like when you got to San Diego where you know, you have this experience and to just show up with your portfolio in your briefcase ready to tackle the advertising world? And in San Diego, what was that all about?
Shawn Parr 21:44
Yeah, no, it was very humbling. Back in 91. It was, it was a city that was revolved around hospitality and military. And there were, you know, there were other businesses here. But once you sort of looked around, it was, you’re right, it was sort of the hotbed of creativity. Back then there was some, there are a couple of really great ad agencies here. There are a couple of great really design studios here. And I think what’s happened is, as San Diego as a city has grown up, over the last 20 plus years, the level of entrepreneurial energy and creativity that manifests itself in food, hospitality, technology, healthcare, biotechnology, what the hotbed of creativity has fueled a community of amazing design-centric companies here. And, you know, I was fortunate to be here when it was, you know, really in that sort of, gestation period, and I’ve just been incredibly privileged to, to live here and, you know, do business here, but at the same time, you know, our, our business has been very much across the US and, you know, outside of the US over the last, you know, 20 plus years. So we chose to look outside of San Diego, we needed to look outside of San Diego for business. And that was actually a really good challenge on reflection.
Marc Gutman 23:21
This episode brought to you by Wildstory. Wait, isn’t that your company? It is. And without the generous support of Wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn’t a logo, or a tagline, or even your product. A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product service or company. It’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room.
Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose-driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about. Reach out @ www.wildstory.com and we’d be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show.
When you came to San Diego, did you start Bulldog Drummond like day one, were you looking for a job within the advertising community? Or what were your job prospects like when you when you came here full of love and hope?
Shawn Parr 24:37
So I actually got a visa on a job with a little design studio. And the owner of that business was thrilled that you know, I had business development and to build a business and you know, I was English. Two days in I realized it was not gonna work and started to think About You know, okay, do I start something on my own, that was incredibly difficult back then. And I was very fortunate my, my wife’s best friend from elementary school, her mother owned a little design, business, design and PR business with a with a friend. And they had good reputation, they had a little portfolio and a little office, and I got introduced to them, I said, Hey, listen, give me a, maybe give me a desk, a chair and a phone and give me a little bit of time. And let me see if I can develop some business. And then maybe we can have a conversation. And within about six months, I bought in some business, and you know, at the end of the year, we figured out, hey, this is going to be a good thing. And so that was the that was the incredible sort of jumping off point where I was able to, you know, really honor them, and at the same time, be able to build sort of a business infrastructure. So that was in 90, late 92, I spent about three or four years building up a team and a portfolio and then launch for Drummond formally in 97. So, you know, the power of or the benefit of being supported by or encouraged by a good person. I was very fortunate that that that was the case.
Marc Gutman 26:25
Yeah, who was that person? What was their name?
Shawn Parr 26:27
Name was Anne, or is Anne Book. And she’s a an incredibly wise, Irish American New Yorker wrote eight books. And my wife actually grew up with that family, and they’re incredible people. And, you know, eternally grateful to Ann. And yeah, no, I was I was, I was very fortunate that she was fortunate. And I was fortunate.
Marc Gutman 26:52
Yeah. And so you, you go off, and you hang your shingle, and you launch this firm Bulldog Drummond and what did you hope to do with it? Right? Why did you start your own firm? And what were you looking to do?
Shawn Parr 27:04
You know, I think, first and foremost, provide a life for my wife and family, provide a great life, my wife and family was Goal number one is going number one today, that hadn’t changed. But I think to work with interesting people, and it was to, at the time, it was to create great advertising, it was to design great, you know, visual solutions for people today, it’s a different thing.
Marc Gutman 27:33
Yeah. And so when you when you went into business, did you have a strong sense of like, who you were going to serve? Did you know what market you were going to be looking at? Or was it more of a like, Hey, we’re just out here, and we’re, we’re hungry, and we’re taking, we’re taking business from anybody?
Shawn Parr 27:48
To start with, it was certainly that to get going, and it was literally getting going. And then it became, let’s work in sport, let’s work in fashion, let’s work in entertainment, let’s work in, you know, health care, to start with to build a creative reputation. And, you know, early on, it was very much about the dynamic nature of the work that you created, built your reputation. So it was early on, it was how you do that. And what type of clients do do we have, and we were very fortunate we won. Once from green to early business, Virgin was a key client of ours for about 10 years. And, you know, it was really sort of a magnet, both for talent, and it was a tool to actually demonstrate our creativity, as we will call it.
Marc Gutman 28:39
And that must have been extremely exciting. And what a What a great brand to work with. And as you started, I mean, was it a success from day one? Or were you? Were you kind of holding it all together? Were you worried, you know, at any given time that hey, this thing might not work and you just shared with me, the number one driver for that business was to take care of your family. So those are some big stakes. Those are real stakes. You know, this isn’t like, no ego and stuff like that, you know, whatever. But like, your family is at stake here. And so were you ever concerned like hey, like, this thing might not work? Or like our I hope it works or like we’re working on that.
Shawn Parr 29:13
I think there’s always that sort of a this driving question of, you know, is are you gonna be in business? Are you gonna be successful? I think the type of any service business is like having a bucket with a hole in and you’re constantly filling it up, because you’re not selling a product per se that people are buying. But I would say that that anxiety, if you like was what certainly fuel drove my energy to keep moving the business forward. And, you know, I’ve sort of always operated from the premise of, you’re not entitled people don’t give you anything. You have to earn respect. You have to earn your way It’s, you know, it’s tough. So it’s been a, it’s been a great journey. But along the way, all along the way that fuel of, Hey, I have a payroll to make I have, I’m beyond my family, I have a business family that I’m responsible for. So that that certainly motivates you.
Marc Gutman 30:18
For sure, absolutely. And you know, I’m gonna make an assumption, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but like, I get the sense that you, you really love what you do. And you really love this field of design and brand. And so, you know, assuming that to be true, and you know, what do you love about it? Like, we’re like, whitey, you’ve been in it for a long time, you’ve been, you know, you’ve been in it by choice, like, what do you love? What do you love about it?
Shawn Parr 30:43
So I think, coming from a country where you knew there was always this, maybe, I’m sorry, go back to what I was saying earlier, to come to a country and be in a in a profession where anything’s possible. And you can play a role in working with entrepreneurs, or you can work with the leaders of multibillion dollar national international companies. And you can help add value move things forward through the power of design, and communication, and collaboration. And it really does, it never gets old. Because if you’re fascinated by the challenge, and you’re fascinated by the people you work with, they are always different. There’s similarities, but the marketplace is different the customers a different stage of business is different. The stage and technology is different. The personalities, different cultural challenges, insider a company, so it’s always different. And I have a terrible add, and you know, sort of have this serial entrepreneurial, want to solve want to create one effects. And so it feeds that sort of incessant need to jump into things and create. And then there’s the fascination with beauty, expressed in designing solutions, and, you know, improving lives and making helping in small ways to make the world a better place. So I think there’s no better place for somebody that’s got a little add, it’s got that energy for creative things, it’s a great place to be.
Marc Gutman 32:30
Yeah, I always described a little bit as like this, like ability to always have new love, you know, you can always fall fall in love again, and again, with a different, you know, leadership team brand idea, like you get to dislike, you know, and you just get to kind of read redo that over and over again. And I really resonate with, with what you’re saying. And so, when you talk about brand, like, how do you define brand? Like what’s your what’s your definition of brand?
Shawn Parr 32:57
So I think it is, it’s multi dimensional. And you do in its most simplest form, it used to mean it was a promise, it is the the manifestation of a broad series of things that sort of end up in a consumers mind in terms of the way they think about a product or company or service. But I think one simple way that I like to think about brand is a brand is like a person. And you know, a person is like a brand meaning they have there’s a we’re searching for a reason why we exist, we have a purpose in the world, we go out and live into that purpose, we have a personality that is distinct, we have a set of values that guide how we think about things and how we operate. And then we have relationships with people that, you know, we’re we’re either in positive, negative or non relationship with. And I brands are very similar. They have a, they have a strategic or dimensional core to them. They’re inherently they have a human characteristic. This is at least one way of thinking about it. From my perspective, it’s like why does it exist? What does it have to do in the world? You know, what value is it adding? How does it show up? How do people experience it? How does it live in their lives? So I think brand is an incredible asset that when understood, and when defined and unlocked. Actually, you see it, we see it transform companies and teams, they believe in that they get behind it, they work every day, because they get paid, they really are invested and engaged in a relationship with it. And the same is true with consumers
Marc Gutman 34:42
that couldn’t agree more and everyone loves transformation and engagement. But what’s hard about it like What don’t we know about this thing brand like like if you know i mean? I’m sure we’d all be all be doing it every business would be doing it well if they could. So So what’s hard about it,
Shawn Parr 34:59
You know, I think inside of organizations, you have different levels of awareness and understanding of all the disciplines, whether it’s finance, whether it’s law, whether it’s regulation, for manufacturing, or whether it’s for marketing or whether it’s a brand. And depending on the people that are stewarding an organization, the appreciation for what a, an incredibly well articulated, framed out executed brand looks like can be challenging. So I think part of our job is always to try to recognize the level of awareness and understanding and be a good guide to help the teams understand what it can do for their, their organization and their constituents. You know, I think it’s hard when it’s viewed superficially, but I think the level of understanding has, you know, in the last two or three years, people are very much aware of what it can do for business.
Marc Gutman 35:58
Yeah, we’re kind of in the the golden age or golden era, if you will, it’s like people are finally hearing and understanding what what it is and what it isn’t. And so, you know, it’s we’re talking, I was thinking about how you started this interview and talking about, you know, Bulldog Drummond’s been around for 23 years, you’ve been doing this for a long time. And it got me to thinking about just like relevancy and staying relevant. And like, how does, like, if that’s something that always just like is on the top of my mind is like, how do you continue to stay relevant? How do you continue to reinvent yourself? And so how does Bulldog Drummond do it? How do you, you know, stay relevant and kind of keep keep on the pulse of what’s going on?
Shawn Parr 36:39
You calling me old?
Marc Gutman 36:41
Not at all!
Shawn Parr 36:44
No, you know, it’s, it’s a fantastic question. Because I think back to brand, you have to be relevant. And I think the world that we live in today, it’s not a brand has to be relevant, but you have to be current, you have to be engaged in culture, you have to be engaged in the world around you. And I think back to your question about why I still love what I do. I am we as a company, we are forced to be relevant and curious. And students of what is now we are also challenged with our clients to solve big business challenges. And so in doing that, you learn and doing that you’re collaborating with team members, inside of organizations and your own, so that you’re always learning, you’re always moving forward. So I think that that plus being self aware, and not not getting, you know, so caught up in Hey, wait, good, but versus we’ve always got something to learn. And I think that sort of humility actually makes us like, watch where we are in the Zeitgeist, it makes us look up where we are in the flow of business.
Marc Gutman 37:59
Yeah. And so as you you think back across that body of work that you alluded to, I won’t make it pick an absolute favorite, but what’s a piece of work that you’re really, really proud of that? You know, you look back, and you’re like, you know, kind of like the full expression of Shawn Parr and his team.
Shawn Parr 38:16
I think this too, for me. One is, I was fortunate to go to Africa in 2006. And the trip was to understand the impact of hunger and the impact of HIV. And we came back and we were we had a project that was literally how do you represent the impact of HIV on a continent and various constituents on that continent. And we were able to develop the concept for a traveling exhibit that was inspired by a trip to the apartheid museum. And it was highly experiential way you would walk through the lives of listening to the lives of different people who contracted on a digital contract HIV AIDS, and that that raised awareness, understanding and a significant amount of money. So that was a project I think, made me think about the type of work we do and a meaningful way that trip made me think about a role that we play because we transition from being an ad agency into, you know, a design and innovation consulting business, as a result of sort of that trip now work with Virgin, which was a really interesting mash up of sort of forces that may made me think about where we were going. And then obviously, the second piece of work is we helped to start a we founded a business called the US School, which is a social and emotional learning platform that is very much about helping high school kids, college kids, people in transition, figure out where they go. And so it’s a construct of self awareness with self confidence, leading to self direction in very simple terms, but it’s a curriculum based platform. So putting all the learning that we’d have, from a business perspective, from a family life perspective into a product. So yeah, that’s the two that come to mind.
Marc Gutman 40:21
Yeah, those are amazing. But flipping the script a little bit. Is there one that broke your heart? Like, is there one that you can remember where it just didn’t pan out the way you wanted it to? Or just left either kind of sad and bummed out?
Shawn Parr 40:36
You know, I, personally, I’ve been so fortunate across all the years. And I wouldn’t say there was any one that left me sad that way. But there was a multi billion dollar technology company that my creative director and I had the privilege of traveling to Prague, and, you know, the UK and another part of the US, and they were foreign owned, and these people were just rude. I mean, we we busted our backsides. For these people. It was a big project. And yeah, that was just, I think that was the one time and 23 years where I experienced rudeness. So yeah, that was that was sad for them, not for us, because we laugh about it. At this point. If I told you the story, you pee your pants, we don’t have enough time. But yeah, these these people, which is? Oh, yeah,
Marc Gutman 41:33
that’s pretty good track record. If in 23 years, that’s, that’s, that’s what you have. So that’s really, really awesome. So what is Bulldog Drummond look like today? Like, what’s the makeup of the business? What kind of clients are you working with?
Shawn Parr 41:45
So we went through a, I know, read, positioning, re examining the role we play in the war about 18 months ago, and especially with climate, and the social issues that are affecting the world. We said, you know, how can we make a difference. And our sort of position as a company is, we get up every day to try to help leaders become a force for good inside of their organizations. So we believe like many people today that businesses, companies, leaders, and companies are the biggest change agents in society, we have, you know, the ability to move culture, we have the ability to remove systems, and not necessarily have to rely on government. Another conversation. But so bought og, we work with the C suite, executives across a range of big a large range of, you know, significant companies. So what we look like today, as a company that we our expertise is in brand, and Brandon to innovation and people and culture, into customer experience into social impact and sustainability. They’re the practice areas that we operate in. And we are part of a three group studio today that has offices in in Irvine and Chicago, and we joined forces about three years ago. And so as a consulting studio, we now have, you know, partners in digital transformation, digital innovation, digital products and commerce. And so we have the ability to sort of affect the entire customer experience, or the connected customer experience, if needed. But what’s in our heart is actually moving the world forward through the work that we do, making the world a better place through the work we did.
Marc Gutman 43:54
And so what’s your biggest challenge right now with that?
Shawn Parr 43:57
I think that the move and the speed at which digital transformation is affecting some businesses, you know, I don’t see that as a challenge. I see that as a, as the natural next step for where business is going. I think helping, the challenge that we have is helping companies be aware of what’s around the corner while they’re while they’re dealing with the current reality of, you know, pandemic, the current reality of, you know, remote working and such.
Marc Gutman 44:32
Yeah, as the pandemic had a big impact on your business.
Shawn Parr 44:36
I was very fortunate, I would say we have a sort of a diverse client portfolio. We have, you know, organizations that are in technology and food and beverage and health care. We had clients that were very active in hospitality. So we I think like the rest of the world. We Got a shock to the system and in March and early April, and since has been extremely, you know, busy and engaged across a wide range of categories.
Marc Gutman 45:12
So what are you most excited about right now or looking forward to, maybe a better question?
Shawn Parr 45:18
I think when a dear friend of mine, who is a comedian, he posted some tape today. And it was a picture of this woman in the 20s. And she was in her 20s get up at Black and White photograph. And he said, Remember, when this was over, the roaring 20s happened, and joy is just around the corner. And so I think what I’m excited by is the much like, you know, back in the early 90s, and I think about San Diego, then and today, the unleashed creativity, that is an the natural joy that is gonna come out of humans, when we can’t have this restriction that is around us today. We I don’t think we’re ever going to go back to the way it was, but there will be a new normal, and the new normal has happened like throughout history. So what happens as a result, the the connectivity, and the the joy, the humor, the music, the art culture that is going to come in the next 234 years is going to be fantastic to participate in and experience.
Marc Gutman 46:30
So Shawn, is he is he think about yourself back in London, his young eight year old boy helping your dad open up those farmers markets and getting up early at 4am? Or maybe you’re a little older than that. Like if he you know, if he saw you today, what do you think he’d say?
Shawn Parr 46:47
He would say, life is short. You know, make sure you’re enjoying either the hearing now or not always thinking about tomorrow? I think he’d say, You did all right. And yeah, no, I think he’s, he, he was he always had these sort of anecdotes. You can never put a young head on old shoulders or an old head on your shoulders. But you know, I think he would, he would say, you know, just make sure you enjoy every day. Let’s say be brilliant.
Marc Gutman 47:29
And that is Shawn Parr of Bulldog Drummond. Hope you heard. I mean, really heard Shawn’s call that business, That design is the platform for change, that we can design our way over, around and through some of our biggest social and cultural issues. Think about that for a moment. There is a way forward. It’s not easy. It’s not obvious, but with some curiosity in intent. Design is the tool that furthers our purpose. A big thank you to Shawn part of Bulldog Drummond. After interview, Shawn shared his story of how he was looking at an old picture of a young woman from the 20s dressed in her flapper outfit. And then it reminded him that those roaring times came after a really dark and tough time. And that on the other side of our time, will be our version of the 20s where creativity and innovation will bloom. Soon we’ll turn the corner and we’ll all be wearing our roaring 20s flapper outfits. We will link to all things Shawn and Bulldog Drummond in the show notes. And if you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at [email protected]. Our best guests like Shawn 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 so you’ll never miss an episode. I like big stories and I cannot lie. You other storytellers can’t deny.
50 min
December 16, 2020BGBS 052: Tanner Krause | Kum & Go | We Must Be the Force of Change
BGBS 052: Tanner Krause | Kum & Go | We Must Be the Force of Change
Tanner Krause is the President of Kum & Go, a fourth-generation family-owned business headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa with 400 stores spanning 11 states. And boy, does he have a story for you. You'll learn that Kum & Go is more than just a convenience store. On top of being a fun place with a die-hard fandom, the service mentality that the company embodies is exemplary, and you'll be sure to feel Tanner's passion through the mic as he expresses his mission to improve greater equality and kindness for humanity.
In this episode, we deep dive into Kum & Go's history and learn how it all started out with a love story. Tanner also touches on crucial decisions that were made during each generation, including his own, that all impacted Kum & Go for the better. Overall, Tanner feels his greatest purpose is to ensure that his family and others are proud of Kum & Go for generations to come. To him, that means using his privilege and opportunity to be a force of change for the many forms of inequality America endures. That being said, how can you become a force of change, even in your own small way?
In this episode, you'll learn...
The name for Kum & Go came from the last names Krause and Gentle, named after Tanner's grandfather and great-grandfather
Tanner speaks fondly of his grandfather Bill Krause, a charismatic person with a gift of making people feel special and paying attention to detail, no matter how influential he became.
Although the number of Kum & Go stores are smaller than they were in 2004, Tanner's father Kyle ensures that the chain of stores left were rebuilt, ensuring a continuity of quality and improving the financial health of the company
At Kum & Go, the 5 core values they stand by are passion, integrity, teamwork, caring, and excellence

Kum & Go has generations of service-based leadership. In an industry where products are not generally differentiated, Kum & go wins with its people, which is why they've maintained such success for 61 years

Tanner stresses that in today's day and age, you cannot require a consumer to come shop and meet your needs at the store. They need the freedom to shop in person at their own convenience. Therefore, developing the technology for that freedom was essential to Kum & Go.

Almost every decision you make, you think is right based on the information you have at the time. It is important to remember this when hindsight overturns your original decision

Tanner encourages families with privilege to make transcended progress in driving change on matters of equality.

Kum & Go associates get six weeks of fully paid maternity leave, which is rare for retail in Iowa. Thus far, this has impacted about 3,000-4,000 people.

The family age of first employment at Kum & Go is 9 years old. Tanner was so excited to work, he unsuccessfully negotiated to start at 8.
Resources
Tanner Krause
LinkedIn: Tanner Krause
Twitter: @TannerKrause
Kum & Go
Website: kumandgo.com
Twitter: @kumandgo
Instagram: @kumandgo
TikTok: @realkumandgo
LinkedIn: Kum & Go
Quotes
[19:48] We have core values at Kum & Go. We have five. Passion, integrity, teamwork, caring, and excellence... A Kum & Go person is somebody who embodies those core values. Somebody who gets out of bed in the morning and thinks about making days better for others, "how do we come in and serve?" And it's been this service mentality that has led us to be successful.
[31:44] Success in the convenience store business is getting some getting somebody to inconvenience themselves to go to a convenience store
[46:47] The fact that somebody's going beyond just, you know, buying drinks and buying gas from us, but to say, "You know what? This company, this brand, this store, this experience is so cool, I want it too, and I want it to be a part of my personal story and my personal brand," I get really proud. I'm really happy I see it, and it brings a smile to my face.
[48:53] Inequality exists in a variety of forms in America. And in order to make acceptable progress, it cannot be the oppressed that drive change. The privileged have to drive change. For us to really make transcended progress and success in matters of all sorts of equality, it has to be people like myself, people who look like me, people who have wealth and opportunity like I have, people that have education like I have, that recognize this and say..."Why don't we be the force of change?"
Podcast Transcript
Tanner Krause 0:02
Kum & Go's purpose is to make this better if we're successful in our purpose, and if we can give you just a glimpse of incremental joy or happiness, when you think about the impact that we can have in the country by being a small source of joy, that's exciting to me, about, you know, how we can leverage what we do to drive the change, we want to see.
That's what we're trying to do. And we invest in our associates and we design our associate value proposition, not in a way in which, you know, what does the market demand? Or does the market bear for things or for people, but, you know, what do our people deserve? And listen objectively, like with a global perspective, do our people deserve a living wage to deserve maternity leave? Do they deserve health insurance, you know what that list look like? And you know, before we start to add bells and whistles over here, and let's stay focused on people in our employ, and make sure that they're respected and dignified, except that they shouldn't be. And that's what we've tried to do.
Marc Gutman 1:02
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 Back stories, and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and today's episode of Baby Got Back story. How a young boy from Iowa grew into his destiny to run one of the largest networks of privately owned convenience stores in the Midwest. I am so excited about today's episode, because I'm personally obsessed with relevance.
How do we stay relevant?
How do we reinvent ourselves? How do we move forward with the world as it moves forward around us? And how do we stay relevant while effecting change. And today's guest is all about relevance. Last week, we had Ariel Rubin from Kum & Go on the show. And today we are talking with Tanner Kraus president of Kum & Go.
And before we get to Tanner, I want to remind you to rate and review this show. If you're listening, I'm assuming you like it. And if that's the case, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over at Apple podcasts or Spotify, Apple podcasts and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines the ratings on their charts. ratings are good for us so we can continue to produce this show. Better yet, please recommend this show to at least one friend you think well like it. That's just being a good friend.
Tanner Krauss is the president of Kum & Go headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the fourth generation to lead the family owned business. And as President Tanner oversees the marketing operations, human resources, information technology, finance and storage development functions. Together, these teams provide support to 5000 Associates and 400 stores across 11 states. I mentioned that Tanner is 32 years old. But you wouldn't know it by listening to him. And as you're hearing today's interview, he was raised for this job. And he knew ever since he knew something that this was his calling. And the combination of the two makes it no surprise that he is President today. What may surprise you is Tanner's perspective on the convenience store. But the impact they're making on their employees, their communities, and the world. Tanner is not simply along for the ride.
He sees Kum & Go as a platform to do good while continuing to build the business. As I mentioned last week, as a customer, I am so enamored by Kum & Go. I seek out their stores when I'm on the road. And I'm so honored to have Tanner Kraus on the show. And this is his story.
So I am here with Tanner Krause, the president of Kum & Go. Tanner, welcome. And if you could start off by telling us, what is Kum & Go?
Tanner Krause 4:26
Well, Marc, thanks for having me. And shout out to all your listeners out there. I love talking about Kum & Go. So Kum & Go is a convenience store company based in Des Moines, Iowa. We've been around for 61 years. We're in 11 states across most of the Midwest, and we've got about 400 locations
Marc Gutman 4:47
and kind of a funny name. Where does the name Kum & Go come from?
Tanner Krause 4:54
Sure. Kum & Go is a name based actually on my family. So we're a family business on the fourth generation of my family to lead the business. And, you know, Kum & Go and grew out of one store in Hampton, Iowa in 1959. And I like to say that Kum & Go was a love story. You had my grandpa who was working for a kind of oil, who's about to get relocated to Wyoming. And his soon to be father in law said, there's no way in hell you're taking my daughter from I went to Wyoming in the 50s.
Why don't I buy that service station that's for sale on the corner, and you can run it and we'll go into business together? So what's keeping Nancy Gentle in Hampton, Iowa was the impetus for the first store in this business. And it was Hampton oil company. Well, we grew pretty rapidly that a good little model. And finally, we needed a name, and didn't want to call it Hampton oil as we went into these other small towns in Northern Iowa. So we needed a name. And they wanted to name my grandpa, my great grandpa that brought in the K from my last name Krause. And then the G from my great grandpa's last name, gentle. So we have the name Kum & Go.
And this is early 60s. So my grandfather's go into the sign company in Northern Iowa. And they say we need you know, we have whatever nine stores, we need three signs for a store. And here's our name, sign guy goes, Okay, it's 50 bucks a letter, and does the record tick, as all right, it'll cost you this much money to buy signage for your stores. And being a scrappy entrepreneurs that we were, they look up the name and said 50 bucks a letter, that's too expensive. What if we do this, no longer will be a nd we'll use the ampersand, save two characters. And we can spell come instead of spelling kome. We can spell it Kum save a third character. And then they got a new quote, they probably saved I don't know, 4000 bucks or something and early 60s, and Kum & Go, as you know, today was named
Marc Gutman 7:18
Ah, that's awesome and it's become an iconic name ever since. And then. So from that moment, where we're kind of in this moment where the name gets more or less branded, or I guess maybe the the typography of it comes about in this organic way. And the name comes about what happens there with the business, how does it continue to grow and expand?
Tanner Krause 7:43
Well, I think the thing that we've gotten better at recently is talking about the elephant in the room. And there was a long stretch of time where we didn't know how to address the reality that it is our name, and the innuendo and the euphemism and the underlying sexual tone in our name. So we avoided it. And looking back, that was probably the wrong strategy, because we allowed others to control the narrative of our brand assets. Instead, we now embrace the fact that our name is our name. And we're controlling the narrative, and we're doing so in a way that doesn't cheapen who we are, it doesn't invite further sexualization of our brand.
It addresses the awkwardness in a mostly mature manner and we even stamped out rude or de sexualizing comments on our social media accounts, so that we, we don't have that type of negative activity or surrounding us. And so now it's becoming more of the conversation and more normalized, and we're seeing a really positive reaction to that.
Marc Gutman 9:03
Yeah, that's awesome. It's really this idea, you know, that I've talked about before, which is brand or be branded, like, either you're out there talking about it, or other people are, but people are talking about it. And so better, like, as you mentioned, to, to try to, it's not even, like control the narrative, it's just like, inform the narrative, it's more like shape it because, you know, narratives are kind of our two ways. You know, a lot of times are most of the time with our customers.
And so, I love that and so, kind of getting back though to when you have these scrappy entrepreneurs, they're they're building the business, how did the business grow from what I was trying to maybe ask and, and I loved your answer because I but I did a poor job. I think of the asking the question was, how did the business grow from that point on how did it begin to become this bigger thing that started to spread out across multiple states and and over the generations have all these all these locations?
Tanner Krause 9:55
Yeah, happy to tell that story too. So, you know, we had a bit of magic That first service station back in Hampton, Iowa. And she had a couple things going for you that my grandpa and my great grandpa. And so my grandpa, Bill Krause was as charismatic a person as I ever met.
He was incredible with people, you remember everybody's name, he remembered more than just your name about you. And he made you feel important. He made you feel special. And he never lost that. And no matter how influential or wealthy he became, he was always had a gift with people. And he worked his ass off. He, you know, my grandma still tell stories how when we had that first store, you would close overnight? Well, he would pin the home phone number to the gas pump. And if there was a trucker driving through Hampton at night, they needed to go to his store, call him he would put his boots on, got to bed, drive down to get the sale, and then go back home and sleep the rest of the night. And so he was that kind of guy.
Then you had my great grandfather, who was, you know, the consummate merchant, he was this business man, he, he owned a pharmacy in Northern Iowa, before he got into the gas and oil and service business, his family, his parents ran a fruit stand and kind of predict that depression era Iowa. And so he was good at merchandising, he was good at, you know, buying for $1 and selling for two. And so they really pioneered and what's the modern day convenience store, at least in our part of the country in which you had this model that was very automobile focused. And it was oil changes and tire changes and fluid changes and gas. And it was kind of basics. And they were one of the first you know, it's the story is told the first to really start to merchandise, staples with your automobile products.
So they were selling bread, milk, a eggs, nice to have, they were really bringing convenience to the customer. And that combination of merchandising and marketing, slash sales and people skills was a really successful one. So the store started to work, show them a lot of money, relatively speaking. And then they were able to kind of go town to town across Iowa. And you know, no business plan, No formalities, a walk into the local banker and say, Hey, this is my model, do you believe in me with a small loan, I can get one of these going in your town. And that worked. And it kept working. And I kept repeating itself.
And then that became Kum & Go, and then we're growing through the 60s or going through the 70s, or growing through the 80s, pretty organically kind of one at a time slow, slow, slow, as you get to the 80s. And into the 90s, especially our business grew to where we were able to start kicking off a decent amount of cash. And we were able to do some acquisitions. So we really grew from a store count perspective and a geographical reach in the 90s especially. And so we had this operational magic, and to some extent, a strong brand.
But really the magic was in our ability to execute in stores, we could take a bankrupt chain of convenience stores in any town in the Midwest, buy it and run it and be able to make a good money and have really quick returns through that process. And so we did that, that got us into Omaha that got us into Colorado got us into Tulsa gotta finish Springfield, Missouri, got us into a lot of the markets where we are today. So my grandfather really led this scaling of our enterprise largest your acquisition.
The next chapter is you have my dad coming up to the business. And so my dad graduated from USC of Iowa in the mid 80s, and went straight in to Kum & Go. So he's grown up during all this time. And he becomes CEO in 2004. And he shifts our growth strategy as a company. So we were an acquisition based company, we shift to grow into an organic built company again, where we now start to build our own stores. And what he saw was while the acquisition led growth had really positive short term returns, right, you're buying really depreciated assets you're putting Kum & Go on the storefront you're putting Kum & Go people in the store and more importantly, and you're getting quick paybacks, so that was spinning well for us.
But you wake up one day, we have 450 stores, all different types of associating customer experiences. We've got some stores of 711 built we've got some stores that getting go bill, we've got some stores that mom and pop in Oklahoma built and they're all over the place in terms of asset quality product offering product mix, plan, the grand the whole nine yards was really scattered. And so our brand suffered ultimately, as a result of all that even though financially we're quite strong.
So Dan kicks off this massive initiative to start to build new and rebuild the key real estate that we own and divest non strategic assets in real estate. And we are just about on the tail end of this project, but he kicked off. And I think it was 2010 or 2011, we're really got ambitious about turning over the chain of stores that we own and operate. And so we now have, you know, in his CEO, experience or leadership, our store count has gone down, as we've divested, but we've built new stores, high performing stores, our volume for outlets are growing rapidly, and our overall company financial health, and ultimately, the profitability has grown substantially since he took over even though our total number of stores is actually smaller than it was in 2004.
Marc Gutman 15:57
Yeah, and then you come in and you become president. And we'll get there in a second. But I kind of want to take a step back because you so clearly articulated, and thank you for sharing that story in that that journey of Kum & Go and your family. And so do you have brothers or other siblings?
Tanner Krause 16:15
I do. Yeah, I'm one of four boys.
Marc Gutman 16:18
Okay. And so it can you just give me a rundown of what that looks like in terms of ages and things like that.
Tanner Krause 16:25
Yeah, so my older brother Ryan is in law school. He's doing social justice law at the Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan. On the second oldest, my younger brother Elliot, also lives in New York City. He is a director of a creative writing program at a Jesuit High School in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And my youngest brother, Oliver, is the director of analytics for Parma Calcio.
Marc Gutman 16:52
Oh, awesome. And so thank you for that. And so this might answer my question. So when you think back and you know, Tanner, you know, you're 856, something like that growing up in Des Moines? Did you always think that you would someday? Be in the family business? Did you dream of having a leadership role Kum & Go? Or was there something else for you?
Tanner Krause 17:15
Absolutely, this is my dream. And I'm blessed to say that, you know, I woke up, I woke up, I grew up, and I looked up to my dad, I looked up to my grandfather, even my great grandfather, you know, he passed away when I was 18 years old, so a lot of exposure to him as well. So, you know, I looked at, you know, my family as, as role models as as aspirational to me. And I've always known I would do this. And I've always known that I would be a part of Kum & Go. And most of my life experiences were designed around preparing me to have the job I have today.
Marc Gutman 17:57
Yeah. And so it's interesting, like, I like when I go into a Kum & Go, I feel that it's different. And I don't know why. And I think that that's always the hallmark of a great brand is you can't always identify why you're feeling something or why you recognize it. But there's these little things, you know, and and perhaps I can, I can trace it back to the stories you shared about your grandfather, your great grandfather and how they approached business. But like, you know, you do feel welcome, if there is a and I want to ask you, you know, what you mentioned, you know, we have Kum & Go people, which is a Kum & Go person, because like when I go into a common ghost store, I mean, you talk about things about being a family business, there's values that are printed in different, you know, areas of the store, I mean, it just feels different.
Has it always been that way? Or is this something that that's a little bit new with the brand and the way that you're communicating your brand story through the store?
Tanner Krause 18:51
But I think we're communicating our brand story in a new way. But I think that thread of consistency has been coming to people. And we've as a brand, if you look back over the last 60 years, you know, if you heard a lot about what I was saying, relative to our assets, we were not winning on asset or store experience or store quality for most of our company's history.
Have you walked into Kum & Gos today, thanks to the hard work of my father and our real estate team, we're finally winning on store stores, right? Our stores by and large, are bigger, brighter, newer, younger and better condition better materials than the competition. I'll put our fleet up against just about anybody in the business.
However, that was not always the case. Like I said, when we're buying bankrupt seven elevens in downtown Omaha, you don't have great assets. So we had to win with people. And we have core values that Kum & Go we have five passion, integrity, teamwork, caring, an excellence. And so what is it coming to a person a kind of a person is somebody who embodies those core values. Somebody who gets out of bed in the morning and thinks about making days better for others, how do we come in and serve. And it's been this service mentality that has led us to be successful.
And you saw that by now my grandfather was not above doing anything in a kum & go store, even when he was in his 60s and 70s. If the garbage was unsatisfactory, he would take the garbage out. If the pumps were dirty, he'd walk in and say, you know, where are your cleaning materials, he walked out and he cleaned the pump, and I saw him good, I'm going to Kum & Go to stores, where here's this, you know, semi retired founder, cleaning palms, taking out the trash getting the mop out of the bathroom, that's who he was. And so we have generation, decades of service based leadership of customer service based associate training and culture built into our DNA.
And ultimately, we haven't been able to win on assets for a long time products in our industry are not very differentiated, you'd walk into our store, it's a similar line of products. And when you walk into our competition, that's a tough place for us to win. So you got it went on people. That's why we've been successful for 61 years.
Marc Gutman 21:19
I love that. And you know, you mentioned that you were always destined to do this, that this was your dream job. I mean, do you remember that first day when you became president? Like, I know, you were in the company prior to that, so it wasn't like you just like, walked in, you know, one day and became president, but like, we scared like, Did you think like, Am I gonna be the fourth generation that screws this thing up? Like, did you have any apprehension?
Tanner Krause 21:45
Absolutely. You know, I knew how to say one thing, my dad still CEO in the business, now he empowers me more and more every day. And at some point, there'll be an additional transition, where he'll step out of Kum & Go a little bit more than he is today. He'll Kum & Go zone by the crowds, group. Kraus group owns and operates 10 different businesses soon to be 11. And so we've got a lot going on in our portfolio. And he's trusted in the power of me, and I'm appreciative of that. But absolutely, I've I've been scared, I've been worried, I've been nervous. That motivates me, that gets me out of bed, you know what you said, I think about a lot, right?
I feel the pressure to perpetuate what we do as a business as my main responsibility in this life. And I'm not going to fail, we are not going to fail. And we are faced with some of the greatest challenges that Kum & Gos ever faced, in my lifetime, we will see my prediction, almost the complete eradication of the internal combustible engine, gas will go away, it'll become a novelty, right, the shift to electric or hydrogen fuel cells or some alternative energy source is a matter of when and not if, even though we still have a lot of time to figure that out. And then you look at what technology is doing to brick and mortar.
Sure, our industry has been relatively protected from e-commerce, because it's harder to get a hot cup of coffee delivered to your door from Amazon than it is to get a book. And so we're a little bit inflated, but that's coming and you're seeing that happen now. And so I view it as a personal responsibility as a failure responsibility to step up and say, we're not going to take the easy way out and sell. And we're not going to get our lunch eaten by somebody who hasn't been doing this as long as we've been doing this. So whether it was the first day became president, which was June 1 2018, I was 30 or today, or in 10 years, we're going to get up every day and say how does Kum & Go continuing to live its purpose How does Kum & Go continue to sustain itself generation after generation so that not only my family has something to be proud of. But every family of the 5000 people that we employ has something they can be proud of for another generation.
Marc Gutman 24:14
And that's you know, quite a mantle to carry and you know, I can I can feel like how much it means to you. And so when you think about it, what is the future of convenience if we are moving towards this new world? You know, what does that look like? What are you thinking about?
Tanner Krause 24:30
As I became a president, I've tried to shift the mentality of Kum & Go for a long time. We've classified ourselves as a convenience store. We're no longer a convenience store. We are in the immediate consumption business. That is our value to the customer is coming those stands for a place where it is easy and quick and convenient to get something to eat drink that I want now.
The convenience store has merely been the model of delivery for us to meet that consumer need. And because of technology and shifts in consumer behavior, there are now other ways to meet that same need. So we have to focus on being the immediate consumption retailer of choice for our target customer. So that when you are in Colorado, one snack, once in a drink, want something to smoke, you think of Kum & Go. And we remain the most convenient option to get it to you quickly and conveniently for your immediate needs. And that means evolving beyond traditional brick and mortar retail, that means leveraging our existing brick and mortar stores and locations to our advantage, because that remains our major competitive advantage over disruptors and people from outside our industry.
And so we'll leverage that. And it means developing technology to allow for the consumer to shop us at their choice. And to not require that consumer to come get in their car travel to our store and shop on hard turf on our terms in order to meet their needs. Because in this century, it's all about customer and convenience. And those customers will pay a premium for. And so if we're not there, and if we're not on the attack, and we're waiting for customers to come to us, we're going to be out of business.
Marc Gutman 26:30
Yeah, and what I can say about like, even in this time, in this present day, you know, like I every every summer, I drive my family from Colorado, to Michigan for the summer, and I you know, good, right? Right through come and go territory, right, right through come and go country. And literally, I mean, my family is like, we are only stopping at a common goal. And especially if you're new, they called Fresh Market, or what's the new the newer concepts, the marketplace, the marketplace where they have healthy options where they have good food, you know, it's interesting.
My kids are like, I won't eat at McDonald's, I won't eat it fast, you know, like, and so it really does feel like you understand the customer and who you're trying to serve and the present day and modern customer, you know, like you walk in any of your competitors. And it's like, basically, there are no healthy options. And it's like pizza that's been sitting there for, you know, probably half the day and things like that. So that really is felt, you know, and one of the things that so impresses me about coming, go. And so when you think about convenience, and maybe you, you know, mentioned this a little bit, but what's hard about it, like What don't we get, like What don't we see and what's hard about your role and the way that you are trying to bring convenience to your customer or instant consumption.
Tanner Krause 27:46
The hardest thing is consistent and quality execution. And Ours is a model, like most retailers, where you've got your typically lowest paid associates, handling your customer delivering your customer service, and executing what needs to get done to make your business run. And so because we acknowledge that we try to culture is set up, Kum & Go. And again, a spirit of service to where we call our corporate headquarters, the store Support Center, and we look at our store associates as they come first in the value chain. And how do we support what happens in our stores? How do we make their days better so they can make our customers days better? How do we take complexity and non value added work away from our stores and into our store support center so they can focus on what really matters? And that's taking care of the customers?
Marc Gutman 28:57
This episode brought to you by Wildstory. Wait, isn't that your company? It is. And without the generous support of Wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn't a logo or a tagline or even your product or a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service or company. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out at www dot wildstory.com and we'd be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show.
You know kind of Want to shift a little bit and talk about how, you know you and I became introduced via social media roundabout way and right before this episode airs, we have Ariel on and so a lot of our listeners, listeners will hear about a bit about that approach and things like that. But like what I'm really interested in hearing, you know, you're younger, you know, you just kind of, you know, laid out your age or you're 32 if I'm doing the math, and so you definitely have that perspective of, of social media. But, you know, my family comes from the oil business, and my extended family. And so I've been around a lot. And I think of it as a real, like, old fashion, not willing to move not very progressive. I mean, certainly not your family, but you know, your, your competitors, of course, and to think that you came in and said, Look, we're going to do things differently, we're going to meet our customers where they are, which is on social. I mean, like, how did that all come about? Was your dad like, Tanner? Like? I don't know, or was he just like, do it like, was he like, yes, like, I believe in this?
Tanner Krause 31:03
Well, my dad has been a huge supporter of mine. I mean, he's he's given me opportunities that I didn't fully expect, or maybe didn't have full confidence in my abilities, which, if you don't know me, is kind of rare. And he believed in me, and he supported me and encouraged me through the way. And growing up the business and seeing us up close, then from afar and up close, I've kind of coming out of the company a few times on my track, I understood that we needed to stand for something greater, and that Kum & Go a little bit had had lost a little bit of a differentiation. And I say this a lot success in the convenience store business is getting some getting somebody to inconvenience themselves to go to a convenience store.
How do you drive for that irrational behavior in which it might be a little slower, or a lot more out of my way, or potentially slightly more expensive, but there's just something there that I like, and it just draws me to it. And we're doing what we can to differentiate on the product side, and you call out some of our healthier options, we're going to go further in that direction. But a bulk of our revenue is still in ubiquitous product, right? You're talking alcohol, you're talking tobacco, you're talking packaged goods, either under cooler or on the shelf. And there's that last X percent, that we're doing proprietary stuff that is different.
However, this social, you know, what I can take credit for is a lot longer than I can't take credit for, I can take credit for attracting creative talent and getting out of their way. And the good thing about social is that the numbers speak for themselves. And it's a subset or it's an industry and of itself by now, where you've got instantaneous feedback from the customer. you post something, what was your engagement? What were your life over your views when your shares and you can get that feedback, and you can see if it's working or not. And you can see progress over time. It's more challenging. If you hire somebody as an accountant and say, you know, do accounting, right, you're not getting instantaneous feedback from the customer.
And so, Arielle and I are friends who've been a family friend of ours for probably close to 20 years, he was our roommate with my older brother in New York City back early 2000s. And when we had this opening, I knew he could bring something different. And I don't fully understand what he does. I don't get social like he does. That's okay. You know, Arielle has no approvals necessary to post. You know, he's this, you know, Director of Communications at our company, and he's got full authority and he fires away. And he's smart enough, and we see the progress we've seen in access. And he has created that same type of empowerment culture on his team. You know, he recognizes Instagram is a powerful medium, and recognizes that he's okay at instant. But that's not really his microgeneration and it's not really his sweet spot.
So he hired somebody who was personally excellent an Instagram to come help us on that medium, tick tock becoming more important. Now, Arielle, and I probably know nothing about Tick tock, but we know enough to know that it's important. And so are you recruiting hired a person who was individually extremely successful at Tick tock, and we empowered them to come in to Kum & Go, and they've done an incredible job with that platform and our brands. And so our success and social, I don't deserve much credit at all. But what I can say is that I've tried to hire credit talent and get out of their way.
Marc Gutman 34:55
Yeah. And as you were speaking, I think that you think that is like normal? Or that that is the way that most people do it. But I can reflect back to you that it's not. And that you know that that leadership style of trusting in your people. Like, where do you think that comes from? And I have to imagine, again, having experience in family business that's like, that's got to be hard, right? Like, it's got to be hard.
I mean, Kum & Go, might as well, it might as well say, Krause across your chest, you know, I mean, that is the same thing. I mean, Kum & Go is your family. It is your family moniker, it's you, you laid it out very clearly, like this is your purpose of life to you to make this make this thing keep going? And like, Where do you think that leadership style comes from, where you have that ability to care so much in in that caring, you're able to let go and let people have their voice and do their job? Because I it's not, it's not something we typically see.
Tanner Krause 35:55
I think it starts with my dad, and my dad trusted and empowered me and gave me the chance to succeed. And he gave me a chance to fail. And he knew that if I screwed up, there'd be limited consequences, at least with the amount of slack is give me at the time, right? And when you own your business, you don't have to explain yourself to anybody. You don't have external accountability. It's an incredibly powerful advantage that we have. And we have complete job security. So if a tweet fails, or a post fails, in which we've had a poster to fail, arguably,
Marc Gutman 36:41
Ariel shared a couple on his episode.
Tanner Krause 36:43
Sure. So it's there. Right. Okay. What happened? You could argue that that posts end up being a success, because we're talking about today. And it was a semi innocuous tweet about a sporting event at Iowa State game, which, you know, Arielle, the sports novice and Iowa newbie, underestimated people's passion for, you know, the Seahawk rivalry. And you know, we got one wrong. Okay, we deleted a tweet, we wrote a Mia culpa. And we moved on. And guess what send us back failure of epic proportions where people, you know, like putting out there and rewards loyalty cards. We probably doubled our Twitter following in since then, right. I mean, failing on social media post has minor consequences. And so we've just said, you know, what we do? I've Kum & Go, you know, it's not brain surgery, right? I mean, we're selling snacks. We're selling vices, we're selling things that people enjoy the simple need. Let's not take ourselves too seriously.
Marc Gutman 37:48
And, yeah, I mean, when you is that also your leadership style, though? Like, I mean, you're kind of like pinpointing social, but are you very much a, get the right people in the right place and let them do their job.
Tanner Krause 38:01
Indeed, you know, I listen, I'm less experienced than probably anybody that has a job like mine in a company like mine, I recognize that. And so in order to compensate for one of my perceived weaknesses, I hire people that have that experience. And I don't try to tell them what to do. They've done this before. I've got ideas, I've got passion, you know, I've grown up in the business, I know, Kum & Go really well, I know what might work here, but don't always know how to get things from idea mode to execution mode. And so I find that in people and I hire them, and I'm big on measurement tools, you know, to me, we've got to focus on the right measurables or metrics for our business.
And we've got to have the leadership group set goals for ourselves over some period of time, and say, Okay, we're going to move this number from A to B over the next five years. And I'm going to empower small number of people to be ultimately responsible for making progress. And so long as they stay within some, you know, brand code operate within our core values, you know, do these things in a good and sustainable way and go for it. And if you screw up, that's okay. Because, again, we're trying to be outdone. And if we miss earnings for a quarter or a year, it doesn't matter. Because we've you come and go as a generational business, we make investments over a 10 to 20 year horizon. And so if we have some hiccups along the way, the setbacks are minor. So yes, I try to hire smart people, hire talented people, make sure that we align on a direction, make sure they understand how they'll be measured. In terms of success, and then give them the tools they need to be successful.
Marc Gutman 40:04
Well, and you mentioned that you had, you know, the latitude to fail, and you have some security within there, outside of social are there is there a failure or an instance you've had, since you've been at the helm of the company where you were dislike, that you can recall or, you know, were, it was it was one where maybe you'd like to have back,
Tanner Krause 40:26
almost every decision that you make you think is right, based on the information that you have at the time of the decision. And there are very few decisions that I've made in my leadership experience here, where I've looked back and said, what I knew, then I did or said the wrong thing. And with the benefit of hindsight, you look back and say, Boy, if I had could have that one over again, I would. But if you're talking about you know, mistakes, or you know, asking for a mulligan, hiring is challenging. And when you hire externally, if you can do better than 50%, you're a good selector of talent. And, you know, time will tell I made a lot of hires in my few years in the business. And I've not gotten every one of those right. And that's had, you know, at times, so significant consequence, in terms of, you know, setting us back months, or maybe a year on a significant body of work. And so yeah, you know, if I could look back at some of the hires that didn't last or didn't work, and do those over again, I'd love that opportunity.
Marc Gutman 41:35
Who wouldn't? Right? Who wouldn't? And, you know, one thing I really love about common go is that it's, it's a brand, you've branded it. And now there's these things, and we talk about sometimes on the show about, you know, whole brands, not the logo and the name, and it comes down to things like core values, and the underlying essence and the why and the purpose of what you're trying to do. But you've also created some really cool, like visual brand, artifacts, some hats, some gear, some fanny packs, like, where does this focus? Because some, someone's got to say, Hey, we're gonna do this kind of stuff. Where does this focus on elevating and building the coming go brand come from? Because again, like, you don't see that from a whole lot of other people in your category, right? You don't see shell, you know, doing a really great job with that. And some of these other, you know, smaller, smaller convenience stores and things like that. So where does where does that come from?
Tanner Krause 42:33
Well, there's this incredible pride and loyalty and sometimes a rivalry amongst regional convenience for change in America. And none of the industry has this kind of, oftentimes rooted in the style, like loyalty and passion around some of these brands. And this is kind of, oh, you're that brand, or where did you come from, or you got to pick aside or whatever else. But there's this really strong, just organically develop passion for our brand that existed, you know, in and of itself for decades, that we've been able to tap into recently. And, and it's about, from my perspective, at least, it's a, it's about taking pride in what we do. And it's about wanting to lead and own a company that does cool stuff. And that doesn't just look at what we do, as, you know, X's and O's.
But what we do is, how do we build a company where we can have fun, where our associates can be proud of what we're doing, where our customers are proud of what we're doing. And so, you know, oftentimes, it's like, not as complicated and, and being relatively small, and certainly, you know, privately held helps, but if we want a fanny pack, and when I say we, I mean, my brothers me, Arielle, you know, then let's make fanny packs. And I bet we could find some fans on social that would also love fanny packs. And your audience can see the shirt I'm wearing, but you know, Kum & Go one in a ward for an LGBT organization in Iowa, and I filmed an acceptance speech that said, you know, what, I want to come up with a T shirt with pride colors. And so we made a combination of product colors. And it's just a function of taking pride in what we do, and wanting to have fun along the way.
And, you know, oftentimes, these are little, you know, swags that we just develop and build and, you know, creates buzz around the brand and creates advocates out there, it gets us a lot of awareness and, you know, we're on the right people's hips are on the right people's chest, and next thing, you know, like, Kum & Go becomes the brand of preference for the next generation of rising consumers. And so, you know, I'm confident that in 20 years, and these kind Uh, you know, regional c store brand wars, there'll be a lot more people out there saying, Oh, yeah, coming goes my company because, you know, but back when I was in college, you know, the fanny pack was the coolest thing on campus, or they stepped up for, you know, my school's LGBTQ organization in a way that other people didn't. And so, you know, we're having fun, and we're breeding loyalty.
Marc Gutman 45:24
And I want you to think back in two recent memory, and I want you to think back to the last time you saw someone wearing some Kum & Go, the peril in the wild, right? Not at not at a store, but you're just out and about, maybe you're having a nice night out or something. Did you? Can you remember that?
Tanner Krause 45:43
I haven't been out of the house in about nine months. If I go back deep into the archives, I can have a couple of things that come to mind. Yes,
Marc Gutman 45:51
yeah. And so when you think of that, like, maybe maybe you can share with us like real briefly like what you're thinking of? And then like, how does that make you feel when you see someone wearing your brand kind of out and about town and rep and Kum & Go and they don't know who you are, you know, you're just you're just across the square or whatever? Like, like, Can you share that with us.
Tanner Krause 46:10
It's a unique feeling to work for a family business, it's, you know, I worked outside of the company, I've worked inside the company, and the amount of pride that I have for Kum & Go is unparalleled, I wouldn't be able to find this working for I don't think any other company in the world. And so when I see, other people choose to associate themselves with our brand. Again, we're not a company that really earns any money on memorabilia, or products, or merchandise or wearables, that is not what we do. So the fact that somebody who's going beyond just, you know, buying drinks and buying gas from us, but to say, you know, what, this company, this brand, this store, this experience is so cool, I want it to and I want it to be a part of my personal story and my personal brand, I get really proud, I'm really happy I see it, and it brings a smile to my face.
Marc Gutman 47:08
And you're talking just prior to that to about your involvement with the LGBTQ community. You know, as you know, I've been following you on your company on social and you're your champion of a lot of progressive issues. Where does that come from, like this idea of, of being a Stuart, a champion, a representative for these types of issues, again, we just don't see a lot of convenience stores or a lot of businesses, and there's a lot of businesses don't even do it in general, that are out there as a champion for these groups. And where does that all come from? And what's that all about?
Tanner Krause 47:40
You know, my family's extremely privileged. I mean, just extremely wealthy. I mean, it's not really a secret, right? I mean, we are who we are. And through that privilege, we've been able to see a lot of the world. And we're extremely well traveled, I'm very fortunate to, you know, have the experiences that I've had in life, I've been able to live in foreign countries, my brothers have lived in foreign countries, I've been able to educate myself to a master's level, as have all of my siblings. And you know, with that comes perspective. And we've always been raised with a strong sense of, you know, what's right, and a strong sense of respect and dignity for others. And, again, going back to my grandfather, who has one of the most prominent figures in the state of Iowa, and was not going into stores and barking orders, but he was changing trash as a, you know, 70 year old man and expensive car in the parking lot. And we've always just felt a general respect for humanity.
And personally, I feel responsible to stand up to improve equality in this country. And inequality exists in a variety of forms in America. And in order to make an acceptable progress. It cannot be the oppressed, that drive change, the privileged have to drive change, for us to really make transcended progress and success in matters of all sorts of equality. It has to be people like myself, people who look like me, people who have wealth and opportunity, like I have people have education, like I have that recognize this and say, You know what, my family has plenty for generations, families like ours, and even families, less affluent and privileged as ours are doing so well. That it's time we look around and say why don't we be the force of change? And why don't we reach a handout and help some of our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our associates, our customers in these oppressed communities and say, I see you I respect you. I'm here for you. And I'm going to Put your needs, and you get into basic levels of human dignity about me getting who knows a lake house or some other, like ostentatious acquisition that we could do.
Because that, you know, the time has come for, you know us in power and us in privilege to join this fight, and to, to stand up for matters of equality, because, you know, it's, it's been on too long. And I recognize now that, you know, I've got this platform, I've got podcasts like this, I've got other engagements where I can speak on things. And I want to draw attention to these. And it is rare, unfortunately, in our industry, and it's rare, unfortunately, in the corporate world. And that's too bad. But maybe if I go first, and other leaders and companies say, okay, like they did that, and guess what, like their business didn't fail, or customers didn't leave them wholesale, or whatever measurement they might be worried about that outcome didn't happen.
And guess what, people got a little bit better life out of it. Did that success, the impact that I want to leave in this world? Sure. It's about coming up being sustainable. But it's about bigger than that. It's about how do we how do we push for a better humanity and, and one of the things of just how America is constructed is that private enterprise drives an outsized amount of change in the world, we have this free market approach to most of our economies, to most of our societies. And so I look at something that we did last year where we gave maternity leave to our frontline associates. And so now Kum & Go associate working in a store to get six weeks of fully paid maternity leave, that is rare for retail in Iowa, we were able to give that benefit to about 3000 4000 people, right, but it's bigger companies look at what we did and say, You know what, that was good.
Or now I have to do that thing to be competitive in the labor market with Kum & Go, then those 3000 people, and then these other companies over here, follow, then that might be 30,000 people. And then next thing, you know, we might have just gone a whole generation of islands or Americans that have access to what should be a basic civic right to be in this country of paid leave for newborn children got that benefit. And so what we try to do is recognize the inequality in America and stand up for those that are oppressed and do what we can. And listen, before I stop talking.
We're not perfect. All right. We're not we don't do everything. Right. All right. And we've not been this way forever. And you've got a long history. And I'm sure there's things that people can point to and say, Well, what about this? And what about that, and those things are probably true, and they're probably fair to say, but what I can say is that we care, we see oppression, we don't stand for it, and we're trying to stamp it out. And we're going to do better every day. But we're not going to be perfect starting today or tomorrow. But I promise you, we're gonna make progress in the right direction.
Marc Gutman 53:07
Yeah, and certainly, you know, if you can't hear it in Tanner's voice, you know, I thought he was gonna come through the screen at me so passionate about this issue. And so he does care. And Tanner as we as we kind of come to the end of our time here. I've got two more questions for you. The first being What's your favorite store, or at least the the one that you're most proud of, and why?
Tanner Krause 53:30
My favorite store is at the corner of 16th and Ashworth road in West Des Moines. Because that was where I started working. The family age of first employment Kum & Go is nine. And so at nine years old, I put on the white shirt and tie for our uniform then. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school, I would go to work, I would sweep, I would mop I would stop the cooler, I would clean the shelves. And if I was lucky, I could run the register. And so for me, that's where it all started. Yeah, I
Marc Gutman 54:03
mean, I can only imagine you're like, you know, just waiting probably as eight year old Tanner to become nine to go put on that uniform.
Tanner Krause 54:10
I actually tried to negotiate an earlier start date this is speaks to my passion to the company. So my brother started at nine as well. And he's just older in his grade than I was he's an October birthday. So he turned nine early in third grade. I'm a June birthday. So I turned nine late in third grade. And so I tried to negotiate with my dad, you know, Hey, Ryan got to be working in his second month of third grade. Therefore, I think I should be able to start working and my second month of third grade and does the no you start working when you're nine. And so I went back to school.
Marc Gutman 54:45
Are you June 19 by any chance?
Tanner Krause 54:48
June 22.
Marc Gutman 54:49
thought we're gonna share a birthday. I was really excited. I was gonna announce it like live on the show that we we had a similar birthday but Tanner, so I want you to think back to That nine year old boy on that first day, walking into comigo and that brand new uniform, so proud and what do you think he would say, if he saw where you are today,
Tanner Krause 55:11
but I haven't fast this ascension into leadership happen quicker than my wildest dreams. But, you know, I, I was I made that nine year old proud, you know, I hope I make all 5000 people that we employ proud I take a two minutes of pride in this company. I hope I make my grandfather proud. He's an incredible role model in my life. And he passed away in 2013. And, you know, he knew I was I was going down this career path. And so I was fortunate enough to have that alignment with him before he passed. But I think about him every day. And you know, I I just try to take my responsibility and stand up for what's important and make those around me proud.
Marc Gutman 56:02
And that is Tanner Kraus, president of coming go. I'm sure you could feel Tanner's passion and commitment coming through the mic. We had a chance to talk a bit after and it dawned on me that Tanner sees entrepreneurship, the business not as the purpose. But as the tool, the tool that can affect change, both locally and globally, the tool that can provide better lives for their employees and the tool that can be a voice for those who can't speak for themselves. And yes, we're still talking about convenience stores.
But when done right, like Kum & Go, any business can change the world. And a big thank you to Tanner Krauss and the team that Kum & Go. Your brand was started as a love story. And I can't wait to see where the love story goes. Next. We will link to all things Tanner and Kum & Go in the show notes. 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 big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can't deny
58 min
December 09, 2020BGBS 051: Ariel Rubin | Kum & Go | Twitter Is Hard!
BGBS 051: Ariel Rubin | Kum & Go | Twitter Is Hard!
Ariel Rubin, Director of Communication for Kum & Go, is a Webby Award-winning digital strategist with over 10 years of experience in social media and content creation in Uganda, Sudan, Turkey, Switzerland, and the United States. Ariel is a master at Twitter, bringing progressive, fun, and human content to Kum & Go, a fourth-generation convenience store chain with its headquarters based in Iowa.
As Ariel puts it, brands have a responsibility to be good corporate citizens. He uses Kum & Go’s signature humor to bring an audience large enough to amplify the voices of marginalized communities that don’t usually feel like they are heard. We applaud Kum & Go for continuing to stand up for humanity and feel inspired to do the same. With that, we ask you, who will you stand up for today?
In this episode, you'll learn...
Ariel has lived all over the world, including Turkey, Switzerland, Uganda, London, and more before talking to the president of Kum & Go and deciding to settle down in Iowa
Kum & Go is a fourth-generation owned business from a family that has lived in Iowa and has served its people for over 60 years

The reason why Ariel chooses to be funny on Twitter is because when he wants to speak on a serious issue, he has a built audience that will listen

Ariel describes Kum & Go as compassionate, welcoming, inclusive, and open. When tackling today’s issues, they put humanity and science first

You can’t underestimate the power of publicly standing as an ally in a state like Iowa, where people may feel like their voices aren’t heard

All of the content created for Kum & Go is organic, created in-house, and on free software without many promotions. And yet they’ve found outstanding traction in the online world

One of Ariel’s biggest posting failures was a meme about college football. Of all his time posting about global crises, he never received nearly as much rage as with the college football scandal

When posting on social media, Ariel does not just compete with other convenience stores for your attention. He competes with your texts, streaming shows, the news, and more. Getting even 5 seconds of your time is difficult

Maintaining relevance is a challenge because audience behavior is changing every day. That is why Ariel never plans a tweet and would rather begin conversations based on what happens that day on social media

Consistency is key with social media, even when you don’t find easy success.
Resources
Ariel Rubin
LinkedIn: Ariel Rubin
Twitter: @arieljrubin
Kum & Go
Twitter: @kumandgo
Instagram: @kumandgo
TikTok: @realkumandgo
Quotes
[9:27] Here at Kum & Go, it's actually about some really inspiring things. And to me, that was what was exciting about it. It wasn't just a convenience store, it was a place that cares about some really progressive causes and actually wants to show up in the community in a really powerful way.
[21:04] I think brands just assume that people care about their thing as much as they care about their thing. And the thing is, you’ve got to earn your audience's care and earn their trust...The strategy behind this whole thing is that I want to be funny on Twitter because when I have something serious to say, I want to have someone to say it to.
[23:46] Frankly, our strategy, I don't put much stock into that, because the platforms are changing so quickly, algorithms are changing so quickly, the audience behavior is changing every day. I haven’t planned a single tweet in my life. I don't have a tweet ready. I don't know what I'm gonna tweet today. I don't know what I'll tweet tomorrow... And that is on purpose.
[27:28] There’s a lot of people here who don’t feel like their voices are heard and I think if we can help amplify those voices and help show up to this community, I think we’re doing good work.
Podcast Transcript
Ariel Rubin 0:02
We did a tweet about the cyclones and the hot guys college football and it was one of the teams lost and so the team, we ended up getting image of a team getting pushed down the stairs, it like spread on Reddit and spread all over and people were absolutely livid. I mean they were taking photos of themselves cutting up their come and go and rewards card and tweeting it and calling for boycotts. And it was like this huge fear and we had like emergency meeting and people were would never I mean, I would I had like, it reached like the far reaches of the internet in Iowa. And it was like a real And anyway, the news covered it. I was quoted in the Des Moines register. I'm very proud of them to have this on my resume at the time. Twitter is hard says come and go spokesperson horio ribbon.
Marc Gutman 0:55
Casting 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 big back stories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman,
Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory. We are talking with Ariel Rubin, the director of communications that come and go, Wait, wait, you mean, come and go that convenience store and gas stations with that funny name? Yep, that's the one. Today's guest Aereo Rubin is a Webby Award winning digital strategist with over 10 years experience in social media and content creation in New gunda, Sudan, Turkey, Switzerland and the United States. And today, he heads up social media, and communications that come and go. That don't go anywhere. I'm going to tell you why Ariel is going to be a must listen episode right after I remind you to rate and review this show.
If you're listening, I'm assuming you like it. And if that's the case, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over iTunes or Spotify, iTunes and Spotify. Use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. Better yet, please recommend the show to at least one friend who you think will like it. If this is your first time listening, please consider subscribing. subscribing is like being best friends BFF. We might even get BFF bracelets. But only if you subscribe. Alright, back to Ariel. I asked Ariel to be a guest on today's show. Because I was drawn to his work. I noticed that Kum and Go was showing up on social media, first Instagram, and then Twitter. At least that's how I discovered them. And I was immediately engaged with their content. They were funny, progressive, human, fun, interesting. And they are a convenience store. And that began my stocking of Ariel. I had to know how all this worked. Who was the crazy person behind building out a strong voice on social media? What did their operation look like? Did they have 100 interns creating all this content? Spoiler alert, they do not. How did they approach social media? Is it working and on and on and on? Ariel covers all that and more in our conversation. And this is his story.
I'm here with Ariel Reuben, the Director of Communications for Kum & Go, Ariel, what is Kum & Go and what does the Director of Communications do at Kum & Go?
Ariel Rubin 3:50
Well, first, thanks for having me. Marc, It's fun to be here. What is Kum & Go? Kum & Go is a convenience store chain based in headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. We have about 400 stores a little over 400 stores now in 11 states. And basically, we're a fourth-generation family run business that started here and really has grown up to be a place it really prides itself I think I'm an opening his doors to everyone really being welcoming, being there for the community, we give 10% back of our pre-tax profits to communities we serve to charities. That sets us apart. And we're really kind of a country that's led by our values, you know, we really look to the communities we were serving and think about how we can kind of make things better for them. So it's a sweet place to work. I really like it. I've been there for about a year and a half. And the Director of Communications, as Director of Communications, my kind of remit is, is our public and kind of internal communications work in our PR or social or events that we put on. Obviously, we're doing quite a few less events in person, at least right now due to COVID. But that's sort of the world we work in and then yeah, everything in between.
Marc Gutman 4:55
Yeah. And to those of you listening so you might be asking yourself like why are we talking to a guy that you know does communications for a gas station and convenience store? And you know, a little bit of the backstory is that Kum & Go has gotten my attention for their very progressive, very engaging social media campaigns, particularly on Twitter, they have a really nice presence on Instagram. And so I personally was so intrigued, I was so captivated. You know, I've also been a fan of the actual the store locations, when it when we're on road trips, my kids all want to go because you can feel that there's something different. And I think that that's a really cool thing about a brand is you don't always know why you love it, you don't always know why you're drawn to it, but you feel that it's different. And you walk into a Kum & Go store and they're friendly, and they're light, and they're bright. And they offer, you know, different offerings in terms of healthy food options, and all sorts of things. And people just generally seem happy there.
So that's a little bit of the context of why we're talking about Ariel. Like, I want to get into your story. And I kind of want to, you know, get to how you're doing social media and why you've even decided to do it. I mean, I don't follow any other convenience stores and gas stations. But you know, when we met, I was super intrigued by your your background, because you're not from Des Moines. You certainly don't have a background in convenience stores or the oil industry or gas stations. You know, why don't we go? I mean, did when you were growing up? Did you think that you'd be running communications and social media for an outfit like Kum & Go?
Ariel Rubin 6:34
Oh, that's a no, I I don't think I did. That was not necessarily something I was planning to do. But you know, as my grandmother would have said, Man plans and God laughs so, you know, here we are. No, it's been a while. I mean, I guess a bit of background on me. I'm, I'm not from Iowa. As you mentioned, I'm a bit of all over. I was born in Canada, I grew up in North Carolina, I went to University in New York. I was in New York for a while, and then I kind of was all over the place I was in journalism, or trying to be for a long time.
Many years ago, I worked in Uganda as a newspaper, I had a Master's from the London School of Economics, actually, in human rights and development in the UN were actually involved in communications. And that was really where that my passion for that came, I started the first Twitter account for UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan, or done blogs there ended up I was in Sudan for three years and then went to Turkey for two years where I worked for the UNDP there as well running digital content. And then I worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland, where I was the head of digital content. And that's where I got to do some really cool stuff with the pretty amazing humanitarian organization there traveling all over the world, producing some cool kind of, you know, engagement campaigns, both with communities we work with for there, you know, communities in Sudan, or Iraq or wherever, but also community back home, how do we get people engaged? How do we get Americans and Europeans engaged in some really, really tough subjects?
So that was what I was doing for almost a decade. And I ended up through sort of a kind of a fortuitous circumstance, having a conversation with the president of Kum & Go. At a time when I was kind of ready to move back to us, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. But I wanted to get out of the nonprofit world for almost 10 years, and I wanted to try something completely different. And Tanner Krauss is the 32-year-old president of Kum & Go really cool guy, really personable guy. And I think a really strong visionary for kind of what a company like his can look like in the future. And he really, we had a great conversation about it. And he kind of got me excited, and the job was there. And I applied and ended up, you know, I came here from Switzerland with my wife and my one-year-old daughter at the time, and we really liked it, you know, it was like a really fun turn for me. And I just thought, you know, I think when you're doing these kind of communications jobs in general, I, for me, at least, I always want to make sure that I can do it in another space so I could I figured out how to do this in a way it's easy, quote unquote, easy to, to get people interested, I think or to do content about what's going on in a place like Syria or Yemen. You know, it's it's a pretty tough subject. And it's easy to kind of show that.
But I guess the challenge for me with a place like Kum & Go was like, how do you do that for hot dogs? Like, I don't mean to make light of it. But it's really it's like, how do you get people to care about something? Ultimately, as a communications person, my job is to make you care about something that I'm doing the Red Cross of the UN, it was about some pretty tough things and here at Kum & Go, it's actually about some really inspiring things. And that was, to me, what was exciting about it was, it wasn't just a convenience store, it was a place that that cares about some really progressive causes and actually, you know, wants to show up in the community in a really powerful way. And they hadn't really figured out how to tell that story, and how to get their audience to really care about it or to know about it. So that was a challenge that sort of presented to me. And what I found really exciting to do was like, how do I get people to care about this store with a kind of a funny name, you know, how do we turn it from? It's coming out to like, wow, this is a community that's at the forefront of some really important issues right now. So
That's sort of the connection for me.
Marc Gutman 10:02
Yeah. And take me back to that conversation with Tanner. I mean, I can only imagine Here you are. You're, you know, living in Switzerland you're doing, you know, important work, you're doing heavy work, you're, you're accomplishing experience. It's not like you're just out of school and kind of like looking to take anything. And this young CEO of a convenience store says, "Hey, I want you to do my communication, like, what's that look like? I mean, are you at first skeptical? Are you like, all in like, What's that? What's that look like?
Ariel Rubin 10:32
I think that I'm always been someone that's Personally, I've always been interested in first, I've always wanted to live anywhere. So for me living in Des Moines is as bizarre as living in Khartoum is as bizarre as living in, you know, London, or whatever. I think every place is can be really fascinating and can be really exciting, presents different challenges and different opportunities. So when Tanner and I spoke about it, I didn't get I didn't, wasn't fully I personally wasn't super serious about it at first.
But again, he really did a great job kind of convincing, not convincing me even but just like kind of expressing what his ambitions were, when I saw his ambitions were really quite, quite big. And he has a really, he's got a really big vision for what he wants this to be, that was what got me excited, you know, it was kind of almost this, like, fantasy startup mentality, but he, you speak him, you'll kind of hear this and he's just got a real passion for this stuff. A really, like convinced me that this was more than just like coming to a place and filling out some press releases. And that's not what I wanted to do. And I wanted to, for me the condition that was like, conditions.
But for me, the thing that was exciting about it was that I would have the opportunity to kind of run some of the social parts, the way that I thought could be effective. So having the freedom to do that, and really let it figure out, you know, give it a voice was what was really appealing to me. And again, the social part wasn't even a big part of my job description. But I was very keen, I really I said, if I'm going to do this job and do it well, I want to focus a great deal of attention on social media, because I believe that's where the energy is. And I believe that's also where audiences so they said, "Sure, go for it."
Marc Gutman 12:07
Yeah, so I imagine you and I'm sure I've got this all wrong, but I imagine you skipping through the streets of Switzerland, maybe some chocolate in hand, and
Ariel Rubin 12:15
Sure, yeah, fondue.
Marc Gutman 12:17
Yeah, exactly. yodeling up the stairs, and you come home and you tell your wife. Yeah, we're moving. We're moving to Des Moines. Because I'm going to earn it. I don't know how that goes down. Or if you have a conversation around it, perhaps. But you know, and you're like, Hey, I really want to go to Des Moines and run communications for this convenience store. Like, what was that conversation like?
Ariel Rubin 12:41
She, my wife is originally from the Midwest, and she grew up in Michigan. And so she was not necessary, I'd say, at first dying to move back to the Midwest, she sort of, I think, left for me for a reason. But her parents are in Milwaukee for they're pretty close. And we have again, we have a young child there. Now, our daughter's three, but at the time, it was really important for us for our daughter to spend more time with our family and be closer to family and friends here. So it worked out. I mean, it was not like, you know, it was and i think that you know, she and I have both grown really, really liked Des Moines and and actually find it quite cool. And I think before, obviously before COVID it was different, but now that it's COVID in a way every This is gonna sound bad, like every place is almost like a Des Moines. I don't know, there's not that much to do anywhere anymore. So I don't know if it was like, Yeah, okay, we're not in Switzerland anymore but actually Des Moines has a lot to offer. It's it's actually really fun. The people are lovely, the surprisingly good. I could go on and extol the virtues of Des Moines. But I don't know.
My wife listens to this now, she's probably gonna be annoyed with me, but I think that yeah, it was you know, it was a fine conversation. She was she's down with whatever. To her credit. She rolled with it.
Marc Gutman 13:49
Cool. So like, how would you describe the voice of come and go social media?
Ariel Rubin 13:56
Um, yeah, I mean, I think you know, like I said, I guess when I started in the role, I was really keen to kind of look at the different platforms we were already on and see which we're working in how they're working together, what kind of voice you wanted to have for which. So for me, I naturally gravitated towards and as I do Twitter, because that, to me, it's the medium I understand the best I think, my demographic, my age, my sort of background at Twitter, sort of by era. And the first thing I did was I got clearance to kind of hire a social media specialist who and the person I hired is someone who absolutely kills it on Instagram, she was just like, I saw her on Instagram and the work she was doing and he had six times the followers that Kum & Go had on Instagram at the time. And I was like, I want someone who really wins at this platform to like run this and to me Instagram is visual is the most important visual platform we have on social media right now. It is where people are seeing your brand. I mean, that really is for me, it's Twitter's more about language and words and if you can be clever there and Instagram is really about sort of like what is your most beautiful life your most beautiful, whatever your most aspirational, living
So she really gotten to use and gets Instagram just like perfectly and then she and I work really closely together on those platforms and really spend a lot of time talking about how we're gonna engage an audience what we're gonna do, we have work, she's, she's very different. She's 12 years younger than me, she's a totally different person than I than I am. But we get along really well. And I really enjoyed working with her because she's just got a great understanding of the sensibilities of the platform and aesthetics of it and voice for it. So our voice on Twitter is more of my voice, maybe in a way, it's, it's a bit cheeky, or it's kind of funny, I we don't punch down that sort of thing we try to maintain, but we try to really, you know, be part of the Zeitgeist and the part of the conversation that's happening.
Like I said, I believe culture really emanates from Twitter, I think, no, I would say like, not everyone's on twitter at all. But every journalist is on Twitter. So even if my mom might not be on Twitter, she is now but my mom was on Twitter, every journalist that my mother reads or watches on CNN or whatever is on Twitter, and is developing their kind of opinions based on what they're seeing on Twitter. It's a really important platform. I mean, you know, Donald Trump understands extremely well.
So it's up—to our own peril not to understand and maximize that platform, I think really well. Instagram, like I said, I think is a great place for that culture to kind of get spread further and into a younger demographic. And then the third thing is is TikTok. And we were again, really fortunate to have in our lead leadership that lets us kind of run with this stuff, we hired a 19 year old, fresh out of high school, basically, to go on TikTok because this person understood TikTok week, they had 200,000, they have 200,000 followers on Tiktok. And I said, we don't have a TikTok make it for us like go first. And their name is Evelyn Meyer, and they're brilliant. So between Evelyn, Nadia, and myself, we're kind of like the social media, I guess, brain trust of Kum & Go. And we each have a bit of a different voice.
And I would say the other thing is that we we work really we're all really embedded, especially naughty, I really embedded with our associates and our colleagues and our team and our leaders. So we kind of get a sense I've been through a lot of trial and error, what that voice should be. And you know, when you hit a kind of a red line, or a third rail, you kind of know it, like there's some tweets that have definitely failed. And there's some Instagram posts that we've had to, you know, rethink, because ultimately, like, you've got to be a little bit, you've got to push the boundaries a little bit, you got to figure out where your audience is and where they want to go. And there's a lot of trial and error, you know, and that's sort of how we, we built it up. But the numbers, I think, you know, ultimately, we're judged by the numbers, it's not by what I think is funny. But by what Nadia thinks is attractive. It's really buy what our audience finds appealing. So for audience loves a photo of beautiful, we know it because the internet is the world's largest free focus group, right? It tells us very, very quickly what works and what doesn't.
So we slowly over time really A/B tested it, I think a lot of different ideas and a lot of different pieces of content. And Nadia and I message each other every day, a million times ideas, and we've kind of workshop stuff on what's up what's appetite as we go. And, and that's sort of how we developed it. And again, none of this would be possible again, without can't stress this enough, without a leadership that totally trusted us. Trusted me and trusted Nadia and trusted Evelyn to do it. Because if there are layers, I think to social has to be immediate, and has to be reactive. And if there are layers of validations, and approvals and back and forwards, you really lose lose kind of the special thing about what social is, which is that's just happening so quickly, you just want to be part of it. And what happened yesterday is already is it might as well be five years ago, right?
So by having the trust of our leadership by our bosses, and all the way up to the CEO, we're in a really fortunate space to be able to really try some fun stuff. And, you know, we fail tons. We also some really, really fun successes.
Marc Gutman 18:31
Yeah, and you know, there were I can't, you know, start with that question was just that, like, you and your team have done something that's so to me, you know, challenging and unique, which is really giving a unique voice to something that is hard to give a voice to, you know, I think it's like a hard, hard product to brand sometimes, and you've done a really good job and maybe walk me through that process a little bit. I mean, did you say like, hey, like, Kum & Go is like the cool new, like, you know, whatever, and you're like you have a persona or a profile, or is it more organic than that?
Ariel Rubin 19:08
You know, I, when I again, I'm not from the Midwest, but when I came here, I remember I said it in my interview. I lived in New York for a really long time. And in New York when I was in college, I went to NYU 15 years ago, whatever. I don't remember. Yeah, it was 15 Oh, my God. Anyway, 15 years ago, I was at NYU and we lived in. I lived in Brooklyn and we drank Pabst Blue Ribbon all the time. And we drank Pabst Blue Ribbon, not because it was a great beer and not because it was it was just the cool thing to drink. And it was $2 and you drank Pabst Blue Ribbon because we're like a posturing hipster. So I remember the how iconic Pabst Blue Ribbon was and it was like, for me it had this feeling of like, what real America is, right? And I think that so many things that feel like what real America is really come from this space in the Midwest, you know, whether it's Harley Davidson, Budweiser, john deere, Pabst Blue Ribbon, whatever, you know, Anheuser Busch, I'm
I don't want a beer but equally to me come and go felt like it had that similar iconic or should have that similar iconic feeling of like a truly American thing. This is fourth generation family that from Iowa from, you know, always when I would came through and built this thing, you know, and that's like a really special, it was special, but it's still there, it's still their thing. It's not like owned by some conglomerate. It's just this family doing this thing. And I think that's like a really special thing.
And I think, you know, I'm just cheesy, but like in a world where like, what is American is kind of very politicized and very, like, you know, divisive in a way. What's nice about the story that of this, and the product is like, it's just like a really nice thing. It's about like America that really welcomes everyone that opens its doors that supports black and brown communities, it supports gay communities. And to me and is this you know, as it's been around, has been there for its people for 60 years, and continues to do that.
So I think that that was a really compelling story for me. And so, to be able to tell that story on social, we first needed to have an audience to tell it to so I think a lot of brands maybe make a mistake, but like, other brands just assume that people care about their thing as much as they care about their thing. And the thing is, you got to earn your audience's care and earn their trust, and you've got to you got to find them, you got to get them to care first. So we spent a long time getting people to care first, and then finding clever ways. You know, the strategy behind this whole thing is that I want to be funny on Twitter, because when I have something serious to say, I want to have someone to say it to. So if I can do a bunch of tweets that get me thousands of likes or retweets, that's great.
Because the one time out of 10, that I'm going to tell you about why we're supporting this young LGBTQ group here that does incredible work with community, "Here's why you should support them," I want to be able to tell that to now I can tell that to 50,000 people, whereas a year ago, I only been told that to 20,000 people and the year before that only until that to 5000. So it slowly grows and builds that community and then people really start to recognize us for it.
So I don't know that I kind of went on a tangent there.
Marc Gutman 22:00
But it's great, you know, and it really seems to me that the leadership Kum & Go, assuming Tanner, really see this more as a platform not not not even social, but the business as a platform, and a enable a tool of change rather than you know, like, Hey, we, you know, yes, we're in the business of convenience stores. But really, it's that's a tool to do some other things and like, to me that, in general is a rare concept. But for a convenience store a gas station in the Midwest, I mean, you know, I think it's incredibly rare to be putting, you're not only to be backing a lot of these progressive causes, but to be like, shouting about it to be like forthright to be like front and center and saying, Hey, this is what we believe. And in no matter when you say that it's scary. But in a you know, you could be worried about polarizing a good subset of your audience or your customer base. Like where does like this just drive to be progressive come from? And then like, Do you ever get any backlash? Or do you ever like, Are you ever concerned? Like, concerns the wrong word? But yeah, do you ever get any backlash and push back on it?
Ariel Rubin 23:15
Yeah. You know, I don't even know if they would admission, if they hear if they would describe it as progressive. I think they would just describe, you know, there's a very pragmatic thing in the Midwest, which I'm not familiar with, but I'm learning about which is that people just, I think that they really, it's, they just see it as human rights. They look at these issues. They look at human rights and science on these issues. And that's what we're talking about Mask use or whether we're talking about Black Lives Matter. We're looking at what is the human issue? And what is how is this issue impacting our community? And what does the science say? So I don't know if even Tanner or Kyle Kyle's, the CEO Tanner's the President, I don't know if either of them would necessarily describe themselves as company as progressive, I think they would describe it as compassionate, a welcoming, inclusive and open. And whatever that means, in today's 2020 COVID. Society, I think, inevitably becomes politicized.
But ultimately, I really, I think they really would, in a way push back against it. But that being said, I think that we certainly we get we certainly received, we received comments. Sure, but I, you know, not as many as you would maybe think. I mean, really, it's been overwhelmingly I think, positive feedback we have and you know, I think one thing I really respect about Tanner in particular on this, and Kyle as well is that they're not afraid like you said it's applied, do you see this as a platform? They're not afraid, I mean, Tanner says all the time. You know, it's our job. It's on me. And it's not me. And him. He's a it's incumbent upon him to use that platform, that privilege that he was born into, and that he lives with every day, for some good and to really stand up as an ally. We just accepted an award last night from a LGBTQ organization, the Tanner spoke at it as an ally, its partner in progress. And Tanner literally just said that it said just that, and I think, again, quite why I joined I wouldn't have joined if that didn't exist here.
To join, if they didn't, I'm thrilled that they let me use social as a way to amplify those messages and find creative ways tell those stories. And we've given some extraordinarily think, I would say progressive organizations and that are doing great work for Black Lives Matter and for our gay and lesbian trans communities. So, to me, it's a really exciting time to be part of a company, I Kum & Go again, I think, thanks to the leadership who have visited that, you know, that's, that's on them. So
Marc Gutman 25:28
I think I think it is something though, that's unique, you know, I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is, you know, I would say, is a progressive area. But certainly, we don't have like a whole lot of convenience stores or gas stations that, you know, outside of Kum & Go that are like, Kum & Go. I also spend a good, you know, I'm from the Midwest, I'm from, you know, grew up in outside of Detroit spend a lot of time in northern Michigan, and there's, you know, you know, it's indicative of America, you know, it's split, and I would say that there is a lot of, you know, welcoming areas, and there's a lot that are less so and, you know, I again, I just you know, I find it very unique, and I don't want, you know, this to get lost, like how special this is that a gas station in the Midwest is really, you know, talking about these issues at the forefront of these issues. But were you gonna say something?
Ariel Rubin 26:19
Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, I mean, we had a with this group that from last got this award from I remember, they said, they did a talk to our company. And they said this, that, you know, is it hear it when companies like Kum & Go say that, you know, publicly stand up as allies in a place like Iowa, the impact that has is extraordinary. And they said, I remember they gave us they were telling us how, like, you know, I'm from New York, I'm from the east coast. So for me, it was not as it felt like, Oh, yeah, this is just what people do.
But actually here, it's not necessarily what every does. And it's not what every convenience store necessarily has. It's not just assumed. And so you have I'm not trying to, you know, top at my own peril and shoulders, you're too much I don't backs too much. But I think that, you know, they were like, you know, for a small town kid growing up in a farm community in Iowa who's gay. To hear that come and go welcomes them and stands up for is extremely powerful. But like, you can't underestimate how, how powerful that is in a place like Iowa and the communities you serve in, in Missouri and Arkansas, and all over I mean, frankly, so I that really stuck with me. And I think it's, you know, it's cool that we can do stuff like that, because there's a lot of people here who don't feel like their voices are heard. And I think if we can help help amplify voices and help show show up to this community, I think we're doing good work.
Marc Gutman 27:39
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So kind of getting back to like when you decided to come aboard, I mean, with management. Was there this vision to have social be a core part of the communication strategy? And? And if so, just kind of like what were they thinking? Because again, like, it all kind of makes sense now it seems really like, like it fits now like, but like I go back to that probably that moment where that had to be risky, like, you know, no business I've ever worked with has too much money. No business I've ever worked with has too many resources, right? Like every decision is always like, "Where can we you know, make best use of our limited resources?" And so just to have that, like, thought, like, we're gonna invest in this area, like, can you kind of walk me through that a little bit? And what that looks like?
Ariel Rubin 29:28
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the funny thing I guess is that it's, it's not a big investment. It's organic content, by and large investment was in was in me and my, and in our social media specialist, and then in our TikTok kind of intern, the three of us is it and actually we're actually probably a lot cheaper than the agency that we were paying to do it before. So we're not, you know, it's not I do everything. We do it all in house. We do it all on free, Canva software, and it's free.
You know, we don't really put money into from to promote content, like the content that does well as well because the audience finds it and and we've we've done a few campaigns with a few different smaller kind of agencies, one in particular, that was really cool and fun for us. But these are small campaigns. These are not like big, multi, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollar things. It's not at all like that. I mean, really, to me, what's social, I always want social to be a space where we can experiment and your point like no company is ever like, we make too much money. Like, I want to have that freedom to do that, not because I'm a narcissist, although it doesn't hurt and I am. But it's because I think that we can do really cool stuff that we can really find a new audience.
And again, only this company where we're family run, so we don't have you know, we don't report to there's not a bunch of different stakeholders that that we have to report to, you know, the, our stuff, we don't have a store, we're not publicly traded. So there's not some stock price that I have to maintain or something you know, that a tweet could sink or something like, I am fortunate again, like a very patient tolerant and open minded leadership team.
I remember there was one time, there was a tweet that we had done, I forget what ages ago and Kyle Krauss the CEO, who's on Twitter is doing a great job on Twitter, that he had this reply where someone's like, I can't believe they like let him do this. And Kyle replied, like, isn't, I don't understand what he does sometimes, but I'll always support it. And I think, as a leader, what an incredible gift right? Like or as sort rather, as for me, what an incredible gift have a leader like that, who he just trust that I'll do an okay job or that might have been I'm trying to get him to get his company to a good place, there's a need to understand like, what the meme is, or the joke, or the particular cultural thing I'm trying to get at and that maybe I miss on. He's simply saying, like, Here, you have this space to play him, go for it.
So I'm really applauding them for letting me again, letting me take the risk with it. But I don't put that much. It's not very expensive, because it's really just like, you know, Nadia shoots all the photos. She's brilliant, like I do, you know, they were just kind of like a, where I see a sort of an in house creative team, really to be honest with you. And I think that that's what makes it kind of again, that's what makes it fun.
Marc Gutman 32:08
Yeah. And so how do you measure success? Man, I know, you probably measure by some some typical social metrics, number of followers engagement, but are you able to track back like increase in revenue and things like that back to your efforts?
Ariel Rubin 32:24
Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, yeah, there's the there's the standards. There's the standard, you know, ROI in terms of our engagement, we look at our engagement, we look at our follower growth, we look at, you know, we look at what's working, what isn't and we ideator iterate based on that. And then we beyond sort of social success. When we look in store, we look at certain campaigns that we have been really kind of getting behind and I mean, I can tell you, for example, we just launched all day breakfast pizza. So we did breakfast pizza till 10. Now we do breakfast pizza all day, I don't remember when it stops. But when it kitchen closes, basically. And we did a fun play on that on social and, and we've seen like a major bump in power breakfast pizza.
So now, it's always hard, I think to do causation and correlation with social, we also have been there is another side of Kum & Go that does marketing that does, it does do marketing, the more traditional marketing side, we don't do it at all. I'm a comms person. And I run this organic social scientists in the tire of the park side, my boss, Ben, Vice President marketing communication leads that body of work. So that also exists as an aside, but I think for us, when I look at what successes there, I see stuff like breakfast pizza selling, and I see us pushing it. I like to think that there's a nice correlation there. I think another thing we do, you know, we try to find ways to bring our online energy offline.
So we do stuff with fanny packs. We made these fanny packs that have been super popular. We can do giveaways. We just did another giveaway on Twitter yesterday. 500. I didn't you know, funny thing like last person to retweet this gets a fanny pack. And it's gotten retweeted like 500 times. Again, like, we bring those fanny packs to store openings. We had one yesterday and Omaha kids show up at 6am to get these they're gone by 630. So we try to make cool stuff to retain a cool audience to find that the cool kids who are out there who want to come get it and I'd say the biggest example, I think a success online that we've been able to see is we had a really fun collaboration with Anheuser Busch, where we made a Budweiser, they let us make this incredible Budweiser Kum & Go drink a Budweiser shirt with all the proceeds going to a charity for for to benefit veterans. And that didn't we sold them out like it did super, super well. And that was like a really fun social play. We sold out entirely. We sold them online now that actually we had some in stores in another run because it did so well.
But stuff like that is just like a really, it's a really fun way to start bringing that stuff offline and showing that success of that energy and where those audience that that audience exists online. And then we can kind of start bringing them into the store. And we're going to continue to do things like that both in store activations and other online. Merch plays, basically.
Marc Gutman 34:47
Yeah. And so you've talked a lot about the successes that you've had, and certainly can feel your enthusiasm and energy for what you do. But like what's hard about it? You know what's hard about this endeavor that you're undertaking with communications at Kum & Go?
Ariel Rubin 35:03
Um, I mean, what's hard about it? I guess, you know, they've definitely been they've been successes. And they've been total failures and busts. And I don't even mean it like that. Failed forward or anything. I just failed. Like, it just I just did stuff that sucked. And was your worst one. What was your biggest? biggest failure? Yeah, no, our biggest one. And we have a really great failure, which was the, we did Nadia and I did a post a tweet. Basically, I we were both new here. And I'm not from that. I don't really know anything about sports in general. And I certainly don't know anything about college sports. But we did a tweet about the cyclones and the hot guys are the two teams here, college football, and it was one of the teams lost. And so the team remember, we had it like it was a good image of a team getting pushed down this,
like spread on Reddit and spread all over. And people were absolutely livid. I mean, they were taking photos of themselves cutting up there Kum & Go and rewards card and tweeting it and calling for boycotts. And it was like this huge fear. And we had like emergency meeting and people who had never, I mean, who had like, I had, like, it reached like the far reaches of the internet in Iowa. And it was like a real And anyway, the news covered it. I was quoted in Des Moines Register, which is I'm very proud of them have this on my resume at the time says, Twitter is hard says Kum & Go spokesperson Ariel Rubin. And I was very proud of that, quote, because you know, the end of the day Twitter is hard. And frankly, I learned a lesson which is in the Midwest, maybe, you know, don't talk about politics, or sports or religion. So you know, stay out of those three. So I, we don't talk about college football anymore. And I frankly, didn't even really understand that.
But I learned from that, you know, we got a lot of engagement out of it. We got a lot of followers. But you know, obviously you don't want to do that at the expense of your base and your people. And I didn't want you know, I remember our legal our general counsel was like I dad called me is like my dad's 90. And he's like, what are you doing on Twitter? He's like, my dad doesn't even know what Twitter is. What happened?
So, again, credit to everyone we work with, and everyone above me who allowed us to continue going and didn't change, do we didn't have to change, really anything. We just kind of, you know, we learned we learned a really big lesson there on that. So I think I think failures like that are super important that because you really do you learn as you develop this, but it's like a year and a half ago, we we were developing our voice and we're figuring out where those where those third rails were. And we certainly learned.
Well, I mean, I got emails, I got death threats, like it was I've never I've worked in on the most hot button issues in the world, Israel, Palestine, whatever. Nothing compares to be animosity, and just deep, deep rage I got on the because of this, this one tweet. So I felt bad. And we apologize. We moved on.
Marc Gutman 37:46
Yeah, as I mentioned, I'm a Midwest guy, and you don't mess with cross state rivals and college football. That's just a No, no. But like, as you were telling me that story again, like, I'm just sitting here, buddy, like, Oh, no, like, I can only imagine like, early in your your career here. And like you're already stepping in it. I mean, we were freaking out or did right away was management. Like, look, we got you. But we got to work this out. I mean, how does that go down? Like you're creating quite a ruckus early in your career?
Ariel Rubin 38:16
I know. Yeah. Again, man, I don't know, I got lucky to have the management. I got like a, you know, I wrote them an email, I was like, I got some bad news. They're very cool. They're very, they're very relaxed about it. Like they, you know, they had faith in the process. You know, I think, something that I learned, maybe from that, but also, I think some in general, and this year has been a good example of that, as yours just been so crazy, I think news is that these cycles, if you I think it's always a good lesson, as a comms person, remember that, like, the outrage cycle will pass. And not only will it pass, no one will have any idea what it even was in three days. And if you can weather that storm, because everyone's everyone's, I believe everyone's attention span has just become so withered by the kind of onslaught of news and media, and then, frankly, like terrifying kind of things that are happening on a daily basis that the brains have really kind of like goldfish out and are really incapable of like handling too much just constant stimulus.
So I think that where the again, the lesson from there was, was like, if you can say that you have to, I think if you can weather a storm that you can recognize that this too, will pass. And it's important always have perspective, in the midst of a kind of social media crisis or any media crisis, which is like, really, the Eye of Sauron really moves on rather quickly these days. And it's, it's important to remember that even at the time when you feel like oh, my God, this is a cataclysm and you know, our sales didn't change for the negative, we follow it. I followed it through I followed up on it with like our analytics team, and we looked at it and sales and stuff and the impact ultimately was practically non existent. So again, fortunate to have to have leadership and colleagues that that were at the time. Really very cool with it. Yes, I was. I was I was very nervous.
Marc Gutman 39:56
And was that the strategy to ride the storm? Or did you have to kind of do a mea culpa and apologize, are we ever did that look like?
Ariel Rubin 40:03
we did a mea culpa, we did a mea culpa. And it was actually my boss. It was her. I was like her first week, and she just been hired. So she really, I felt really more bad for her because I'd maybe been there for four or five months. And she was really new and was like, Oh, my God, you know, through this ad or like the first week. So we did do a call, but I, and I think it was probably the you know, I was he was a good thing to do kind of diffused in a bed. You know, I said, People really upset I felt really badly hurt by that. Now it was, like I said, it's never our intention. never actually anyone was attention to find it funny. I knew it is the funny joke at the expense of another audience, you know, so, you know, you live and learn? I don't know.
Marc Gutman 40:48
You know, so shifting a little bit when we first spoke, you said something to me that that resonated and it was a paraphrasing, or maybe not, but it was something to the effect of socials where the conversation is, you know, can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, like, what do you mean by that?
Ariel Rubin 41:04
I think that every day I wake up, and I work for Kum & Go, and all I'm trying to do is get my job is to compete with every single thing that you can do on your phone. My job is compete with the text message from your, your wife, or the photos of your kid, or the Amazon Prime membership, or Netflix or every other brand in the world. I'm not just competing with Kwik Trip, or Casey's or whatever, I'm competing as a brand for your attention and I'm competing with the Red Cross and competing for literally anything and everything. And I think that, you know, we, I just want to get, I want to get five seconds of your time today to think about her coming up. That's funny, or they did a funny tweet, or Wow, they have a great Instagram, or I got to go there and pick up a hot dog because that was awesome, whatever. Like, I'm trying to get that little slice of time.
And so I think that when I say that, that's where the conversations, literally I look at audience behavior. And even now, I mean, now accelerated by the pandemic, but we look at social use and and can phone use and it's it's through the roof, it's only growing. And so as we continue on with very connected digitally native younger audiences, or consumer bases, we're only going to continue to be focused there. So it's why I see something for example, like TikTok, I have no real conception of and no real understanding of, but I know is where conversation is happening or culture is kind of created. I know, I want us to be a part of that. And I want us to be a part of that in a way that's authentic, both to the platform and to our brand. So I don't want to be me on TikTok talking because it's inauthentic for me because I literally don't get it. And I would look like the 35 year old. So I want to find ways to to kind of be part of this conversation tonight. I think, you know, social is the watercooler of our time. And there's I don't know where everyone else is. But they're all there constantly. And I think probably much to our society's detriment, but is what it is.
Marc Gutman 42:54
Is that why you do what you do?
Ariel Rubin 42:56
I mean, I think I'm a product of of our broken brain, social media generation. Yeah, I mean, I was probably, you know, and I, I find it really exciting because I think as when I was younger, I wanted to be a journalist, because I thought that was a really compelling way to kind of tell stories and share news with people. And I think, as I got into journalism, and I had a terrible career as a journalist, I wasn't very good.
But I think that, as I got into it, I realized that early on that, you know, what was really, for me really exciting was the kind of constant flow of information that was happening in places like Twitter. And at the time, Facebook when I was younger, and I think that was, I've always found that really addictive. I mean, again, for better or for worse, it certainly has ruined my ability to like, read a book from start to finish. But I really I appreciate and I think I'm okay, a fairly decent at cracking the code of understanding how to get other people interested in what I think is cool. And that's what I try to do at Kum & Go.
Marc Gutman 43:50
Yeah. And so like, what's the biggest challenge for you and your team right now, as it pertains to social and kind of how you see the world?
Ariel Rubin 43:57
I mean, I think, you know, it's always a challenge in trying to be relevant, and try to maintain relevance, as always, because again, I think, I think, frankly, our strategies, and this matters, like, I don't know how much I don't put much stock into that, because the platforms are changing so quickly, algorithms are changing so quickly, the audience behavior is changing every day. I don't even plan to single tweet in my life. I don't have a I don't have a tweet, right. I don't know what I'm gonna tweet today. I don't know what I'll tweet tomorrow. I don't know what Nadia is going to put on Instagram, we, we do it by that. And that is a on purpose. Because I believe to be truly effective.
You want to know, you want to wake up, go on Twitter for five minutes, see what people are talking about and then start developing what that conversation is going to be and how you're going to be a part of it. So I think that the challenges are always in that process. It's tough, like to kind of do that and to maintain, I think, an energy to kind of keep up with it. It's kind of exhausting. It's like there's always that kind of that challenge.
And then I think more broadly, you know, it's something you touched on earlier, but it's like, we always want to think about how we can I think show success and show that we're able to not only just get lolz on Twitter or likes on an Instagram post, but actually how we can convert and drive that traffic into stores. That's always the challenge. And I always find that chall—I find, you know, I've been doing this job for a year and a half, I still find that challenge be really rewarding and fun.
Marc Gutman 45:15
Yeah. And so, you know, do you have any advice that you could give anyone who is either starting their career and social and or looking to add this to their brand? Who might just be starting a little bit flat footed or don't don't know where to go from here?
Ariel Rubin 45:31
Yeah, I mean, I think a few things. I think, I think consistency is really key with this stuff. I don't think, you know, I think it's, when you're building an audience, and I'm building an audience, we're all trying to build audiences. And it's really hard to build an audience like the hardest thing to do, because I'm one store out of a billion stores and one and, you know, one voice out of a billion. So I think, really, I think, consistently kind of like going out every day, and pushing and not getting deterred when you don't find easy, easy or quick success, because I think it takes a long time. And the other thing I would, I would say is, I see this actually a lot like, I think if you're starting your career, you're young, in your career, you're young, you have such an advantage. And tomorrow, in terms of this kind of world, because you grew up in it, you grew up immersed in it, you grew up, you know, I grew up with a dial up modem and AOL and it's just a different world, things are changing so quickly.
And I think you grew up with Twitter, Twitter's around for what, 15, 20 years now, like, you know, that's part of and you're 20 years old, like it's just, it's always been there for you. So, you know, the language that you have that you speak in is, is you're already at such a competitive advantage to someone like me, because you just get it better, and you understand it more and you're quicker. So I think, frankly, use your youth I think is an advantage what I'd say to young people starting out and I tell people who are older who are maybe more gatekeepers or leadership positions. I always say this though, it's just like, you have to find people, trust them, and then let them do whatever they want. And that's it to me, it's fine to people that are good at this stuff.
And then don't try to ruin it by like, like, Yeah, but where's my brand go? Or like, what about putting this in the photo, like, let the people that are really, really clever at at figuring out a platform or, you know, under understanding an audience, let them do that work for you. And really trust them to do it. Because that I think, is where certainly we've seen and I've seen Nadia and Evelyn are my two kind of colleagues really extraordinary success and some really really fun stuff happen.
Marc Gutman 47:18
And so outside of your mobile phone, what's your favorite social media tool?
Ariel Rubin 47:24
Outside of my phone? Like what's my favorite tool to—?
Marc Gutman 47:28
Just mean like use your phone to tweet and take photos and things like that. But yeah, so like, to me that would be my like, I was just trying to like, you know, get you to not say my phone. Like, what's your favorite tool?
Ariel Rubin 47:40
Like but like even like platform that I'm on or—
Marc Gutman 47:44
No no no no like actual tool for for doing your job. And I'm hoping to—
Ariel Rubin 47:48
Literally just my phone, I don't have anything else. I don't have a single other thing. I have this laptop that I'm talking to you on. I hate it. So I it is truly, truly just my phone. I don't use a camera, I don't use I used to use a to shoot and I mean, I edit and shoot stuff. I you know, another thing I would say generally, it's like, learn how to do everything, at least a little bit well, or at least basic, you know, like learn how to shoot, learn how to edit photo, and video learn final cut or, you know, or Adobe Premiere. I think having basic knowledge, that's not a POC, I want to learn how to do podcast, no idea how to get like, think learning all that stuff is really important. So I can do a little bit of all of that. But the Yeah, I just use my phone for anything.
Marc Gutman 48:27
Incredible. No, it's good. Like, I'm a tool collector, you know, so like, some tool. Um, but actually my favorite tool is probably Facebook Creator Studio, because I like that I can you know, do it with Insta and load up, you know, schedule posts and things like that. Before it was only like you can't do or you have to have some weird, weird thing. So yeah, so that's what I like the most. But you know, there's people out there like, you know, Hootsuite and Buffer and all this stuff. But yeah, that's not me. I'm on a more like one to one.
Ariel Rubin 49:01
Right on. Yeah, yeah. So you know, as we thank you guys, we come to a close and towards the end of our time here, like what does the future look like for for you in Kum & Go and the social team like where do you think this is all going?
I have no idea. But I'm you know, I think again, like this has been the year I'm like any that I've ever I've ever experienced that, you know, earlier, we asked me how I got from Switzerland to here and I think I was working on Ebola at the Red Cross and things like that. And I was like, I'm done with all that, like, I want something that's going to be light and I want to live in Iowa and I want to relax and I ended up coming here and having like the most politically and sort of, you know, intense it's been an intense year and you know, dealing with you know, COVID-19 has been super intense.
So I, I hope I hope the future for coming go in future for the country and the planet is one which sort of we'd get Oh, grab a grip on this pandemic and can kind of go back to it. I don't think we're going back to normal ever But I think go back to, I don't know, pretty, you know, it's content that's a bit more fun and a bit lighter. Because it's just been a really it. It's been a tough year for a lot of people. And I hope that for Kum & Go in general that I, you know, again, I think that I think we have a really exciting plan for what this company, how this company wants to be ended up. It's been around for 61 years, it's gonna be around for a lot longer. And I think there's a lot of interesting ideas for how you make and how you reimagine and re envision what convenience looks like in the 21st century, especially post COVID, I would say. So I think it'd be interesting to see what this company does and where it goes. And I'm excited to be part of it and hopefully, continue driving really interesting conversation and building an ever bigger ever growing audience.
Marc Gutman 50:39
Yeah. And I kind of alluded to that was my last question. But you've made me think of one more. You know, I think that there's something really interesting that has happened that there's this shift where people are looking to brands, for their news, they're looking to brands for their information, they're looking to brands to like, how do you feel about COVID? How do you feel about politics? How do you feel about what's happening in the world? I think that's, like, a real, profound shift that that is not happening has happened. You know, you know, and, you know, so how do you? How do you approach that? How do you handle that, when so many of your community, so many of your of your audience, your customers are looking to you for commentary on like, big topics like that?
Ariel Rubin 51:26
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's, it's scary, that that's where we are as a society, I don't think it bodes well for us. But leaving that aside, I think that brands have a responsibility to be good corporate systems and be good people and kind of be a good, good corporate citizens. And I think that this isn't a new burden, maybe for brands. And I think, you know, I think the brands that succeed, and the brands that we're going to talk about in 5, 10, 20, 50 years, we the brands that took this kind of moment seriously and took that responsibility seriously, and and, frankly, are the ones that I think that we're on the right side of history. So again, I I'd say that I wouldn't work for a company that I didn't think was on the right side of history when it comes to these really important issues. And I'm proud to work for a company that is has been pretty explicit with where they stand on this stuff. So I think yeah, I think it's a brave new world.
Marc Gutman 52:21
And that is Ariel Rubin, communications director and social media mastermind at Kum & Go. I hope you felt like you got a social media master class, because I certainly did. And did you hear what he said? It really doesn't take much to do social right? To build an audience to create a platform. But it does take time. It does take mistakes. And it takes a whole lot of trust between internal collaborators. And of course your audience.
Business is the platform for social good for creating corporate citizenship as Ariel put it. So what are you waiting for? Build a social media team, have some fun, change the world. A big thank you to Ariel Rubin and the team as Kum & Go. Continue to be that voice for your community that might not be able to shout loud enough for themselves. We will link to all things Ariel Rubin and Kum & Go in the show notes. Please make sure to go follow them. Check out their socials, you might just learn something.
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. I like big stories and I cannot lie, you other storytellers can't deny.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
54 min
December 02, 2020BGBS 050: Cory Bayers | Patagonia | Success Looks More Like Activists
BGBS 050: Cory Bayers | Patagonia | Success Looks More Like Activists
If there are two things Cory Bayers does exceptionally well, it's buying a lot of sushi and having a big heart. As the Vice President of Global Marketing at Patagonia, Cory leads storytelling for the higher purpose of saving our home planet. Cory's humble disposition, fervor to learn, and respect for the standard Patagonia is held to as an environmental leader makes it all too easy to rally behind his success. His passion for growth propels him to leap towards risk and adapt to the moment (including that time on the chandelier in Austria), and we can't help but want to do the same.
For our special 50th episode, good friend Mike Arzt introduces Cory and provides fun insight and perspective to his journey. This episode will warm your heart, make you laugh, and inspire your inner activist. You truly can have it all at Baby Got Backstory. As accomplished as Cory is, he stresses that over time, the marketing campaigns won't be what he remembers most, it will be the people. With that, we wonder, what can we all do to focus more on our relationships right now?
In this episode, you'll learn...
Cory advocates that Patagonia's value-based mindset and excitement for advocacy is just as real as it seems and courses through all of its employees
When Cory asked Yvon Chouinard what success looks like for Patagonia's future, he responded that they might be smaller. That was the perfect answer to Cory because it proved that the company cared more about impact than metrics.

The most difficult part of marketing for Patagonia is that their audience holds them to a high standard. Although it is scary to be called out when something isn't perfect, Cory encourages the community to continue because it pushes them to be better.

Always the adventurer, Cory moved with his family to many places for work, including Norway, California, Seattle, Vancouver, and more.

Cory valued the decentralized marketing model that Lululemon took on, which tolerated risk and allowed for a freely creative environment.

When Cory joined Patagonia, he felt like he was coming home. He found himself full circle working for one of the first brands he ever fell in love with.

Instead of worrying about what's next, Cory prefers to stay in the present and focus on the relationships he's made over time.

Cory overshot the sushi order by 120 feet. You'll get it when you listen.

Even as an experienced leader, Cory still feels a sense of uncertainty and risk when putting out something new as a marketer, and he considers it a good feeling

For the next generation of creatives: Don't chase perfection or let your ego rule you when you're figuring life out. There will always be great moments and hard moments, so dive in and be okay with how things turn out.
Resources
Website: patagonia.com
Instagram: @patagonia
Facebook: @PATAGONIA
Twitter: @patagonia
LinkedIn: Patagonia
Quotes
[7:54] The conversations are real. It's values-based, it's on a mission, and it's a serious mission. And it's not just, "Hey, let's put a mission up there but we're really out to sell a product." No, it's not like that at all. We truly are in business to save our home planet.
[22:37] I fell in love with the business of sport or that interaction, or that blurring of the lines really, between fun, passion, and sport and work.
[30:41] Heck, I'm still a student. I'm still learning every day. And I love that aspect of it.
[44:11] I enjoy that aspect of being able to help coach and impart some of my knowledge on the next generation of marketers and creatives and people that are going to change the industry way more and change the world way more than I have or will.
Podcast Transcript
Cory Bayers 0:02
I don't know how it evolved. We were standing somewhere and there's one of the rooms and there's no furniture is just literally the castle. And it was a massive room with this ceiling that seemed to go on forever and hanging down was this crazy big chandelier like one of those you see in the movies like it looked about 810 feet in diameter just hanging there but like wood and it had candles, it wasn't like electric or anything. We can handle one. And I was like, Am I as a kid you always see movies like people swinging across those things. So I thought, hmm, Now's my moment to shine. And I care what I was standing on. I just jumped off of it, and landed on the chandelier and Swan across the room.
Marc Gutman 0:54
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 big back stories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman.
Mike Arzt 1:14
Mike Arzt here super honored to be introducing Cory bayers for the 50th episode, Baby got backstory. I've got a long, long history with Cory. And I can honestly sit here today knowing I'd be on a much different paths if I hadn't been lucky enough to get to work work with Cory through a couple different companies he's been at. So for me, as I as I thought about our journey, I realized how much that I was at a kind of a pivotal point of my career in life. I was freelancing, but we hadn't started our agency yet. We were starting a family but didn't have a family yet. Like it was this is this big moment in my life of I think stepping into a whole new level of growing up building a business building a family when I cross paths with Cory. And so as I look back on that I feel like it was the stars aligned to have a mentor a client and a friend like Cory taught me so much that I still think is a big part of the foundation of what we do today.
So I first met Cory when we got hired, actually, I got hired to be the snowboard team manager for Helly Hansen. Cory at that time was working for Helly in the Seattle office, heading up marketing. He got the opportunity to move over to Oslo, for Helly Hansen, moved his family over there. They had their third child while in Norway. And we were constantly going back and forth. And not only getting to, you know, go over there and work with them. But a watched him raise his family in a foreign country. And I should say, well, Cory was working in the US he was the Canadian, so he was already an expat. So it was really, really amazing time. And what I learned from Cory was that he was super calculated and organized, when it came to budgets and expectations and just just real clear vision of where the marketing of Helly Hansen was going. And I think sometimes that stifles creativity, but when you have someone who has creative vision, and formulaic execution, with budgets, that's I think what is so hard to find these days, we work with a lot of different clients and you know, some very wild style and you go out and get stuff done. But it's it's rare. When you find someone that sort of puts that whole package together and has a ton of fun doing it, rallies the teams around them.
People are excited to go work extra hard. And then Cory has also got the other side that you kind of got to watch out for that might not come out till later night. But let's just say that a Cory's liver was built and designed in Canada. And it's a powerful machine that you should just know what you're getting into. We've seen we've seen some weaker folk not not survive. So yeah, just this great, great journey, learning from Cory, him really giving us an ability to expand the work we did with Helly , which was at the time we were launching the Public Works our agency, it all fell into place. And I can sit here probably 15 years later knowing that it was a huge chapter of my life with so much fun and education and I owe a ton of that to Cory. So it was cool to see him make the decision. Eventually to leave Helly Hansen go to Lulu lemon, which was a move back to Canada. You know, Lulu time was you know, I think a brand that so many people are envious of watching seemed like They were just on top of the world. And Cory Cory had a great gig there. And his family was back in Canada.
He was closer to solid quality hockey, which I know is a big part of his family's being. And then he got this opportunity to go work with Patagonia and head up their marketing, which I think for any of us who love the outdoor industry, or the outdoors, or companies that take a stand and do really hard things, I mean, Patagonia is at the, at the pinnacle. So now Cory sits in this position of, I mean, he's, he's in a position now this is going to change the world. You know, what he does, what that company does, what his team can do. It's profound change, so couldn't be more proud of him and thankful for the time that we got together.
Marc Gutman 5:56
So I'm here with Cory Bayers the Vice President of global marketing at Patagonia and Cory, what does a vice president of global marketing at Patagonia do?
Cory Bayers 6:06
That sounds pretty official. Wow, I'm all grown up.
Marc Gutman 6:11
It's about time. Right?
Cory Bayers 6:12
Exactly. My mom always want me to grow up someday. Um, well, it's very official title. Basically, I have the great fortune of leading an amazing group of people at Patagonia in Ventura, California, and in our offices around the world. Communicating with the brands up we tell stories, you know, I work with, you know, creative teams, marketing teams, strategy teams, operational teams, you know, lead books and film, basically all all the brand communication, non non non graphic on product, but any other PR, communications, branding, marketing, advertising comes comes out of my team and I work super collaboratively with people in Ventura, the business units, with, you know, marketers and market. So there's a lot a lot of great collaboration. Yes, that's kind of what I do. I tell stories about a pretty amazing brand.
Marc Gutman 7:10
Right? I mean, that sounds like the job I want when I grow up. So you got it, you got a pretty good, so I'm gonna hop right into it. Like, what's awesome about working at Patagonia? Like why, you know, why do you love it? And what's so great about it?
Cory Bayers 7:27
Ah, I think I said to someone the other day, someone asked me, they said, What? Well, you know, is Patagonia's as real as it seems like his value base like, is it? Is there any bullshit there? Like what goes on? and sincerely Do you see, it's real, I mean, from, you know, right through the organization, from the Chouinard family, all the way through our board and our teams.
The conversations are real, its values-based, you know, it's very, it's on a mission, and it's a serious mission. And it's not just, you know, hey, let's put a mission up there. But we're really out to sell product, it's no, it's not like that at all, you know, we truly are in business to save our home planet. And that's I've never been at a place anywhere with such conviction of mission and such a discipline of staying on task, you know, I mean, evolve and the family have, you know, charted waters over the last decades that it's just been consistent. You know, they've learned they've been transparent. They figured stuff out, they've LED, they've done everything. So it's really, that's the best part about working here. conversations are still as hard as they'd be at any other brand. And the work is as hard as it is at any other brand. But the purpose of the mission is real. And that's, that's what gets me up every day. So that's cool.
Marc Gutman 8:55
Yeah. And, you know, at least for me, and I think so many people, I mean, Patagonia is the gold standard. It's the brand that I think of that I admire the most for all the reasons that you just laid out, I think, at least in my memory, I'm sure there were other ones. But in my memory was really the first purpose driven brand. It was really the first values driven brand where I think even as a consumer, I looked at it, and I said, Wow, they have my values.
They believe what I believe, in addition to sort of this ability to transport me to a place of adventure, and make me feel adventurous made me feel like I'm part of the outdoors. So, you know, I think we see that, and I work in a space now. And you might get this question all the time as well. I mean, everyone now is purpose driven. Everyone now is values driven. I don't say that to be sort of flippant. You almost have to be you know, it's like it's, you know, the world is expecting it. But not everybody has that same sort of success. Not everybody is able to hold to truenorth the way Patagonia It does so like, like, in your opinion, like, what do you think the secret is? Or what do you think the wise? How is Patagonia been so good at that and been able to turn that in to both a company that is mission and purpose driven? that's changing the world and is a pretty good business.
Cory Bayers 10:18
Yeah, that's a meaty question. I, you know, I originally thought, when I interviewed at Patagonia, I sat down with Yvon Chouinard the, one of the founders, and I asked him, I said, What does success look in five years? Like, what do you want from me? Like, what is? What does Patagonia look like, in five years? How do I know if I'm succeeding in your eyes? Like, are we moving forward? And I was sitting there with the the CEO at the time Rose and the head of HR Dean, and he Yvon just kind of, in his great way, you know, looked down at his hands and, you know, rubbed his hands a little bit and put down his feet and said, I dont know, we may be smaller, and the head of HR just went white, just pale. And I said, that's the perfect answer.
And what I mean by that is, I don't really give a shit about sales, we're not numbers driven. They've had some hard years in the past, I'm sure you know, over the decades, it's a good years, and I'm sure that'll continue. But the success for them, as in Patagonia, in general is never been sold, there's never solely rests on a sales figure, or growth, target success looks like, you know, getting more activists to sign up to sign a petition to, you know, defend a local watershed to change the supply chain completely on its head to organic cotton only. I mean, those are huge success factors, regardless of a sales figure. And I'm not saying that everyone is just all other brands, we're just looking at a sales figure, but it does give us a different frame of reference of what success looks like. And I think that's that's helped us weather a lot of different storms over the over the decades. So that mentality about truly wanting to do good, and and being up for that change. And measuring that change has been such a central tenant to who we are, that I think that's our success metric. So yeah,
Marc Gutman 12:18
yeah. And we've talked a little bit about what's so great about Patagonia. But what's really hard about what you do there, and What don't we see What don't we know? Like, what and what do you wish, like maybe people didn't know about the, the how hard it is? Or the hard part of what you're doing?
Cory Bayers 12:34
I get Yeah, the it's a bit of a double edged sword on this one. The hardest part is, because we're seen as a leadership brand, we're held to a very high standard, which which is right. And, and to me, this is where you get the double edge to it, we're held to a high standard. But we're also open to, you know, like anyone else, even more so though we've got, if we, if we step out a line, we got to target like, people let us know. And that can be really hard when you're doing, you know, making the number of nine out of 10 things right, or 915 things right, and you do one thing wrong, and you get hammered for you're like, Damn, but there's all this other stuff. We're doing good. Yeah, we dropped the ball on that one, but look at the goodness, but I look at it, the others on the other side and go, you know, what, it's a good way to be though, you know, we're a community that cares. And we care, hold us to that standard. And that standard allows us to, to keep moving on and keep you know, pushing ourselves. So while it does get hard and frustrating, sometimes it it does pull us forward, it's a nice standard to be held to.
Marc Gutman 13:43
Now you've got me curious, because, you know, I firmly believe that we often grow through those hard times when we're challenged or when there's criticism. So, oh, Can you recall a moment that kind of falls into the parameters you just describe where maybe you did a mess misstep, or you got called out and how that went and how you learn from that. And then how you were able to, to kind of, you know, return back to that high standard by through that through that learning moment.
Cory Bayers 14:11
Yeah, you know, looking at as an example, you know, I look at, let's see, DWI, or you know, water repellent finish on on gardens, we are switching to be non fluorocarbon. So, not as toxic in that there have been other brands that have been quicker, because we look at, you know, what are the options. So by switching from one, one formula to another, there's impact, and it's not a marketing play, to just switch and say, Hey, we're PFC free or whatever. It's okay what what chemistry are using now, and what are the effects on the environment now, and because there are ramifications and we've spent some time looking at the solids and we don't want to jump to assault That is just makes us look good or feel good.
When we know there is also an environmental impact to a lot of these options out there. So working with our supply chain working with our partners to to get that right formulation. So in some instances, we've been, you know, criticized for going slowly, and rightfully so. And I think that's fine. But you know, people need to know that we really examine all solutions, and we play through the impacts, and those impacts could be on the environment, those impacts could be on performance and durability, lifetime value of the garment itself, its performance of the garment, other harmful effects, so we kind of play through everything, we're very much, you know, measured twice, cut once mentality. And when we go, we go, but a lot of times, you know, our communities don't see that. So we can be called out. And that's, that's rightfully so. But sometimes it's a little, you know, a little hard, but it's all good, keeping us to that standard, but dw is one of the examples that we're looking at right now. And we have, we are switching and in subsequent seasons, we're going to be completely flipped, and it's going to be really exciting.
Marc Gutman 16:10
Yeah, and that's really interesting to think about, you know, and that you have to have all these considerations. And I think of Yvon is kind of famous story about, you know, shifting to organic cotton and things like that. And you know, was that as that that the way that story goes was just like it was a decision, it was done? It was the it was gonna ruin the company. But you know, he didn't care and he was just going to move forward, because it was the right thing to do. Is there a little hyperbole to that story? Is that the way it happened?
Cory Bayers 16:42
That's pretty much how it happened. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think he walked in and said, You got 18 months, you know, figure it out. And you know, switching to organic cotton at the time. And I'm going from story I wasn't at Patagonia at the time, because this is going back, I believe, to the early 90s. Could be 94, 96, somewhere in there. But yeah, and you know, taking people out to the farms. and showing them the difference between employees at Patagonia and inventor and showing the difference between organic farm and chemical based, you know, fertilizer and run farm and having people actually see that difference and the impact that that's having. Yeah, that's, that's fair, there's a lot of truth to that story. It's, it's completely true. And similar with this DWR as well, we're looking at, you know, timelines on there, where we're going to be flipping it. And we have that conversation with a lot of different things like, you know, we're always pushing ourselves to a timeline, like, Okay, how quickly what is the impact, and really want to make sure we're careful and solution, but at the same time, trying to run as quick as we can. One of the expressions I had heard, go as quick as you can to take the time you need. And that's been, I think, really paramount in a lot of our decision making, like we're going to run as quick as he can turn over every cell, do whatever we can, but make sure we're also examining the impacts, and then going,
Marc Gutman 18:05
I mean, that part of that story that kind of blows my mind that like I haven't really thought much about, and being a storyteller, and you just shared in the opening, I mean, your your whole job as being a storyteller, is this idea of bringing the employees to see the different farms and to get their buy in? And you know, and I don't really see that very often, I think we're so consumed with external storytelling, that we don't spend a ton of time on this internal kind of component. And so, like, how important is that to you and your role? I mean, are you spending a lot of time thinking about how do we sell? and sell is kind of the wrong word? How do we like show how do we get people to see our point of view? Because when you just share that that story about going to the farms I was like, Oh, my God, like, how could you work at Patagonia and not be bought into the shift? Even though it seems scary, even though it seems big? If you're given that opportunity to insert yourself in the story?
Cory Bayers 19:00
Yeah, no, it's, it's something that we can always do more of. And you're right. It's not selling to the teams. It's more, you know, making sure they're engaged. We have a very, very incredible group of people in all of our offices that are, they're there for the right reason, they're hungry, they're curious, they're creative. So it doesn't take much to share the story and go, Hey, this we're working on to get people really, really excited, which is pretty incredible. And I'm trying to think back of, you know, other places that it goes really goes really quickly like a story gets picked up. You're like amazing, okay, how do we make it happen? And people getting behind it. And there's there's very little having to sell someone in a meeting like this, the reason why we're doing it, it's more like his right reason why we're doing it. Here's some of the background and just see people light up like Oh, man, that's cool. That is, oh, yeah, let's do it. If anything, we're on the other side of that. As I always say, you know, we want to solve so many problems, we do a lot, and sometimes too much and we get it, we get, we get underwater a little bit when it comes to the storytelling or some of the things we're taking on. We've got a lot of energy.
Marc Gutman 20:15
Like I can only imagine, I think, maybe it'll come up later. But I shared with you My, my, sort of thought, how I always view the the decision room, the marketing room at Patagonia, and everyone's like, you know, can we talk about something else? Maybe other than saving the planet, or public lands or water rights or, you know, all these things? So, you know, and so thanks for sharing that Cory what, you know, I'd like to know is like, you've had this amazing career. And I want to talk a little bit about that. And but like when you were a young boy and growing up in Canada, were you even thinking like, Hey, I'm going to be in the outdoor industry. I'm going to be in marketing someday I might work in marketing for some big, you know, outdoor brand?
Cory Bayers 21:04
No, no, not at all. I mean, I grew up in Montreal, and grew up in the city. Luckily, we could, we spent summers in Vermont, and upstate New York on Lake Champlain. So for Yeah, all summer, basically, I've been in a tent and a sleeping bag for months on end. And that was amazing. And I always, you know, that was my connection to the outdoors and made me fall in love with the outdoors and the sports that I did. But it probably wasn't till college where I was an accounting major, which makes me laugh right now. And I'd gotten into skiing and snow sports.
And there I was, it sounds bad, but I want to find a way to get to the mountains cheaper, and mean somebody just started you know, ski club, and it was a way for us to get Okay, we'll get a bus, we'll get a bunch of people on there. And if we get enough people, we'll get a few free tickets and then we can ride for free. We just got to work it and organize it and and we're not getting paid but we're gonna get free lift tickets. And I just kind of got into that and we used to get in organized try to do weeklies in the winter, like busloads of students, you know, down to like, you know, JP smuggler's notch, you know, moe, Sutton all these places, and just have fun with it. And I really fell in love with the, I guess the the entrepreneurial side, the business side, the marketing side. And some of my friends I'm hitting the longer they actually joke, they're like, yeah, we weren't sure if you're gonna graduate or just be escaped. But they're like, we're pretty impressed that you actually graduated, stuck around.
But I just I fell in love with the, I guess the whole the business of sport or that interaction, or that blurring of the lines really, between, you know, fun, passion and sport and work. And then straight away, I think after my first semester, I switched from accounting into marketing, and just, you know, enjoy the creative side of it. And the entrepreneurial side of it, really. And so that was kind of the foray into into it. And when I really started to think about, hey, this could be, this could be a place I'd love to work in, and it was like, Oh, am I going to work in like, you know, ski resort like country Lodge, I thought about guiding, you know, guiding school, do I want to do that. So there's a lot of options, but I knew I want it to be tied to the outdoor sports and the outdoor community in some way that I could apply my little bit of knowledge and passion to to be part of the community.
Marc Gutman 23:33
Yeah, and I would think you know, this, but maybe you don't Mike Arzt who introduced us for this episode, and also connected us so that we were able to have this interview. Did you know he had an exact same sort of like a call to racket going on, where he was putting together ski clubs selling lift tickets, like getting people to the mountain so he could go for free?
Cory Bayers 23:53
I didn't know that. And I've known Mike for years.
Marc Gutman 23:57
Exactly. verbatim, almost verbatim to what you just shared. It was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, did they do that together? That sounded like, like, almost identical.
Cory Bayers 24:07
Although Funny enough, I know. He went to UVM. So yeah, we weren't that far. I was in Montreal, but no, I didn't know that story. No. That's funny.
Marc Gutman 24:15
That's how he got his start as well. So, you know, and at that time, why don't you give us like a little sense of what the outdoor landscape look like, you know, you know, it's I think it was a lot different than it is today.
Cory Bayers 24:30
Yeah. Wow. I mean, it was definitely a lot. It was more fringe. It was more varied a lot fewer brands, the space wasn't it wasn't I wanna say co opted, but it wasn't as mainstream. You know, it was a little more isolationist, different kind of pursuit, smaller group, smaller community at the time. So yeah, it was a little different in that regard. Obviously, you know, product and technology has just exploded in terms of what's possible now. But the community was a lot smaller and you were more on the fringe, it wasn't as mainstream to see someone who saw someone walking in, you know, a ski jacket or waterproof jacket or even hiking boots in the city, either thought they were student or, you know, a traveler or something like that, like, you know, a European traveler coming through backpacking through whereas now it's very commonplace. I mean, it's it's part of, it's part of the culture it is it mainstream activities and pursuits.
So yeah, it's grown immensely, which has had some great upside to it. I mean, it's been amazing to tie it back to Patagonia, though, but, you know, something that, you know, people aren't gonna protect the land unless they have an attachment to it, love it, no, it care about it, or recreated, you know, on it. And by having more people involved in the sport, it's only going to get more people involved in defending the places we love. So it's, it's been super positive in that regard. Yeah, and
Marc Gutman 26:00
I think at that time, there was this really interesting birth of this intersection of outdoor and lifestyle, you know, and that where people were, you know, I think, you know, that was about the time I was starting to see, you know, accountants and business people wearing Patagonia clothing, you know, around town and stuff like that. And prior to that, we didn't really, we didn't really see a lot of that. So, at this time, you know, you've made this decision, you're going to apply yourself, you're in the marketing, you see the, at least the world that you want to be a part of, you know, that it's like, hey, there's this cool thing with like, being outside and being in marketing and business and being an entrepreneur. So would you do with that, where'd you go from after you left school?
Cory Bayers 26:50
My girlfriend and I went and cycled around Europe for almost a year. So that was that was fun. I had Patagonia gear at the time, obviously. And then when we came back, we knew we want to live kind of in the West, the mountains, we wanted to explore the western side of Canada and the US a lot more. And so we moved to Vancouver. And the we actually used mountain bikes with flicks on them to tour we didn't use a regular touring bike. And it was a Canadian brand called Rocky Mountain bicycle. And when we moved back to Montreal, basically packed up the car, sold everything, not that we had a lot basically had ski snowboard stuff, threw it on the car, and then drove drove out to Vancouver. And, you know, applied, we both applied for jobs sending photos from this trip to Rocky Mountain bicycle where the bicycle place that we bought our bikes from. And my wife got a job there as an accountant.
And I would just, you know, hang out, you know, mess around with the bikes. This is early 90s. So mountain biking was relatively young then and kind of got into the sports team got into with a lot of those guys. And then eventually I joined Helly Hansen and I was doing marketing for Hansen in Canada. So that was you know their retail and wholesale and team and all that stuff so out of Vancouver so life was pretty good actually starting to see you know how I could actually apply some of the things I learned and the passion I had to the the outdoor industry so that was Helly Hansen was kind of my first outdoor brand that I just threw myself into and enjoyed immensely of Vancouver. That was
Marc Gutman 28:33
Yeah, and when you started with Helly Hansen, what was your role there?
Cory Bayers 28:37
I was head of marketing for Canada. So I was overseeing Canadian marketing.
Marc Gutman 28:42
Was that a big was that a big sort of territory or big deal? Or was Howie maybe not that
Cory Bayers 28:47
you know what? Helly wasn't, I guess that huge at the time. And it was a big geographic territory, but not a massive role. It was a great role for me to you know, learn and figure stuff out. I would say it had, it was big enough that I had a budget and and things I could do to get in trouble. But it wasn't so small. I was like, Damn, I'd like to do that, Oh, I can't do that. I can't do this, I had enough latitude. And and it was of enough size enough autonomy that I could kind of mess around get in trouble try some different stuff, whether it be events or ads or whatever it was, or working with athletes or or in store and things like that. So I really, I really enjoyed it a lot. It was a lot of fun. And then after that, I went to do marketing for their Mountain Sports division out of Seattle. So moved the family down to Seattle, and enjoy that as well. You know, just concentrating globally. This is a global role on Mountain Sports. So ski and snow and climb and hike. And that was that was so much fun.
I love Seattle love the Northwest. And the opportunity came up. They said well, you know we want Would you like to come to Norway, and kind of You know, market the other categories as well like be involved in marketing for your kids and footwear at the time. We've got some other categories. And always the adventure is like hell yeah, I'd love to. So moved over to Oslo, Oslo, Norway and work for for Helly. They're a global that's their head office and work there for I can't remember I was there almost four or five years, I guess, in the marketing team there just met some amazing people, and just what a great culture and what a great country to live in, and what a great brand. And I learned, you know, a lot of dealing with international markets and just other stuff it was it was really cool. It's such a great learning curve. Heck, I'm still a student. I'm still learning every day. And I love that aspect of it. So now that I'm looking back and thinking, wow, yeah, I enjoyed learning there. There and there. So no, it was great. I had a lot of fun.
Marc Gutman 30:55
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I think for a lot of marketers, a lot of people in the outdoor industry, that would have been a job of a lifetime that would have been it that would have been like, Hey, I'm going to stay with Holly. I'm going to do you know just I've got I've got a good I've got it really good. And yet another roll came came your way. And did you go right from Helly Hansen to Lululemon?
Cory Bayers 32:19
I did. But the reason why I left Norway was it was for personal reasons. My dad, my parents are a little older. And my dad I was on a photo shoot in Northern Norway. with Mark Gallup at the time, good old photographer friend and my dad. My parents live in British Columbia and an interior small town called Kamloops. And my dad had a heart attack. And it took me like, as soon as I found out I was on the shoot, it took me another 3040 hours to get home, get back to British Columbia to see him. And I kids at the time two young, two young girls. And I was just like, Oh, you know, I want them to know their grandparents, I got to get home. So I went back to North back to Norway after my dad was feeling better. And it was it was tough. But I you know, the guys at Helly, were great. I just said, Look, I really I gotta get home, you know, there's a time for family. As much as I love, love the team here and I love Norway. I got it, I got to get back and take care of my my family and let them see what my parents you know, see their kids, their grandkids are. And so I went back. And they were great. And now Helly was like, hey, do you want to stay on and like, consult for a little bit out of Vancouver like helping the transition.
I'm like, I'd love to. That's great. So my thought of coming back to Vancouver was, you know, maybe I can talk to a few brands and kind of string a bit of a marketing consulting thing together. You know, whatever that looks like. So move back to Vancouver landed on like July the second song hit the pavement talking to some old friends. And one of my buddies was like, Hey, you know, you should talk to Lululemon. I was like, Oh, the yoga brand over on West fourth. He's like, yeah, Cory, you've been out of Canada a little while they're a little bigger now. Okay. And this was this is 2009. And I've been out of the country since early 2000. So not quite nine years, but close to it. So 2009.
And I approached them and said, Hey, you know, here's what I'm looking to do. Here's my background, I'd love to, you know, see if you have anything, you know, do you need any help? And the person there at the time was like we don't but we've got a brand role. Do you want to be brand manager here? You know, we're figuring some stuff out at the time. They're still relatively small and growing. And I was like, sure, this is kind of cool. I really loved everyone I met and what they stood for, and just every conversation I had, I'm like, oh my god I'm in. So that's how, you know, I just transitioned, you know, by mid August. I was like, yeah, I'm at Lulu. Now. That Lululemon for was almost seven years, seven years. So from August oh nine, I started at Lulu overseeing brand and brand manager role and then oversaw the creative. So head of brand creative VP brand creative for for several years.
Marc Gutman 35:18
And so for folks that may not know like what what is a brand manager and in you know, maybe in the context of working at Lulu just to make it real and then also like had a creative like, like what does that what does that role do? And what are your responsibilities? And and again maybe like maybe some of the things that are that we don't know like what's tough about it?
Cory Bayers 35:38
Yeah, well, brand manager very similar to you know, marketing manager, the difference that Lou lemon between I guess a typical marketing manager role. And why it was a bit more of a brand manager type role was a very decentralized model very, very interesting. And that, you know, a lot of they create locally, whether it's events and their stores and stuff like that. So it was it wasn't typical, you know, hey, here's, here's what we're doing in the month of August or whatever this is your store window and, and do that it was more about teaching them about brand about our brand about the limit brand, what does that mean? Where our values and having them go and create locally, which was really cool. In such a such a great, a great model.
And then when I was, you know, before I jump to the creative side of it, you'd ask, you know, what were some of the challenges, and one of the interesting things, you know, blue lemon had, at least at the time, and for my tenure there, and I would think so still now, you know, an appetite for risk. And they knew that, you know, I'm making up out of 10 windows that a store would put out, one would be absolutely amazing, or two or three, whatever would they'd have absolutely amazing windows, and a bunch of them would be kind of mediocre, it is what it is, and you can't hit it out of the park every month. And then one or two would get us in trouble. Meaning they'd be like, Oh, that's an offensive one or you know, their media would be involved or something would get messy, like oh, yeah, okay. But there was a tolerance for that. And it was an exciting environment to to be creative within. And then I went to, after that overseeing the creative team and working with them and other talented bunch of, you know, designers photographers, film, there's a bit of film and video, you know, at Lou lemon at the time. And that was a different role that was like purely creative with a bit of a strategy to it. But the creative side of it was really guiding that, you know, what's the look, the look and feel of lemon through those years. Everything from you know, print ads to the website to how we shoot how we tell a story, the emails that go out. So all the creative communication at the time, I had the great fortune of working with, you know, a great team there to bring that to life. And that was a lot of fun to learn again, I learned a lot there.
Marc Gutman 37:59
Yeah, and the way I hear the story, and please correct me if I've got this wrong as that you're at Lulu, and you're head of creative and things are good, you're happy you're doing your thing. And you get approached by by the the, the big the big white whale right by Patagonia the I was gonna say, you know, like, I was gonna say, Detroit redwings. But you know, that think that's for my like, more of my memory than the reality these days. But you're, you're you're approached by you know, the preeminent outdoor. You know, like you said, the gold standard high level. Patagonia. Is that is that the way it happened?
Cory Bayers 38:37
Yeah, it was actually interesting in that when I was still in Norway, and I was looking to move back to Canada. I had reached out to a few people, like different recruiters like, Hey, you know what, I'm heading back to Canada, for family reasons. You know, I'd love to talk with you guys about something I got talking with this person, Deanna at a recruiting agency, we had a great conversation. And she's like, you know what, there's nothing at Patagonia right now. But I'll definitely keep you in mind. And she was working. I think it was in Portland, with a recruiting firm. And I was just kind of getting my name out, because coming back to the US had been out of the country for quite a while and didn't think anything of it, and then went to Lulu. And literally it was I guess it was a probably a total of eight years later, I get a call from her. I was like, Oh, hey, Deanna. We didn't talk to him forever.
I'm like, Wow, great. What's going on? She's like, well, we you know, we're looking for a head of marketing. Are you interested? I still had I remember our conversation a few years ago, and like, eight years ago, about, you know, just a random conversation we had. So she reached out I'm like, Yeah, I'd love to have a conversation with Patagonia for sure. And it just kind of started they're really you know, I met with rose CEO at the time and the people here and just love them. every interaction every conversation I had, so it was it was a tough decision actually to leave to leave Vancouver to leave lemon. But yeah, it was it was. It's been great. It's been great almost five years now. Yeah.
Marc Gutman 40:13
And I can imagine was a tough decision. I mean, first of all, moving from Seattle where you've established your home and you're loving it, and I was Vancouver, Vancouver. Yeah. Okay, I'm sorry, Vancouver. But yeah, you're still you're still moving to Southern California. That's a big move. And I could sense perhaps in the question that you referenced in the beginning of the show, when you asked, you know, well, how do I know I'm successful? I mean, I would have to think it might be intimidating, coming into a company that's so highly revered, like, like, you know, and certainly, at a high position. I mean, my thought is, like, I wouldn't want to screw that up, you know, I don't want to be the one that like, I don't want to be the one that like, starts to put, uh, you know, cracks in this hall of this of this ship. So, I mean, were you intimidated? was it was it a little scary?
Cory Bayers 41:02
Um, I don't know if it was scary. I mean, I have gone through the 80s, you know, as skiing and in the outdoors, I was just so immersed in their catalogs, and the imagery and the brand. And I'd read Let my people go surfing that it. It didn't feel distant. It didn't feel like this is another entity. It felt like something I knew something I was passionate about something I felt close to in some weird way. You know, because I've been so involved or absorbing everything they've been doing for decades, really, like I said, since the 80s. That it didn't, it didn't seem like such a leap. And the conversations were very real and honest. And expectations were our you know, about saving the home planet, which I know that sounds massive. It is massive. But it's it Yeah, I don't know, I it's not something that really crossed my mind. It was, I guess, another adventure, a way to learn. And it's in a really weird way of felt like kind of coming home because of my, they were one of the brands that are the first brand I fell in love with, you know, when I was into the outdoors, or getting into it and getting into quality apparel, and, and what spoke to me imagery wise. So yeah, it was it was a bit of a full circle in that regard. Yeah.
Marc Gutman 42:29
Yeah. So you're there. Now you're overseeing a great team, like, what's next for Cory?
Cory Bayers 42:36
I don't know, keep having fun, keep learning. You know, just keep growing really keep. I keep talking about learning. I'm kind of the eternal student. But there's something that I discovered a long time ago that I really liked coaching, you know, and not to jump around. But I remember like, in the 90s, when my first jobs actually had us do this Myers Briggs test. And it's a personality test, right? And you go through the whole thing and answer these questions, and the report comes back. And I was, you know, mid 20s, at the time, and one of the things on there, it says, You you really enjoy coaching, you'd be a great coach. I never thought of that, like really a coach? like when I play team sports and ever wanted to be the coach or anything like that. But I just discovered like, okay, I want to be a coach, really, okay, I was in my mid 20s, I kind of put it aside. And then, you know, when I was leaving Norway, the team there, they put together this little photo book, and it was just pictures of me with them through my time there. So like, on photoshoots, behind the scenes on the mountain, you know, in the cafe in moss and Norway at the office, or just a bunch of stuff. And, and the thing that just broke me was they said, thanks for being our coach. And I was just like, shocked.
I was like, Oh my god, I guess? Yeah, that's what I love doing. I, I like that. And I hadn't thought about that for about 10 years. And that just nailed it again. And so I am I enjoy that aspect of being able to, to help coach and impart some of my knowledge and you know, on on the next generation of marketers, and creatives and people that are going to change industry way more and change the world way more than I, I have or will. So I do enjoy that. So I don't really look too far. What's next I kind of try to stay in the present about keep learning on what I'm doing and keep keep coaching my team and keep seeing people grow because honestly, if you ask me was the thing I'm most stoked about over the last 10 years. I'm not going to talk about a campaign. I'm not going to talk about creative. I'm going to talk about relationships, people I met someone like Mike you know, Mike Arzt and the great work we've done. I'm going to talk about, you know, a young designer out of school that was I believe that intern at the time when I joined Lw lemon, on my left, she was, you know, an art director and on our way to be a creative director, just a brilliant creative mind. Those are the things I remember, I don't remember, you know, some campaign that went out that we may have felt good about at the time. So, yeah, that's kind of what I'm looking at right now.
Marc Gutman 45:19
Oh, and it sounds like you've been such an influence to a lot of different people. Just even how you, you know, described, you know, your involvement in coaching and your influence and, you know, coaching the next generation of marketers, but like, who's been the most influential person in your life?
Cory Bayers 45:37
Oh, tough question. I don't know if there's been just one I think through throughout my journey, there's, there's always been someone along the way that is really inspired me, you know, that we're talking about mike mike is always, always inspired me with his just creativity, his drive, his sense of purpose, the ability to have fun, I've looked up to Mike for a long time. And I look at you know, some ambassadors we've had the pleasure of working with, you know, when I was at Helly, there is one gentleman Yoren Crop, who unfortunately passed away in a climbing accident several years ago, but such an influential person and his perspective on life. And, and what he accomplished, you know, was amazing, I look at right now someone like Yvon Chouinard who's simply iconic the real deal, you know, learning from him and hearing his little bits of wisdom.
So yeah, it's kind of a bunch of people all along the way, have always, you know, it hasn't been one mentor. It's been a bunch of a series of mentors. And, and even if they weren't full mentors, just learning like a snippet from here, or, or someone teaching me something going, Wow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I never looked at it that way. You know, from even days, that loon lemon and yoga philosophy and just exploring yoga, and things like that. And I learned along the way from, you know, some of the some of the coaching we got there was it was incredible. See, I can't pick just one sorry.
Marc Gutman 47:17
It's all right. And, you know, I think it's a just, there's some synchronicity in that you mentioned Mike and Mike was on the podcast. So those of you listening, you've heard us reference him a couple times, you can go ahead and listen to his episode and learn more about Mike. But Mike also had sent in a question through the baby got backstory, sort of email channels, have a question that he would like to ask you. So are you ready for it?
Cory Bayers 47:44
Um, as I'll ever be.
Marc Gutman 47:47
All right. All right. All right, let's, let's see, let's see.
Mike Arzt 47:52
There was a time when we as Helly Hansen, rented out a castle in Austria, is maybe one of the best fashion shows parties have ever seen go down. I highly recommend renting a castle to anyone listening. Later that night, while leaving after copious amounts of enjoying the castle. Cory pulled off pretty amazing gymnastics done, and was really hoping he may be share, share what went down?
Cory Bayers 48:25
Oh, geez, I knew Mike would talk about something like that. It is it is it was a castle in Austria. And it's really, it's pretty crazy. It's funny. I was at a sales meeting. Pre COVID in in Europe, or European team there. And it was in Italy and what they had rented out like, it's incredible what you can actually buildings and areas you can do events in in Europe always blow my mind. And this was a castle in in Austria. And we were launching a new season. I can't remember which season it was. And yeah, it was just a lot of fun. It's really well done. And we stayed around a big group. We had a bunch of the skiers and snowboarders there and just had a really good time. And I don't know how it evolved.
We were standing somewhere and there's one of the rooms, there's no furniture, it's just literally the castle. And it was a massive room with this ceiling that seemed to go on forever. And hanging down. Was this crazy big chandelier like one of those you see in the movies like it looked about, I don't know. 810 feet in diameter just hanging there but like wood and it had it candles. It wasn't like electric or anything was the candle one. And I was like, Am I as a kid you always see movies like people swinging across those things. So I thought, hmm, that was my moment to shine. And I care what I'm standing on. I just jumped off of it and landed on the chandelier and swung across the room. And I believe there's a couple of bottles of elixir in my goggle pockets on the inside of my jacket that fell out as well when I was swinging and Mike like that story, but I just swung on that thing. And after a golf Mike was like he didn't realize that things Pro is over a couple hundred years old, he could have killed yourself. That's like, that's the last thing I was thinking it was. I was six years old again. I want to fly on that thing, just like you saw in the movies, man.
Marc Gutman 50:23
Well, thank you for sharing that. And I am just so sad. I'm so sad that like I like you know, didn't didn't have the opportunity.
Mike Arzt 50:28
I think I alluded with the other question if you get into it, but we'll see if he'll tell that one. If he won't I have pictures. I don't think Cory holds back on much. There's I think one of our favorite ones was the most you talk about, like snowboarding or skiing, like overshooting the landing. Ian foreman and Mark Gallup and I were all heading over to corys house in Oslo to have dinner and he told us just to stop and pick up sushi on the way at Alex sushi, which is like, it's the Nobu of Oslo. So really good, stupid expensive, like you probably buy a small house in Kansas for what dinner costs, right. So in the snowboarding terms, if it had been a 60 foot tabletop, I'd say Cory overshot the landing on the order by 120 feet, but maybe he can tell that story of I still kind of wonder what happened to all that sushi. Hopefully he fed the entire neighborhood.
I think Cory might have taught me about the Canadian Caesar and Crown Royal, like those are two very big staple still in my life. I think a lot of that resulted from the same trip that a game we created called trail ball was launched. I remember our bar tab at the end of that week at chatter Creek. I still have that also. But the line items are something like 196 crown Royals, like 126 Caesars, more Coconino than like he could have floated a small tugboat and the amount of coconuts we went through. But that was an epic trip that a lot of learning and creativity came out of and even some good photos. This thing with Cory Cory some pretty put up put together for he's like one of those guys that could actually probably run for political office
He's a dark horse.
Cory Bayers 52:35
Yeah, you know, I was I always struggle with the sushi orders, you know, and I got better in my old age, but I always just struggled quantity. And these guys are coming over and they're hungry, and I don't want them to starve. So I went to the restaurant during the day. I said, Look, do you guys deliver? I'm not living that far. But I like to place an order and do you deliver? And they're like, no, sorry, we don't deliver. I'm like, Okay, well, I'm gonna order now. Okay, now and my buddies will come by a taxi. They'll pick it up, and they're gonna bring it to my house. No problem. And I still remember Mike, when I opened the doors, Hammond gallop and Ian. And they're holding the sushi. It literally looked like a pallet of it. And they're all smiling and laughing and I'm like, what's wrong? They go, Well, we got a message from the owner of the restaurant.
I'm like, Oh, geez, would I do my card bounce? Like what happened? He goes, No. His message to you is here's the number you should call. We'll tell you what is it you ordered? Like it's an for an army we will deliver anywhere for you. And here's my personal number. So I kind of overshot the landing. I think it was something like I don't know. $4,000 to sushi for four people. But it was Yeah. My wife still reminds me that to this day, whenever I order sushi, I get the look. So yeah, I really overshot the landing. I get the look. Yeah, even my kids, even my kids know the story and they give me the look too.
Marc Gutman 53:58
It's serving you well, you know, you're still telling that story today.
So, has there ever been a moment like at Patagonia or any time during your career where you just felt like, like scared or like, you know, something wasn't gonna work out the way you had hoped?
Cory Bayers 54:16
Oh, yeah, we did a week is it? Yeah, I mean, shit. A lot of times. Yeah. Because, you know, whatever you as marketers, or as creatives, you know, whatever you're unleashing, kind of wait for a reaction. Sometimes there's some stuff you can put out there and go, ooh, boy, this is gonna be interesting how this one's received. And sometimes it's received well, and sometimes it's not or Yeah, there's always an element of, of risk or uncertainty. I mean, you do what you can you work through it. You work with your teams, and then but once it's into the big wide open, yeah, there's an element on a lot of campaigns or a lot of things that I've put out over the years that you're like, Okay, how's it gonna be received and yet a feeling doesn't go way, I think it's a good feeling.
Marc Gutman 55:02
Yeah. And so kind of in that same kind of milk, like, what are you struggling with most right now?
Cory Bayers 55:08
Uh, right now struggling? Oh, let's see, bro, can I say the election?
Marc Gutman 55:16
You can say anything you want, yeah.
Cory Bayers 55:19
Yeah, just, you know, electing climate, climate leaders, people are gonna care for this planet, you know, truth, trying to implement some government change and, and that's something that we're very passionate about. And yeah, the environment. So that's, that's that's a big thing right now and obviously we're a couple weeks away from Election Day and hoping that we can as a community elect climate leaders that are going to help protect and you know, keep these lands safe so we can we can continue to enjoy them and our children and grandchildren and everyone can enjoy them. So yeah, that's that's the biggest thing on my mind right now.
Marc Gutman 55:58
Yeah. And you mentioned that you really enjoy coaching and that you enjoy mentoring that next generation of marketers and creatives. With that in mind, like, what's one piece of advice that you'd give them?
Cory Bayers 56:10
Oh, this is like the the letter back to yourself when you're 18, or something like that? Kind of, I always think, or I think about that sometimes, like, what could I tell myself, or someone starting out? And I would get and say, You know what, don't don't worry about being perfect. Like Don't, don't chase perfection, just go and do it and try it and figure it out. Don't be Don't be too concerned about how how you look or let ego get in the way just just dive in and figure stuff out. There's going to be great moments, it's gonna be hard moments. That doesn't change that just goes with you. But yeah, don't be apprehensive and don't worry about perfection. Just just kind of dive in and be okay with it. And don't let Don't let your ego rule you.
Marc Gutman 57:02
What's one of your favorite memories of Cory
Mike Arzt 57:05
I was thinking about this driving in today. And there's so money, some good memories. But uh, I think an awesome one was we're at we're an Aspen for the X Games. And, you know, you were watching all that athletes compete. And it's just such a great weekend, you're surrounded by all your industry friends, you're in Aspen, which is awesome just on its own. But it was just hammering snow. And I believe we were supposed to fly out of Aspen to go directly to the SI trade show in Vegas. And I think the flight got canceled. And then we just quickly made the decision that it just wasn't worth like sitting at the airport, probably getting get canceled again, or whatever. So we just stayed. And that Monday when pretty much the circus of the X Games cleared out of town. We went to Highlands and height islands bowl and had a I don't know, it must have been a two or three foot deep powder day. And it's just that feeling of you just had this great weekend. But it was chaos. And then the next thing we end it with just just us hiking the bowl and just smashing some serious pow. And then we got in the rental car, drove straight to Vegas, and checked into the hotel still in our snowboard gear. And I think we ended up getting in like half a day later than we would have. But getting that that kind of bonus day with that. sharing it with friends and getting powder like that. I mean, that's really takes it right back to why we all got into this whole thing.
Marc Gutman 58:41
In addition to the question that you asked earlier, is there something else that you've always wanted to know, from Cory that maybe there's been like this mystery of this thing outstanding that either professionally or personally, you wanted to ask him and know the answer to?
Mike Arzt 58:58
I don't know. There's so much Luckily, we've had some good time to sit down together. And luckily a couple weeks ago, I ended up out in California and got to stop in and spend a night at Cory's new place and kind of you know, just see the family. I think it's been several years everyone was so so grown up his oldest is in college. I mean, it's crazy. I like last time I saw them they were kids. This time they were adults and and just cool to see him settled into the whole new Patagonia thing, but I don't know I think I think what's interesting, so interesting to me is that he was able to move through a couple different great companies, but those also required international moves with a family. And I think that would probably stop other people from taking on that challenge. And yes, I don't know if I if I had some one question. I'd probably be like the mindset of making big decisions like that with a family and trying to To figure out what the right move is.
Marc Gutman 1:00:02
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. I like big stories and I cannot lie. You other storytellers can't deny.
1 hr 1 min
November 25, 2020BGBS 049: Chris Do | The Futur | Type Is Life
BGBS 049: Chris Do | The Futur | Type Is Life
Chris Do is the founder of two seven-figure businesses, the first being Blind, an Emmy Award-winning motion design studio with over $80 million in total billings. The second is The Futur, an online education company whose mission is to teach 1 billion people (yes billion!) how to make a living doing what they love.
We immerse ourselves in Chris’s design journey, from picking skateboards based off of their hypnotic decks, to passionately combing through the same comic books over and over again, to even trying an early hand at editing by manually fixing his grades. Chris is a great storyteller with a vast expanse of knowledge to share, and he worked tirelessly to get here. To become the master that he is today, he had to remove his defenses and submit to his teachers’ harsh criticisms. By letting go of his ego, he was able to absorb as much as possible and ultimately, get ahead. We are moved by this act and begin to ask, how can we all remove our own resistance to become better students of life?
In this episode, you'll learn...
Chris was born in Saigon, Vietnam, but his family fled to Kansas City, Missouri in 1975 when the country fell to communism
Moving every 1.5 years was dreadful for Chris because he felt like he couldn’t establish long term relationships and he had to stand up to bullies often

Chris found a home in skateboarding because of the mesmerizing graphics and found it to be a “gateway drug” into graphic design. He even picked his decks based off of design, rather than its manufacturing

Before entering the first grade, Chris’s uncles taught him and his brother multiplication and division. This was just the beginning of his advanced mind. Since then, Chris coasted through school by being the “lazy smart guy”

When Chris didn’t have many comic books, he would feed his obsession by studying the ones he had front to back, over and over, savoring even the advertisements and smell

Chris’s early exposure to “Photoshop retouching” was occasionally using his mom’s drafting tool to electrically erase his printed grades and using a blunt pencil to rewrite more admissible ones

As an ArtCenter student, Chris had many sleepless nights with many unhealthy meals (which he doesn’t encourage), but he learned the power of removing his ego to intake knowledge and get ahead

Mastering typography is training your eye to see connections and experimenting repeatedly within a controlled environment. It is a wonderful discipline that not many can figure out

Chris named his company Blind because it is an ironic name for a visual communication company. It was also inspired by Blind Skateboards and its punk spirit

When Chris got word that his company won an Emmy, he was terrified to learn that he had to prepare a speech. Lucky for him, the show was running long and there ended up being no time for him to speak

With his platform at The Futur, Chris shares all the information he has, which in some cases has earned him some enemies, but overall, his generosity has earned him many fervent students around the world with a lot of gratitude
Resources
LinkedIn: Chris Do
Facebook: Chris Do
Instagram: @thechrisdo
YouTube: The Futur
Website: thefutur.com
Quotes
[32:23] My one key advantage that I had over other people was, at this point in my life, I had already developed this mindset of objectivity... I just submitted. I removed whatever little parts of ego I had and I tried to absorb as much as what they had to say as possible.
[34:07] I was trying to win a game with myself. Like, “Can you push past that limit, that threshold? How bad do you want it? How far are you willing to go to get what it is that you want?”
[39:12] Type is life man. Type is thinking made visible. If you can learn how to design with type, you can learn how to design everything.
[59:03] If you're able to help another human being, and if you're able to do this at scale, and you're able to reach so many people, I gotta tell you, that's that kind of joy that no money can buy.
Podcast Transcript
Chris Do 0:02
She submitted it. And to my surprise, they're like you win. You get one. And I was thinking this is excellent, until they send you this email saying, you need to prepare your acceptance speech. And it can only be, I think, 30 seconds long or 45 seconds max, they'll cut you off. And you need to be short. You need to be pithy say something that will make the editors keep you in Edit when this thing airs. And I was struggling with this, because this is in 2010. I had not done a lot of public speaking at that point, and definitely never even thought of doing a YouTube video at that point. So this kind of wrecked me. Like I can be there on stage. I can grab this statue, I can hold it up. But I don't want to say anything because I'm still not comfortable speaking.
Marc Gutman 0:50
Podcasting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Backstory podcast, 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 Back story, how a shy kid from Vietnam found art and built to seven figure businesses doing what he loves. And today we are talking with Chris Do. If you're a designer, or designer, let's say adjacent chances are you know of Chris Do. He has nearly half a million followers on Instagram.
Yeah, like almost 500,000.
The YouTube channel hosted by his company, the future has just under a million. Both of these numbers are at the time of recording this. And I have no doubt if you're listening to this episode. After this time, the numbers will even be much higher. And before we get into my conversation with Chris, if you like and enjoy the show, please take a minute or two to rate us and review us on iTunes or Spotify, iTunes and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. You know what? Better yet? Please recommend this show to at least one friend you think well like it, friend share at Baby Got Backstory, and don't keep it all to themselves. This spirit of generosity is touched on in today's episode, as you'll soon hear, so go out and share the show with someone you love.
Today's guest is Chris Do. He's the founder of two seven figure businesses, the first of which is Blind, an Emmy Award winning motion design studio with over 80 million in total billings. The second is The Futur spelled sort of funny with no e at the end, an online education company whose mission is to teach 1 billion people how to make a living doing what they love. He is also the author of a pocketful of dough, which sums up more than two decades of entrepreneurship, teaching, creativity, coaching and learning scaled down in a potent bite sized lessons that can be ingested quickly.
I'm reading it right now. I'm quite enjoying it. 1 billion people. That is a big vision. And I want to be completely transparent. I am a crypto fan. Right around the dawn of the pandemic. I was chatting with my friend Greg about business models and something or other. And he said, Do you know Chris Do, he's doing something really interesting with The Futur. And after we work through my confusion that The Futur was the name of the company, and not some measure of time, I strolled over to The Futur via the internet. And it was like I climbed a mountain. And as I got to the peak, my aperture opened up to a view I had never seen before.
There were all these creatives, mainly designers, but also what I'm now calling designer adjacent professions, brand strategists, photographers, filmmakers, youtubers instagramers. My mind was blown. I did a little more snooping. But it didn't take long before I joined his community. And it's one of the best decisions I've made in my business. So I love me some Christo and even though I'm a part of his community, I really don't know Chris. I don't know much about him. And today, we're going to change all that. We're all going to get to know Chris Do in this. This is his story.
Hey, Chris, so thanks for joining us today on the podcast and I want to get right into it. What is The Futur?
Chris Do 4:58
What is the future? It's the thing that happens after today. But if you're talking about my future, The Futur that we've created, it's an online education platform where we're where we have this big, hairy audacious goal to teach 1 billion people on planet Earth, how to make a living doing what they love, without selling their soul.
Marc Gutman 5:16
That is a big, audacious goal. And I think that you're well on your way. Now, you know, now that we know kind of where we're, we're at, I kind of want to know how this all started. And, and I've heard you talk a lot about invites, not like real specifics, and kind of like bite sized pieces about how you grew up and, and what it was like as a young child. And so like, Where did you grow up? And what was life like for young Chris Do?
Chris Do 5:45
Hmm.
I was actually born in Saigon, Vietnam, and my family as well as many other families fled when it fell to communism in in 1975. So we arrived here in the United States in Kansas City, Missouri, where we live there for a couple of years, and we're ultimately moved to San Jose, California. That's kind of where I grew up. I grew up in the valley around computers, but not a lot of inspiration. I know. I hope I'm not offending a whole lot of people. It's not like a cultural center. And so I grew up like, like a lot of kids in the malleus, skateboarded. I, I sketched I drew, I made things and I was mostly kind of a shy, introverted kid.
Marc Gutman 6:26
Yeah. And what did your parents do for a living?
Chris Do 6:29
Both my parents worked in the tech space. My dad was an engineer for a company called Applied Materials. I think they they do semiconductor kind of things. Beyond that, I don't know. My mom worked as the designer drafter for IBM until she ultimately retired.
Marc Gutman 6:46
Oh, this is all of a sudden making a lot of a lot of sense that Chris Do I know today, combination of the two Actually, yeah, so you know, I've heard you allude to this a little bit. But I have to imagine it, it probably wasn't all that easy. Growing up as a Vietnamese immigrant in Northern California, especially, you know, coming, you know, on the heels of the fall of Saigon. I mean, there was probably some, some anti Vietnam senate sentiment. I mean, was it like that, or, you know, was it difficult?
Chris Do 7:17
It was difficult for me, and I don't think I'm sharing anything that's unique. I don't know if there was a specific anti Vietnamese sentiment, it was just mostly like, Hey, you look a lot different than us. You're an Asian kid. And most people just assumed I was Chinese. And that was the go to racial default box that I fit into. And it I didn't help myself, because I'm a skinny kid. I'm not athletic. I like weird things I like to draw. And I mostly keep to myself, I like comic books, and things like Dungeons and Dragons. And so naturally, the stronger bigger kids they want, they just want to pick on you. Or if you're in the streets, they just want to establish the pecking order. And it's a world that didn't fit into for a very long time. I'm not sure I ever actually fit into that world. And I was bullied. But luckily, I have an older brother. He's four years older than me, he told me that bullies just like an easy target.
So if you stand up for yourself, even if you get your butt whooped, they'll leave you alone, because they just want to move on to another target. They're trying to establish their kind of artfulness, if you will. They're their dominance over you. So you stand up for yourself. And so I gotta tell you, I mean, it's almost like literally, like I said, I transferred from one school to the other. Because as a kid, we moved a lot, my parents got increasingly higher paying jobs and ultimately landed where they're at. So we moved, I calculated almost every year and a half. So it was dreadful for me, because it meant I couldn't put my roots down, didn't establish long term relationships. And this is haunted me to this day. And when I would go to new school, and it wasn't like they, they timed it perfectly, like at the beginning of the school year was kind of school year it started. And I can tell you almost within a day or two, somebody's gonna pick a fight with me. And I was gonna get into a fight. I already knew it. I was prepared for it. Like mentally, not physically, but mentally prepared for it.
Marc Gutman 9:06
I was gonna ask, like, like, did you learn to fight or like I and I have to like, I mean, look, I went to a school where everyone got picked on for everything. I mean, you know, I had a last name like Gutman, and I had a you know, a father who's Jewish. And that was enough so I can't even imagine, you know, Vietnamese and and how that was and how that went down. I could, you know, probably picture some kids doing some Bruce Lee moves are something that taught you or whatever, right? Like, you ever get good at fighting or like, was it something that like you just had to do?
Chris Do 9:37
It just, you had to do it. And you don't have to get that good. All you have to do is just say like, I'm not going to take this Let's fight and and then they're thrown for a loop. Right? And I remember I'm not looking to pick a fight. I don't want to get into a fight with people but they did things that would draw you I think into a fight like I remember one time on the playground. And this was just a couple days into school. My my brother There was only a year younger was in a grade below me, obviously. And he was playing around. And the next thing I know somebody had kicked his lunch bag and his entire juice in his sandwich was everywhere. And they did that just like a soccer kick. It wasn't I accidentally stepped on it. And then I had to confront these guys, because, look, here's the thing.
I don't get along with my brother, at least back then I didn't get along with him. But he's family and you don't get to pick on family. So my blood was boiling. I'm like, What do you guys doing? And they're like, it was an accident. Like, yeah, I said, Bs, that's not an accident. And then what are you gonna do about it? And then pushing happens? And it's like, okay, we're gonna get in fight after school. And that's exactly kind of how it played out.
Marc Gutman 10:38
Yeah. And you know, I don't know if it's just kind of my general who I attract on the podcast. But there seems to be this running theme of guests on the podcast that have, they didn't fit in other places. But the one place they did fit in was escape culture like this. There was something about skateboarding. I mean, that's how I grew up. I mean, that's what ultimately drew me to California had these images of Thrasher, and kids and Venice Beach and the Dogtown guys and everything I was like, and then I got there. And I was like, it doesn't quite look like that. You know, what was it about skateboarding that resonated with you? And that was where you found a place to find yourself?
Chris Do 11:17
Yeah, this the answer to that question is gonna sound horrible. But I was mostly drawn to skateboarding because the graphics on the skateboards just mesmerized me they were hypnotic. I remember going to town and country like inside the mall, I think it's called time and country, or something like that, or one of these skate lifestyle surf shops. I would go in there and I was like, Oh, this is cool. I look at the T shirts. I look at the back display wall behind the counter and had all the boards laid out there. From visions streetwear the psycho stick man, Mark Gonzalez, his skateboard, Christian Hosoi? The Hammerhead with him just doing the iconic move they was doing.
I was just kind of mesmerized by these things. And I see that people are skating as a solitary endeavor. And I just wanted to learn one of my friends had a cheap skateboard and he was saying like, Yeah, let's go learn how to ollie together. And we would just practice on the grass on the go. I think I can do this. And it took him weeks. When I just stepped on it. It's like a worked on it took me a couple of days. I'm like, Oh, this can be kind of fun. And I think for a lot of artists and illustrators and graphic designers, skateboarding is a gateway drug into graphic design. So I was right there with you. Thrasher magazines, Thrasher magazine Transworld skateboarding magazine. And just kind of living vicariously through these images and words, I think is Craig stesiak, who started to, to kind of create this idea and the culture. And he he's credited for helping to at least create part of this skateboarding subculture here in Santa Monica, Venice. And so yeah, I was drawn into that.
Marc Gutman 12:46
Did you have or do you remember a favorite deck design that that you remember today?
Chris Do 12:52
Oh, yeah. And and so I made the mistake of picking decks based on their design, not necessarily the manufacturing or the shape of it. And I figured that out later on. But I loved almost every design from Santa Cruz. The the choreo Brian, Grim Reaper with a fireball that that thing was awesome Rob Ross cop with the crazy face and the hand breaking through the target. I also loved a bunch of designs that came from from Powell Peralta. So these are like the big skateboarding companies and they, they can afford to hire like trained artists to work on their their design. So Steve Cavalera, the dragon amazing Mike McGill with the skull on the rattlesnake coming out of his head and Tony Hawk skull, skull Hawk or skull bones or whatever that's called. That thing was awesome.
Marc Gutman 13:38
Yeah, so awesome. I made the same mistake to I think at a vision hippie stick at one point. And that was not the right word. But I like the way it looked. And I think my all time favorite was the Lance Mountain. But I also think, because I thought Lance Mountain was like such a cool name. I was like, Yeah, I was like, I'm Marc Gutman. I want to be Lance Mountain like that's.
Chris Do 13:56
That is a very cool name.
Marc Gutman 13:57
Yeah. Right. Like, like, Who doesn't want to be Lance Mountain? So, you know, you're growing up, like, were you a good student.
Chris Do 14:03
I was above average student. I think I graduate high school with a 3.8 something GPA. And I think I would have gotten a 4.0 GPA, but I just didn't really care about school and school came relatively easy. And something to kind of keep in mind like, my both my parents have incredibly large family siblings, you know, like my dad has, I think 10 brothers and my mom, 10 brothers and sisters, my mom has an equal amount on her side. So there were no shortage of uncles and aunts around us all the time. Especially in the beginning. It's like a very typical immigrant thing, right? You live in a relatively small house with and it's packed with all your relatives. And so I would hang out with them. I lost my train of thought here. What was your question again?
Marc Gutman 14:46
Were you a good student?
Chris Do 14:48
Oh, yeah. Yeah, here we go. So sorry about that. So a little brain fart there. So we I had uncles basically my dad's younger brother, brothers who who didn't have a lot to do because they're like either going to college or something like That, and they would make sure we learned all our arithmetic and multiplication and division. And this is before I even went to first grade. So for a long while I was like coasting like God, America, so easy. Because back at home, it was brutal. It's like you're gonna get whipped with a chopstick or ruler if you didn't memorize these things. And so when they're doing basic addition, I was like, already into, like long division here, like what is the holdup, and I remember in a couple instances, I think was between third and fourth grade, where because of budget cuts, I went to public high school, by the way, because of budget cuts, they smashed two grades together.
And so while we were teaching the third graders, they would switch every other day or something like that the fourth graders were kind of learning, I was just sitting there listening, and I was just learning so much from the fourth graders, and applying right to third grade. So for a long time, I just coasted I'm pretty late. I'm a pretty lazy smart guy. And so I kind of just figured out like the bare minimum like I could, I could learn the vocabulary words or the spelling words, just the night before and just aced the test, it wasn't a big deal. I just never really applied myself.
Marc Gutman 16:08
And so in through the description and kind of relive of your academic time, you're talking all about kind of core academic courses, like what word is like design and drawing? And where's that residing in your life? Is that like a side thing? Is that a secret thing?
Chris Do 16:26
It's a side thing. It's not so secret, but I, I just would pour over these comic books. And I didn't have a lot of them in the beginning. And so I would just like go over them again and again. So after you read the story, you'd reread it. And then you start looking at the ads and studying every little ads about sea monkeys and growing muscles and standing up to the bully, I would just get into all of that there was nothing that I didn't love from cover to cover, including the smell of the pulp the paper and just had this sweet smell to it. And I love that and I would draw on I would make my own comics.
Not very good. But I would sit there and practice. And then like many people, I discovered the book How to draw comics the Marvel way. And it was just so mind blowing, just trying to draw, like the way he was instructed in the book. And so this is what I was doing. But in terms of like public high school, or public schools, there aren't a lot of art programs. But every time there was an elective, I chose something that was going to allow me to work with my hands. So in junior high was woodshop. And then in high school, I took metals and I took commercial art, as it was called back then and yearbook. And so wherever I could apply this creativity because I wasn't going to take another foreign language, I was not going to be my thing.
Marc Gutman 17:38
Yeah, and but what did your parents feel about this? I mean, what did they want for you? And what did they think about those classes? Were they encouraging you to do more of these hands on Creative classes? Or was that just kind of like something you did? I mean, what was their hope for you at this time? Or even as girl growing up? I mean, I've heard you kind of allude to like there's this tough Asian parent mentality, like, what was there? What would they want for you?
Chris Do 18:03
Yeah, so this is kind of weird, because my mom and dad are the older of their siblings, like my dad is the oldest male, I think my mom's a second oldest female. And they're very different than their siblings who are very, very strict with our kids. My parents on the other hand, or setting benchmarks for us to hit, but they didn't really grind us on these things. My dad pretty much just put the fear of God in us in that we can never get a c a b was barely acceptable. And those those tropes about Asian parents, those parts were true, but they weren't very hands on, they had really no idea what kind of classes I was taking, they're just looking at the grades do these grades line up or not. And I remember one time, I won't admit this, now, I had to forge my grades because I knew I didn't do well in a particular class. And I got to see and I knew that I had been coming home with a C with my dad was just going to be the end of it, I thought it was gonna get kicked out of the house.
So every day I would check the mail to kind of find it. And back then they kind of sent these things out and it was like carbon paper on one side, you tear it open. And so I got my grant, I intercepted it, thank god ripped it open and saw that I got to see. And so my mom has all these drafting tools like she would initially do it with traditional tools. And then later on using CAD, but in the early days, she had this massive thing was like electric eraser. I don't know if you ever seen one of these things, you actually plugged it in, and I would sit there and just erase that see away. And then I was take this pre Photoshop everybody out, take a really blunt pencil just to get it to the right stroke with and then I would find on the front of the grade A letter B and I would just carefully trace and change that C to be using the carbon paper smudge a little bit and kind of just disguise it.
Thank goodness my early days as a Photoshop retouch or work because my dad wasn't any the wiser, but they didn't really care what kind of classes I took. They just wanted us to be in a good university. Your college afterwards and then pursue something that's safe, more traditional doctor, lawyer, lawyer, accountant, something like that.
Marc Gutman 20:08
Yeah. So it was that kind of the moment you had your first glimpse or appreciation of typography. Were you like, wow, this is typography can really do something here.
Chris Do 20:17
Now, because I'm dense. I did, I'm like, Oh, this is good. Like, this could be a service, I was thinking more of an entrepreneur and less like an artist, like, I wonder if other kids need me to change their thing for them. But that was that. I, I dabbled in design and art and made things and I excelled at them where I applied myself. But I did not put myself in that mental space that this is something I can do for the rest of my life. Because I also believe what my parents led me to believe, which is a career in design in the arts is one of suffering and starving.
It's not a realistic career path. I dreamt of being a comic book artist. But I was just like, this is not real, like, you know how somebody is resolved. It's like, no matter what obstacles are in front of them, they're going to push past them for me. One person could walk up and say, that's a crazy idea. You never want to be a comic book artist. And I would say, Yeah, you're right. And throw that dream away. So the rest did my resolve in terms of become wanting to become a creative person. That didn't happen until later.
Marc Gutman 21:19
Yeah. And so as you get through high school with your 3.8, and you look to the future, where did you go? I mean, did you head on a path to become a lawyer, Doctor, accountant.
Chris Do 21:33
I tried, I applied to UC San Diego, UCLA, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. And I initially thought I was gonna apply through the regular program, but I was brainstorming with my older brother. And he said, "If you could extend your like art and design, apply there, get in and change your major." So I was trying the old backdoor technique. And I was really surprised when they sent me a follow up and said, We need to see your portfolio. And I was like portfolio. I have a portfolio. I got these things I did in commercial art class. So I had to go back to my teacher, Mike davita. And said, Mike, Mr. davita, Can Can I have some of these pieces that you held back? And he goes, What do you done? I said, I'm gonna apply for an art program. He's like, Huh, okay.
So I put it together. I wrote up a pretty lame essay, I'm not a writer. And of course, I got rejected out of every one of those schools. And I think in some ways, my parents were super disappointed. They didn't say anything to me. But you could just tell. It's like, I didn't get into any of the schools. And my mom was like, yeah, of course not. Because you never apply yourself. But coincidentally, between my junior and senior year, I got it. I think it was actually my senior year in high school, I got a job working at a silk screening place. And and this was just pure serendipity. My younger brother's wrestling Coach Rudy had said, Hey, I think your brother draws right. And and he's like, yeah, you might want to go and talk to my friend Brad, who does all this silkscreening stuff. And the reason why he knew I drew is because friends would ask me to do illustrations for the school newspaper. And that's kind of how people knew I drew and I met with Brad who owned a silk screening place. And he looked at my portfolio, random art pieces, you know, the same ones that got me rejected out of school, and a couple of drawings is I get you want to do this job. I'm like, Sure.
So is that you're hired sit down, and he hired me on the spot. And he said, I'm gonna pay you 18 bucks an hour. And for context, their minimum wage back then I think, was 350 or 370 $5 an hour. So I'm making four to five times as much as I used to make and I was thinking, what do I need school for? This is freaking awesome. I can just do this man's work. So basically, he made me an inker. So he had all these pencil drawings. And he would say, Okay, here's acetate. Here's our video graph pen, just ink these things. And he showed me how to do it. Of course, he's the master of doing this. And so I'm doing it and he goes home, right. So I'm working on it. It's like, my hands are all shaky. The ink is bleeding everywhere. I'm like, Oh, this is a nightmare. And I worked on it.
I think three, four hours later, I finished it. And next morning, he comes in, I talked to him. I'm like, this is okay. He goes, Yeah, this is pretty good. And he looked past the fact that it wasn't perfect. And then he asked me like, how long do you work on it? I did the typical design thing. I pulled my hours just because I was embarrassed. It took me so long. So instead of saying four hours on my dad took me two and a half hours. Is that great? I got more work for you.
Marc Gutman 24:28
Awesome. Awesome. So your your screening, shirt shirts and whatever kind of material and working for real money. 18 bucks an hour just crushing. Yeah, yeah. And you know, the world's your oyster. And so like, what happens? Like how do you end up leaving that job? And where do you go next?
Chris Do 24:46
Yeah, so as I'm doing that, and I didn't think that this was going to be a serious career. For me. I'm thinking the man's drawings right. I'm not even that good at it. And then I quickly realize the play here isn't to be the guys employee. The play is to be his partner. So I'd ask them, Hey, Brad, how much do you charge do these things like when people give you an assignment, he's like, Oh, this is what it is, I started doing the math in my head. So I thought, Hey, I'll go out, and I'll sell the work. And I'll do the design myself. And Brad and his team will print the shirts, and I'll make the money in between.
So I'd even work for him for that long, because I was like, ah, I can hustle. And I can do these things. So I was just working there part time anyways. And so this worked out just fine for me. And I learned firsthand how not to run a business. So I sold shirts. And I didn't calculate in there, my labor. So if I sold the shirts for 12 bucks, I thought I got him printed for like five and a quarter. And I was going to make the difference between 12 and five and a quarter. So it's like 675, or something like that. But there was a lot of selling, designing, making going back and forth, and assuming all the risk. So at that point, somehow my mom's like, your like, your bank account is like, nothing. And so I had to borrow money from her to pay off supplies or whatever it else those buy at a time. So my mom was looking at me like you're terrible business person. And at that point I was.
Marc Gutman 26:12
And so you're not? Well, you're figuring things out, right? you're figuring out, figuring it out, you're learning and that's how we learn. Maybe we kind of make mistakes, or we learned the hard way. But at some point, you kind of move on and you decide you got to go back to school.
Chris Do 26:27
Yeah, I have to go to school. So high school finishes up. And it's summertime. And my my brothers asked me, Hey, you want to come in? live with me in San Diego. At that point, he had just finished his his computer science degree in, in UC San Diego. So he's like, come live with me, I'm gonna prepare for grad school. You can stay with me for the year while I work on this, as you can see is great. And my brother is a very special human being that he's always looked after me, even when I didn't deserve it. Even when I didn't know this is the thing that I wanted to do. He isn't it. His name's Arthur,
Marc Gutman 27:03
Just wanna give a shout out to Arthur, he's always taking care of you. Want to make sure he has his proper, his proper credit.
Chris Do 27:08
He's like my second father. You know, like my dad was busy but didn't understand the culture. He didn't want to help. He didn't grow period is another system here. And so I go and live with my brother. And this is the time for me to go to community college and to actually make a real effort to get into art school. I already decided at that point in time, I'm going to go to artcenter. It's what Brad, the silkscreen guy told me to do. He's a go to artcenter. I'm like, okay, so I don't know anything about artcenter, except for its name. So I'm going to San Diego City College. And I'm taking commercial art classes. I'm looking through the catalog of these two schools, these two community colleges, Mesa College and San Diego city. And San Diego city offered graphic design classes, I'm thinking this is it, I'm going to go do this. And that's where I kind of gets set on a path. It took me a little while to actually become passionate about design. And eventually I found it and and that's how I started on my career. I finished my portfolio got into artcenter. And then that was the beginning of everything.
Marc Gutman 28:08
Yeah. And, you know, I admit, I might have shared this with you before, but my wife went to ArtCenter. We lived in Southern California for a while. And like I hadn't really heard of it. You know, I didn't know what it was, she definitely did. And I remember the first time I went over to that, that school, that campus, I walked in some of the buildings and there was like, just like rows and rows of like of like art in drawing and material. And it's very well known for being an auto design program. And you'd see clay mock ups of all these concept cars. And like there was something I just like this. This was a magical portal into this world that I had really not seen. And I loved it. You know, like actually one of my very first jobs I worked at Imagineering, and this like, kind of skunk works in the valley. And it had that same kind of feeling an allure like that there were things being made, and he didn't really know how or why but it was just, I just thought it was so so cool. Like what was what was your experience when you first kind of got there and and saw ArtCenter? And do you know, did you have the same kind of reaction?
Chris Do 29:09
Yeah, I did. And I I remember it very clearly. It's a steel and glass building. It's a long rectangular, it's referred to as the bridge because it it covers the this kind of like gap where you drive underneath it. And it's designed for Craig Ellwood, I think, and it's Stark, it's blocked minimal. And you walk in there and everything from the concrete, the polished concrete floors to the black and white interior. You feel like you're an art school. You really, really feel it. As soon as you walk in and you see the gallery and you see all this work from all the different majors from photography, fine art, illustration, graphic design in transportation design, which, which you reference, it's what they're known for. You get the sense like, I'm going to be a designer. I'm a creative human being just by stepping in the building and being a part of the program. So I remember when I got in I stepped into my very first class, I just said to myself, like very quietly, like I made it immediate in. And it was kind of like an accomplishment in itself. And I was proud to like, know that I'm an artcenter student. I'm different than everybody else.
Marc Gutman 30:15
Yeah. And were you like an instant star? Were you start? Like, did you just take off the top of your class? Or did it take some time to figure some things out?
Chris Do 30:23
It took a little bit for me to figure it out. But now when I say a little bit, I mean, it took me a couple of classes, like, like two or three weeks into, like, I'm starting to get my bearings here, because we're all coming in from different sources. And I think back then the average age was 27 years old. And here I am a 19 year old kid. So I'm just fresh out of high school one year in community college, I'm here. And I'm like, oh, okay, everybody's got more experience that and you can tell because it's a very expensive school that everybody's affluent, I'm probably like one of the poor kids going there, relatively speaking. Okay, like, we're, we're working class folks, you know, where were people driving in their fancy cars, like, okay, so I'm here. And I wouldn't describe myself as a star. But I stood out, because I just worked like an animal. I know that people talk about this all the time. And they're like, No, but I really, really worked like an animal.
So I'll tell you kind of how a typical day would work for me. You go to school in the morning, and you're there all day, computer labs, a library, the school closes, and you go home, eat dinner. So maybe that's like 10 o'clock. So I just grabbed and this is a horrible diet, my diet of jack in the box, grab a burger. And then I would go to my room. And I was living in Pasadena at that time. And I would just work on my drafting table, doing drawings, or whatever it is I was doing. And about one o'clock in the morning, I was really tired at that point. The burger probably helped me at all. And sound like Okay, I gotta go to sleep. And I was just set my alarm for three hours and get right back up. And just keep working up into the manor. Like, I would timeouts like, I need 30 minutes to shower and put on my clothes. And it takes me another 20 minutes to get to school and park and get to class, I would just time it like that I would just work into the very last possible minute. And I was just repeating this pattern. many nights, I didn't even sleep, and especially during midterms and finals.
So I hustled and I worked really hard. And it started to show because I was starting to get it. And my one one key advantage that I had over other people was, at this point in my life, I had already developed this mindset of objectivity. Like Where were the teachers are handing out some pretty harsh crits people were becoming very defensive. And I could see they're like resisting the whole time. And I was like thinking to myself, why are you resisting? Aren't you here to learn from this instructor and master at their craft. So I just submitted, I removed whatever little parts of ego I had. And I try to absorb as much as what they had to say as possible. And if they said, This is too big, okay, I'll make it smaller. This is not working. Okay, why, and then I'll just keep working on it. And then I could see pretty quickly by week three, four or five, oh, something's happening here. They're starting to fall behind or I'm moving ahead. And that felt really good. There's nothing like weaning or achieving something to build your own self confidence. And it just began to snowball, I think in the beginning was more like a snowflake. But by the time I was done with third term, I felt like this avalanche of energy and confidence.
Marc Gutman 33:31
And was that superpower and I call it a superpower. I mean, you know, you play that game. Everyone's like, if you could have a superpower, where would it be mine would be to not sleep or to get by on three hours of sleep because I cannot do that. So hearing you say that is like, like, I'm like involved? now. Is that something that carries on today? I mean, is that just always been your superpower?
Chris Do 33:51
I think so. I'm almost 50 years old now. So nights without sleep take a longer time to recover. And I don't recommend this to anybody. But I think it was just for me. Like it was a game and it was competition. And it was like trying to to win a game with myself. like can you push past that limit that threshold how bad you want it, how far you willing to go to get it what it is that you want. And that would do that? Now I want to say this and there's a very healthy asterisk to this. There's a big caveat to this is that I remember certain periods in school when I had not slept for days. And I'm going like almost crazy. I'm losing I'm literally hallucinating while I'm driving.
I remember one time driving down the street to school at night coming back from dinner or something like that, that I saw the trees the canopy of trees or reach down and I was trying to avoid it with my car and I was like oh my god, I am tripping out. I have woken up and driving on the wrong side of the road. So this is super dangerous. And this is not a badge of honor or courage. I do not want anybody whether you're just starting out, to put yourself in your body or mind through these extended periods of work without sleep, it's dangerous. It's unhealthy. And it's unproductive, period. I had to learn this the hard way. So take it from one workaholic, super crazy, intense guy, that that is not the path forward.
Marc Gutman 35:20
That being said, I still want it to be my superpower. But you heard him Do not try that. Don't do that kids. Yes. This episode brought to you by Wildstory. Wait, isn't that your company? It is. And without the generous support of Wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn't a logo, or a tagline or even your product. A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service or company. It's what people say about you, when you're not in the room. Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out @ www.wildstory.com. And we'd be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show.
While at Arts Center, you're going through and you mentioned that you're getting some momentum, things are starting to happen for you was there there was there a moment or a period where you really started to recognize or identify where you wanted to spend your career a certain type of discipline.
Chris Do 36:52
Yeah, I thought I love type. And I excelled at using type. And I knew that whatever job I had had to use a lot of types. I was thinking, editorial design, maybe some kind of packaging or something like that. And, you know, best laid plans go out the window. Because in my senior year, as I'm one semester away from graduating had to decide to take a term off, I was feeling a little burnt out at this point, friend of mine got a job in advertising. And she said, Chris, I need a partner, will you submit your your portfolio so that, that maybe they'll consider hiring you? And I was thinking to myself, and her name is Colleen. And I was thinking to myself, I'm a graphic designer, what is an advertising agency gonna want to do with me? So I put together literally four pieces, four pieces, because nothing else made sense. I put the most conceptual work that I could that was most design driven that could work for for an agency. And to my surprise, I was offered this job. And they knew I was still in school and they hired me anyways.
So I'm like, okay, fine, ces la vie, sayonara. I'm gonna take a semester off school. So, I moved to Seattle, and they put me up in a corporate hotel. It was just awesome. It was way better than where I was living. And I was working in that industry. I was like, this is kind of nice. There's expense accounts, nice office spaces. And this is pretty cool. And you're treated like you're an important person. And I like the feeling of this. But ultimately, advertising didn't feel right to me. Because all these skills that I acquired this love for typography, I couldn't use them. Because advertising was like, find the one right image. But that headline somewhere, don't get too tricky with it and put the body copy where people can read it. And those constraints made me feel like I was an engine revving, but I got nowhere to go. So ultimately, after graduation, I discovered this thing that then became known as motion design. And it would allow me to have a lifetime of learning because there's so many different skill sets that you have to acquire to be good at motion design. So I thought, This is fantastic. It's gonna keep me busy. Keep me hungry, keep me curious for a really long time. And it did.
Marc Gutman 39:07
So you mentioned type a lot. They're like, what's cool about type?
Chris Do 39:12
Type is life man. Type is thinking made visible. Type a few. And if you can learn how to design, what type you can learn how to design everything. It's totally true. So I felt like when I was in typography class with Simon Johnston, he gave me the key to solve any kind of design problem. And it felt so powerful that you talk about superpowers. Imagine having a key that opened every lock in the world. That's how it felt. So I was in love with it, because it was the answer. It was everything. And so all my big breaks in terms of a professional person have come from me having mastery, like soft air quotes here, mastery of typography.
It allowed me to get that job. At cold Weber, the advertising agency allowed me to work at epitaph records, because you know, what their image-makers in the world photographers and illustrators, and then their designers and designers, you got to know your type. And type is the thing that pulls it all together in terms of your layout and making it sing, and communicating the message. So every opportunity, even the early motion graphics opportunities came because I knew how to typeset. And then I barely knew how to animate. So I would just send the typeset over to the client, they were like, Yeah, that's good. And then an animated minimally. And I made a ton of money doing that hundreds of thousands of dollars working on commercials, where, literally, I was just typesetting and moving things on X, Y coordinates. And that was it.
Marc Gutman 40:41
And so like, what's, what's hard about type like, What don't we see?
Chris Do 40:45
Okay, for all you non-typographers out there, type is daunting type of scary. There are too many options and too many possibilities. What typeface what Wait, what point size? How much letting tracking kerning? Do you apply to any of these things? Do these two typefaces look good together. And so I can see that a lot of people they would even tell me, like, I have friends that are illustrators, like, I love everything about design, I just hate type, I just can't figure it out. And type takes a certain kind of discipline, a way of teaching it learning and experimenting with very tightly controlled constraints. And this repetition of explore exploration will lead you to understand how things work. It's training your eye and train your hand or your mind to see things and connections and making things related and learning how to break the rhythm. So it's that work like if you want to be a composer, maybe a concert level pianists.
It's like putting in the hours of learning the keys. And, and the things that my two boys practice every single day. It's boring, it's monotonous, it's repetitive, but it's hard to be great at that thing. Unless you put in that kind of work. And most people aren't willing to do that.
Marc Gutman 41:59
Did you just feel that? Did you see what happened? Like you just got like, lit up you got like fired up? You started like your body language got all like animated and not everyone can see us as they're listening in the podcast. But I can tell you Chris just like he like he leaned into the camera. And so I can tell that you truly dig type. I love type type his life. Yeah, type his life. And you mean it? That's that's really awesome. Well, in addition to The Futur, that you described, the beginning to show your your kind of best known also for founding the design agency Blind. How did that come about? And like, how did you end up even starting an agency? And, and we can go from there?
Chris Do 42:41
Yeah, the origin story of blind is a little tricky. So I'll give you the the briefest version of it in case, there's some other questions you have to ask. I was freelancing in Los Angeles, Hollywood, in particular, doing design, motion design and a little bit of animation. And I got a call out of the blue from our uncle who asked me ever since I can remember, you've always wanted to start a business. And now that you're done with school, is this something you want to do? And I said, Absolutely. He said, so here's the deal. I'm business partner. He develops hotels all over the world. And he's interested in becoming a partner with somebody who wants to start a design firm. So here's what we're gonna do, because we're going to be in Los Angeles. And I want you to meet us at the Westin Bonaventure, which I've never been to up until that point, and I want you to put together a business plan, how much money do you want? What are you willing to do? How are you gonna make the money?
And so this is like, early dawn of the internet. So I'm calling my friends, my roommates. Father, who's an investment banker, like, Can you tell me what's in what's required a business plan. This is like old school internet, you just call up a human, right? And he told me and I was just writing in my notepad furiously. Now to get on my computer, I started writing this, this business plan forecasting, first through fifth five years of projections, and just basing out nothing. Like we project will lose money for two and a half years. And then by the third or fourth year, we'll make money and this is what we're thinking. And so put this together. And true to my nature. I hadn't slept, and a meeting there for dinner at the hotel. And I go in there, we meet him. His name is Bob and I'm talking to him and he's and I said, here's the business plan printed out. Here we go. And he takes his finger looks at it just goes through a couple pages. He didn't really look at it. And then he just looks at the bottom line the numbers, right? He's like, okay, and at the end of dinner, he reached into his jacket pocket, pulls out checkbook, once he does paying for dinner via cheque. That's kind of pretty old school. He writes me a check on the spot for $10,000.
He says, this is a good-faith gesture. He goes, You know what that means? He's like, we're gonna do business together. Okay, I am like 22 years old. I've just been out of school for like, three, four months here. So it's like, I think September October, graduated in the summer. And my very first encounter with a business investor venture capitalists like a deals done. And we don't even know what the terms are. That's how I started my business basically. And then the place I was working, I said, Guys, I'm wrapping my booking, I'm going to start my own company, I have an opportunity to do this. And I remember my boss, my supervisor at that time, his name is Ian Dawson, who I still know today. He's looking at me like, like God, they make them really cocky at artcenter, don't they? Because the kid is just barely working for us. He turns on a full time job offer from us. And then he starts his own company. And he said to me, he smiled. And he's a great guy. So he smiled and shook my hand says good luck with everything. And I know what he was thinking. Good luck, because I'll see here in a couple of months when you totally fail. 25 years later, still doing the thing? Same thing?
Marc Gutman 45:45
Yeah. And was it called Blind from day one?
Chris Do 45:47
It was, it was called Blind. And I think it was called blind visual communication. Because my business partner, the investor at that point in time, just didn't like what I really wanted to call it. Now, a few months into the business, we're making money, we're profitable. And he had promised $100,000 in terms of investment to us, he could not produce it. One of his properties was not going well. And he's had bigger fish to fry. So he basically defaulted his partnership and gave up his $10,000 investment. And so after that had happened, I dissolve Blind Visual Communication. And it just changed it to what I really wanted to call which is Blind Visual Propaganda. I was really still infatuated with Russian constructivism in terms of design. I love the aesthetic. And if you guys don't know what that is, if you're familiar with Shepard Fairey his work obey giant that's basically Russian constructivism kind of CO opted for street art.
Marc Gutman 46:44
Yeah. And did it have that same kind of look and feel that that like, you know, I've seen that have a it was a blackout? Is that the type?
Chris Do 46:53
No, no, I know what you're talking about, like black letter, like black letter. Yeah. typeface? No, it was more experimental in the early days. And we tried all kinds of things mixing serif and sans serif typefaces gather, doing Baroque and Gothic things with it. And it evolved all over the place from from those kind of grungy, the cult of scratch, as some some creative people would call it moving into super clean, ultra modern, just minimalist design. We played around with identity for for quite some time. And, you know, it's it's a design company, well, we'll do whatever we want. Roger called blind, it wasn't into. Yeah, it wasn't until the later part of our company, that I had come to this realization that we are one of the early pioneers of motion design in that we were there at the beginning. I think we're there like one and a half generation motion design, right? The first was like a guy named Flavio akamba, who was doing desktop animation and video. So we're just right after him. And we wanted to celebrate this. This was something that was unique to us. So I started pursuing this identity design that made it feel really old, hence the calligraphy the black letter. That's what we were doing.
Marc Gutman 48:07
And then where did the name come from? why you'd said you'd wanted to call it blind. Like, why? What was that all about?
Chris Do 48:12
Well, there's something that was intriguing about blind in that I love these kinds of I like ironic names, where we're graphic designers, we do visual communication, the name like blind, provokes dialogue. But I also tell you a dirty secret, which is, I grew up loving skateboarding, right? So vision Street, where it was a pretty big company, it was a corporate company. And there was a company called blind skateboards, who is a faction of x. visions, skaters, and it was kind of a mud in there. I love that kind of punk attitude towards it. So I took the same spirit, I'm like, we'll call ourselves blind. That makes a lot of sense. We're doing design. And there's a lot of really professional firms out there will be professional in our own way, will be the Pirates of design and, and we wanted to kind of have that edge to us.
Marc Gutman 49:01
Yeah. And Blind had a lot of success. I mean, we could we could have, you know, can talk for hours about all the things you worked on. But you know, you were fortunate enough, you you won an Emmy, which is, which is awesome. And super incredible. What was that? Like? I mean, did you even imagine that? You'd be up there accepting an Emmy for your work at any given time?
Chris Do 49:21
No, for a lot of different reasons. Now, we've been in business since 1995. And we've won a ton of awards. Basically, I would sit there and think to myself, I don't want I want to win that award. And we would apply and when generally speaking, we would win. And Emmy was not part of like it wasn't even on the radar for me because it was a whole different world because we make commercials and music videos and Emmys were generally for TV shows, not for theatrical, but for television. Okay, because theatrical Earth theater has the Oscars and other kinds of awards. So one of my office managers said you know, Chris, we're going to get you an Emmy. I was like, okay, her name is spacing her name now. Sorry.
So she's like, I want to help you win an Emmy, I'm like, okay, so she went through the entire any kind of submission criteria. And she found a category for one of our projects that fit into that. And this is kind of the art of submission. So, I mean, there's all another story there. So she found that you could submit an animated work and music video qualified for a special category called Individual Achievement in art direction for animation. This is a juried award, meaning some years of it gives zero awards and some years, they will give several and it was up to the the animation pierburg to decide whether or not you deserve one or not. So she she took a video that we had just done that was very proud of it was for the Raven, it's called the hardest stone.
And she submitted it. And to my surprise, they're like you when you get one. And I was thinking this is excellent. Until they send you this email saying, you need to prepare your acceptance speech. And it can only be I think, 30 seconds long or 45 seconds max, they'll cut you off. And you need to be short. You need to be pithy say something that will make the editors keep you in Edit when this thing airs. And I was struggling with this. Because this is in 2010. I had not done a lot of public speaking at that point, and definitely never even thought of doing a YouTube video at that point. So this kind of wrecked me. Like I can be there on stage. I can grab this statue, I can hold it up. But I don't want to say anything because I'm still not comfortable speaking. So that was super scary for me.
Marc Gutman 51:35
Yeah, I can imagine. And I think that you mentioned I think I read a post as recently where you were talking about that, that you got kind of bailed out where they were running late. So you were sweating. You're in your tuxedo, you were like, sweat that hard. What happened there? Now
Chris Do 51:55
You need to understand, like, I could look that part. The facade doesn't tell you a lot about what's inside. Right? At that point in time. I was just doing the p90x program. So I was really thin, very fit. Some people looked at me like, Are you sick? So I was wearing his brand new Dolce and Gabbana suit, tie everything I was like ready to go. But inside I was like crying like a child. Because we're sitting there in the theater. And you know, they're they're like, going through all the wards. There's a lot of awards to get through. And it's, it's, it's like, you know, when you ride a roller coaster, the line and the anticipation of the drop are the scariest parts. When you're chugging up the roller coaster and you're about to hit that point where you're kind of floating and you're going to freefall for a second. That's the scariest part when you're hanging over the top. And that's what it was like for three hours, sitting in that theater, waiting for somebody to grab me to go backstage. So here's the weird part to the story. So I'm shaking, my my knees are like, you know, I'm just bouncing all over the place.
My wife's like, puts her hand on my knee is like, honey, you got to just calm down. You're First of all, you're driving me crazy, but this is not going to help you. And the reason why I was so nervous was because, like 30 seconds, what do I say? What do I say? Do I think my mom dad and my cousins or or my teachers like where do I go with this thing? And I had something prepared the night before. But you start second guessing yourself. You start thinking I just don't like the way that sounds. This is terrible. Let me go all heartfelt No, no, let me be all inspirational. Now, let me tell the refugee story. Now be humble. Like no be boastful. Like, I don't know what to do. And it's really weird because we were not sitting with the animation peer group because I was in the title design pierburg totally different group. It's weird. And so everybody that was gonna receive an award was already backstage. So there's a page who's walking down the aisle away, turning left saying Christo turning to the other side, Krista, and my wife's like, slaps him on the shoulders. Like, I think that guy's looking for you. Like, nobody's looking for me. I turn over and I could see this guy. He's making his way out of the theater. I'm like, shoot, I get up. I'm Excuse me, excuse me. Just moving past the ceremonies still going on.
I run after I'm like, Hey, are you looking for me? Yes. Oh, my God, we are so late. I couldn't find you in your group. I know, I was sitting over there. He's like, I didn't get the note. We got to cut through the front. We're not going to go the background. There's no time. And I was like, oh my god. I'm already nervous about the talk. And now we're racing towards the front. And here's the interesting part to put all the beautiful people front, you know, when the camera pans and you see all the celebs there in the front. Okay. And so we're like rushing by I'm like looking past them as we're going up, like just thinking to myself, don't fall, don't fall. My shoes are slippery. They're brand new shoes. We race right up the stage into the back and waiting in line now, with these other award winners. The guy in front turns over, turns around, he's like, you know, and he's angry. He's like, Oh, you know, they're running long. They're not gonna let us do our acceptance speech. And I gotta tell you, it's like no words that made me happy up until that point. I'm like, Oh my God. And this just called homeless just washed over my body.
I was like, This is so good. And he's like, you know what? I'm not gonna stand for this. This is wrong. This is our moment. Just because they're late should not affect us. I'm already gonna do is I'm gonna go talk to the producer. I was like, Oh, dude, just leave it alone, man. Leave it alone. And so now this whole kind of like, emotion of like scared nervous what I'm going to say, dips down to like calm and peacefulness eight goes right back up through the roof, like, Oh my god, I go back to like, rehearsing what I'm going to say. He comes back A moment later, he looks at me like, and I'm like, and it's like, no dice. Walk up there. You grab your statue and come right back as like, oh, that sucks. I'll smile. I was like, oh my god. I'm sure my pits were drenched with sweat. And just this emotion of running up there. There's up and down. Finally go out there. Okay, man, just try to take a good picture. And I couldn't even take a good picture. My head's all crooked, my arms all weird, but whatever.
Marc Gutman 56:02
Well, you've got the picture. You've got the me. I got it. You know, and you have this agency in, you've won an Emmy, and you're serving clients and things are going great. But that's, you kind of that's not enough, right? Like so. Another vision starts to creep in and starts to I'm assuming I'm editorializing here, rattle around your head a little bit and starts kind of keeping you up. When does that happen? And then kind of how does that happen?
Chris Do 56:32
Yeah, so for some context here, like I said, Before, we make commercials and music videos, mostly commercials. That's how we pay our bills for really large advertising agencies. And for us, the peak was a I think, in 2007, when we almost hit $7 million in Billings, right. So the commercial industry, as you now know, is tied to TV. And people were starting to stream content more. And they were able to use a DVR and skip commercial. So I could see the writing on the wall. Like when everybody was talking about TiVo and how cool it was. And I was using TiVo to skip all the commercials. I was thinking, Wait a minute, we're in a line of business, that's not going to be around, I don't want to be waiting for my death, the writing was clearly on the wall. And so I started trying to do different things that would make us less reliant on commercial work. And I tried a bunch of different things. And then we got into doing brand strategy and digital design as an agency. And we had success there. So I was thinking, Okay, I quickly moved us and I say quickly, it took a couple years, moved us away from relying purely on commercial work, to working with clients directly, building their brand doing the strategic work building their websites. And that was really cool. Simultaneously at at this time, my friend, Jose Cabo, and my friend Jose Kabir, was like, Chris, let's go make videos on YouTube together, because I want to start an education company. And he said, I know you do, too. And it's true. I did at this point, I was already teaching for 15 years.
So I thought, Yeah, all right, let's try this thing. And it was really weird. It was super awkward for me, because I'm a behind the camera talent. I'm not in front of camera talent, people know what that means. So just looking into a piece of glass and talking to nobody, that was very, very scary for me, I was still not comfortable with seeing my own face and hear my own voice. And slowly but surely, over the course of a couple of years, I started to find my groove and figure out Oh, there's an audience here. And they actually want to learn something. And I didn't think YouTube was used for anything other than like goofy jokes and prank videos, right. And that definitely was not something I wanted to do. But an audience appeared that wanted to learn more about design principles, they wanted to hear from a person who was making business level decisions for with really big clients, and sharing that knowledge in terms of pricing, negotiation, communication, and managing teams, all this stuff. And that's what I was teaching.
And this is really the thing that kind of excited me because if you're able to help another human being, and if you're able to do this at scale, and you're able to reach so many people, I gotta tell you, that's like, there's that kind of joy that no money can buy. And that's when I started to think I want to build a viable business. So this becomes my primary thing and not an afterthought. It's not going to be a hobby. Like I would tell people, I'm very clear about the things I do for fun. That's a hobby like fishing, where I know I will make no money and things I want to do as a business enterprise or an endeavor. So it has to make money. So at this point in time in the storyline, Jose and I, we split up, he goes his way I go my way. In 2016 we start The Futur, we start making money, we're start making content. And by about end of 2018 my entire design team is now folded into making content with me. So we stopped taking on client work in December of 2018.
Marc Gutman 59:57
Yeah, and you know what? One of the things that struck me about that that story and the the retelling of those events is that, like, you're so generous with what you do share online. And I think now, it's still even hard for people to do that today. But I think that's more of a common message that we're hearing Hey, give and you will receive give, you know, before you get, you know, be generous with your, your information. But that wasn't always the way and it wasn't always the way people did things. And I know like, some of your most popular YouTube videos are ones where you like, talk about pricing, like this thing that like, no one used to talk about, like, it was like this taboo like, yeah, you think what do you think this like idea of the generous gift of being open of being transparent of talking about things that were people weren't talking about in a way that you were giving like service? You know, it wasn't it? Was this real kind of giving kind of mentality? Where'd that come from? Because I don't think that that's always intuitive for everybody.
Chris Do 1:01:00
Yeah, I think it comes from the spirit of being a teacher first. And I've had teachers at artcenter, when they were working professionals, and they would hold back and it always made me feel really weird. Like there was a teacher who taught 3d animation and visual effects. And we would ask, how do you do that, like that shot that you worked on? He was like, you have to figure it out. And so he kept his trade secrets, like, close to his chest. And I was thinking, how you serving your students this way. And I knew, then, I did not want to be that kind of teacher. If you're not going to show up as a teacher and give everything you've got, what is the point, just don't even become a teacher then don't really know what you're doing. And so, in business, people are very tight with their information, because they think giving away any bit of information is going to be to their detriment.
It's a disadvantage to tell people how much you charge how you charge because well, nobody else is doing it. If you give it out, they're likely to use it against you. But in this point in time, I was just thinking, you know what, when I'm with my students, I tell them everything. I tell them, the horror stories, the war stories, the trials and the tribulations, and they love it because they want to save themselves from some of that pain. And I didn't know that you could say this openly, without massive negative repercussions. And so you do what everybody does you try it out a little bit and see if there's tremendous backlash against you. And I knew I was saying things that my competitors didn't want me to say that agencies didn't want me to say, and I was going to risk a little bit. So I was making small Gamble's at the beginning, not one giant gamble, by revealing this information. And for the most part, people are super cool about it. And they're thinking to themselves, like Finally, someone's gonna say it, because we need to know. I think the other reason why people are very reluctant to share this kind of information is because if you're doing well, they're gonna think you're boastful. And if you're not doing well, they're gonna discredit you.
So what is the sweet spot? And this is the narrative that we tell ourselves in our head. And I think most of it is untrue. Now, I think there's going to be a small percentage of people, regardless of what lane you're in, how, how kind and generous you are there going to always question your motives, because I was see those comments always, just at the beginning. It's like, you know, what's the play here? Why is he doing this? There's something that's up and they will say it publicly and they would say, in small circles, but I can't live my life, in fear of what a few people say, while trying to help as many people as possible. So they're the detractors, the the haters, they're out there. I know who they are. I know. I know, the PACs in which they travel, and if you will, and they're there. And I'm going to ignore them for the sake of everybody that wants to show up.
Marc Gutman 1:03:50
So what's your biggest struggle right now?
Chris Do 1:03:54
My biggest struggle right now is learning how to create a scalable marketing engine or funnel so that more people can convert into becoming customers of ours, I have this big, big dream. In order to fulfill this dream, we need capital, I would tell people, you know, if you have this amazing cause you need capital, because without capital, there's no cause. And it's not a small dream. It's not a hobby. It's a lifestyle business. I want to hire some of the best storytellers, writers, producers, teachers, people who know marketing and people of different subject matter expertise. And in order to be able to do that, I got to sell more products. And one of the biggest challenges I have right now is I want to be able to approach an instructor, a potential instructor for us and say, make content and distribute on our channel because we're gonna really support you not only in terms of the production, but also the marketing and you're going to make money and your legacy is going to be preserved. I can't do that if we're still struggling to figure out how to sell courses.
Marc Gutman 1:04:57
Yeah, and in that's a great segue. into my next question in that, like, what's the future look like for The Futur?
Chris Do 1:05:06
How far out are we talking about Marc?
Marc Gutman 1:05:08
How far would you like to go? You know, you know, you know, and you can answer it any way you want. But you know, it's kind of like, you know, what's next? Or Yeah, what's what's the, you know, what popped into your mind when I said that?
Chris Do 1:05:20
Well, there's two things that popped into my mind my immediate future and the far distant future. So let me answer it that way, then, the immediate future is there's the curriculum that I've sketched out, and there's lots of gaps that we need filled. Because I was thinking that the first goal for us is to be able to replace what I feel are the important parts that you need to learn from going to a private art school in terms of getting a an education design. So we created a few courses, but we're far away from where we need to be. And so I need to recruit instructors to be able to teach and make it economically viable for them to do this with us. The distant future is about having pods all over the world where people can come and learn and to gather and social ways and build community around learning about the broader topic of creativity and design, where the master content will be recorded somewhere and then pipe into these learning centers and hubs.
I still, as much as I'm a proponent for distance-based learning, still believe in the value of just being around other human beings. And so we want to be able to do this. And ideally, these hubs would have living spaces, so that people can jump from hub to hub. If you're traveling through a specific area, and you want to crash there, we'll figure out some way that it makes sense economically, for both of us, so that you can stay there you can learn with other people. We know that they do programs within universities called What do they call the artists in residence, where they kind of pay for people to be there to make their art to do their research. We would love to have that, but just on a much, much bigger scale.
Marc Gutman 1:06:58
And so Chris, I asked this question in some form to every guest that comes on the show, and you recently released your own video, which I kind of got very nervous about because I think the title of your view, I'm paraphrasing, so I'll probably get it wrong as something to the effect of advice to my younger self. But I listened to it this morning, just to make sure I don't think it ruins this question. So I want you to go back. Once you go back to the Silicon Valley time, I want you to go back where you're you're perusing those skateboards in the skate shop young Chris. And let's look the other way. What would he say? If he ran into you today?
Chris Do 1:07:36
Nobody's ever asked that kind of question before. Well, young Chris, say he would probably be very skeptical. Maybe not cynical, but just skeptical. Like, are you sure this is how we get from here to there? And do I have these skills? Are you sure you're not somebody else? And I'll tell you something. years ago, I was watching an early TED talk by Gary Vaynerchuk. Before he became like Gary Vee, the way everybody knows him today. And he was giving a talk and I think was to promote his book, like Jab, Jab, Right Hook or something like that. And he was giving a talk also at, I believe, USC, to a bunch of like, really interested students and in business school, I believe. And here's this guy who's just talking, dropping f-bombs and his ability to articulate at the speed in which he's articulating, and to be able to pull upon references and quotes and authors and ideas and formulas. And these really kind of digestible sound bites. I was blown away. And I remember looking at that video thinking, Oh, my God, how does one become that kind of person? Is this a skill that I can acquire? I'm not sure.
Fast forward many years later. It's like, Oh, I'm not talking as fast as him. I don't have these great sound bite he kind of segments to drop on people. But now I've learned so much, and that I can reference certain quotes without looking at them and certain key ideas and be able to recall them upon whenever necessary upon demand. And I'm just like, well, this is actually it's possible. So Young Chris would look at older Chris problem, the same way that I was looking at Gary Vaynerchuk, just a few short years ago.
Marc Gutman 1:09:21
And that is Chris Do of The Futur. I could talk with and interview Chris for hours. He has this unique blend of knowing how valuable his time is. And yet he's always so gracious and generous. Type his life y'all. You heard it here. I must admit, I'm a closet typography student, and I find it so fascinating. I'm not sure I've made it to the level where it's life, but I'm working on it. The big thank you to Chris doe and the team at The Futur on a mission to change 1 billion lives. I have a feeling it's going to happen. sooner than later. We will link to it All things Chris Do in The Futur in the shownotes.
They have a treasure trove of amazing content on YouTube and Instagram, as well as their website, www.thefutur.com. No e in future. If you know of a guest who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at [email protected] our best guests like Chris come from referrals from past guests and our listeners. That's you. 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. I like big stories and I cannot lie you other storytellers can't deny.
1 hr 11 min
November 18, 2020BGBS 048: Jeff Harry | Rediscover Your Play | See Where Your Curiosity Goes
BGBS 048: Jeff Harry | Rediscover Your Play | See Where Your Curiosity Goes
Jeff Harry is a positive psychology play speaker and founder of Rediscover Your Play, with a mission to work with businesses to address their deepest issues such as toxicity at work, creating an inclusive work environment, and dealing with office politics through the experience of play. Jeff explains that adults are limited by their expectation of results and calculations of the future. By encouraging play, Jeff crafts an environment where adults can live in the present moment, think outside the box, and in turn, take risks and tackle issues in a more resilient, positive way.
Companies such as Google, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Adobe, the NFL, Amazon, and Facebook all depended on Jeff to help their staff infuse more play into their day. His work has been featured in the New York Times, SoulPancake, the SF Chronicle, and more. Beyond that, Jeff speaks internationally about how workplace issues can be solved through play and was selected by Engagedly as one of the Top 100 HR Influencers of 2020 for his organizational work on addressing toxicity in the workplace. Jeff encourages us to get bored, follow our curiosity, and remove the need to “should on ourselves” due to other people’s expectations. By doing so, Jeff helps us look within to ask, “What gets you in a place where you can hear you and no one else?”
In this episode, you'll learn...
Inspired by the movie Big, Jeff wrote letters to toy companies from 5th grade through high school with all his toy ideas until one responded and said that if he wanted to go into toy design, mechanical engineering is the way
Once Jeff got his degree, he finally got the job of his dreams in the toy industry. And he hated it.

Jeff banded with 7 other "nerdy guys" to build the largest children's Lego STEM education company in the country, teaching about 100,000 kids a year.

The Lego STEM company was so successful that companies began asking for adult workshops, so they started working from scratch to help companies play outside the box

The first time Jeff wore his signature Lego bowtie, he was dared to wear it to a conference. The more he wore it, the more genuine people would be around him and more connections he would make

In junior high, Jeff did everything he could to get into the "cool" pool party with his friends, only to lose his core of play in the process. It was then that he promised himself to never compromise who he truly was again

According to a UCLA study, you will hear the word "no" 148,000 times by the time you are 18 years old

Just do the things that feel good to you. You'll know when you're trying to "should" on yourself when it doesn't feel right

Jeff's dad came to the US from St. Vincent as a doctor and his mom came from the Philippines to work as a nurse. They met in an operating room in Minnesota

Jeff encourages us to ask our friends what value we bring to the friendship and when we seem most alive to begin defining a path for ourselves, rather than relying on what society deems as right or wrong
Resources
Rediscover Your Play Website
Youtube: Jeff Harry Plays
Instagram: @jeffharryplays
Twitter: @jeffharryplays
LinkedIn: Jeff Harry
Medium: @jeffharryplays
TikTok: @jeffharryplays
Get Inspired
How Do You Add Play To Grown-Up Life - Even Now - NY Times
A Play Experiment To Remind You Who You Are - Medium
How To Play Through These Uncertain Times - Medium
Quotes
[20:14] I remember as I crossed that threshold, I felt such a wave of relief and I was expecting next to be so happy. But instead, as soon as I passed through, I felt like I left myself back there. I remember...just feeling like the loneliest I had ever felt in my life up until that point...and I remember making a pact with myself that day: I am not going to compromise who I am just to be cool or to people-please.
[28:04] It's not that you shouldn't dress up or you shouldn't put your best foot forward if that is you. Yo, do you. But if you feel like you're doing it just because you're trying to impress others, and you don't feel comfortable in that space, then why are you doing it?
[33:06] There are moments when you're in a state of flow, where you're creating something and it's hitting on all cylinders, challenging intellectually, it's challenging you creatively, and you feel alive, right? Like you just feel so excited about it. And that is what I mean by play. And that is what I want to help people rediscover.
[36:00] Just get bored and see what comes up, because you have to actually quiet down everyone else's voice so you can start listening to that inner curiosity, that inner child, that's gonna then whisper something to you like “start that podcast” or “write that blog”.
Podcast Transcript
Jeff Harry 0:02
And often all of us getting out and it's like, you know, like 90210 with that cool walk and, you know, throw in the towel over my like shoulder and, you know, and just act and so like dope because I'm, I'm finally going to get accepted as soon as I walked through this party. And I remember we were like, 10 feet away and feeling excited. And then I see a friend of mine run and I think Jeremy and a bunch of other people, and they weren't being led into the party. And they happen to be black. And there was a scuffle as like, maybe seven feet away. And I remember someone saying to them, Bob, you get the fuck out of here. We are not letting any support. And man when I heard that I just froze.
Marc Gutman 1:03
Podcasting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Backstory podcast. 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 we are playing. No, I'm not joking. And neither is today's guest who is super serious about play. Today we are talking with Jeff Harry.
Jeff has built an entire business and life out of play. Jeff shows individuals and companies how to tap into their true selves to feel their happiest and most fulfilled ball by playing. Jeff has worked with Google, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Adobe, the NFL, Amazon, and Facebook, helping their staff to infuse more play into the day today. Hey, if you like and enjoy the show, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over Apple podcasts or Spotify, or the listening platform of your choice. These platforms use ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts, and ratings bring exposure which helps us to build an audience which then helps us to continue to produce this show. And if I may ask just one more favor. If you like the show, please recommend it to at least one other person. You may think well like it this week. That would make me happy. And who doesn't like a happy Marc Gutman?
Jeff Harry is an international speaker who is presented at conferences such as inbound, South by Southwest and Australia's pause fest showing audiences how major issues in the workplace can be solved using play. Jeff was selected by bamboo HR and engaged Lee as one of the top 100 Hr influencers of 2024. His organizational development work around dealing with toxic people in the workplace is playworks work has most recently been featured in The New York Times article, how do we add more play to our grown up life.
Even now, which we will link to in the show notes. He's also been featured on AJ plus SoulPancake, the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN. And as you'll hear in today's episode, while we spend most of our time pretending to be important, serious grownups, it's when we let go of that facade, and just play that the real magic happens. Fully embracing your own nerdy genius, whatever that is, gives you the power to make a difference and change lives. Jeff believes that we already have many of the answers we seek. And by simply unleashing our inner child, we can find our purpose and in turn, help to create a better world in this is his story.
Today, I am talking to someone who does something that I don't believe I've ever had any experience with directly at least in my adult life, and we'll talk about that. I'm so just intrigued and excited to get into this conversation. I am here with Jeff Harry, who is a positivity psychology play speaker. So Jeff, like I'm gonna ask you right off the bat, what is a positivity psychology play speaker besides being a mouthful,
Jeff Harry 4:53
Right? Um, knows. It's a great question. First, thanks for having me. I'm the best The way in which I described positive psychology in plays I, I combined positive psychology and the idea of player the concept of play, to work with businesses to address some of their like deepest issues like dealing with toxicity at work, how to create an inclusive work environment, how to deal with office politics bs.
And we all do it through the mindset of positive psychology as well as the experience of play.
Marc Gutman 5:27
Very good. And so, you know, a question I typically lead off episodes with is something to the effect of, Jeff, when you were a young boy, when you were eight years old, did you always want to have a job in play? But I can't really ask that because I'm assuming eight years old. Yes. That is exactly the job that you wanted.
Jeff Harry 5:50
Yeah, so so and I love that you pick the number eight because I think that's when I saw the movie Big. And that was the catalyst for me. So I saw the movie big with Tom Hanks. And if you remember that movie, you know, he plays with toys for a living, he works for a toy company of all things. So you know, seeing the movie, I ran down to FAO Schwarz thinking if I just danced on the piano, a CEO would discover me and offer me a job. And that did not happen. So then I started writing toy companies in fifth grade on my word processor.
That's how old I am. And I was spamming toy companies with letters before spamming was a thing, I would send like six letters at a time, that were like three or four pages long with all of my toy ideas, to any toy company that I could find the address to. And I just kept doing that all the way through high school until a company contacted me and was like, yeah, you need to stop sending these letters. And if you want to go into toy design, you should go into mechanical engineering, I did that which I probably should not have just listened to some random letter, but I did it. And then I went to school for it, graduated and then went into the toy industry. And I don't know if you've ever had a moment where you get what you want. But I got into the toy industry. And I hated it. Like there was no play, there was no high fives there was no toys. They might as well have been selling microwaves.
And I was just like, What am I supposed to do with my life. And I was in New York and 911 just happen. So I was like questioning whether I should even be here. And I don't want to die in a cubicle. And I remember leaving New York and heading to the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area living in Oakland. And I remember finding a job where you can teach kids engineering with Lego. And it was only seven nerdy guys at this job. And I just hung out with him. And we helped grow the largest Lego STEM education company like in the country. And we all did it by just playing and making it up as we went along. Like we would pick cities because they were fun.
We had no business plan. We pick fun people to hire. And we just weren't just making it up via play. And because we were doing so well. And we were teaching like 100,000 kids a year, Silicon Valley started recognizing us and was like, hey, do you run things for adults like team building events? And we were like, of course we do. Even though we did it. We didn't know we were doing we're just making it up. So we just say yes to anything. And then I realized as where was running a lot of these workshops for adults, they would talk about creativity and collaboration and connection. But they weren't playful environments. They weren't like creating a playful place where people could take risks, and quote unquote, think outside the box. So I was like, you're not tackling the big issues. So I created rediscover your play as a way to just like, yo, let's go right at those hard issues. But let's use play and positive psychology to do it.
Marc Gutman 9:02
Wow, that thank you for sharing that you went from eight all the way to, through through now to now it's a time warp. And so we're gonna, we're gonna hold that we know where the story kind of leads. But I want to go back. I mean, you told me before we started recording that you're in Chicago with your family. And is that where you grew up? I mean, was your life like, like big was it with Josh Baskin, were you, you know, rooting for the Cubs? And? And, yeah, I know the movie. I know the movie. Well, you know,
Jeff Harry 9:32
Well, I hated the cubs. I'm a White Sox fan, because I live in the south side, right? I live in the south suburbs of Chicago. And that's where I grew up. But yes, I am like, my dad is from the Caribbean. small island off the coast of Barbados called St. Vincent. Only 100,000 people. You know, I think he was the first doctor to make it in the US off his Island. And then my mom is from the Philippines and came here. You know, when I A lot of us nurses were going to Vietnam. And then they met in an operating room. My mom doesn't remember this. But they met an operating room because he was the attending physician in Minnesota, in Rochester, Minnesota at the Mayo Clinic, and she was the nurse on call. So that's just how like they got here. And then yeah, I grew up in a really predominantly white generic suburb, you know, that had Chili's and, you know, a Walmart and a bunch of other really boring places.
Marc Gutman 10:32
So what was it about toys? I mean, it seems like that you were enamored for what you've shared with me with toys at a young age. I mean, you stayed with it, you kept hammering all these companies with your your desire to get in the industry, and you actually went and, and fulfilled that vision? And to answer your question, yes, I would say my life has been marked through our various chapters with getting what I wanted, and what I dreamed of only to realize my dream was way cooler than the reality. And they didn't match up and had to make a shift. So I feel you there. And I'd love to talk about that in a little bit. But kind of want to know, like, what about toys? Like, what was it about toys? And what kind of toys in particular were you drawn to?
Jeff Harry 11:13
I would, I mean, I think I was more drawn to play but what I think I loved about some of the toys that I played with, you know, the GI Joes. And again, I love to do was I love to combine all of my board games together.
Like Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, mousetrap, clue, monopoly, like all of them together, and I would set up this epic, you know, game for my sister and, and tying into like, what I now coin is my play values. The reason I love doing it, even though they hated playing that game, was that it was an experience for us. I love creating experiences for people. I love the creativity of it. And I love the connection. Like how do I build a memory from this? So like, that was the type of plays that I always wanted to do. So that kind of ties into even what I do now.
But I think, you know, and maybe this is a perfect time to share my most embarrassing story from my teenage years. Um, is, where do I start? Yeah, it was seventh grade. I think it was seventh grade, where so much of what I do now is shaped by what happened in seventh grade. And, and I don't know if you remember, seventh grade was seventh grade. Good for you. I just want to just get an idea.
Marc Gutman 12:33
It was a mixed bag.
Jeff Harry 12:36
Right? Like most people don't like junior high, like they're just not enjoying junior high. And I remember sixth grade was like, super fun. It was playful. But I remember seventh grade. And I remember the first day of school. And all I wanted to do was play Foursquare, right? Because like Foursquare was like my game man. Like, you know, everyone's in there. You know, you compete, you get kicked out, and then you just get back in line. And I was so obsessed with Foursquare, that I remember walking down the hall, you know, to recess, or maybe it was lunch, and I was literally singing the song. I'm gonna play some Foursquare, gonna play some Foursquare. And I was so like, aim to get out there. And I remember going out first day recess, and like, nobody in seventh grade is playing. Like, no one's hanging out. And everyone was, was there before. So like, I remember running up to like, Matt, in, you know, Jimmy and just being like, yo, you want to play some Foursquare? And they're like, no. And they're all like hanging out just talking. Like, why is everyone talking? And then I remember Matt saying something to be like, hey, do you know that Ryan is dating Samantha? And you know, and mark is dating Julie?
And I'm like, so do they want to play Foursquare? Like, I'm just trying to get an idea of like, Why no one's over there. And can we start playing right? And they're like, No, dude. Like, no, like, they're going out. And I remember being like that, what did he say? like Mark, Mark was going to first base with Julie. And I was like, What does that even mean? Like, you know, like, look over to the baseball field and like, No, dude, like they're kissing. That was like, I don't understand what's happening. Why is no one playing. And then I realized, like, a little bit later on, like, there was a new game that everyone was playing that I did not know which was being cool. And apparently there was a vote of like, Who's cool and who's not cool over the summer and, and there was no mail in ballots, so I never got a chance to chime in. So like the cool people had already been ranked, and I was like, really low on the totem pole, and I was like, This is wack. And I was like, Well, I'm just gonna keep going to play Foursquare. But every day we'll go out there. We know a buddy there. So Like this is frickin Bs, man. Um, and then I remember I was like, fine, I just want to belong, right?
Fine. I won't play I just want to belong. So remember going up to, like Matt and being like, what do I need to do? Like, what do I need to do to be cool? He's like, you got to start, you know, like, daily. Um, how's that supposed to date? And he goes, Well, you know, you know, everyone, everyone that's cool has banks. And I was like, What are you talking about? It's like an all of the top ranked dudes literally had those like, bangs from you remember the 90s, where like, they flicked them out of their hair, right. And I'm a black, Filipino dude with a shoot fro at the time. And I'm like, I can't grow bangs. But I remember stealing my sister's Vidal Sassoon moves. And like putting all this mousse in my hair, and shoving it down to create this frozen bang, just so I could get accepted. And that moves would dry up by fifth period. And I didn't know that this is what happens. And when that happens, the bang turns from like a bang to like this raccoons. But that's just like coming out of my forehead. And I'm like, trying to talk to ladies like Hello, ladies. And they're like, oh, Grace, you know, and I'm like, this is just Bs, like, this being cool thing is BS. I hate it.
But I needed to be accepted, right? So I constantly do all these things. And then I remember, late in the year, everyone was always being asked to go to parties. And I never got invited, right. And then there was this last party of the year. And it was like, the pool party of the century, for this junior high. And everyone that anyone's gonna be there. And I was like, Oh, can I go? And remember Matt being like, you know, it's invite only and I'm like, What is that even mean?
So like, you have to get invited by someone that's already accepted, right? So I remember begging all these people, you know, can I come to the pool party with you? And they're like, now, now, like, you're not ranked high enough, or whatever. And they remember going up to Antonio, and Joey via Gomez, and being like, I go to the party, like, Can you bring me to the party. And they were like, maybe. And then I remember, basically being at their beck and call, you know, folding their triangle notes and handing them off to like their girlfriends and buying their lunches and doing whatever I could to, like, just get accepted by them.
And then after two weeks, you know, I'm in the car with them going to the party, and I'm so amped, and like, like, I'm literally singing the same song of like, going on, go to the party, going into the party, go into the party, and I'm so like, excited. And then I remember as parking 20 feet from the party, and awesome, all of us getting out. And it's like, you know, like 90210 with that cool walk. And, you know, I'm throwing the towel over my like shoulder and, you know, and just acting so like dope because I'm, I'm finally going to get accepted as soon as I walked through this party. And I remember we were like, 10 feet away and feeling excited. And then I see a friend of mine run and I think Jeremy and a bunch of other people, and they weren't being led into the party. And they happen to be black. And there was a scuffle. As I'm like, maybe seven feet away. And I remember someone saying to them, like, fuck you get the fuck out of here.
We are not letting any party. And man when I heard that, I just froze. Because the like, I'm black. Like, am I like, like, are they gonna let me in. And I just like, I felt as if like water had like, rushed up to my knees and just like, froze, and I couldn't move. And I'm like five feet away from like, the entrance. And remember Antonio, looking at me and being like, Yo, dude, like, come on. You know, it's no big deal. And I'm like, No, it is a big deal, dude, like they're gonna let you in, but they're not gonna let me and I don't even know where I am. I don't even know how to get home. And I remember getting up to the front. And, you know, the people that were blocking the party looked at Antonio and then looked at Joey, both were Latino and then looked at me, and they were like, is he with you? You know? Like, is he black? And Antonio's like, nice Latino. And I remember thinking like, Don't say anything, like don't say anything and you get it. You get in if you don't say anything. And I remember them just like nonchalantly, like, given a head nod of like, Alright, go ahead. And it was like nothing to them. But for me, it was like it was everything, like being accepted was everything. And I remember as I crossed that threshold, like, I felt such a first a wave of relief. And I was expecting next to be like, so happy.
But instead, as soon as I pass through, I felt like I left myself back there. And I remember, there were like, 15 people at the party, and everyone's talking. And it was just so silent for me. And I felt such shame and guilt. And it was this pool party. And I remember like, going into the pool, because I wanted to play and no one's playing. And I remember just sinking down in there. And just feeling like the loneliest I had ever felt in my life up until that point. And I was like, is this it, like, Did I give it all up for this, and I remember making a pact with myself, like that day, like, I am not going to like compromise who I am, just to be cool, or to people, please. And I remember freshman year, then going into my basement, and making a weird games that I would play by myself just hanging out there. And after a while, some of my friends heard, like, you know, I was just hanging out in my basement, and it was a place where you don't get judged, and you can, you don't have to be cool there.
And they would start coming over. And we would just make up ridiculous games. And I just created like, a safe space for us to just be like, our nerdy selves. Um, and what's ironic is like, that's what I do. Now, I do the exact same thing. But for adults, um, but it all stemmed from that experience.
Marc Gutman 21:52
Wow. And thank you for sharing that and getting, you know, authentic and, and real on that, on that relive of that story. Jeff, like, why did you call that? Why do you call that your most embarrassing story? Like, I didn't hear embarrassment and that story?
Jeff Harry 22:10
Well, I think I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed multiple times, I was embarrassed first, to be who I am, right. And then I was embarrassed. When I finally became, quote, unquote, cool, because I was embarrassed with who I became. Right? So like, I wasn't happy in either of those places. So it finally came down to me being like, alone, that's sitting in my basement, where I that embarrassment, like left me because I wasn't trying to please someone else. I, you know, wasn't ashamed of myself anymore. And I could actually just be my nerdy mate.
Marc Gutman 22:53
And so what did you get from play back then? And how does that relate to how I play? How do we see and interact with play today?
Jeff Harry 23:04
Yeah, so I define play as any joyful act, where you're fully present in the moment where there really is no purpose to the play, you know, you are letting go of results. And you don't have an anxiety about the future, you don't have any like regrets about the past, you were just fully in the moment, almost like in a state of flow, as a lot of adults like to refer to play as, and there's something powerful there. Because when you think of your best memories, their play moments, there are moments when you're playing, you know, they're not when you're documenting stuff on Instagram, um, and the opposite of play is depression, as Dr. Stuart Brown says, and if you think of like the world that doesn't have play, it is a world that doesn't have innovation, it doesn't have creativity, it doesn't have humor. And it's just like, especially during these uncertain times, especially during COVID times, like, so many people are.
So many adults are fixated on results all the time, which really is like I see results and expectations is like the thief of joy. And because they're so fixated on what 2020 was supposed to be so many people were disappointed with twit 2020 was or what it is. And the more resilient you are, the more play oriented you are, the more you're able to roll with it. You know, the more you're able to be like, okay, that didn't happen, but that's not a big deal. I can figure this out, right? And embracing that playful, childlike spirit is what is going to help us actually get through the rest of 2020.
Marc Gutman 24:44
So Jeff, I noticed and thank you for talking about play there. I noticed that both today you came to the interview, wearing a bow tie that almost looks like bit like a spinner. And in your headshot you have it like Tell me about that. What is that?
Jeff Harry 25:00
So what this is zero clip it owns as you can see it, it's a Lego bow tie. And I used to wear it when I was working for that educational Lego organization. But I started wearing it as an experiment. Almost a dare from my colleague, Lisa at the time, was like, yeah, Gary to wear that at a conference. And I was like, Yeah, I am gonna wear it at a conference. And I remember wearing it because I felt like everyone at a con at conferences, has a facade, you know, like a professional veneer of like, this is who I am, what do I do for a living bla bla bla, you know, I'm not sure I'm a serious adult. So I was like, trying to mock that and being like, well, I'm gonna wear a costume to it, my costumes gonna be this stupid Lego bow, tie my clip it on to anything, t shirts, sweaters, whatever, it doesn't really matter. But that's going to be how I dress up. And I remember the conferences being so much more enjoyable.
Because for some weird reason, because I'm wearing this nerdy artifact, and I would attract other nerdy people, and they didn't feel like they had to be their professional selves around me. And we can talk about nerdy things like Game of Thrones and Avengers, and why they love the Lego and anything else, you know. And I was just like, Oh, dude, I should just wear this all the time. And the more I wore it, like on airplanes and other places, just I, I realized, like, I was able to connect more with people, because then they would be willing to share stories about themselves, because they felt more comfortable being around me, because they realized I was playing. So why can they not just also play?
Marc Gutman 26:35
Yeah, what's wrong with being professional being an adult? And I sense in your value system, that that is something that you like, you're like, hey, that that's, that's the wrong way to be.
Jeff Harry 26:45
I don't know if it's right or wrong, because I don't like to think of things as right or wrong, you know, it's just like, Hey, you do you boo, boo, you know, like, like, but What I don't like is being inauthentic. And I don't like that we are always told how we're supposed to show up. Like, this is the right way to show up. This is the wrong way to show up. You shouldn't do this, you should not do that. You know, like we've been, you know, I say this a lot in a lot of interviews is, you know, the reason why a lot of adults don't play is because of 148,000. Nose, like, there's been studies that found that we hear the word no 148,000 times by the time, we're 18 years of age. On top of that, we get shut down all the time by adults and our parents and everyone else. And then we go to school where they tell you to ask they have you asked for permission, you have to raise your hand all the time. And then you look at media and social media that's always telling you you're not enough.
So all of that is happening. And then anytime you want to be yourself, you're told you're being Miss too mischievious or being too much, that it's such a rebellious act for us to just be ourselves to just be our weird, nerdy self. So when I when I refer to as professional, it's not that like you shouldn't dress up, you shouldn't like should put your best foot forward. If that is you. Yo, do you. But if you feel like you're doing it just because you're trying to impress others, and you don't feel comfortable in that space, then why are you doing it? like who are you trying to impress? And and by trying to impress people that you might not care about in like a year? Like, how's that working out for you? Does that bring you happiness? And I've found that it has
Marc Gutman 28:36
This episode brought to you by Wildstory. Wait, isn't that your company? It is. And without the generous support of Wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn't a logo or a tagline, or even your product. A brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service or company. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out @ www.wildstory.com and we'd be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show.
And so tell me a little bit about this idea of play. I mean, I feel like it's one of those words that you can say it and I'm not sure that the schema that the the image that everybody has in their head always matches you know, and I think that we that might be one of the challenges and I feel like that happens like around the word story. I was building a business For a long time around the word story, and you know, that can mean different things, you know, 10 people come up and say, I want you to help me tell my story. And that can mean 10 different things. And you know, it's like, it's just like this word that we all think we know. But in reality, we haven't all agreed on, kind of like when I say horse, and we're all like, like, I'm like, right? Okay, I get that. So what is play? If you could dive into it a little bit? Like, how do we do it? And like, why is it so difficult? Like, what why are we challenged in this thing called play, which seemingly should be natural and easy?
Jeff Harry 30:34
Well, part of the reason part of it is the 148,000 nose, and part of it is being told that we're supposed to show up to the world a certain way, you know, that they're adults are very results focused. Because we really want to always be telegraphing what's going to happen next, so we don't get disappointed. And that actually puts us in a really bad situation where we can suffer from depression and anxiety, because we're trying to control everything. And play is much more resilient.
It's like it's purposeless. And you know, you're at play, because everyone's play is different. Like I said earlier, it's like any joyful act, where you're fully present in the moment. So when you're at play, you forget about time, like, what are the things you do where you forget about time, where you're just so fully involved, that you're like, oh, man, I didn't even realize I was doing that, you know, that could be this podcast, it could be making videos, it could be writing, it could be, you know, whatever. The thing is, that just brings you a lot of joy and satisfaction. And I think a lot of times people think, well, I you know, I don't play you know, I stopped playing. There was a moment when I went to the playground in the night and never went back to the playground. And I challenged that I remember I was coaching someone once though, was a lawyer. And she was like, Yeah, I don't play. And I was like, Well, what do you do? Like, what do you do in law, and she's like, Oh, I help people that hate each other to come to an agreement.
And I'm like, that could be your play.
Like, if you really enjoy it, and you like the puzzle, problem-solving part of it, like explore that, right? But I think, let me know, you felt this way with story. But when I would mention play to a lot of companies, they would recoil. They'd be like, Oh, gross, like I don't, we don't need to play, we need results. We need profitability, we need blah, blah. But when you reference it as flow, right, which is also a state of play. And you know, Dr. Chick said, me, Hi, this positive psychologist has this flowchart, literally called a flowchart where the state of flow is when the difficulty of the task meets your skill level perfectly, you know, and when the difficulty of the task is really high, but you don't have a lot of skill, you have a lot of anxiety, like when you first start a job, and you're like, Oh, my gosh, I don't know what I'm doing. But when you have a lot of skill, and the task isn't that hard, then you're bored, like when you've been at a job for way too long, or you've been binge-watching Netflix for way too long, and it's not bringing you joy anymore.
But there are moments when you're in a state of flow, where you're creating something and you're like, it's hitting on all cylinders, you know, challenging intellectually, it's challenging you creatively, and you feel alive, right? Like you just feel so like excited about it. And that is what I mean by play. And that is what I want to help people rediscover.
Marc Gutman 33:33
Yeah, and I love that idea. I mean, I can totally relate and resonate with this idea that we're super results focused and it always has to have an outcome and I think that was always kind of the trouble when we were talking story a lot of times it was like, What tangible result will this will this have and I can't promise you always know a lot of things are like, you know, in that in that space, where it's like talking about you're going to connect better you're gonna relate better you're going to all these different things to help people locate themselves.
I think now people are seeing it more clearly that a brand story is an asset and something that drives revenue but but prior to that, it was it was challenging, and I think it also again, you know, using just that qualifier, brandstory helps a little bit when talking about it. But you know, when I think about this idea of play, like how, how do we do it like give me give me an example of what you know, you might do and you know, what kind of team that you might work with in the business world, if you will, and how you let them other than saying go play, like, like, how does it like how does it work?
Jeff Harry 34:42
Right? So when I'm when I'm trying to answer the question for individuals is different from organizations. Alright, so when I'm answering for individuals, we first have to start with the idea of soothing or calming, so my play mentor Gwen Gordon talks about how You can't play until you're calm, or until you've soothed yourself in some way, if you have a lot of anxiety, you know, or anger or frustration or something like that you can't really play. And she talks about how you learn how to soothe and calm yourself from the person that that took care of you the most, you're the person that nurtured you the most. So you might be adopting a lot of the anxiety that they had, and a lot of that trauma.
So you first have to identify how do I calm and soothe myself, if you think of when you have your best ideas, it's like when you're in the shower, or when you're walking, or when in some state where you're like, Oh, this just feels really nice. And then ideas just start popping up. So identify for that for yourself, how do you soothe and calm yourself. And then after that, then I challenge people to get bored, which is ironic as a played person, but it's just like, it's time to get bored, which means you got to shut out all of that noise. So hop off your social media for a couple hours, hop off binge watching Netflix for a few hours, and just get bored, like, and see what comes up, because you have to actually quiet down everyone else's voice. So you can start listening to like that inner curiosity, that inner child, that's gonna then whisper something to you, like start type podcast, you know, write that blog, like, reach out to that person you've always wanted to reach out to, but you're super scared.
Like, it doesn't even matter what the thing is, as long as you're following that curiosity, because once you follow that, it leads to something else, which leads to something else, which leads to something else, like just even thinking about your podcast, when you first started it to now where it is so many, you know, so many, you know, years later, like, look at how it just is evolved, right? And even Steve Jobs talks about this, and I don't like I was quoting that guy, because he was super mean to a lot of people. But you know, it's never linear on the way back, right? So why are we trying to plan everything out in a linear fashion going forward? When it's just like this jagged craziness? You know, when you look backwards? Like, why are we not following our curiosity more, right?
As for like, at companies, it really depends on what their pain point is, if they're dealing with toxic people at work, you know, my friend, Gary ware, and I put them through experiential play workshops, where they try to have a hard conversation with that toxic person, like they do it over and over again. Because a lot of times, we don't even know how to practice having hard conversations, just like we don't know how to practice telling our own story. We don't have practice having like having a difficult crucial conversation with someone, right? Like, or dealing with our inner critic, we don't know how to how to dress that mean voice in her head. So we practice that in the workshop, and actually almost embody that inner critic, and then address it directly. Mine is garga Mel, and then I'm like, Thank you, garga. Mel, for your super rude comments.
I don't need them right now. I appreciate it. But you need to sit in the back of the car. I'm driving right now. So like, I put them through a lot of experiential play, and create a safe space so they can kind of like start to figure out who am I and how do I want to show up for work?
Marc Gutman 38:13
Yeah, and maybe I'm a little bit confused. Because like, when you were using that example of having a crucial conversation. That didn't sound like play to me, that sounded like kind of like sounded like tough. That sounded like work. So maybe it was kind of like back it up a little bit. And like, explain to me like how how this play thing kind of actually works? And people people experience it in order to move forward in?
Jeff Harry 38:38
Yeah, sure. Sure. So in the in, I'll go through the dealing with toxic people workshop, right. So when we when people first arrived to the workshop, we are like, you know, people are people are pissed. Some people are angry, like I've seen, like, we did it in Australia. And, you know, people were, you know, in tears at one point, and they were laughing at one point, because at the end of the day, what a lot of people bonded on was the fact that they weren't alone. Right? Like, just in regards to toxic people.
I think it costs like $223 billion in the last five years for Fortune 500 companies, of people just leaving because someone's super toxic. So when they first walk into the room, you know, we go, Hey, we're gonna be you know, messing around, we're gonna be playing a lot. So what we want you to do right now is we want you to envision that inner a hole, that inner toxic person, and we want you to embody that person and we want you to interact with each other as that person as that, as I refer to Chad, you know, and people start doing it and they see how absurd it is, as they're saying it to each other and moving around the room. But they're starting to like feel Oh, and then we ask them afterwards. What was it like to be that ale?
What was it like to be that toxic person? some people love it. Other people absolutely hate it. And then we run them through a lot of other things. Role Playing where they either are that person, or they're talking to that person. And, and it's a lot of roleplay. And a lot of times, at first, it is hard. And things can be hard. And they can also be playful. And sometimes they're not always fun at the time. But they're, we're diving into something much more deep rooted. And by practicing and being like, oh, man, you know, going off to Chad, you know, at work and being like, hey, Chad, when you're at that meeting, and you cut off, Samantha, um, you not only did you did it feel really rude for her. So she didn't feel like sharing. But it also communicated to all of us that you didn't want to hear what we had to say, you know, and you practice saying that, because you Chad might not know that they're a toxic person, and you're practicing having that conversation. And we do it multiple times where it feels a little awkward, you start to get comfortable with it. And then you have the bravery potentially, to go back out there and actually have a real conversation with your chat, right. And that's what we're trying to do is a lot of times, it's not always like, Oh, this is gonna be fun and joyful, but it's just like, let's get to serious issues.
But let's do it in a role-playing way, where you actually embody what it feels like. So you don't, so it's not as bad as you think it's going to be because I think a lot of times we build it up in our head that this is gonna be really hard. And then you try it and you realize it's not that hard.
Marc Gutman 41:29
Poor Chad, always has to be Chad. Always has to be Chad. Chad, if you're out there, I believe in you, man. I know you're a good guy at heart. Like don't don't listen to what Jeff is saying. So I love this idea of listening to your curiosity, like like following that, how do you know that that little voice you hear? Is curiosity versus something else? How do you know it's not a gremlin? How do you know it's not? You know, that little voice that's telling you, you know, who you should be? Like, how do you know that's the right little voice to listen to? I feel like we have all these like little little voices in us, right? That come up,
Jeff Harry 42:09
Right? There's so many voices, right. And I can dive in the whole inner critic stuff in a moment if you want. But I'm someone I was at a winery once and someone's and I was like, you know, I don't know anything about wine. And the wine guy was like, you know, if you drink the wine, you like it, you keep drinking it, if you don't like it, you stop drinking again. And that's really the same thing with curiosity. You know, if you follow this curious thing, and it's just like, Hey, you know, make this video and you and you kind of like it and you're like, Oh, that's kind of fun. I think I'm gonna continue to do that. And if you don't like it, then you're like, Ah, I'm not interested anymore. You know.
And that's kind of how kids are, when they're at the playground, they go play something with someone, they don't even introduce themselves formally, they just start playing. And then when they're done playing tag, then they're like, Yeah, I don't want to play anymore. And it's the exact same way. Just do the things that feel good, that feel good to you. You know, you'll know what that it's, it's not you and that you're trying to should on yourself, when it just doesn't feel right. When in just feel like when you can ask yourself, who am I trying to please right now? And then you're like, Oh, I'm trying to please my boss, sir. Oh, I'm trying to please, this friend of mine, you know, or I'm trying to please somebody, instead of trying to focus on what I want and what my needs are. So that's how I would be able to tell people how to decipher it.
Marc Gutman 43:33
Yeah, and I think there's this thing, like, you know, and like that you brought up the podcast at one point as an example. Because Yeah, I mean, that is like, kind of, for me, the right example of curiosity, and following my curiosity and play, and that it was an experiment, I didn't really know where it was going to go. And, and that gave me a lot of freedom. You know, sometimes I would think, though, that by not planting my flag by not declaring, I'm going to make this a big thing.
It also kind of gave me like, one foot in and one foot out, you know, it kind of gave me this, like, defensibility. And I think, you know, when I heard you talk, it's like, yeah, like, even when I think about and put myself in this in this situation, it's like, yeah, I'm gonna make that video, but really, I'm doing it because I want to put it on YouTube. And I want people to like me, and you know, I want some sort of, to your point result and the problem being and YouTube's a great example, I love I love shooting videos. I, I love the idea of being a YouTube, or, but I'm not, right, like, I mean, it was really hard for me to, like, accept that, like, I don't like to edit. And you know, YouTube's just not a channel where I can show up regularly and create content even though I do put some stuff up there from time to time. But it was really hard for me it's really hard for me to kind of like admit that it was hard for me to say, look at this as like, hey, it's a cool experiment or it's a cool frame of play that opened up a door or that's like this point in my journey that's now pivoting to someplace else.
You know, I'm really personally struggled with this like, you know, am I Am I curious? Or am I wishy washy? And so like, how do you, you know, respond to people that struggle with that, like, is this curiosity? And is to your point? Is this just the way it's nonlinear? And it should be or am I just like, all over the place, and I gotta, like, be a little more, you know, have a little bit more direction.
Jeff Harry 45:19
Um, I don't know when I hear the wishy washy and this is just my take on it, but it's just like, I hear this, like a should voice in that, right? Like, maybe you are wishy washy, sometimes. Maybe you are curious, sometimes, like,
Who knows? Right? Like, you'll you'll figure it out by just experimenting more like I, if this is interesting, I make a lot of tic Tock videos, right? Like, I'm really fascinated by that app. Because there's a lot of play in there. There's a lot of people that are not taking them seriously in it. But even I, you know, we'll make a video, put it out there. And then like, Man, that was super fun to make. And then there's a part of me that goes back and just like, how many views how many views that again, Oh, my gosh, I didn't get that many views. And then I get like, there's a part of me that's like, it's super disappointed. But I remember as I was mad as I make more content, and I'm just putting it out there. And I didn't let go of it. Because like, it doesn't really matter whether it's popular or not popular, because I've had things that have gotten blown up and like 40,000 people watch it. And
I'm like, Man, that's not even something I liked. I didn't even like as much making that video that video was like, man, how can be wrong like this other video. And then I realized like, that the arts, like people's opinion of your art or your creation, almost is none of your business. Which is ironic, right? It's just like, just create the stuff and put it out there, Jeff. And when I do that, then it's just so much more fun. Because I have to keep reminding myself, why am Why did I start making these in the first place? Oh, because I just enjoyed the creation, right? And then like a month dolla, like you put it out there and then it gets swept away. Like you you work on this design for so long. And then the wind blows it away. Because it was never about you. It was about just the creative process.
And knowing when I make a fun TikTok video to start my day, if it Prime's my day to see everything in a very playful way. And then my friend Deseret told me this, which I really loved. Where, where when something good happens at the beginning of my day, ask yourself how can it get any better than this? Like, how can this situation get any better than this? with curiosity? And when I start my day with a tick tock video, and I'll just describe today, right? Like, you know, I started my day I made this video. Oh, this is awesome. How can it get any better than this? Oh, sweet. I have this really cool podcast with these people from England. How can it get any better than this? Now I'm talking to you on your podcasts? How can it get any better than this? I get to see my girlfriend later on.
How can I get him better than this? And I'm positively stacking and priming myself to look for positive patterns throughout the day. And then that makes a good day. But usually when someone focuses on having a bad day, it's because they're focusing on one moment in time. And thoughts usually lasts between nine seconds and 90 seconds. So they're just running that bad moment in their head over and over and over again. And then looking for other bad moments. But you can get out of that by simply being curious and asking yourself the right questions.
Marc Gutman 48:26
I want to be clear that after this podcast, it gets no better than this. Yeah. This is it. Jeff like this is like just I mean, I know you're you're curious, but like this is the little voice inside of you telling you. No, but it doesn't it doesn't this is this
Jeff Harry 48:41
The sultry Gutman voice is the best thing I'm gonna get today.
Marc Gutman 48:45
Well just enjoy it. Just enjoy it and know I mean, sometimes it knows to know it's this is as good as it gets. So, Jeff, how is it addition to being curious how else can we flex this play muscle? And like how do we know we're doing it? Right? Like how do we know we're...
Jeff Harry 49:03
There is no right. So it's it's letting go of the idea of right and wrong. Because like during COVID times, and I put this out so much like nobody knows what they're doing. No one ever has ever known what they're doing. They're just making it up as they go along. And then and then people will make like webinars or courses that are like, this is what you should do. And you should do it this way. And maybe that will work. Maybe it won't maybe p90x is not going to get you on fit. You know, it's it's like it's just one way and it's their way.
But you have your own way, right? And listening to so many people preaching about what we should have done or what we should do during the pandemic like this is how you should start your business. This is how you should pivot during the pandemic. And I'm like, wait, were you around in 1918 I'm just trying to get an idea of who was around running a business in 1918 during the last pandemic Because if you weren't, then shut up, like, like, stop acting like you know what you're talking about? Because none of us do. We're all simply making it up as we go along, right. But you know, a play experiment that I put out to a lot of people that I really enjoy doing with a lot of my clients is, you know, try this right?
Reach out to your friends, like maybe three or four of them, and ask them these two questions. I'm like, What value do I bring to your life? Because I think a lot of people don't know why people are friends with them. Like, I don't know, what do I do for you? Why are we friends? Why don't you continue to hang out with me, which is really important to hear. Because a lot of times you don't know what you do for people, and you get to hear all that love back. So what value do I bring to your life? And then second, I asked them, like, whenever you see me most alive, or another way to ask it is like, when have you seen the most playful, most joyful, most present, you know, most happy. And they'll remind you and be like, man, when you were traveling, you felt that way. Or man, when you were like making that podcast, or when you make your videos, you seem so happy. And it's an and listening to multiple different people's perspectives on it and writing all that down. And looking at that, and being curious about what's on the page. Because all your friends are going to tell you totally different things, you'll start to see patterns and be like, Oh, man, that is what I'm most alive. Oh, man. That is the value I bring to people's lives. I never even realized that. And then follow that just follow that guideposts and see where that takes you. And I'm telling you, it's gonna take you to a really cool dope ass place.
Marc Gutman 51:47
Yeah, I know, there's so much gold and nuggets in there. And all I can think of is that perhaps p90x and muscle confusion isn't going to work for me. Like I thought that worked for everybody. You know, I thought like I thought like, I mean, I've never done it. But like, I figured that, like, if I did it, I would be ripped in like Beachbody. And now like maybe like, you know, there's a reason I'm not doing that. Because it's not for everybody. It's not for my Thank you, Jeff Harry, you just you just let the p90x monkey off my back.
Jeff Harry 52:17
Right. And let me remind me reminds me of something else that I talked about a lot, right, which is affluent deadness, right. So I know, a lot of millionaires like I know a lot of people that you would consider successful, you know, whether like famous or whatever the thing is, and a lot of them are not that happy. Like, I know people that have enough money, they could travel the world 10 times over, they can buy whatever they want.
And they have a deadness to them.
Not everyone, but a lot of people that are in this Echelon that we and many people are striving for. And they're either worried about losing all their money, or they're comparing themselves to somebody else. So they're like, Oh, I'm not as I don't, I don't have as many riches or I'm not as famous, or I don't have as many followers as this other person. Right? Or they're just straight, like, bored. But not in the curious, bored, but bored in the sense of like, Oh, I thought it was supposed to be more fun when I got here. And then they post on Instagram, that they're like, living these amazing lives, and everyone should be like them, but when in the background, you know, it's coming from a place of insecurity. So they're selling this lie of like how amazing this life is, with all this effluence when they're not happy, and then there's always people striving to get there only to get disappointed when they get there as well.
So why are we pitching this as the successful right way to do it? Like it's just all bs to me. And instead, instead of being affluent, like, like, affluent, you know, monetarily. Why can't you be affluent, like socially or in an impactful way, or able to like build huge, like, really real connections are able to share your story in a way that's compelling that other people want to share? Because that that is like makes you alive? That is the type of like affluence I would want to reach out to one where you feel most alive and you feel most like yourself.
Marc Gutman 54:24
So what if we have trouble getting bored? You know, like, I think of myself, I'm like, restless, I'm anxious. Like, I don't know if like just walking away from my phone and sitting in a park is always gonna do it for me, like, how do we get more bored?
Jeff Harry 54:37
That's a good question.
And the reason why I say bored is because if you think about when you were a kid, your best ideas came when you were bored, right? but also your most dangerous ideas came when you were bored. Right?
So I think it and bored can also be referred to as calm, right?
So it could be something as simple as like what we said earlier, like taking a shower. You have a ton of ideas when you take a shower, do a have a bubble bath, or go on a walk or you know, or you know, sometimes I do brainstorming sessions with my friend Lauren. But we do it over mimosas and then come up with a bunch of crazy ideas that way. You know, I've told people, you know, to do a play, experiment with their friends, where they get them all on zoom. And you're like, you know what, I'm not playing enough. And then we all you know, have a bunch of Moses, and we just start brainstorming all these ways in which we use the play as friends. And what we can do now in these COVID times, right, like, I was, I was coaching someone that was like, well, I love to travel, and I can't travel right now. And we were like, Well, then let's play with it. Let's play with the idea of like, how can you travel?
What is it that you loved about travel? and she goes, I love meeting new people. I love meeting new people from other countries. I love those conversations. So she started looking for all of these nomadic networks and camp indies and all these travel places. And then found all these other people that also love to travel but live in other countries. And now she has all these new relationships with people. And she feels like traveling. And by just simply hanging out with them and has places to stay when she can fly again. That's all by her getting a little bored, a little calm and then being like, oh, let me follow this curiosity and see where it takes me. So like, that's where I would challenge people to just be like, again, you don't have to do it the right way. But just what comes what suits you? What, what what gets you in a place where you can hear you, and no one else.
Marc Gutman 56:43
Hear you, And no one else. I like that. So Jeff, is we come to the end of our time here. Thank you so much. We'll make sure to link to everything. Jeff Harry in the show notes. While you were talking. I was looking at your Tick Tock. Yes. There's a lot of play there. Jeff Harry plays on Tick tock, and probably all other handles, but we'll make sure to get those linked appropriately. In the shownotes. Jeff, when you think back to that awkward eight year old boy and maybe that teenager with the bangs that were plastered against his face, or even that that boy that had to give up a sense of himself and go into that party just to be included? If you ran into that, that version of yourself today, what do you think that younger version would say?
Jeff Harry 57:34
Would say to me?
Marc Gutman 57:35
I'm sorry, you say if he saw you today? Like what would he think?
Jeff Harry 57:40
He'd be like, that's badass dude. He'd be like, Oh, I don't need to try? Like, Oh, it was like, I had all the answers the whole time? Like, ah, wow, that that takes the load off me. Let me put down the moose.
You know, like, let me let me stop word the zeek ever reaches in jerboas. Because I realized like, Oh, I don't need to actually try so hard. You know, like, I feel. I feel there's such pressure to try so hard to be some perfect version of yourself. When like, you have all the answers you need are ready. And you just really need to play enough in order to figure them out.
Marc Gutman 58:33
And that is Jeff Harry. Positivity psychology play speaker. Yep, it's still a mouthful. I'm all about the play. And Jeff really got me thinking about this idea of where our best memories come from. And I agree. My best memories are when I'm in a state of play, when I'm not looking for any particular result. And it's long been a wild story core value that's posted, read on our website. Play for a living, followed by the words. The world of business is a much better place with humor, smiles and belly-aching laughter. we approach our jobs in mission with a sense of playful humor. It's okay to laugh. It's okay to poke fun at yourself.
If you can't poke fun at yourself, poke fun at us. We can take it with a smile. A big thank you to Jeff Harry. stay curious, keep playing. get bored. Sounds like a recipe for success to me. 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 big stories and I cannot lie. You other storytellers can deny.
1 hr 1 min
November 11, 2020BGBS 047: Jamba Dunn | Rowdy Mermaid | Welcome to the Kombuchaverse
BGBS 047: Jamba Dunn | Rowdy Mermaid | Welcome to the Kombuchaverse
Jamba Dunn is the proud founder and CEO of Rowdy Mermaid, the first kombucha company to reimagine the 2000-year-old beverage as a plant-based medicine that is safer and fitted to anyone’s palate. Yes, even a toddler. You’ll soon see that the awesomeness of this company stemmed from Jamba’s roots in the punk rock scene, his passion for Egyptology, and most importantly, his love for his daughter.
Jamba’s path to being rowdy actually looked much more musical than it does today. Jamba traveled across the US with The Pandoras and made some money DJing, hoping to someday fall into his own band playing guitar. Little did he know that someday a sour fizzy drink would fall into his lap instead and change his life forever. You’ll have to listen to the details because you don’t want to miss it! We commend Jamba’s foundation in countering conventional culture, which helps us question, how can we all own our alienation rather than stand within the crowd?
In this episode, you’ll learn…
Jamba was actually born James. He got the nickname from a friend in the 80s!
When Jamba was first introduced to the punk rock scene, he actually wasn’t interested in it. His friend showed him the safety pin he had through the back of his hand and Jamba thought that wasn’t cool at all.
Jamba had a very musical life for a while, which included meeting The Ramones and DJing until he dropped out of the music scene and started his life over
Jamba’s father and grandfather were both great entrepreneurs and inventors, and although he rebelled against this life early on, Jamba could help but return to his roots
Once Jamba’s toddler asked to try some of the beer he was brewing in his garage, he realized that he wanted to make something she could have as well, thus inspiring his interest in kombucha
According to a market research survey in 2012, only 5% of Americans actually knew what kombucha was. Jamba had a lot of work on his hands to find a recipe that was just right.
In the early days of Rowdy Mermaid, much of the brewing, deliveries, etc. were done in Jamba’s garage with the help of some volunteers
Today, Rowdy Mermaid is present across 48 states with a vibrant team of 30 people
The name Rowdy Mermaid was discovered at a hot spring in Colorado, although it wasn’t until much later that Jamba chose this as the name
The design of Rowdy Mermaid’s logo is inspired by Jamba’s love of Nordic minimalism and Egyptology
The anti-establishment agenda that punk rock stood for influenced the flat organization structure of Rowdy Mermaid
Resources
Rowdy Mermaid Website
Jamba Dunn LinkedIn
Quotes
[21:44] Punk rock absolutely spoke to me. It was all about taking your alienation and owning that and turning that into something that you could wear physically to show other people, “I’m not like you, and I’m proud to be different from you.”
[24:35] Being lower middle class and not having the ability to get a leg up, it seemed like everything was turned against me or us. I think part of that might be true, and a lot of that was illusion.
[37:56] It was a huge divide in my life, education. But it was something I was passionate about and something that I decided was more important than a lot of the relationships I had at the time. So I pursued education.
[43:20] I sat there like, “Wow, that was really interesting. That wasn’t just a beverage that was kind of an experience.” And I went back into the market, and I bought another bottle and went back out to my car and thought, “Well this one I’m just going to kind of sip,” and I downed it completely again. And I thought, “What is this?”
Podcast TranscriptJamba Dunn 0:02
I felt alienated. I didn’t know how to enter into conventional culture. And I, in many ways over romanticized, what it would be like to be in conventional culture and to, to be popular to have the nice clothes to know more about the world around me and to feel confident in that world. And I just didn’t have that and, and you’re right, punk rock absolutely spoke to me. It was all about taking your alienation. And in owning that and turning that into something that you could wear physically, and show other people. I’m not like you and I’m proud to be different from you.
Marc Gutman 1:00
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, how his son of Scottish immigrants combined his passion for punk rock music, a thirst for learning, and the love for his daughter into a kombucha juggernaut. And before we get into the episode, I need to do my usual reminder.
If you like and enjoy the show, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over iTunes or Spotify, iTunes and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. And we like good ratings, who doesn’t? You’d be surprised how happy I get when you click on all those stars. It’s almost like you gave me money. Almost remember, ratings help us to build an audience, which then helps us to continue to produce this show. So please go ahead and give us a rating if you think we deserve it.
What do Scottish immigrants, Southern California, punk rock music, Egyptology, and a 2000 year old beverage have in common? Well, it turns out a lot. Today we are talking with Jamba Dunn, founder and CEO of rowdy mermaid. What is rowdy mermaid? Is it a woman surf brand? Is it a punk rock band? Is it an odd character from SpongeBob SquarePants. Not even close.
Rowdy mermaid is kombucha and not just any kombucha. conceived as the first plant based kombucha. Rowdy mermaid thinks of itself more of a functional plant medicine company than a kombucha company. One that’s on a mission to bring as many functional plants to as many functional people as they possibly can, using only the fruits, fruits, mushrooms and botanicals that nature created. And 20 years ago, if you walked into any grocery store, or even a whole foods, kombucha was not something that was readily available. We take for granted all the choices of kombucha we see on the shelves today. And generally speaking, kombucha is a fizzy sweet and sour drink made with tea. And for centuries, many people have believed it to be an elixir that relieves or prevents a variety of health problems. kombucha has been around for nearly 2000 years.
It was first brewed in China and then spread to Japan and Russia. And it became popular in Europe in the early 20th century. kombucha is now experiencing revival and you can see it almost on every shelf at every grocery store in almost every neighborhood in America. The basic ingredients in kombucha are yeast, sugar, and black tea. And kombucha has been around for nearly 2000 years. It was first brewed in China and then spread to Japan and Russia. It became popular in Europe in the early 20th century. And now we’re seeing it pop up on shelves all over America.
Rowdy Mermaid, such a cool name and a great brand. And of course, you rarely find a cool brand without an intriguing founder. Jamba Dunn is certainly intriguing. I could have spoken to him for hours if we had time. We covered so much of his story and only touched on his passion for Egyptology, which is probably a whole nother episode that we could go into for probably another couple of hours. And not to get too sidetracked or weird. But speaking of Egyptology, a year or so ago, I was at the National History Museum in New York City and they had an Egyptian accent. exhibit and it struck me as odd. Why we don’t carry on some of their traditions? Well, I’ve made it known to my family, but now it’s here on public podcast record. I’d like to be buried in a cool Egyptian sarcophagus, probably Fox style, and then put into some sort of pyramid. You heard it here first.
Okay, enough with my eccentricities. We’re here to talk about Jamba Dunn, and rowdy Mermaid, and in 2012, while experimenting with kombucha in his garage with equipment that was originally intended to home brew beer, Jamba fell into brewing kombucha. Actually, his daughter wanted to be a part of the hobby. And being a good dad, john felt his three year old daughter should probably not be brewing and drinking beer. I think that’s being a good dad. Anyway, as a way to include her in his hobby. He brewed kombucha and the rest. Well, this is his story.
I am here with Jamba Dunn, the CEO and founder of rowdy Mermaid, rowdy Mermaid, what is that? You know, you might be thinking it could be maybe some crazy surf brand. It could be the cool new bar down the street, but it’ s kombucha. So before we get going Jamba, can you tell us a little bit about rowdy mermaid and then we’ll jump into a bunch of your story?
Jamba Dunn 6:35
Absolutely. Rowdy mermaid is a functional beverages company that I founded in 2013. And it was founded on the idea of bringing a safer plant based kombucha to market and now we’re expanding into different product categories, or at least, we’re experimenting with different product categories right now.
Marc Gutman 6:59
There’s so much I love about the name and the branding, and we’ll get into that, but I want to save that for a little later. But you know, I want to think back to a little bit of the beginning of your story. And when you were a young boy, I mean, did you even know what kombucha was? We’re gonna kombucha say like, eight years old, like what are we doing around that time?
Jamba Dunn 7:23
Well, I don’t think anybody knew what Kombucha was when I was eight years old. GTS is the largest kombucha company and they’re about I think, 21 or 22 years old right now, before that, no other kombucha have been brought to market. So let’s see cut back though, eight years old. That’s an interesting time for me. I was living in Southern California, and just recovering from a major accident where I fell out of an automobile. And I think just really, at that time starting to recognize the the world around me in Southern California in the 1970s. With surfers and music and all the other things happening in California at that time.
Marc Gutman 8:14
That was like the the golden age, I think of California, or at least one of them. They’ve had a few but you know, the 70s and in Southern California, and I think, you know, like you mentioned, you know that that was the the blossoming of that 70 surf culture. There’s a lot of different things going on there. What were you doing? Like, what, what were your interests? Where did you grow up? What was your family like?
Jamba Dunn 8:36
Sure. So you’re right. It was one of those many Golden Ages that California had in the mid 70s, mid to late 70s. And I wouldn’t fully drop into my experience of California and all it had to offer until a little bit later. But around that time in the mid 70s. My family was we’re in Huntington Beach and my family is second generation Scottish American. And we were extremely blue collar, my family, my father and my mother. And we were surrounded by a very changing atmosphere. A lot of people were white color. A lot of culture seemed to be in transition around that time. I had an uncle who had started plastic fantastic surfboards, which has kind of a now sort of cult surfboard brand from Huntington Beach. And I had a cousin who was already surfing and would go on to become a very good surfer. And for me at that time, it was just more about the beach and school and trying to understand the world around me a little bit.
I definitely played the role early on as this sort of translate Later between my family and the outside culture, I guess you could call it because my family was very different from even our immediate neighbors. And my mother and father were extremely reserved and cut off from other people and didn’t really want to have much to do with them. And so, I would play, like I said, the translator between our neighbors and the waitresses and the the people who would come to our house for services. And so it was interesting time for sure. But, you know, cut forward a few years. About five years when I started high school, that was definitely the height of punk rock in Orange County. And that was a culture that definitely brought me out of the home and more into what Orange County and California had to offer at that time.
Marc Gutman 10:55
Yeah, and you know, I’m intrigued by this, this idea. And so if I heard you, right, your parents were first-generation immigrants. And are you in your second generation at that time? Is that correct?
Jamba Dunn 11:05
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Marc Gutman 11:06
And so you, were you born Jamba?
Jamba Dunn 11:08
No, I was born James. And it wasn’t until the mid 80s. That friend of mine started calling me Jamba. And it just it stuck. And it’s, it’s stuck ever since then I could not get rid of it. So now it’s my name.
Marc Gutman 11:27
It’s a great name. I was wondering where it came from. And I wanted to get in a better story than I thought. And so and just before we move on, like, you know, you mentioned your your folks were blue collar, like what were they doing in this Southern California environment for a living like, what were you seeing and modeling after at that time?
Jamba Dunn 11:46
So it’s kind of an interesting and convoluted story in itself. And I actually once tried writing a book about it, but it’s hard to summarize. So I’ll just tell one story. My grandfather on my father’s side had come to the US after being a foreman in Europe and the series of factories. And he wanted to make a better life in the United States, but couldn’t find work. He ended up becoming a milkman in Milwaukee, and saved up his money to try to, I guess, afford a better life, a better house, etc. And my grandmother, his wife, convinced him that she had a scheme that she knew about that was going to work in California. And that was to raise chinchillas, which at the time was all the rage, people would raise chinchillas, then they would sell them to a farrier. And they would come and take them all away and turn them into coats. And they would make lots of money off of that. And so he decided to take the bet and put all of his money, all of their money, all of the family’s money into chinchillas.
They then packed up the car and drove across the United States with my father and his brother and landed in Long Beach, and they rented a house. And a couple of days later, the chinchillas arrived, and they put them all into the garage and close the door. And the next morning, every one of them was dead, because they had no understanding of what they were doing, or what they were getting into, or how to take care of this animal that they had only just heard about. And my father had a meltdown and nervous breakdown. And he ended up dying shortly after. And my father found himself in California having to figure out how to make a living. And being somebody who is really not only industrious but but quick on his feet and smart with his hands.
He started figuring out how to fix things. And he fixed different types of machinery, and ended up fixing, adding machines at the time. And then he went into the military and started fixing uniacke, and UNIVAC, the first computer systems that were installed on submarines. He got out and continued to to fix adding machines and later on copy machines, ditto machines and those types of things and started his own business. So that’s how we we kind of landed in California and my mother had been a housewife her entire life. And so the two of them patch together a life like this. And that was what I came into
Marc Gutman 14:47
The way it works, you know? And that’s the way it works. And so what did you think about that? You know, what did you think about your father? I mean, were you like, Wow, that’s really cool that he’s fixing all of these things, or were you like Like, you know, I can see there also potentially being conflict, you’re looking around Southern California at the super cool culture and being like, this isn’t cool. Like, like, Where did you land on? Like, what do you think about all that?
Jamba Dunn 15:11
So it’s a really interesting question. And it’s something that I’ve been trying to understand my whole life in some ways, I actually wrote a book about my dad that I need to go back and edit and try to do something with at some point called the baloney generation. And it was really about his lifestyle, growing up in the United States in extreme blue collar situations coming out of it, figuring out how to really fix anything that he can get his hands on, and in turning that into his living. And you’re right, I mean, here I am. And I’m growing up in Huntington Beach, which at that time was a really up and coming cool place with surfers, I had an uncle who was in surfing. And as I mentioned, my cousin, cool culture was all around us. And we were just not a part of it. We were extremely low, middle class, and we ate very poorly. And my parents didn’t know anything about nutrition.
They didn’t know anything about culture, or at least the culture that was around us. Both my mom and father had grown up in Catholic school. And so they knew a lot about Catholicism. But now they had given that up, and they wouldn’t allow anyone to practice Catholicism in the house. And we were very removed from everything. So you’re absolutely right. It wasn’t easy to bring a friend to our house. Because my friends at school where we’re from completely, I just I thought of them from being as from a different culture than I was in a lot of ways. And so it wasn’t until later that I started to hang around with my father more.
I started working with him at one point, when I was a teenager and into my early 20s, I actually started going out and fixing machines for him because he didn’t have anyone to help him. And on our drives, he would let in on these stories that I just they seem completely different from the Father I had known. And so I became sort of addicted to hanging out with him and, and trying to get these stories out of him that he wasn’t really willing to share in stories that he also thought were just kind of like beside the point that weren’t really important enough to tell. One of them was growing up in Milwaukee, he was very interested in inventing new ways of listening to music and cars. And he was the first person that he had ever known that had installed a record player that can play singles on a spring inside of cars. And you could listen to it and drive and it wouldn’t skip. And he was installing them into other cars and became kind of well known for a while when he was younger in in Milwaukee.
Another one was this crazy story that still just seems odd to me. But he was working in Oakland at a company that fixed adding machines. And one day he was visited by these three men is three African American men. A one of them was very nicely dressed. And the other two were wearing leather jackets. And he said they they were very big guys. And the nicely dressed man came in to ask for his adding machine back. And my father told him it wasn’t ready. And that wasn’t a good enough answer. And they told them they wanted it now. And they ended up actually closing off the door and knocking over some machines and some cabinetry and things in there and telling him like, Listen, don’t you know who we are, we’re the Black Panthers. And my dad because he was so naive about culture thought that they were a Car Club, which I guess was a big thing when he was growing up. And so he tells me he looked out the window at their automobile. And he saw this, you know, lowered primered gray car with, with blue walls on it. And his perspective was he could never be pushed around by somebody who had blue walls on their car.
And it just was like so crazy to me that to hear these stories to have grown up knowing who the Black Panthers were in my father still not knowing who they were but relaying these types of stories that I just realized that there was there was so much more there than I had ever done. Growing up, and it was very interesting.
Marc Gutman 20:03
I can imagine and to me, it sounds like you’re straddling two worlds, you know, you’re struggling a little bit this immigrant world with your, your parents and then trying to adapt and assimilate in Southern California. And you mentioned that as you got older, you started to find the punk rock scene. And that really kind of spoke to these people that felt like they didn’t belong, that they didn’t have a place like, you know, were popular music was they weren’t, you know, it was a different kind of music for a different kind of person who didn’t have a community and the type of music that spoke to them. Is that what was going on for you at that time? Were you really finally finding your people, the people that spoke to you and that punk rock scene?
Jamba Dunn 20:52
Absolutely. I would say that the one thing that’s often missed about people reminiscing about the punk rock scene isn’t necessarily the music. It’s, it’s really what it stood for. And it stood for all of those people who felt alienated by conventional culture. And I was 100% in that category. I felt alienated I didn’t know how to enter into conventional culture. And I, in many ways over-romanticized, what it would be like to be in conventional culture and to, to be popular to have the nice clothes to know more about the world around me and to feel confident in that world. And I just didn’t have that and, and you’re right, punk rock absolutely spoke to me. It was all about taking your alienation. And owning that and turning that into something that you could wear physically, and show other people. I’m not like you, and I’m proud to be different from you.
Marc Gutman 22:05
And so who were you into at that time? And do you remember your first punk rock? I’ll call it experience because it might not have been like a show. But like, yeah, who were you into at the time? And what was your first memory of like your standout punk rock or like your first, you know, punk rock experience? Yeah, my
Jamba Dunn 22:21
My first punk rock experience wasn’t a very good one. It was a it was a very good friend of mine from school, who pulled me into an alcove at school to show me that he had put a safety pin through the back of his hand because he was really into punk rock now. And I literally had no idea what he was talking about. I was horrified. It didn’t seem very cool at all. And then I remember him, like shortly after showing me pictures of Johnny Rotten, and how Johnny Rotten had, you know, safety pins in his ears. And I was like, That still doesn’t really resonate with me at all. And it was like, shortly after that, that I started hearing local bands. Oh, yeah, the local bands were great. I mean, we we had TSL in the crowd. And in Orange County, I believe in Orange County, or LA, we had adolescence.
The adolescence were a huge band for me, there were, of course, black flag was around in Santa Monica at that time, and there were so many bands around us, and a lot of them in Huntington Beach. It was kind of it was a little bit like being in London in the 1960s for the birth of rock and roll or the growth of rock and roll there. It was just everywhere, and you’d hear new songs and giving, you’d have to find out who it was. And there were record stores popping up in neighborhoods that would only sell punk rock albums. And we were drawn to those types of places. And eventually, that became my entire friend group. And, you know, they they weren’t into, you know, self mutilation, or anything, the way their early punks seemed to be, but it was all about rebellion. And that was 100% something I could get on board with.
Marc Gutman 24:20
Yeah. What were you rebelling against?
Jamba Dunn 24:23
My parents, my upbringing, the feeling of being so removed. The feeling of being a translator and not having my own voice. Being lower middle class and not having the ability to get a leg up. It seemed like everything was turned against me or us. And, you know, I think part of that might be true, and a lot of that was illusion. And a lot of that was just how to lessons but I certainly at the time, I couldn’t distinguish those.
Marc Gutman 24:57
Yeah, and so if we’re still kind of in that high school, period, you’re falling in with the punk rock scene. It’s, it’s you’re finding this this group of people to rebel with I mean, what’s your plan? What do you think you’re going to do at this point? Do you have a plan? Are you just like, I’m just just trying to like get through high school like I’m gonna do I’m gonna work for my dad, like, What are you thinking?
Jamba Dunn 25:16
Yeah, plan. That’s very funny.
Yeah, there was no plan, there was no, there was no weird to go there was there was no, there was no strategy. There was no anything. It was 100% day by day. And I had no real guidance through all of that my family had no one in my family had ever gone beyond high school. And my parents had just barely gone beyond high school. And so they I couldn’t turn to them for academics. My sister, who is four years older than me, really didn’t want to have much to do with me. She was in a whole different music category.
My sister was going to kiss shows and Queen shows and David Bowie and a lot of the bigger groups around the time and she was sharing some of her experiences with me, but we, I felt like I was in a different world from even what she was in. And so I was definitely drifting there was there was no plan. But I like your enthusiasm.
Marc Gutman 26:34
All right, well, so you’re drifting and you’re going through and I imagine at some point, you drift and matriculate, like that were matriculate through high school, and the real world is on the other side, and you can fill in any gaps where I might have missed that. But assuming that that to be true, that’s true. And you kind of hit hit the real world and you’re staring at the rest of your life, like, what does that look like? And what do you do
Jamba Dunn 26:59
So I didn’t realize it at the time. But in my, in my last year, my senior year at high school, there was definitely some partying and there were definitely friends that I would stay out all night with. And there were concerts that would happen all night, and sometimes on weeknights.
I didn’t realize at the time that school was just falling by the wayside completely. It wasn’t serving me public school was not helping me whatsoever. My teachers were not engaged with the students. It all sort of felt like something of a dream. And it wouldn’t be until several years later that I ended up actually getting therapy and finding out that I had gone through post-traumatic stress during high school. And I had basically been just blocking a lot of my life out at that time. And that was from my my fall that I had mentioned earlier, the accident that happened when I was six. And so I started putting things together a couple of years after high school, and I started understanding that I had to, as you say, come up with a plan. And I had to get a little bit more serious about my life. And by that point, I was heavily involved in the garage music scene in Los Angeles. And my girlfriend at the time was the keyboard player in a band called The Pandoras.
And she eventually went on to play with white flag and the leaving trains and other punk bands. And I decided that something had to change. And so when the the Pandoras went on tour, I went with them to the east coast and traveled around for a while and lived in New York and hung out with some of the bands out there. Got to meet Joey Ramone and hang out with the Ramones and lived with the fuzz tones for a minute. And he had a very, very musical life at the time. But I still didn’t fully understand what I was going to do. I was making a little bit of money by DJing and clubs here and there. But the world around me was changing drastically and rapidly. I thought that something in the music industry would eventually work out for me. And so I moved back to California and started to write a fanzine for 60s Garage music, and I thought that was going to be the direction but I just I didn’t have the dedication.
I really just didn’t know what I was doing. And so that kind of fell apart. And so I found myself kind of hanging out with people like Rodney being and heimer from Rodney on the rock and Greg sharp who founded bomp records that produced you know, everything from the Ramones to modern garage music, and I thought that Something would occur there and I’d find my way or I would fall into a band playing guitar. And in just everywhere I went, it was just not meant to happen. And it wasn’t until about the late 80s, about 89, that I decided to simply drop out of all of it. And I got in my car, and I drove up to Central Coast, California. And I found a group of people up there that seemed friendly enough, and I decided to just stay and start my life all over. And when I started my life all over, I decided I would just leave behind any presuppositions I had about people in the world and how I should be in the world and how things should be and music and all of that. And it was like a personal rebirth in a way. And I spent a lot of time in Big Sur, and I spent a lot of time in San Luis Obispo and that area, Cambria. And I really started to to get into different areas, literature and food and understand people’s stories.
And I felt like at that point, there was a major transition that occurred in me and I realized that the one thing I had to do was go back to school, and to really learn this time. And so I eventually did that I went back to school. And I did very well in school. And I took a course that is now you know, kind of a very well known course, at Cuesta College, a several year course in the history of civilization, I became friends with the professors, I would hang out with them, I was just a sponge for everything around me. And I felt like that really, really propelled me forward and saved me in a lot of ways. And education to me seemed like the right direction. And it’s interesting because I did go on to study at Berkeley, I got my MFA, I got my PhD later on. And I’m still friends with my, with my, my group of, you know, girlfriends and pals and everyone from the punk scene and the garage scene. And it is fascinating to see how different we all became.
Most of them are still into music and publishing and recording. And I’ve definitely built a much different life for myself after all of that not to say it’s better, just, I’m not sure where I would have ended up if I hadn’t had taken that move out of California, or out of Southern California.
Marc Gutman 32:58
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And thank you for going into that and extrapolating that that journey, I mean, that was going to be my question and looking at your bio and looking at your history as you were talking and telling me that you weren’t a good student. And you kind of went on this journey in to New York City to get into, you know, the music scene and I’m looking at your bio, and I’m like, at what point did you get this like thirst for learning? And it really is like the tale of two Jambas you know, and it’s, it’s interesting, and you very eloquently referred to it as a rebirth and a new awakening. I mean, can you get into a little bit more specifics as to like what flipped the switch for you?
Jamba Dunn 34:39
I think it was, wasn’t about subject matter which schools before me had always been about. It was about people and structures. And I started meeting people who are professors who really took the time With me, whereas nobody had when I was younger and, and they took me under their wing a little bit, and they told me or I was going wrong. And they pointed out areas where I should maybe think about focusing. And they asked me what I was interested in, and what I liked about their courses, or what I liked about studying. And in a lot of ways, I realized I didn’t understand my own desires. You know, growing up, it was easy to have a sense of rage and a sense of feeling on the outside and feeling like the whole rest of the world was entitled. And, you know, here I was, though, being asked, What do you want? And I didn’t know. And so, school gave me the opportunity to start learning about the world in a way that I think, you know, hopefully my children get that now in really connecting to pieces here and pieces over there, and going back to these professors and asking them, hey, do you have more of this, or this is what I like, can you direct me and getting that direction, and really just feeling like I was on a kind of a journey.
And interestingly, even though for the first time I was having this revelation of about education, and about all the different things that were going on in the world around me, and all the different avenues that I could take. My parents still didn’t fully understand what I was doing, or why I was doing it. Because if, you know, in their eyes, you weren’t studying to become a mechanic or to fix a machine or to become a doctor or to do something that was a position in the world that they knew about, then it just seemed irrelevant to them. And I remember even when I graduated from UC Berkeley, and I had been studying Egyptology and several other areas for years and years and talking about it, every time I saw them, they thought that I had gotten a degree in sociology. And when I told them, I didn’t they, they just couldn’t understand it. And they would be like, yeah, yeah, well, we’ll just like pretend that you’ve got a degree in sociology, because I have no idea what you’re talking about. And this huge divide opened up between myself and my parents. And if it wasn’t there already, in the early days, it was definitely there then. And it opened up between not only myself and my parents, but myself and the rest of my family as well.
My cousin who is my age who decided to surf instead of going to school. I remembered him saying things like, you know, you come around here with your big words, and nobody can understand you. And it was a huge divide in my life education. But it was something I was passionate about. And something that I decided was more important than a lot of the relationships I had at the time. So I pursued education.
Marc Gutman 38:11
Yeah, and I feel like we could spend hours talking about this topic. So I’ll just shift gears a little bit and I want to move into kombucha and I want to know, When was the first time that you even heard of kombucha or even realized kombucha was a thing?
Jamba Dunn 38:32
Yeah. Interesting. So because there are a lot of lives that lead up to kombucha You know, a lot of my past, basically, that leads me to Boulder, and I’m at Boulder. I’m in Boulder and I had been teaching at a university here. And I remember going to a Whole Foods Market in 2009. And there’s good old Steve o from high country kombucha standing by the kombucha set, handing out free bottles of kombucha. And, you know, I took one and he he told me a little bit about what kombucha was. And I could tell that he really, you know, he had kind of a stick and he wanted to like, tell talk with somebody. And so I hung out with him for a little bit. And he told me how I can take a bottle of his kombucha, pour it into a jar, put a lid over it, you know, or cloth over it and set it on the counter and grow scoby and eventually, I could make my own kombucha.
And it sounded very abstract to me at the time, I did not comprehend how it was possible to take something off of the shelf of the grocery store and grow it and turn it into basically an engine for making more of that product. And so I brought it home and instead of making it I decided just to kind of drink it and you know that maybe someday in the future. I would do something else with that knowledge. But it wasn’t until a few years later in 2011, that I was brewing a lot of beer in my garage at the time, my wife had given me a beer brewing kit. And it was something that had always interested me. And my daughter came walking into the garage. And so what I was doing, and I told her, I was brewing beer. And she asked, Well, is there you know, can you make me so Can I have some? And I said, Well, no, it’s alcohol. And she didn’t know what that was. And I told her, it wasn’t for kids. And she got really sad and asked if, you know, there was something that I could make for her. And at that time, I kind of looked around the room, and I realized, I could spending a lot of my time in the garage, making beer and other things and getting really into this. And here’s my sweet little three year old, you know, and I’m not spending time with her doing anything for her. And so I remembered back to Steve O.
And I thought, well, this is going to be easy. I’ll just take a, you know, bottle of kombucha and I’ll put a thing over the top. And I’ll make some for my daughter. And so I did that. And I did it with several different brands. And I realized that only one out of three of those brands actually started to grow. And I think that was the point at which I started wondering Hmm, like, what is this actually? And why didn’t those other ones grow? And so I started to reach out for information. And I found that there was not much information about kombucha at that time. And I think that seeing that there was a lack of information and knowing that kombucha was a growing category, it just immediately fed my curiosity, and I had to get into it.
Marc Gutman 41:48
And so up to this point, between that and your first interaction with Steve, I get that right, Steve? Oh, is Yeah, keep thinking Steve. From the jackass movies. That’s what keeps coming into my, into my head. But um, so I was like, I was like, I can’t be here. So you have this experience with Steve Oh, and and all the way to when your daughter puts you on the spot and says, Hey, what about me? Like, what’s your relationship with kombucha? Between there? I mean, you have a relationship? Are you consuming it regularly? Is it just this thing that’s like, kind of out in the consciousness and you know about it, but you’re not really into it? Like, what’s your relationship with kombucha at that point?
Jamba Dunn 42:26
So yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. I remember that that day, when I went to the market, and I got my first kombucha and, and I remember going up to the car and drinking it and feeling like man, like, I don’t really know what this is. It’s kind of like a soda. It’s kind of sour. I’m not sure if I actually like this. And then it was a couple of weeks later that I, I remember, I’ve been doing some kind of like hard work, and I was really exhausted and overheated. And I went to Whole Foods again. And I was walking around trying to find something that would quench my thirst. And I thought, whoa, the kombucha maybe I’ll try that again. And so I went out to my car, and I closed the door, and I drank it. And I started drinking. And I mean, I took a couple of sips. And then all of a sudden, it just was like this, this like drive where I just downed the rest of the bottle. And I sat there like, wow, that was really interesting.
That wasn’t just a beverage that was kind of an experience. And I went back into the market, and I bought another bottle and went back out to my car and thought, well, this one, I’m just going to kind of sip and I downed it completely again. And I thought What is this, there’s got to be something here that you know, is just very, very different than anything I’ve ever had. And that kind of sat at the back of my mind. And when I started brewing kombucha from my daughter, I was kind of taking a passive role. Like, I don’t know what this is, you know, don’t really care what it is. I’ve had it, it tasted good. But something about my daughter in the way that she was reacting to kombucha. She was getting really, really hyper and running around the house. The next morning, She’d wake up early, and she’d have her little cup and she’d be standing by the area where I was brewing kombucha, wanting more.
And I was thinking, well, this is unusual. Like, she kind of has that same reaction that I remembered having, you know, years before in the car. And so, you know, I I didn’t fully grasp what fermentation was what the beverage was. And so it was at that time in 2011, that I started really asking questions and I went around I look for all the literature, I read everything I could find. I went to the University, I read everything that they had on file. I started reaching out to kombucha companies and talking with CEOs and founders of other kombucha companies. Then, in 2012, I started paying people and offering $100 if someone would sit down and talk to me for 30 minutes, and what I quickly realized was that here are people that had thriving businesses that were actually doing quite well at the time. But not all of them understood what it was that they were doing or what kombucha was.
A lot of people still thought it was kind of like a mystical thing that happens, you just kind of, you know, you put it into this jar, and you mix this in here, and you close the door, and then voila, there you go kombucha, you know, and, but nobody could tell me exactly what it was or exactly what the processes were, or why it was that it was making my daughter extremely hyperactive. And so that’s where I really took a huge interest in kombucha and decided to go out and hire a microbiologist and a brewer and we work together to fully understand what was going on and what they helped me understand what was going on in the process. And I started looking for ways to hack that process.
So you know, having gone through, you know, years of university and having gotten my doctorate in, in research, basically in philosophy, I had the ability to to understand when when I saw Bs, and what I was reading on a lot of websites at the time about the history of kombucha just smacked of total BS, there were no historical records there were, there was nothing that I could find at that time, that basically corroborated the idea that this is 2000 years old, except for the fact that I had studied ancient history. And I did know that there were lots of vinegar, I guess, drinks and attributes from the ancient world. And maybe this was kind of like those, but to relate what kombucha was today with those ancient elixirs just seemed not right to me, and something seemed odd about it. And so I did get heavily involved with this microbiologist in understanding that kombucha is basically a semiotic relationship between yeast and bacteria, the yeast consume sugar, that’s you make a sweet tea with sugar in it. And you put in a starter culture and the yeast break down the sugars or oxidize the sugars and create alcohol, and the bacterial strains translate that alcohol into different types of acids.
And so you end up hopefully with a low alcohol, low sugar beverage at the end. But that turns out not to be the case, oh, and low caffeine as well. And so what I did was I looked at all of the misunderstandings that occurred with kombucha around that time. And granted in 2012, we did a market research survey, and it showed that only 5% of Americans actually knew what kombucha was at the time. So a very small subset of people. And there were a lot of misunderstandings about it.
People thought that by the end of the process, that it had no alcohol, that it had almost no sugar, and that it had no caffeine. And so I decided, I knew a little bit about research, and I could talk with people at research institutions and laboratories. And we could do some tests. And we could sort of prove that out. And so I started taking in my homebrews. And they showed that they were wildly, wildly out of spec, they were high on alcohol, they were high on sugar they had, you know, all these things that I didn’t want. And so trying to figure out how the market leaders were doing it became a sort of obsession for me.
Marc Gutman 49:20
And at what point did you take obsession in in sort of this garage mythology and mad scientist tinkering in your garage for the joy of your daughter and following your own obsession? And at what point were you like, Oh, this is a business. I’m gonna like make a run at this.
Jamba Dunn 49:38
Well, let’s see. The first inkling about potentially turning this into something else was definitely in 2012 when a market survey came out, saying that over the next five years that they they thought that kombucha was going to turn into a $500 million a year business with seemed just crazy to me at the time, because there were only a few kombucha companies. So there weren’t that many companies and certainly, you know, only a couple of market leaders. And so it seemed like there was a lot of open space for other brands to get in. But I didn’t have anything to offer at the time. So I couldn’t make anything that was in spec.
I certainly didn’t make anything that was different from what the market leaders were doing at the time. And it wasn’t until I think, mid 2012, that I got in touch with a brewer who had been the brewer for another major kombucha company. And she and I decided that I would lease a warehouse and she would come and help me with recipes, even though she wasn’t very interested in doing that. And we rented a warehouse space and in 2013, started, really just doing iterations on different flavors, and herbs and herbs and plants was a place that I’d always been very interested. And pursuing.
I’ve been growing a lot of herbs, I’ve been making a lot of teas. And so I decided to start taking some of those flavors from the TEAS I was making and her knowledge of herbs from India and other places. And we started building these recipes. And, you know, we would do iterations that would be you know, like 30 different batches of the same type of thing with, you know, one gram of ingredient less in every bucket, and really doing kind of this like pseudo scientific research and seeing if we couldn’t land on something. Granted, I was doing all of this and throwing out hundreds of gallons of kombucha at a time because I had nobody to take it. And I still at that point wasn’t thinking that I would turn this into a business. And it wasn’t until we really hit on a series of recipes, and a series of methods for making kombucha that were really different from anything I’d ever tasted in the market.
It was less acidic, it had low sugar, it did have low alcohol, although tended to waver sometimes depending on barometric pressure, temperature, other types of things. But it was relatively stable. And it tasted great. And suddenly I had people all around me asking if I would sell it to them? or could they come by and fill up their milk carton full of it. And it was at that point that I realized, we’ve got something like I’ve got something here. And wouldn’t it be interesting to make the first plant based kombucha and really, instead of relying on the probiotics as the reason for believing in the beverage, put together these recipes that were based on age old herbal wisdom, and create herbal recipes, functional recipes, the based off of the herbs themselves, and use the kombucha as a sort of background for highlighting the ingredients that we were putting in.
And if I could make a three year old or however old she was at that time, love it, then I knew that I would have a certain audience in America that would like this. And so I decided to drop everything that I was doing, and really just put 110% into building this business. And so that was in 2013. And it took me until April of 2014 to actually get the tasting room up and running. I and rowdy mermaid was born.
Marc Gutman 53:57
And where did the name come from?
Jamba Dunn 53:59
So when I decided to break into my family that I was going to leave my my stable job at Rosetta Stone and start a kombucha company. I took my family down to these hot springs in Colorado. And I’ll never forget my daughter was really out of control at the the hot springs playing mermaid. Although it sounded much more like a dolphin to me. And she was making these dolphin noises and jumping over people’s heads etc. And she was just really high on life and having the best time ever. And I was in an another pool and I told my wife Hey, listen, I got some news. I’m going to start my own business. And the first question out of her mouth was what do you call it? And I hadn’t put any thought into that whatsoever.
And right at that moment, I remember my daughter was jumping over someone’s head into one of the hot springs. And I had to turn to her and say, Hey, sweetie, stop what you’re doing. You’re being very rowdy. mermaid. And that phrase rowdy Mermaid, just it went into a little room in my head and just stayed in there. And I didn’t believe that that was going to be the name. So I actually went out and hired agencies to come up with names, and I did crowdsourcing for names, etc, etc. And it wasn’t until a while longer later that I think I was speaking with the CEO of another kombucha company. And he told me, you know, like, you have to use a name that is authentic. Otherwise, you know, what are you doing in this industry? Right, because everything we do is based on authenticity.
And I realized he was absolutely right. So I would use rowdy Mermaid, because it was for my daughter, after all, but I had to figure out some way to keep it from being rowdy and keep it from having mermaids because I didn’t want it to turn into craft beer. And so I found myself in artists, and we went out and worked on the the logo and the branding. And we came up with something based off of Nordic minimalism, and I felt like we got it to a very good place. And here we are today.
Marc Gutman 56:14
Yeah, and I love it. And I think that, you know, it has this real kind of Explorer, you know, take me to other worlds take me to someplace new experience. And you mentioned, you know, all the different ingredients that you’ve been using, both at the beginning and probably today in your kombucha, like, you know, herbs from India and different plants and all these different things. So it has this real kind of like, take me to lands far away feel and I was going to ask you about the unique Oh, and some of the unique characters in your branding and in your, you know, typography and stuff like that, but that Oh, so from what I’m gathering is Nordic and and what do you call that?
Jamba Dunn 56:56
Um, so that, that no, you’re talking about the newest font that we use from the it’s, it’s a Montreal font, that that’s part of the brand new branding from here studio in California. But the real brand came from that original, what we call the logo lockup, which is the the tail and water. And that’s kind of interesting story, maybe a long one, but I’ll see if I can cut, cut it quick. I wanted something that represented both my interest in Nordic minimalism, and also the brand, the rowdy Mermaid, and also my interest in Egyptology. That’s what I had been studying at Berkeley. So we decided to go with the tail with the water under it on three straight lines like that would represent water.
Three wavy lines also in Egyptology represent water, but a straight line represents somebody’s name. And so we decided to do the tail with a straight line under it not only to represent a mermaid tail coming out of water, but also to really define mermaid in that instance, just the way you do it with cartouche. And because I didn’t want anything to be too rowdy, we decided to put the lockup around it. And that’s how that was born. But there’s also if you turn it on its side, a hidden k in there for kombucha. And we went back and forth for a long time about whether or not we should turn it on its side to show the K. Or just keep that as a secret. And we decided to keep that as a secret.
Marc Gutman 58:40
Well, thanks for sharing the secret. I see it now. And I can’t unsee it. And I love it. And thank you for going into it. That’s great. I love it. And I think that that’s just such a great lesson and a great logos that has meaning beyond just it being assemble. And you really were thoughtful and it really whether or not we ever knew that it has roots in your Egyptology studies and passions like it’s there. And I think that’s just you know, what a great a great Mark does, and I love it. I love your brand and your branding. And so you started in the garage, you didn’t set out to be you know, you’re kind of like an accidental kombucha guy. And what does the company look like today? I mean, it started with you in the garage just kind of Ruin and now you actually have a like a company like what does that look like?
Jamba Dunn 59:28
Yeah, well, it’s it’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs as I’ve been finding over the years, but to find yourself in this situation where you feel, you know, a little bit like an imposter because you’re right. You know, we started in my garage and we started with a concept and we started with a lot of research and not much else, not much money. It was a hard struggle for many years with me doing everything at the business from you know, bookkeeping and answering During the emails to making the kombucha and making the deliveries myself, the only people who worked for the company for the first couple of years were just volunteers. And so that was pretty much the way it was. I had, I think two full time employees in 2017, 16 started in 2016. And in November 2016, I fell, had a horrible fall and broke my arm. And I had complications from that. And I could no longer do all the jobs. And so I had to bring people in.
And the first person I brought in was my wife, who was a wonderful sales woman. And she helped build a sales team and and I stepped away from doing manufacturing and production and started really focusing on the business itself. And what do we want? And where do we want to go and put together a plan that we’re still following today. And today, we’re in 48 states, we’ve got a vibrant team of about 30 people. I’ve got incredible team members, both people from the brewing industry here in Boulder, who are very experimental brewers.
My first taproom salesperson is now our Director of Sales operations. And she’s fantastic. We have a VP of Sales and Marketing who came from background and Coke and Pepsi. And we’ve got a food service person who just came over from Clif Bar, and we’ve got a really vibrant, interesting culture happening now. And I just I absolutely love it. And I get to finally step back again from a lot of the day to day and, and really help guide the business towards what I feel like we should be focusing on. And I just, I feel like that’s my happy place. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful life now, very different from our starting years.
Marc Gutman 1:02:06
It’s taken a lot of sweat and a lot of a lot of risk and sometimes some desperation so I can I can relate. So john, as we come to a close here, I want to thank you so much for for sharing your story. And as you think back I have one last question for you if that young, eight year old jumbo who is in Huntington Beach and kind of feeling awkward and straddling two worlds I ran into you today. What do you think he’d say?
Jamba Dunn 1:02:37
Stay away from cars, I would tell him that he should not lose hope and should not be angry about the way things are. Because if it’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of my life, it’s that everything changes, and you’ve really, really got to learn how to enjoy the ride. Otherwise, it’s never going to be very much fun.
Marc Gutman 1:03:06
And that is Jamba Dunn, of rowdy mermaid. The day after we recorded this episode, I received an email from Jamba. And with His permission, I am going to read it on edited Marc, Thanks again for the conversation today. It was fun. Although I woke up last night filled with a sense that I missed so many opportunities, and perhaps didn’t paint the right picture. I wanted to get it off my chest. My father and grandfather are entrepreneurs and inventors. And although I wanted to do anything but follow in their footsteps is they lived externally difficult lives. And we often had our power shut off, or we had to hide from collection agencies when times were tough. Entrepreneur ism was for good or for ill in my bloodstream. You asked about me at eight years old, and I later recalled my father working all night repairing typewriters and photocopy equipment in the garage.
He was also a master mechanic. And he had a side hustle of buying, repairing and upgrading old cars that he’d sell. And weekends when I was eight, I’d visit my grandfather who 20 years before had invented a device for squeezing all the toothpaste from the tube and who ran the manufacturing company. And so the idea was stolen out from under him. And he was always working on new devices, when I recall was for controlling the television from his chair using strings and another for generating custom address signs which he later sold door to door. So while I was unsure of who I was or what I wanted at that age, and later I would rebel by getting into the punk and Garage Band scenes. I was also subtly ingesting a sort of anti establishment agenda that will become crucial to my mental blueprint when dreaming up the structure for my own company. Where we are a flat organization, and everyone has a say in how we progress. Although my parents were somewhat shut off from the outside, they also valued Straight Talk.
My father, for instance, always loved the waitress who would tell him he looked like crap. And who would ask if he slept under a bridge the night before? Because some days he did look rough, and he loved that honesty. Looking back, he had a level of personal transparency that has become a hallmark of rowdy mermaid. So while at first, it all seems superficial and not very pleasant living with my parents when I was eight, growing up in a vibrant and changing Orange County. It also taught me the lessons I needed to be successful in 2020. Best, Jamba.
Thanks for adding that Jamba. We do appreciate it. And the thing that keeps sticking with me after our conversation is the focus on your daughter, brewing kombucha, to get her involved her rambunctious nature being not only the namesake of the company, but the essence of the brand as well. And that’s the thing about truly authentic brands. They’re part of the people that build them. They’re living, breathing feeling entities, and even when you don’t know like the little tidbit about the rowdy mermaid logo Mark being a nod to Egyptian hieroglyphics or the hidden k in the white space that symbolizes kombucha. You know, you can feel it, sense it, believe it. Believe in the promise that the brand is making, just in the way that I believe in rowdy mermaid.
I will link to all things rowdy mermaid in the show notes so you can find and drink some of this delicious kombucha goodness for yourself. And a big big thank you to john but done and the team at rowdy mermaid. Keep brewing kombucha that means something kombucha that is changing the world.
And if you know the guests who should appear on our show, please drop me a line at [email protected] our best guess like Jamba come from referrals from past guests and our listeners. Well that’s the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstorm.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 you other storytellers can’t deny.
1 hr 8 min
November 04, 2020BGBS 046: Tim Williams | Ignition Group | Stand for Something and Get Paid for It
BGBS 046 Tim Williams | Ignition Group | Stand for Something and Get Paid for It
Tim Williams is the founder and managing director of Ignition Consulting Group, noted author of several books, the latest being Positioning for Professionals: How Professional Knowledge Firms Can Differentiate Their Way to Success, and international speaker for business organizations worldwide. His popular blog Propulsion is regularly featured on LinkedIn Today, and he has been interviewed and quoted by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, and so many more.
Although Tim is very insightful and respected in the business world, we learn that he developed many other talents throughout his younger life as well. Tim used to compose his own music as a child on his piano with his dad’s 8-track recorder, ran his own radio station for the kids of the neighborhood to hear, and had a deep interest in visual arts. Later in life, he learned vital lessons about pricing and strategic positioning, though you can still find him immersed in the Silverado soundtrack at full decibels while driving into Moab Valley. In the end, Tim teaches us that you can actually increase trust by being honest about what you don’t do, encouraging us to ask, how can we all say no today?
In this episode, you’ll learn…
Tim had his own radio station covering local news as an eight year old and printed his own newspaper, while having interests in photography and music
As Tim was deciding to piece all his passions together, he decided to declare himself as a music major when he went to college and had his sights set on life as a film composer
Living in Southern Utah, Tim most identified with Western film music scores and would listen to them driving through places like Moab Valley
Tim started out playing trombone, but also played piano. He would compose his own pieces using his father’s early version of an eight track recorder
When Tim started interviewing for jobs, he still didn’t know if he wanted to go to the account side or creative side, but luckily he got a job as a writer and account exec at Marsteller
Tim spent time working at Salt Lake City, but originally felt it was a culture shock and ended up moving to Houston in under a year
After partnering up, Tim decided to start his own agency back in Salt Lake City called Williams and Rockwood, which attracted attention beyond state borders and across the country, with clients such as CBS and NPR
Branding is more the experience the brand delivers, than the product itself.
Price based on the value you create for your clients, not on the cost you incur inside your firms
As a business strategy, you can’t serve every kind of client. You can be excellent at something, but you can’t be excellent at everything.
Successful agencies have walked away from charging for inputs and instead charge for outputs. These firms reward productivity instead of busyness as a culture.
Resources
Ignition Consulting Group Website
Tim Williams LinkedIn
Tim Williams Twitter
Quotes
[12:36] This is one discipline that incorporates almost all of my interests: writing, music, broadcasting, the visual arts. All of that is just kind of wrapped into one and in the ad business.
[36:48] Visit any website at random of an agency or a law firm or an accounting firm, you’ll see those words, “full service,” most of all. That is not a strategy. It’s the absence of a strategy. It’s saying we do everything for everybody.
[47:34] In most businesses, if you improve your pricing by just 1%, which is completely doable, you’ll improve your margins by more than 10%.
[52:19] The successful agency doesn’t do timesheets, doesn’t equate activities and efforts with value.
Podcast Transcript
Tim Williams 0:02
I remember, oh, after the first month or so that I was, in my job, I had a great boss, a great mentor gentleman named Ted France who, who really just taught me the whole business. I followed and copied everything he did. And he was a great teacher. But one day he said, a damn. On our lunch break. Why don’t I take you down to Brooks Brothers? And let’s buy you a nice pinstripe suit and some conservative ties, and a few white shirts because this was this was the late 70s. And I I think the suit I had was a light blue kind of, you know, very 70s looking suit, but just did not fit in, in the conservative business culture of New York. So I kind of had to remake my image. It was that point I bought the book. How to what is it how to dress for success?
Marc Gutman 0:59
casting 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. We are talking to Tim Williams, who is on a mission to help professional service firms escape the tyranny of an unfocused business model. Okay, okay, here is my regular plea for ratings and reviews over at Apple podcasts and Spotify. Apple and Spotify are the two giants in the industry. And they use these ratings as part of their algorithms. And this determines the rating on their charts and we want to climb those charts, we want to go up those charts we want to improve on those charts, we are already doing well. But we can always do better.
Those ratings help us to build an audience that an audience, a community, which then helps us to continue to produce this show. Please, if you haven’t rated or reviewed this over at one of those platforms, whichever one you’re listening on, and you think we are worthy of a strong rating, please go ahead and do so I would appreciate it. So so much. Tim Williams is a globally recognized expert in the areas of business and pricing strategy. Tim is a noted author, international speaker and presenter for business organizations worldwide. Based on his expertise in positioning and pricing, Tim has been interviewed by news gathering organizations including the economist, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg News, The Guardian, Toronto Globe and Mail. The Australian Financial Review in numerous business publications ranging from Europe to Asia. Suffice to say Tim Williams, is a big deal. Tim is the author of two books, take a stand for your brand and positioning for professionals. And as a consultant to professional service firms, Tim has worked with hundreds of organizations, ranging from mid size independence to multinational networks and global holding companies.
As you’ll hear, he began his career on Madison Avenue, working for major multinational advertising agencies, and later served as president and CEO of several mid sized independent firms. Tim knows this space. And as the leader of the ignition Consulting Group, Tim now advises the leaders and managers of professional service firms on the development and execution of positioning and pricing strategies. And this is his story, as well as some practical positioning and pricing insights.
Tim, thank you very much for joining us on the show today. Let’s hop right into it. Can you go ahead and give me a little background on who is Tim Williams?
Tim Williams 4:03
Wow, where to start the current iteration if Tim Williams is my role as a consultant, running a small but focused consultancy, that focuses on the ad agency space. So primarily marketing communications firms, which is a pretty narrow niche if you think about it, but also other types of marketing firms, PR firms, digital agencies, and to some extent, I get dragged into the rest of the professional service world law firms, accounting firms and so forth.
That’s not my sweet spot. But enough of what I do is relevant to other areas of professional service that I do some work in that area as well. I so how’s that for a start?
Marc Gutman 4:55
Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s that’s that’s excellent. And you know, you you started that By saying the current iteration of Tim Williams, let’s talk about the early iteration of Tim Williams. What were you like, as a young child? Were you interested in these types of topics like marketing and advertising as a? Let’s say, like an eight year old? Tim Williams?
Tim Williams 5:14
Yeah, absolutely. I had my own radio station as an eight year old and would drag kids from the neighborhood and, and printed my own little newspaper, photography and music buff. And in my formative years, I was always thinking, how could I take these bits and pieces of things that I love, and, and make a living at it? So my, my answer by the time I got to high school was to be a professional musician. I was heavily involved in, in music and in band and jazz band. And so I decided to declare a music major when I went to college and and had my sights set on life as a film composer.
But I quickly learned in my freshman year of college, that that was going to be a difficult way to make a living there were like 10 really well known film composers, that would be hard thing to break into. So I decided, alright, I’ll keep music as a hobby. And which I do to this day, and I will do something a little more commercial. And that’s when advertising caught my eye.
Marc Gutman 6:36
And before we get into the advertising space, so like, what was your radio show as a kid? What did that cover?
Who were you emulating?
Tim Williams 6:44
Local news. I would go hang out, I grew up in a small town, just a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. And we had a radio station like every small town does. And I would go up and just sit on the floor of this radio station. for the better part of the day in my summers. And listen and watch and kind, kind guy who ran the place jack Tranter took me under his wing. He gives me all his old records and the promotional things that he got sent by, by musicians and artists, and I’d take them home and repurpose it all for my for my own. For my own show. I just, I just loved it.
Marc Gutman 7:29
Yeah, and in addition, I can imagine, you know, when you get all the swag and all like the Promote promo items, like, yeah, that’s certainly an attractive, attractive bit of the business. But what else did you love about it? I mean, what was compelling? What, when you saw that were What were you dreaming about? And thinking about?
Tim Williams 7:44
Well, I was, I like the music part. But I’ve always been fascinated with the, just the whole world of mass communications, the the ability to get get the word out to lots of people in a in a mass audience in a mass kind of way. And, and so that, you know, that’s kind of part of what drew me to it, I just felt like that would that would be an important job and important thing to be involved in to, to be part of the industry that reports the news, and just keeps people aware of things that they should know about. Yeah, that’s about as close as I can get to an answer, I think.
Marc Gutman 8:30
That’s a good answer. And as you were an upcoming musician, what instrument were you playing?
Tim Williams 8:34
Well, I started out playing trombone, and that that worked fine in, in jazz band, and, you know, orchestras and so forth, but also also piano, my mother started me on piano at a pretty early age. And I immediately started, like, a lot of people do composing my own pieces.
And like my, my dad, who was kind of an audio file, he had a early, you know, eight track recorder and I would do my own eight track recordings with orchestration of just me on on on piano, mostly laying down multiple tracks. But you know, really having a lot of fun, just with early versions of that technology, which is way way better and easier now, isn’t it?
Marc Gutman 9:28
Sure isn’t like almost anyone can be a composer now and it will at least have the tools to be a composer. It still takes
Tim Williams 9:34
Yeah, that’s right. Exactly. Yeah.
Marc Gutman 9:36
Did you have a favorite film composer someone or a favorite film score that you were like, always either mimicking or replicating or looked up to at that time when you thought it would be a composer?
Tim Williams 9:48
Well, I’d have to say the early westerns, Elmer Bernstein, The Magnificent Seven. You know that that the whole the whole Western soundtrack, john Which is probably my largest playlist on on Apple Music is really what got me going I and I’m a Western kid, you know, born and raised in, in Utah and, and just identify with, with all of the themes and the imagery that that comes along with that, you know, Southern Utah is where most of the a lot of the Western films were made the john wayne films and and it just does something to me to be in that environment and and here Western film scores to this day I spend maybe half my life in in Moab and southern Utah, which if you been is kind of the epicenter of Red Rock country, Arches National Park and others.
And when we, when we my wife and I drive in to Moab Valley, there’s usually something like, you know, the Silverado soundtrack playing, you know, full decibels and in our car, because it still has that same effect on me.
Marc Gutman 11:03
And I can imagine and next time I go to Southern Utah, I’m gonna do that because I as you’re speaking and talking and describing that it really took me to a place of thinking I know how majestic and and how just vibrant that landscape is. And I can, I can see you as a young young boy being you know, Hey, there, this is where the moon, this is not where movies are made.
This is where westerns happen, you know, and I think that there’s something something really, really neat about that. And it is it’s not like a movie set. It’s real. Yeah, that’s the real thing. Yeah. And so you mentioned, you were in college, and before you kind of jumped into advertising, like, what were your interest in college? What do you think you were going to do at that point?
Tim Williams 11:44
Well, I think like a lot of us, I probably had two or three majors. By the time I was through my first first year, first couple years, political science was one of them. not related at all, to what I ended up doing, I thought maybe maybe business school, I should just continue and get an MBA. My brother was a law professor and had lots of family members who had followed that path. But honestly, none of that motivated me. I thought the money part of that might be nice, but wow, what a boring life to be an attorney. You know, I just thought that doesn’t exercise any of the creative interests that I have. So I, when I took my first course advertising 101, I thought this is it that I finally found it, this is it. This is one, one discipline that incorporates almost all of my interest, writing, music, broadcasting, the visual arts, you know, all of that is just kind of wrapped into one and in the ad business.
Marc Gutman 12:51
Yeah. And so you that light goes off and, and touches you and you get excited. And but as you just outlined, there is a lot of there are a lot of facets to the ad business, there’s a lot of different things, and some of them seem very complimentary, and some of them are kind of far apart. You know, like, how did you then say, I want to do this? Or was it more? Hey, I just need to get there?
Tim Williams 13:14
Well, I, I think it’s that fork in the road that a lot of people in in the advertising marketing space face, especially in school, which is all right. Do I want to go business side or, or creative side? I mean, that’s the essential choice. And not everybody can do both things. I kind of felt like I could I had interest in going in both directions. And so I thought, well, I’ll get a holistic education. I’ll, at least in this space, also learn about media or learn about PR and so that I can be as well rounded as I can. But But still I faced that same fork when I graduated and sent my resume rather presumptively presumptuously to the top 25 agencies in New York, and said, Hey, I’m going to, I’m going to leave my homeland here.
I’m going to the big city, if I want to, if I want a career, if I want to have a serious career in advertising, I’ve got to go to New York. So when I started applying for jobs and interviewing for jobs, I still didn’t know Do I want to go account side or creative side because I felt like I could do either either job as a writer or as a account exact. And fortunately, I landed at a place that allowed me to do both both things. My first job was at an agency called marsteller. And its sister agency Burson marsteller, which is, you know, it is now a marsteller is not a name that it’s known now, but it was one of the top 20 agencies at the time. It was purchased by young and Rubicam while I was working there and great place to start, but they had this system they called copyright. Contact, which allowed account people who have who had the ability and to also write to write their own copy for the clients they worked on. So that was pretty unusual was really lucky for me. So I was able to do both things, at least for the first few years of my career.
Marc Gutman 15:19
Okay, and what was that? Like? I mean, a kid from Utah out New York City, and you’re working at this cool agency? Yeah. What was that like for you?
Tim Williams 15:28
Well, you know, I, I’d lived other places, part of that haven’t spent my head and spend my whole life in Utah, we lived in Europe, when I was a kid, my dad worked for the US government. And you know, so I had seen the world I traveled the US and a lot of Europe. So it’s not like I was completely wet behind the ears. But it was still quite quite an adjustment. I was a young married, we had an eight month old son, which made me kind of an anomaly. Just that I mean, all my other friends of a similar age were, were certainly single and couldn’t imagine being married with a child.
So it was a it was a, it was a one of the smartest decisions I ever made. Because I learned so much. I mean, I just soaked it all up as a sponge. And, to this day, I’ve always felt like I could easily go back and, and do that all over again. And fortunately, I I kind of don’t have to, because a lot of the a lot of the work I do in my consulting business is in fact, in New York, and I I’ve ended up working with a lot of the agencies that that that I, you know, dealt with and wanted to work for when I was a young man.
Marc Gutman 16:44
Yeah, and what was what was hard about it? I mean, you know, you certainly shared the the exciting side of it, but what was heard about being in that business at that time, and what you were seeing?
Tim Williams 16:54
Well, there was just a lot that a Western kid doesn’t know about the whole Ivy League scene, you know, I felt like I was pretty culturally current. And that, you know, I would fit in pretty well. But I, but I remember, oh, after the first month or so that I was, in my job, I had a great boss, a great mentor gentleman named Ted France, who, who really just taught me the whole business.
I followed and copied everything he did. And he was a great teacher. But one day, he said, Hey, Tim, on our lunch break, why don’t I take you down to Brooks Brothers, and let’s buy you a nice pinstripe suit and some conservative dyes and a and a few white shirts, because this was, this was the late 70s. And I think the suit I had was a light blue, kind of, you know, very 70s looking suit, but just did not fit in, in the conservative business culture of New York. So I kind of had to remake my image. It was that point I bought the book, How to what is it How to Dress for Success and learned, you know, all the apparel I should be wearing in metropolitan business centers.
Marc Gutman 18:11
And so where did your career go from there?
Tim Williams 18:15
I, at that point, I had, I’d been at marsteller for about four years, and I got word that my mother had died. And my my, my father said, Hey, I’m thinking about selling or moving out of the family home? And how would you would you be interested in coming back and, you know, taking over the house, and you know, you could have a career here. And I really fought the idea. I really wrestled with it for quite some time. But then I thought, Wow, it’s going to be forever before we get in the house living in New York on a starting salary as a young married. I mean, we had no discretionary income whatsoever. So I thought, okay, that’s probably not such a bad idea. So we went back, I got a job still in the business with one of the really good agencies in Salt Lake City. And that lasted about less than a year, it was complete total culture shock for me, I thought, Wow, that was that was really a bad decision.
I mean, Salt Lake is a fine place to live. But I’m not going to learn and develop and advance the way I want to hear. So I contacted a few headhunters I met in New York and said, I just get me back to New York about as fast as you can. And they asked me which agencies I’d like to work for. And I told him honestly, Ogilvy and Mather would be at the top of my list. So I get a call back saying we’ve got a perfect job for you. It’ll be great. They said, but it’s not in New York. It’s in Houston. About Houston. Wow, that’s never been on my considered set. But it was a good fit for me. I went and interviewed for the job, and most I moved my little family to Houston where I work for Ogilvy. And that was a, that was a great experience.
Because Ogilvy, they consider themselves the Teaching Hospital of ad agencies. And, and so, you know, you’re always learning a great agency with a great reputation. And I was there, at the early days of the, you know, technology boom, and the personal computer. I mean, we, we went and pitched this account that that was formed by a couple of guys from Texas Instruments, and it was a computer brand called compact. Everybody knows compact. There were they had six employees, and we weren’t sure we wanted it because it looked like maybe kind of a risky thing. We didn’t know if it was for real. But we, we won this little account. And a year later, they made the cover of Businessweek is the fastest growing business and you know, the history of the Fortune 500. So that was a really interesting wild ride to be in on the early days of tech, because I was the account supervisor on that business.
Marc Gutman 21:11
Yeah. And where was it, you know, maybe give a little more color about what it was like to be in the ad business in Houston. I mean, to your point, not really, on most people’s radar, then are probably on now. I mean, it’s, you know, it and it’s a huge, you know, commercial center. And so it makes a lot of sense. But, I mean, was there a part of you that kind of felt like, oh, like, I’m kind of, I’m kind of grown down to the miners are employing, you know, different kind of ball here.
Tim Williams 21:35
I certainly would have felt that way if it hadn’t been overly made either. I that that’s really the only reason I did it. And Houston, you know, as you say, it’s a big city. It’s the fourth biggest city in America. Most people don’t know that. It’s a sprawling metropolis and and for Rocky Mountain kid, it’s not a great place to live, you know, it’s flat, it’s hot, it’s humid. There’s not a lot of outdoor recreation. I mean, I, I think, you know, for me, people like me, it’s kind of a tough place to live. But it’s a dynamic Business Center. From an advertising standpoint, at the time it was it was it was an outpost for multinational agencies. I mean, many multinationals had offices there, mostly because of the oil business. And our largest account with Shell, you know, probably the largest account within all of Ogilvy was shell and it was run out of Houston. So it was an interesting mix of New York professionalism and Texan faultiness. So it was okay, you know, it was it was a it was a good experience. I enjoyed it.
Marc Gutman 22:41
And when you put it like that sounds like potentially, it was quite a bit of fun.
Tim Williams 22:44
Yeah, it was fun. You know, Texans are fun people. And And so, as I say they a lot of the half the office were transplanted New Yorkers. So there was that half of the culture and the other half were kind of local grown Texans in it culturally. It was it was a lot of fun. You know, they they knew how to take care of their clients, yet. We did it in a professional way. That makes sense.
Marc Gutman 23:14
Absolutely. Yeah. And I get the the appeal of Ogilvy I mean even today, I mean, I think it’s, you know, the, the gold standard, it’s an agency, I’m always, you know, just intrigued in, in fact, by and following, and yeah, holding really high regard. And so, why did that come to an end? What happened?
Tim Williams 23:31
Well, I didn’t, we didn’t exactly love living in Houston. I thought the career experience was was great, but we really missed the West, we missed the mountains. And I had in the back of my mind, like a lot of people, my entrepreneurial streak where I felt like some at some point in my career, I do want to start my own firm I want to partner up with someone and and and just give give it a shot. And I thought I’ll salt lakes probably the place to do it at the time, you know, still not a big ad center not not thought of in that way. And I thought so that’s that’s extra challenging. Could we could we establish an agency in a place like salt lake city that that could do world class work and gain a top reputation that that was the challenge.
So I moved back and and partnered with a guy named Scott Rockwood and we formed the agency Williams and Rockwood and had lots of early successes, our goal from from the start was let’s do the kind of work that would attract the attention not just of clients in you know, in our own state borders, but but well beyond California and New York. I mean, could we do that? And we did. I mean we succeeded in one of our early clients was CBS and entertainment out of La CBS News in New York. NPR, based out of Washington that was largely pro bono, but what the heck I mean, it helps burn as your reputation. Mrs. Fields cookies based in Utah, but certainly considered a national kind of a brand. And we were featured in Communication Arts as and the one show in New York, the one club invited us to put on our own show at the one club and hosted a special soiree, we got quite a bit of attention in the trade press and ad week and Ad Age and so forth.
And I thought, wow, you know, this is kind of what I had envisioned. And we did that for 10 years. And another similarly minded agency in town, had the idea that we should merge and kind of get a little more critical mass and attract bigger clients. So we, we we merged. And it was at that point that I decided to do that the next thing that I was certainly on my mental list, which I didn’t plan, but, but the timing just turned out to be right. For me to sell my interest in the agency once it was once the merger was completed, and all the partners were in place, and the accounts were stabilized. That’s when I made the decision to start my current business ignition Consulting Group.
Marc Gutman 26:31
Was it hard to leave that agency that you found it? I mean, you could hear the tempo in your voice. I mean, you’re proud of it. and rightfully so. And there is some excitement in your voice that I’ve heard is you were reliving that. Sure. Yeah. Like, like, like that must have been difficult.
Tim Williams 26:47
It was difficult, made easier by the fact that the the merger, like a lot of businesses that they get together, and it appears to be a good match from a business standpoint, and from a client conflict standpoint, and good, you know, good synergy from a business standpoint, that but the cultural piece of it was just difficult. You know, I meet so many agencies and agency principals that have had similar experiences where that the culture is one culture, when you put two cultures together, one kind of has to dominate. And there was a that that was difficult. So that made it easier for me to to make the decision, it didn’t feel like the same place that my partner and I had had worked so hard to establish. And the ACS is still in business to this day, they changed their names called called Richter seven. So still still going. And all the original partners have moved on, was was a while ago.
So that made it easier for me to to make this decision to hang out a shingle. Start a consulting business. I’ve always had an academic streak. My, my siblings are all have advanced degrees, many of them have PhDs. And so I was the black sheep in the family, you know, the ad guy, that that the one person without the PhD and but I knew I like to write and speak and present and teach. And I thought, here’s a chance to do it. The the scariest part was I was, I was fairly young, at least as consultancies go. I mean, you look at a lot of people who, who move into the consulting business, they’re often in their late 50s, early 60s, kind of a, you know, pre retirement thing that they they want to do for a while before they you know, until they turn late 60s or 70s. I was I was 48. And, you know, had still kids at home.
So that was that was a little risky, especially to say I’m going to focus exclusively on the agency space, I’m not going to work client side. I’m going to just do what I think I know best. And that’s the market that I feel like I know, and what’s the worst that could happen? You know, worse it could happen is after a year, I can’t pay my bills. And so therefore, I will go look for a partnership and in another agency or I could always move back to New York or elsewhere. I wasn’t worried about that.
Marc Gutman 29:27
What was the trajectory of that of that business? I mean, did you have a client waiting for you? I mean, did you literally hang a shingle and just kind of wait by the phone? I mean, would that look like for you? Yeah,
Tim Williams 29:37
I did not have a client waiting for me. But you know, I felt like I’d work pretty hard to establish a good reputation. So there were agencies in in the Mountain West in the region and elsewhere who knew who I was. We belong to an agency one of these independent agency networks. which is now called magnet where I met lots of agency principals throughout North America and Europe and other places that all belong to this network and they become friends. And that’s who were a lot of my early clients were were the agencies who knew me, and who I had a relationship with. So that that really helped to have that. That that business, those relationships materialize within the first couple of weeks of me kind of announcing what I was doing. So that that definitely helped.
Marc Gutman 30:37
This episode brought to you by wildstory. Wait, isn’t that your company? It is. And without the generous support of wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn’t a logo, or a tagline, or even your product. A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product service or company. It’s what people say about you, when you’re not in the room. Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out @ www.wildstory.com. And we’d be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show.
Well, today, front and center on your website, it says stand for something and get paid for it. So first of all, kudos to someone who is a professional positioning, that’s great positioning. But that idea and I love that idea. I mean, it really resonates with me, and I think it resonates with a lot of people. But was that a formed idea at that early time? I mean, is that what you were going out and trying to talk to these agencies about
Tim Williams 32:04
the first half of it was the stand for a half the get paid for it came later? I’ll I’ll explain. So I knew that the primary thing I wanted to do for agencies was help them with their positioning strategy with their business strategy, because it’s one of the great ironies in our business, that these professional service firms agencies that are in the business of helping their clients develop a distinctive brand, and focus strategy are, you know, really poor at doing it for themselves. I mean, it’s the it’s the example of the dentist with bad teeth, you know, it’s agencies just a lack, for the most part, lack the discipline to and objectivity, quite honestly, to do it for themselves.
So I thought, this is where I’m going. This is where I think agencies need help. So I made the decision, actually, about the same time I started the business to write a book. So I went to work on a book, which is a heck of a lot of work, people who’ve written books know that. And I published take a stand for your brand, in the early years of my business, and that was a real catalyst to to help me get more more interested prospects. writing the book helped catalyze, for me, the my own process, my own thought process and a framework for helping agencies with their positioning strategy.
Five years later, I wrote a second book called positioning for professionals, which is on the same theme. It just takes what I learned in five subsequent years and and, you know, puts it into kind of a second iteration. So that’s the Stanford piece to get paid for a piece that came later. Because what I half of what I do is teach positioning strategy to professionals. The other half of what I now do is teach pricing strategy to professionals. And I would have never imagined that I would be teaching pricing. I haven’t taken a single class in accounting.
I’m not drawn to the idea of a career in accounting, or finance, necessarily. But I met a gentleman named Ron Baker, who is an accountant, a CPA, who had written some books about what’s called value based pricing for professional firms. And basically, he’s on a mission to bury the billable hour and to show how billing by the hour is, is a wildly suboptimal way of capturing the value you create for your clients. And when I met Ron, he just turned my world upside down when it came to the pricing because I was deeply ingrained as most agency professionals are in the hourly rate. hourly billing, you know, cost accounting based on hourly rates and utilization rates and all of that nonsense, which I now believe is nonsense. So he showed me the way and completely changed my paradigm. And so half of what I do is now helping help change the paradigm of mostly agencies, including the the, the multinationals now, on a better way to price our services and capture the value they create for their clients.
Marc Gutman 35:29
And so let’s, you know, let’s not assume anything, and let’s clarify, and thank you so much for breaking up that the very clear positioning statement to to two areas that I’d love to kind of shift and talk about, and the first being positioning like, what is it? I mean, you’re talking positioning positioning strategy, I want to make sure everyone’s really clear on Yeah, what it is and what it isn’t. And why does it matter?
Tim Williams 35:52
Yeah. Well, it’s a, it’s a business strategy. It’s deciding what you are and what you’re not. And it’s, it’s the what you’re not, is the hard part. I, you know, there are a lot of good models and frameworks for business strategy, the one that I that I teach, basically, is the idea that you and we all agree with, with this, just, it’s just a sensible thing to say, look, you can’t stand for everything, and you can’t serve every kind of client, you can be excellent in something, but you can’t be excellent in everything. So the agencies and other businesses that go out there and say, this will sound familiar, we’re a full service integrated marketing communications firm serving a wide range of clients, that that’s the default, so called positioning strategy for most professional firms. You’ll just visit any website at random of an agency or a law firm or an accounting firm, you’ll see those words full service, most of all, that is not a strategy.
It’s the absence of a strategy. It’s, it’s saying, we do everything for everybody. And so what what’s needed is some apply some critical thinking to say, Okay, let’s back up here. Who really is your market? Is everybody your market? Or do you have expertise in certain categories? and business segments? And, and what are those, also your service offering, you can’t be best in class and everything, but you, you can be best in class in some things. So let’s define what those things are. And then let’s talk about your method, your your methods, and you know, your your, your purpose and things to get deep. But the four things I teach are what who way? And why. So the what is what are your competencies where you can be best in class, the Who? What are the markets in which you have deep expertise? The way is, how do you deliver that in a in a unique way? And then finally, why is your purpose? Which is the the most difficult of all those four questions. So every business needs to think through those four questions to have a memorable differentiating positioning strategy.
Marc Gutman 38:11
And how does a firm or an agency know where to draw the line? I mean, I think that a real common problem that I see and and i know i personally even suffer from it is, you know, you start narrow. And then in this crazy world of marketing and branding, and communications, you just start to bleed slowly or quickly into other areas, you start to touch other areas, you start to think, Oh my gosh, if I don’t deliver the next step in the process, my beloved client is going to go to my competitor, and then they’re going to wine them and dine them and take them over. And to be honest, I even feel like I’ve had that happen a couple times. Not every time but you know, you’re, I’m talking for personal experience. So like, how do you know where to draw that line? And how to be broad enough, but certainly not too broad?
Tim Williams 39:02
Yeah, great, great question. Because I think it’s human nature to diversify. It’s true, actually, that most businesses start fairly narrow. And over time, they take on client requests and start offering services that they never intended. It’s like barnacles on a ship that you know, you never intended for. You look back and say, Wow, I actually didn’t. That was not intentional growth, or I mean, at least not intentional and intentional business strategy was quite unintentional. We just go to a client meeting and they say, Hey, can you do our event the big event we’ve got planned and you say, you give a halting Yes. And then you go back and meet with your partners and say, Hey, guys, can we can we do events and and so you scramble and try and figure it out?
Well, that’s so that’s human nature because we want to play Our clients, especially on the front lines of client service, what you have to do is just be clear about the areas that that that you want to become your core strategy and those that you don’t, my experience is that it actually increases client trust and respect to tell them you don’t do something like, No, actually, we we don’t, we’re not in the events business. But we will have, we’re happy to hook you up with someone who could do a good job for you, that increase increases clients respect for you to say that, that you don’t do that, because they know that the things you are doing doing for them, that you have some competence and deep expertise in drawing, drawing the line is, is the hard part of strategic development, deciding what not to do. So that’s, that’s a matter of getting a small multidisciplinary group of senior executives, you know, in the firm together.
And first of all, convincing that group that that narrow is is better than than broad and that narrow is not the same as small, I mean, that that we really have to fight that one because we feel like narrow fills, niches and small and we’re never going to be big, but the reverse is true. I mean, Starbucks is pretty narrow, right coffee, and they’re on every street corner in the world, they’re not a full service restaurant, you know, just take, serving all all sorts of different meals in different forms. So narrow is not the same as small, that I find that the primary hurdle is psychological, that most of the time, the reason we give into these requests to do something is that we just we just don’t have it accepted that that actually we’d be better off saying no than saying yes.
Marc Gutman 41:56
So I was recently told Matt that recently, but you know, within the last year told that branding is not a discipline, it’s not a positioning, what’s your thought on that?
Tim Williams 42:07
I think branding is one of the most overused words and in business, I think we we, we throw it around, and it when meaning lots of different things. A graphic design firm would i would interpret branding as the look and feel of the brand. You know, it’s not only its logo and its mark, but its packaging and its building and its trucks. And you know that that’s that’s branding, but but the argument is that branding goes much deeper than that, it it’s just as much or more in the experience that brand delivers, then then the product acts itself. I mean, David Ogilvy used to say that a brand is someone’s idea of your product, you know, a brand is the idea in the mind of the of the customer of your product.
So I do think that the the central question around branding, or the first question to ask about it is, is about what your business strategy is those four questions? Have you decided on a on a target market? You know, who’s your customer? What, what are you going to feature as core products and services? You have to do that? First? It’s not because otherwise the the branding exercise will be will be superficial, it’ll it’ll just be a band aid, when you haven’t really done the hard work of developing and defining the positioning strategy. Am I answering your question?
Marc Gutman 43:31
Yeah, totally. Yeah, that was great. And let’s talk a little bit about the second half, they get paid for it. So why is pricing so hard? Like, right, like it really is. I mean, it’s one of these things I look back in my career, I probably literally today at lunch, I was having lunch with someone who owns a software development firm, but same same idea. And he was talking about, like the conversation was, how hard it is to deal and maneuver around pricing. And so like why why is it so difficult?
Tim Williams 44:03
Well, most of us have never studied it. You know, I do I do seminars with rooms full of CEOs, CFOs, in some cases from large, global multinational communications firms. And I asked how many here have ever read a book on pricing and not a single hand goes up? Because we don’t, it’s just not on our radar screen. We we think, well, we need to know how to run, read a balance sheet and an income statement. We need to understand basic cost accounting to run a business. But none of us have ever studied pricing, which is not an accounting, right. It’s and that’s that’s what in the end kind of attracted me to it. It’s not the science of counting your costs. It’s the art of making judgments about the value you produce. And these are two completely different disciplines. If you look at Large client organizations, they have a finance department and a chief financial officer.
They also have a pricing department and a chief pricing officer. These are separate disciplines with separate skill sets in, in most professional firms, that gets conflated. We conflate, you know, cost and price. And we have our finance people doing the pricing, and they’re the worst people to be doing the pricing, you price based on the value you’re creating for your clients, not the cost you incur inside your firms. So this is a matter of dragging professional firms kicking and screaming into what is essentially a pricing revolution. Over the last 20 years, there’s been a global pricing revolution in in among marketers, they have, they have developed a lot of really innovative interesting ways of pricing their products and services. And you see new new methodologies invented every other every other week. But professional firms are stuck in this old dusty bill by the hour paradigm that actually dates all the way back to the Industrial Revolution. They just haven’t ever pulled their heads out of the sand to see to even look at what pricing is about.
Marc Gutman 46:18
And and why is that important, though? Like what what are they missing? And how does that change once they start to, you know, follow this idea of value based pricing?
Tim Williams 46:28
Well, it if you look at the revenue and profit margins of the agency business over the last 40 years as a business, not only a steady decline, but a freefall agencies used to make 30% margins back in the days of Don Draper madman. If you fast forward to the next decade, those margins dropped to 25 and then 20, and then 15. And today, the average global agency profit margin is below 9%.
So there’s, there’s a real economic imperative for this, this, I guess, if we just keep going in the current cost plus bill by the hour framework, you’ll eventually will have agencies that generate no profit or negative profit, because that’s, that’s what’s been happening. So it’s, it’s an absolute necessity to look at a better pricing model, plus all the interesting research around the what’s called the power of the 1%. In in, in most businesses, though, if you improve your pricing by just 1%, which is completely doable, you’ll improve your margins by more than 10%. In some businesses, it’s 20, or 30, or 40%. So it’s definitely worth the time and attention of both entrepreneurs and managers to improve their pricing.
Marc Gutman 47:59
Yeah, and so I’ve been on this journey of trying to follow value based pricing, I think of it a lot like yoga, you know, it’s like a practice. It’s not, it is something that I’ve like mastered. It’s something I’m working towards and getting better and no, it’s it’s difficult. It’s challenging. And there’s a lot of different reasons why I mean, it’s weird. I say weird, but maybe it’s not it’s, it’s in conflict for me to charge, you know, a big company a lot more in a smaller company, a lot less for essentially the same service. You know, that’s a little bit in conflict. I tried to do it. But also, you know, why do you think it is so difficult, you know, so it’s easy to talk about, it’s easy to understand the philosophy and the the idea of value based pricing, but rise, it’s so difficult to put into practice? And what do you recommend to firms that are that are trying but maybe struggling a little bit?
Tim Williams 48:47
Well, I think it’s definitely difficult for professional service providers, it’s not so difficult for manufacturers, and and others, I mean, they they have no problem charging different prices for the exact same thing to different customers. For us. We feel like that might be slightly on ethical. But it’s it’s not. I mean, it’s just it’s just capitalism. I mean, it’s just the way the marketplace works. And I think the reason is, because we’re tethered to the billable hour, we’ve come to most people only know the billable hour system, they’ve spent their entire careers in it. So they’ve come to equate a value and, and cost an effort on a one to one basis. So if I spend this much effort, it’s worth this much. So that’s the main reason we it’s it’s the wrong, it’s the wrong paradigm.
It’s the wrong theory of value. I mean, the labor theory of value was developed by Karl Marx, you know that that was the idea that that the amount of labor that went into something ought to determine its price and that I think I think we’d all agree that that’s a pretty outmoded paradigm. So I think it’s just, as I say, more psychological than anything, and it’s a journey for sure. It’s, I’m gonna say it took me two or three years to fully wrap my head around it and get comfortable with it. Because when I first heard about it, I thought it was insane.
Marc Gutman 50:22
And so you mentioned, agencies like in the model, like, you know, back in Mad Men days, and since then it’s at least, you know, from a revenue standpoint and margin standpoint, like steady decline, is the agency model as we know it? Is it? Is it dead or dying? Or what do you think it’s at right now?
Tim Williams 50:41
Yeah, there, as you probably know, there’s a two or three articles a week on on on that, with that kind of a headline, right, the agency model is, is dead, I certainly think that the the agency revenue model is dead. And that underlies, I think the health of our overall business model. If you think about a business model being composed of how how the firm creates value, how it delivers value, and how it captures value, those, to me are the three main elements of a business successful business model, the deliver value piece is your positioning strategy, your what your who the deliver value is the your your production model and your organizational structure. And the capture value piece is, is your cost structure and your and a revenue model.
And I would submit most agencies don’t have a revenue model. And that’s what’s that’s the thing that is most, in the most making the agency business model overall and the most dangerous because we don’t have a revenue model, we have a cost structure that masquerades as a revenue model. I mean, Tesla has a revenue model, Apple has a revenue model, they’ve got pricing professionals, they’ve got lots of different ways they price, they test and learn, we we add up our time and send the clients a bill. And that that just is unsustainable and it doesn’t align at all with the value that we create for our clients. We we create tremendous value that is money we just leave on the table.
Marc Gutman 52:13
Yeah, and so using that as the framework, what is the successful agency look like?
Tim Williams 52:19
The successful agency doesn’t do timesheets doesn’t equate activities and efforts with value though they are their inputs. So that at a basic level, we want to move away from obsessing about and charging for, and reconciling and analyzing and all the nonsense that most agencies do inputs, and instead direct our attention to the actual outputs themselves, the work product and the outcomes that we deliver on behalf of our clients. So the successful agencies are the ones that have walked away from obsessing about inputs and charging for inputs and instead have found ways lots of different ways to charge for the outputs. And in some cases, the outcomes and culturally, to work in an agency that is not looking at your utilization rate they you’re working instead of for, for a culture of accountability instead of a culture of utilization.
No, those firms don’t care if you look busy. They only look they only care if you’re producing results on behalf of your clients. I mean, they’re defining productivity as it in the right way, you know, productivity is not buisiness.
Marc Gutman 53:42
Tim, before I get to my final question, where can our listeners learn more about you? Where can they find out more about Tim Williams?
Tim Williams 53:51
Well, I, I do write quite a bit on LinkedIn to get a flavor for more of the ways I think in the work I do. I think LinkedIn is a good place to go with the articles that I write there. And the website Ignition Group comm also, that’s where I publish a blog. And that’s where Stanford something and get get paid for it is explained in a little more detail.
Marc Gutman 54:19
Thank you. We’ll make sure to link to all those resources in the show notes for easy connection to Tim Tim. So we come to a close here. If that young, eight year old radio Tim ran into you today, what do you think he’d say?
Tim Williams 54:33
I think the eight-year-old would be happy that this is that I followed that path and found a way to do something that I love and make a living at it. So that’s a that’s a great, great question.
Marc Gutman 54:58
That is Tim Williams of the Ignition Group. I am so fascinated by the topics of positioning and pricing in business. I find it is truly the difference between those businesses that are successful and those that are struggling to stay afloat. I feel like I need to go look at our positioning and pricing as soon as I stopped recording this podcast will be linking to all things Tim Williams in the show notes, so please make sure to check him out. And thank you again to Tim Williams and the Ignition Group. 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 big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can’t deny
56 min
October 28, 2020BGBS 045: David Barnett | Popsockets | Surprisingly Useful
BGBS 045: David Barnett | Popsockets | Surprisingly Useful
From “after-school sports dork” to CEO of Popsockets, David Barnett left a ripple in the world with an invention that revolutionized how we hold phones. And to think it was originally made out of glued clothing buttons. By accomplishing his purpose of increasing people’s happiness, even if just a little everyday, David teaches us that no impact is too small. That “doodad” that he built in his living room has reached unimaginable heights, selling well over 200 million units and jump-starting a movement worldwide.
Above all, you’ll learn in this episode that David has an intuitive mind. You could say that his years enveloped in philosophy and questioning the nature of reality cultivated an inventor's mind. Examining the abstract allowed David to imagine something that didn’t exist, and yet, his intention was only to solve an individual problem. Little did he know, there was much more to come, including sharing the wealth with important causes. We admire David’s ability to make something surprisingly useful out of a simple annoyance, inspiring us to ask, how can we turn our own frustrations into action?
In this episode, you'll learn...
8-15-year-old David was always an entrepreneur, thinking up ideas like a bike repair business and mixtape business
David saw his grandfather as the most successful person he knew and therefore wanted to do anything he did to achieve similar success. At the time it was business

An epiphany in college led David astray from business for a significant amount of years to delve into philosophy and physics

David became completely engrossed in philosophy and became a professor

Frustration led to the invention when David created a "Popsocket" out of buttons to prevent tangling his headphones

There was no “eureka” moment with the handmade button detangler for a long time until his friends and family made fun of him enough to make a real prototype that got people excited

The insurance package from David’s house burning down made great funding for Popsockets

David’s wife contributed the name, “Popsockets”

The original Popsockets was a case with two grips that expanded and collapsed

When sampling his product with his students, David realized that people were using Popsockets for a different reason than its initial purpose, which led to a standalone grip

Although David never wanted to give up, after receiving his third defective shipment of 30,000 grips and exhausting his finances, he felt for the first time that he might be forced to

Today, the Poptivism program is a way for you to purchase a grip and send 50% of the profits to a charity of your choice
Resources
Popsockets
Poptivism
Original Kickstarter campaign
Quotes
[29:23] I suppose it was just frustration with wasted time. So when I notice that my time is wasted more than once on the same problem, I tend to take action.
[34:08] My friends and family motivated me by making fun of me to start tinkering with mechanisms to get the buttons to expand and collapse so that it would look a little more respectable and also have more functionality.
[55:37] One of my original goals, when I decided to commercialize this invention, was to generate wealth for myself so that I could use that wealth for good causes.
[59:17] All of our products, we try our best to include the three ingredients which the original product has. One is the empowering quality, so it just makes using a phone so much better. The second is the fun or magical feature—that it's surprisingly fun. And it’s surprisingly useful.
Podcast Transcript
David Barnett 0:02
When we get right down to it, I was all excited. And they would just contradict themselves, you know, one contradiction after another. And when I pointed out, they'd laugh it off. And I think to myself, I can't laugh that off this is it like this is the foundation of reality and you're contradicting yourself. There's nothing funny about that. We need a real theory here to understand what's going on. And eventually, it just frustrated me so much.
So I walked out of a lab, a physics lab, halfway through the lab, I hadn't done any work. And the first half, I was just sitting there looking around at the other students, and looking at my lab book thinking to myself, I can't do this. The rest of my life there. It's so detail-oriented and they don't really want to address the fundamental questions. So halfway through, I walked past my professor waved to him, he didn't know what I was doing, walk straight over to the philosophy department and got an application to apply to their master's program at CU.
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 Back story. How a philosophy professors frustration with his perpetually tangled headphone cords prompted him to invent what might be the most recognizable mobile phone accessory today. All right. All right now if you like and enjoy the show, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over at Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of their algorithms that determine the ratings on their charts. Ratings help us to build an audience because we get discovered people find out about us, which then helps us to continue to produce this show.
If you haven't gone ahead and given us a review and you think that we're deserving please please go ahead and do that that would be greatly appreciated. This is Episode 45. And today's episode is oh, so worthy of 45. I want you to think back to 2012. This is the time of the iPhone three Marvel's The Avengers has just released in the theaters. The Space Shuttle Endeavour has had its final flight. And Barack Obama is elected for his second term. Homeland the TV show is the talk of the watercooler and Facebook goes public among concerns that they'd be able to make money. funny to think about now.
It is also the year that David Barnett, philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, launched his Kickstarter campaign for Popsockets. I want to take a moment here and call out his Kickstarter video. I have personally been involved in creating and advising and several Kickstarter videos. And I'm still not sure what his campaign was selling or promising. But what I can tell you is that it's one of the best Kickstarter videos I've ever seen. We'll make sure to link to it in the show notes. And I highly recommend you check it out. But let's get back to popsockets. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if you have a mobile phone, which I know you do, little side thought Do you know anyone without a mobile phone today? Anyways, I know you have a mobile phone. So I'm going out on a limb and going to say you have either personally used seen or know someone who has used or seen a popsocket.
You know, those little plastic buttons stuck to the back of a phone or case that open accordion style and have that satisfying little pop when extending and collapsing. And there's something magical is David will explain about this piece of plastic and rubber hay and I'm sure it's some sort of advanced material. And I'm using terms like plastic and rubber loosely just bear with me. And there's a draw. That's in explicable the invention started as a way to solve a very real problem. David's headphone wires kept getting all tangled. And as you hear, anything that either frustrates David or cost him time moves him to action. But while the inspiration was tangled headphones, what he found was that most people were using Popsockets as a grip.
Today, Popsockets have shipped over 200 million Popsockets all over the globe, and the business has been structured to serve a greater purpose. David Barnett is the founder and operating CEO today and this is his story.
So David, you're best known for inventing and running with the company Popsockets. I think at this point, if you don't know what a Popsocket is, you're probably living Under a rock. they're just about ubiquitous I'm sure you were hoping they're they're more ubiquitous but as far as I'm concerned they're they're fairly ubiquitous. When when you were a young kid when you were young boy was like eight year old David like an inventor and into inventing things?
David Barnett 5:15
I yeah, he was he was a little hustler. I like to say, so little eight year old through I'd say 15 year old David was an inventor. And I say more generally a hustler because he was just constantly coming up with ways to start a business. So more of an entrepreneur, starting businesses, for instance, a bike repair business, even though I had no idea how to repair a bike, it didn't stop me from opening a bike repair business in my neighborhood. I had a mixtape business in I think fourth grade. Because my sister's boyfriend had a bitchin album collection. I thought I'd take advantage of that by making mixtapes for the other students and selling them. And then I had a string of other businesses.
Marc Gutman 6:03
Oh, the irony, if you still had that mixtape business right now, you would have about a billion hipster customers that would be all over I love the idea of a mixtape business. That's like, that's so great. So where'd you grow up? What was that? Like? Where'd you grow up? What would your parents do for a living?
David Barnett 6:20
Sure, I grew up southeast of Denver, Colorado, out in out on the outskirts of suburbia. So we were on the edges of suburbia. And then I watched it grow as I grew up, around us. And let's see, my father was a manager of a retail store called medianav. Back in the day, it was eaten up by Macy's, which I don't think exists anymore today, but just a general retail store. And my mom occasionally worked as a secretary for CPA firm, but maybe 50% worked and 50% an at home mom.
Marc Gutman 7:00
And so was would you say by all accounts, your upbringing was fairly normal or standard, or was there anything a little bit different about it? And by the way, what do you call the outskirts of suburbia? What was that at that time?
David Barnett 7:14
It was unincorporated Arapahoe county at the time. So it wasn't part of any city. We were in a county but not in any city near Cherry Creek Reservoir is as most for those familiar with Colorado. We're right near that reservoir and houses were just popping up left and right. Douglas County, the fastest growing county in Colorado didn't exist yet. I watched it come into existence. Sorry. One point is the fastest growing County. And now there's just miles and miles and miles of development and neighborhood after years of development across fields that I used to play and
Marc Gutman 7:55
yeah, I'm imagining a little bit like the scene from a Spielberg movie or like et or like, you know, one of these communities, there's communities sprouting up and there's kids kind of running all over the place and and as people are discovering suburbia and the new sort of the new wave, and you know, when you were in middle school in high school outside of being a hustler, what other interest did you have? Wow, that's a
David Barnett 8:19
good question. I was a snake hunter in grade school. So I was in a gang and our gang road, road road little dirt bikes and hunted for snakes. And then in middle school and in middle school and high school I became part of a gang called the after school sports dorks. We did not name ourselves that but that's what one of the jocks on the football team named us in between probably beating me up. He called us the after school sports dorks because my friends and I would get together after school and make up games with basketballs, volleyballs, golf balls, whatever it was. So people would see us around the neighborhood, playing our made up sports games, after school sports dorks. That's really what I was. With my friends after school, I wasn't I wasn't much into school. I have to say. I had a lot of fun.
Marc Gutman 9:12
Yeah. And so you mentioned like, you know, kind of you get this nickname the after school sport dorks and you kind of threw in there that maybe you're getting beat up or chased around from time to time it was it was high school tough? Were you a little bit in that, that outcast crowd?
David Barnett 9:28
No, it wasn't tough. I wasn't in the, in the I went to large High School. So I had a lot of clicks. But my click was a mix of actually, actually athletes. So they were on some varsity teams just not not the football player, cheerleader crowd, right. So that's who I'm thinking of as the guy who, who might give me a Negi or a Snuggie and put me in an occasional headlock. Maybe give me a nice charley horse. But I cannot I cannot by any means say that I was an outcast and had a tough I had a nice group of friends and and did all right socially.
Marc Gutman 10:09
Alright, well when you're in the nice group the after-school sports dorks are hanging out like where do you think you were gonna go like after after high school? Where did you did you you know I have your your bio here and I see that you were a philosophy major at Emory which I find a little bit in contrast when you say you really weren't into school because I don't really think of philosophy majors of not being in the school, but we'll talk about that. But I mean, did you Was that your plan? Did you think you were going to be a philosopher? like How'd you end up at Emory?
David Barnett 10:36
I thought I was going to be a business person in high school and grade school and middle school. I looked up to my grandfather, he was a successful businessman. And he was vice president of a company called Chris Kraft. And I just admired him that was what I thought of as success because he was the most successful person around me had thought and business happened to be what he was engaged in. So I figured I'd be a businessman and I had been a hustler, you know, in my life and an entrepreneur. And then I went to Emory, because I checked it, I checked the box off on the common application where you get to choose from a list of colleges to apply to and you didn't have to fill out a separate application for each one. That seemed efficient to me. So I just checked off a bunch of boxes, checked Emory and it was the best school I got into. And that's why I was at Emory.
That's why most of my friends at Emory read, it's that we've gotten rejected from the Ivy League schools in the better schools. And so that was our answer. When you asked why we were there. It's a good school Emory, but it was often not people's first choice. And then once I got to Emory, I, I took a big turn away from business, probably from eating hallucinogenic mushrooms, I'm guessing, sitting around with my friends thinking, Wow, I can't be a businessman in my life. What a waste of a life. I've got to do something else I've got to do philosophy or physics or science. So some kind of epiphany in college about the meaning of life led me away from business and onto a pretty significant detour for for many years before I got back to my roots as a hustler.
Marc Gutman 12:12
And so your grandfather worked at Chris craft, the motorboat company is that the right company?
David Barnett 12:19
that's what they that's what that brand is known for. He he was a executive vice president. So he and somebody else ran that company. But really how they made their money was was in media. So they, they acquired they sold Warner to Time, but in the Time Warner deal. When Time became Time Warner. They sold United Television to Paramount for the UPN network. They own a bunch of TV stations, radio stations, they own Chris craft boats and sold it off and they owned was it paper, some some Aircraft Company? They had their hands in a lot of different businesses. And
Marc Gutman 12:59
It's kind of the era of the multinational conglomerate, and doing all those kinds of different businesses where you're like, why is Chris Kraft selling, you know, packaged foods?
David Barnett 13:12
Why are they getting in fights with Rupert Murdoch, I remember there are articles when I was a kid about how Chris Kraft was the white knight like saving. I don't know, united television, or maybe was Warner Brothers, I think they save Warner from a hostile takeover from rupert murdoch. And that was all those were the exciting days where there were hostile takeovers, and like you said, multinational conglomerates.
Marc Gutman 13:35
And so what was interesting about that to you like when you saw your grandfather, and what was his name, by the way?
David Barnett 13:41
Lawrence Barnett
Marc Gutman 13:43
Very, very strong vice president name. It's very good. If I was gonna cast at Lawrence Barnett. I think that would be it. But like, what, what do you remember about him? Like, why was that appealing when he had all these other influences around you?
David Barnett 13:58
He really was the just, he just seemed successful to me. His wife, by the way, was Broadway, a Broadway star she started in in, she was Sarah Brown, and in Oakley original Oklahoma on Broadway. She was in Guys and Dolls as one of the main characters. And the two of them when I visited them, they just seem successful to me. And it's not that I admired so much what they did, I think just as a child, subconsciously. That was my only option in front of me. Not that not that the rest of my family members were failures or anything, they just seemed exceptionally successful. And they and by the way, they happen to do business. So have they been exceptionally successful, and they were both physicist, I would have been a physicist. I think it was just for me what success was and I was driven to be successful as a kid.
Marc Gutman 14:49
And then you got to Emory and you talk a little bit about it. That sounds like you went on a bit of self discovery yourself. I mean, it is a pretty big change I have to imagine from Denver at the time and And you're you're at Emory. And you're your experiment and you're you mentioned some psychedelics, you're, you're deciding what to do with yourself like, like, why philosophy?
David Barnett 15:11
Wow, I, I remember, I was taking some economics as an economics major. And one of my classes was full. I don't think I've ever told anybody the story. But I remember standing in front of a wall with schedules and, and lit course listings. And I had to choose a different class because I couldn't take the class that I had signed up for. And there was a beautiful girl standing next to me. And she chose some philosophy class. And I thought, Well, that seems like a good idea. So I ended up enrolling this in this philosophy class. Because she did. And I loved it. It just opened my mind it stimulated me I found is so much more interesting than the other classes I was taking. So I started taking more and more philosophy classes, because I found them just stimulating and intellectually rigorous and lively. So that got me into philosophy. And, and it was a totally different sort of philosophy from the philosophy I ended up doing and getting my PhD. But it's still open my mind to
Unknown Speaker 16:15
anything happened with the girl.
David Barnett 16:16
I can't really I highly doubt it. So I guess since I don't remember any answers, no.
Marc Gutman 16:24
If you can't remember, the answer is always No. So you're, you're at you're at Emory. And you've, you've been turned on by philosophy and you decide to get into that and in put some rigor into philosophy and, and and then what happened? Where'd you go from Emory?
David Barnett 16:42
It's an exaggeration to say put some rigor into it, it woke me up, I liked my classes. But I have to say, when I wasn't in class, I was not studying unless it was an all nighter right before an exam. I was having a lot of fun in college, so and I don't regret it, I would do it again, I had so much fun. But when I finished Emory, I thought to myself, okay, now I'm ready to learn and get serious. And I was ready to become a physicist. I wanted to understand the nature of reality, and the nature of the universe. And so I moved back to Colorado where tuition was lower, because I, my grandfather paid for my college, my undergrad, but he was not going to pay for any further school. So I was going to have to pay for my own school, which meant in state tuition, and living in the dorms and being serious.
So I went to University of Colorado, put myself in the dorms, I had a lot of friends in Boulder, I stayed away from my friends to be serious. And I took full load of math and physics and chemistry, all the courses i'd need to prepare for a Ph. D. program in physics. And I just immerse myself in it. So I was a serious student there for the year and a half a year and three quarters, preparing for a Ph. D. program in physics.
Marc Gutman 17:59
Did you understand your reality? Did you find the answer?
David Barnett 18:03
I didn't. So I yeah, I found it stimulating. I enjoyed the classes. But I was sitting in a physics lab, I ended up debating with my physics professors quite a bit and being disappointed with their answers. I felt like we would get, we would start debating, we'd get to the crucial questions about the nature of reality, say the interpretation of quantum physics. And we get right down to it, I was all excited. And they would just contradict themselves, you know, one contradiction after another. And when I pointed out, they'd laugh it off. And I think to myself, can't laugh that off.
This is it like this is the foundation of reality, and you're contradicting yourself. There's nothing funny about that. We need a real theory here to understand what's going on. And eventually, it just frustrated me so much. So I walked out of a lab, a physics lab, halfway through the lab, I hadn't done any work in the first half, I was just sitting there looking around at the other students and looking at my lab book thinking to myself, I can't do this, the rest of my life there is so detail oriented, and they don't really want to address the fundamental questions. So halfway through, I walked past my professor waved to him, he didn't know what I was doing, walk straight over to the philosophy department and got an application to apply to their master's program and CU.
Marc Gutman 19:18
And did you feel? I mean, it sounds like you felt full of conviction. And hey, like, I'm real confident in this decision, or was there at all a little bit of like, Oh, crap, what did I just do?
David Barnett 19:29
No, I was confident. I was happy with the decision, even though I didn't really even know what philosophy was. I had taken an undergrad, gotten an undergrad degree in philosophy, but like I said, it was a totally different sort of philosophy. And so what I was about to immerse myself in here at CU, I really didn't know. And it was totally foreign to me.
When I started taking these classes. I had no idea what was going on. What they were talking about why they were talking about these topics, why they mattered. It took me a good couple of years. To really appreciate what the method was, and then why I thought it ended up thinking why, why it was better suited to my interest than the methods of undergrad philosophy.
Marc Gutman 20:12
So how the rest of that period of your education go?
David Barnett 20:15
It was great. Some of the best years of my life spent my days thinking about really interesting topics, the nature of thoughts, the nature of consciousness, I also did a lot of philosophy of physics. So I ended up being able to address those questions that, that I felt that I wasn't able to address with the physics professors. And so interpretations of quantum physics in general relativity, philosophy of math, even. So I fell in love with it, really, and then ended up pursuing a PhD. I went to Cornell gotten into their Ph. D. program, and then I transferred to NYU, and ended up getting a PhD in philosophy at NYU.
Marc Gutman 20:57
And then was that your plan? Did you think hey, like, I'm getting higher education in philosophy, and I'm going to teach it at a university. That's my plan.
David Barnett 21:07
That is the plan, though, you'll find people in PhD programs in philosophy, and probably probably a lot of topics would never use the word teach, because it's so the emphasis is so much on research, rather than teaching. It's more, I'm going to devote my life to researching the subject matter. And oh, by the way, I'll teach and that's how I make my money. And that's how you keep your job, of course and get tenures is based on the research, not the teaching. So yeah, I was passionate about the subject matter and passionate about that a career in philosophy as a professor,
Marc Gutman 21:42
What was the subject matter that you were so passionate about that you were like, Hey, I'm going to devote my life to this?
David Barnett 21:48
So I ended up doing a lot of work in philosophy of language, the fountain, so that's sort of the foundation of, of language, in philosophy of language, you don't ask particular questions about, say, English or Japanese or French, you ask more fun, fundamental questions about the nature of language. So you would ask what, what must any language look like? What are the basic building blocks of a language? And what is meaning? So our sentences, sentences I'm uttering right now means something to you, I'm communicating thoughts to you right now. What are these things the the meanings of my sentences, or I just call them thoughts, they end up the things we're communicating are actually our thoughts, right?
So I quickly moved from philosophy of language into philosophy of the mind. And you ask, what is the thought? What sort of thing is it? And it can't be related to humans, either, because you could imagine an alien having a thought or coming down and communicating with us. So it's not, you know, some neural pattern in our brain, it's got to be something more abstract. And that can then lead to more questions about consciousness and what what the nature of conscious being is. So I did philosophy of language, some metaphysics that I hate to say that word on outside the context of philosophy, because it can mean lots of things to different people. But that's generally just the nature of reality, what sorts of things exist and what categories and things exist? So philosophy of mind philosophy of language and metaphysics, were my, my main areas,
Marc Gutman 23:20
heavy stuff, I like it. I feel like we could spend hours just talking about that, but we'll spare a little bit maybe some other time. We'll get into that I'd love to. I'd love to dive deeper. But you're, you know, you, you finish up your graduate program at NYU, I'm assuming and correct me if I've got this right or wrong. You come back to your your one of your alma mater, see you and you become a professor in philosophy. Is that is that?
David Barnett 23:44
Yes, it was. It was a little more of a circuitous route back to CU. I started as a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina. And then I transferred to University of Vermont, which I which I loved. I like Davidson too, but really loved University of Vermont being in Burlington, it was much like boulder and then I did have the opportunity to come back to Colorado, which I did so I took that opportunity I think in around 2006 and came back for a tenure track position here at CU Boulder.
Marc Gutman 24:21
Was that at that like at that moment? Are you thinking hey like I'm I've done it like I'm back in Colorado? I'm a professor in the the discipline that I'm that I'm want to be in like are you what's going on for you content? Are you? Are you kind of like getting restless?
David Barnett 24:39
No I was very much content even though sad leaving Vermont. I really loved it there. I was happy there. But Colorado was a place. I wanted to end up long term and in academics, you don't typically have the opportunity to choose your, your destination. So for me, I'm getting the opportunity to Come be a tenured professor at Boulder ultimately, be a tenured professor, that was a massive opportunity for me to be back here. And I was very much happy with it. So, and I was still passionate about philosophy to
Marc Gutman 25:15
Are you kind of doing what we today call a side hustle is the hustler and you showing up in different ways before kind of like we get to the the big idea, but like, Are you trying other things?
David Barnett 25:27
No, not at first, I was still squarely immersed in philosophy. So I spent, I spent my days when she's when I compared to today, they were relatively empty. But in philosophy, you know, I only had one, if I got a great night of sleep, which meant nine and a half 10 hours of sleep, then I had about two hours of good concentration time in me the next day where I could really be productive and solve problems and think through some issues. And then the rest of the day was mountain biking, playing, preparing for a class maybe. So it was a great lifestyle. But it didn't involve subject matter-wise, it didn't involve anything but philosophy.
Marc Gutman 26:10
And so you're filling your days with philosophy and you're filling your mind with expansive thoughts. And let's talk about what's going on with your earbud chords. what's what's happening.
David Barnett 26:24
So let's see 2006 I think is when I arrived at CU, I might be wrong, but roughly then. And then in 2010, I think by 2010, four years later, I had this right, I think I had secured tenure for myself. So I didn't really have the pressure anymore to to publish, publish, publish. And I also had a lot of papers that I'd written that I just hadn't submitted to journals yet. So pressure was off. In terms of research, I was also starting to burn out. So I just was frustrated spending my days trying to convince these other professors of of things that I thought, I just thought were totally obvious. And that I just asked myself, do I want to spend my life trying to convince these extremely stubborn people of some simple points? Or could I do something else.
So it was already in my mind that I that I was I was getting burnt out. And then one day, I got frustrated for the 30th time pulling my tangled headset cords out of my pocket. So I hopped in my car went to a local fabric store, Joanne fabrics, till the first solution ended up gluing a couple of big clothing buttons to the back of my iPhone three, with a couple of little spacer buttons underneath them. So I could wrap my cord around my headset and prevent the tangle. And that was the beginning of the popsockets journey.
Marc Gutman 27:54
Well, that's interesting to me. I mean, a lot of times, you know, I say that businesses are started are one of three ways or all three ways frustration, inspiration or desperation. Certainly, that story illustrates some of those. But I'm also sensing in your own life. There's this moment where David gets, you know, you take it, you take it, you take it and then it's just you can't take it anymore, and you're gonna take action, you're going to MIT take a solution, you're not going to allow things to frustrate you. You're going to make a change, right. And I think that's really cool that like you're proactive, you know, you're like, Hey, I'm not just gonna, like let this insanity repeat itself. But like walking me through a little bit like, you know, I love the I love the image of you taking action and going to Joe and fabrics. But yeah, I think we also need to set the stage a little bit. I mean, you know, ear headphones, and earbud headphones, you know, we're becoming quite ubiquitous.
They had the long wires. I mean, we're getting to a point, you know, David were probably in like, five years ago to tell the story and kids are gonna be like, what are earbud wires? Like, what? What are those? And, you know, so like, I mean, what's going on? I mean, are you just pulling it out a jumble in your pocket? And you're just like, like, I mean, Are you frustrated? Are you like kind of cursing Apple under your breath thinking like, like, why? Like, why don't they do this better? I mean, what's going on for you before you really take action and get those buttons?
David Barnett 29:21
Sure. I suppose it was just a frustration with a waste wasted time. So when I noticed that my time is wasted more than once on the same problem I I tend to take action, whether it's organizing my stuff better in drawers so that I can find it next time and not waste time looking for something. And this had just been too many times where I found myself standing, picking at this at this bundle of wires that were tangled and wasting whatever it was two or three minutes before I could even use the headset. And then something's like you said something just snapped and I thought I can't To deal with this anymore, it's not like I lived right next to the fabric either I lived up in the mountains, so I hopped in my car and drove, you know, 20 minutes to the fabric store without a solution in mind just to kind of walk the aisles and look for a solution for myself.
Marc Gutman 30:17
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Of all places, why Joann fabric? I mean I think like if I had this, you know and by no means am I a man-man so I'm not going to get guns or like Home Depot, but I'm probably going to like Rei or like I don't know, like I'm thinking of like maybe a you know that that's probably where I would go what what prompted you to go to join fabrics and think of buttons?
David Barnett 31:41
Sure, I can't remember exactly. But I'd say putting myself and myself back in those shoes. It would either be macaque ns, which is the the hardware store that has everything under the sun. And it probably has this probably has a Joanne fabric somewhere in the store, or Joanne fabric. I don't know why I started with Julian fabric. And I didn't have buttons in mind. At first, I was just going to walk the aisles to look for something to build, I certainly didn't have in mind that there would already be a pre existing solution.
So that's why I didn't go to Rei, or store, you know, mobile accessories store that might already have something, I was going to build my own solution. And fortunately, oh my god, this is some of the best fortune I've had in my life. I did not Google this problem. Had I looked for a solution for this online, I probably would have found a YouTube video showing somebody point sticking out their pointer finger and their pinky finger and holding their two middle fingers down with their thumb, and then wrapping their cord really quickly around the two horns of the bowl that you make when you stick your pointer finger in your your index finger and your pinky finger out. You quickly wrap your cord around the two. And that's what I ended up doing later on after the after I use the invention mark as a grip. It's a great solution to so I would have never been at Popsockets had I seen that video.
Marc Gutman 33:06
And so when you're injured when fabrics and you get the button going, was it a bit of a eureka moment? Or was it like oh like okay, this will work. And I'm just gonna do this and move on with my life.
David Barnett 33:19
I say the latter. There's just a, I'm happy with a solution for myself. Not really Eureka.
Marc Gutman 33:26
Cool. And so you're using the solution you're wrapping your wires and things seem to be going well. When do you start getting a sense that this might be something that other people want?
David Barnett 33:40
Not? Well, geez, I'm guessing here, but I'm guessing it was a couple of months. What happened was that my friends and family poked fun at me for having these enormous clothing buttons on the back of my little iPhone three. Remember, the iPhone three was tiny compared to current phone. So it was kind of like the Zoolander phone. And I had these huge inch and a half diameter buttons on the back of it that occupied the entire back side. So it looked absurd. And my friends and family motivated me by making fun of me to start tinkering with mechanisms to get the buttons to expand and collapse. So that it would it would look a little more respectable and also have more functionality.
And so it wasn't until after I did that and prototyped the solution I landed on the accordion solution that it occurred to me that I could start selling these because when I prototype that I at one point ran into some kids in the Quad of CU boulder around this big grassy area. I ran into some kids maybe middle school age, and I showed them a prototype and their eyes just bulged out. their jaws dropped open. They went into this trance of I have to have that and that's the moment that that I thought to myself. Oh God, I could sell a ton of these or at least At least a few thousand.
Marc Gutman 35:02
Well, I want to thank you for bringing up Zoolander. It's one of my favorite all time movies, I'd say it's a top five comedy of all time. So So thanks for that just a little bonus. But thinking about this, like, how do you go about you're a cu professor, you're not a prototyper? You're not someone that designs, you know, molded plastic goods like how did you go about prototyping this and prototyping that according design?
David Barnett 35:28
Sure. So I went into Ali Baba. And I found, I just picked randomly, I don't recommend that people do this. I randomly found a prototyping group and the guy's name was Cade Wu. And this guy, Cade Wu, would accept my files. So I also taught myself 3d CAD software called SolidWorks. And I started making models of these accordions actually first tried hiring an engineering student, but that lasted a couple of weeks, maybe a few weeks, so frustrating having to tell somebody make this little change, make that little change, and then wait a few days for the changes. And so instead of just taught myself and started cranking on the software, and I would send these models off to Cade Wu in China, and I believe, two or three weeks later, in my mailbox, I'd get, I don't know, 30 or 40 prototypes from different models, maybe I'd send him six months, six different models. And he'd send me two or three or four of each of these models. And they were they were terrible.
I can tell you, that was terribly disappointing. When I received them, they did not function at all, they didn't expand or collapse. They were nothing close to the final product.
Marc Gutman 36:45
And so what do you think? Are you like, this is a wait, like, maybe I'm just wrong is this is this a waste of time, like this is just not?
David Barnett 36:51
It's odd, because I have fond thoughts of Cade Wu I really like Cade Wu. And yet, Kate would cause me so much suffering and pain. So I have mixed feelings about Cade Woo. On the one hand, I have fond thoughts of him. On the other hand, he sent me off on the wrong path again, and again, I didn't realize it for at least a year. But he was telling me that he was using certain materials, for instance, polyethylene, or polypropylene. And so I would get these prototypes. And I think, ah, my design is bad. I need to redesign it. And I totally redesigned that accordion, again, and again, and again, based on these prototypes, and after about a year, I figured out he was lying to me about the materials he was using. I'd say you Santa preen eight, nine or five, some material, I'd research he'd say, okay, Santa preen 8905. And he sent it to me. A year later, I realized he couldn't possibly be using these materials. It just doesn't work. You can't use these materials with the process that he had a prototyping process. And so looking back I had, I had just assumed again and again that my design was off. But in fact, the material was wrong. I don't know where I'd be today. If he had been honest with me what what the Popsocket grip would look like today? It might be totally different. The design.
Marc Gutman 38:11
How'd you find out he was lying. Like what? You know, what do you know about these materials?
David Barnett 38:17
I ended up hiring a design firm. When I had a Kickstarter campaign. In 2012, I hired a design firm called spec design in the Bay Area to help me design the case. So the body of the case, I had worked quite a bit on the accordion. So the main component, and I worked with them, and they started working with Kade Wu, and they were getting these prototypes. We were getting them, you know, every few weeks, and they didn't notice he was lying either. But then at some point, once somebody that the design firm, an engineer made some comment to me. And it all just I had an epiphany, I thought to myself, holy cow, this guy has been lying to me for a year, and they didn't even notice it. You can't use these, you can only use the materials I was requesting injection molding. And that's just not for prototyping, and it takes months and months to build the tooling. And then you inject the hot, you know, molten plastic into these tools. The materials just can't be prototyped the way he claimed to be prototyping, I'm sorry, infer that he was using something called a cast urethane and that that's what made up all the samples he'd been sending me.
Marc Gutman 39:26
Did you guys have it out or what happened there?
David Barnett 39:28
No, I still like Cade Wu for some reason.
I still like Cade Wu to this day. I guess I maybe that's maybe that's one of my faults is that I'm pretty charitable. I thought to myself, okay, what he was doing is he was just trying to find a cast urethane, that mimicked the material I was requesting most closely. So if I asked for a Santa cream at 8220, he would look up the specs of the material and think okay, I'll use this urethane and it will most closely relate Assemble that. And that's what he always did, I'm guessing.
Marc Gutman 40:03
So it sounds like you're investing some significant money. I mean, you're you're hiring design students, you then go get a design firm in the Bay Area, which I am assuming just based on what I know about design firms in the Bay Area is not cheap. Like, how much money are you investing in this? And like, why are you investing in this? Like, what's your thought?
David Barnett 40:26
Sure. I was burning through cash. By the time I had a Kickstarter campaign, I think I asked for maybe $12,000 in the campaign back then the campaigns were much smaller than they are today, most of them, and maybe I ended up raising 18,000 or something. I burned through that in a few weeks. So it's not as if I hope that that would really fund the whole project. It was mostly a PR activity. But I had, let's see, I had spent my savings and I was starting to go through some of my retirement.
And then fortunately, my house had burned down at the end of 2010, in the form of fire here up in Boulder, big fire that took about 240 homes, burned my hometown, and just a couple months before it burned my hometown, I had raised my limits on my insurance suspiciously. But I raised I raised my limits, and it triggered a massive increase in the limits for my contents. So after my house burned down, I was sitting on a really nice insurance package, I use that money for Popsockets instead of replacing the contents of the house. So I lived in an empty house. And then I got married and lived with with my new wife and in the rebuild house. And it was mostly empty for years, until I got some money from the Popsockets business. But I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, ultimately, on this business. When you ask why. And I don't know. I guess I was obsessed. I wanted to see it through and had I lost everything I would have been fine. I would have just tried something else after that.
Marc Gutman 42:05
So I cannot be imagined imagine what your fiance's thinking. I mean, she totally cool with this it like is like that going well? Or is there some dissent? like yeah, I'll marry you in live in an empty house while you burn all those gas on a plastic thing for your phone?
David Barnett 42:26
It depends on whether she's going to listen to this interview the answer to that question. I'm assuming she's not In which case, the real answer is no, she was not nowhere close to being okay with this. And she said she married a philosophy professor. And then she felt tricked. She got, she got somebody who was obsessed with starting up a business, spending enormous amounts of time starting a business while being a professor. So she didn't get the time that she thought she'd had with me. Since my summers were occupied. On the popsockets business, I spent all of our money on popsockets. And she thought it was a ridiculous product. As did all my friends. They nearly all of them just thought it was silly. So the answer is no, she was she was not with me on that one.
Marc Gutman 43:16
Got it. Like I wouldn't think so. But businesses like this a lot of times not. And so when you're doing the Kickstarter is Popsockets. The name at that time?
David Barnett 43:25
Wow, that is a good question. I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. It's 95% confident that it was called Popsockets. By that point, it started off as iButtons. And fortunate I never really liked that name, I came up with that name. It was also a term of affection. Ibuttons. So you could say that to somebody, Ibuttons. It's just a sweet thing to say. But then a big company threatened to sue me because they had a product called an iButton. And they did not like the fact that I got the Ibuttons.com URL. So I had them give me about $20,000, which I needed in order in exchange for giving up that name. And using a name that I liked a lot that it was popsockets.
Marc Gutman 44:09
Where'd that name come from?
David Barnett 44:11
That came straight from my wife, that is her big contribution to Popsockets. Maybe we had toyed around with sockets or pop one at one or the other was in the air and then she put it together.
Marc Gutman 44:21
See, she was behind you. She got it like you know, it's like, she came up with the name.
David Barnett 44:26
She's good for something for sure.
Marc Gutman 44:29
And so you fund your Kickstarter and to the tune of $18,000 and I'm assuming you're just like, Easy Street, you're just moving product and you have no problems. Is that how it goes down?
David Barnett 44:44
That's right. Within a year I was a billionaire. I didn't lift a finger.
So no, it was it was rough. It is much easier today for sure. I was running out of money. The 18,000 was nowhere close to really fun. I eventually found some investors around town just through through people that I've met. So these were strangers who had faith in the idea when I pitch it to them, I raised a few hundred more thousand dollars. As I was starting the business, I didn't launch until 2014, two years after the Kickstarter campaign, I had massive manufacturing problems. That's partly why I didn't launch until 2014. And the factory just couldn't get the case. Right. It was originally a case with two grips that expanded and collapsed.
Marc Gutman 45:33
And pretty much in the original form that will or the the common form that we know it as now which is like the the button with the accordion. Was it just that with the case?
David Barnett 45:43
Yeah, it was two of those since the kicks if you look at the Kickstarter campaign, it was that a case with two integrated Popsockets grips that expanded and collapsed. And the factory I chose just couldn't make a case they had an over mold. So a soft material that was molded to a hard, hard plastic. And they they really just didn't know how to do it. And month after month, after month passed by they had to throw away the tools because they had revised them so many times. And so and then version, the version of the iPhone change by the time we had got the case, right? That was an old version of the phone, I think were the iPhone five, by the time I actually launched the company out of my garage in 2014. And I had by that time develop the standalone grip that that has been the popular product.
Marc Gutman 46:29
Yeah. And what was the insight on that? Like, what was the big aha moment that less is more?
David Barnett 46:34
Sure. It, it likely, likely has its source in in feedback from my students. So when I was a professor, I handed out some cases, some prototypes of the original product to my students. And by the way, they would all when I would ask them, Would any of you use this product to keep your headset tangle free, and nearly all of their hands would go up in the air? So I finally got some samples, I handed them out. And then I watched them over the course of a few weeks to see who would who would stop using the product, how many of them would stop using the product, those who kept using it? What were they using it for?
And I noticed the ones who kept it on, we're not using it for headset management, they were using it for the grip function and the stand function, but mostly the grip function. And yet the grip was not in an ideal location, there was one grip that was too high and one grip that was too low, because I had two of them on the back so that you could wrap your headset around them. And that made me think look, I should invent just a standalone product that can be placed ideally for the grip function. And when I launched the Kickstarter campaign, I ended up licensing the original invention with a case to case made out of Atlanta. And thought, well, they can run with this Well, I developed a standalone product that was not under license. So that's what I did. They worked on the case for six months, and then they ended up Never launching a case. And in that time I developed the standalone product.
Marc Gutman 48:03
And at that point, did it just take off? I mean, I I have this recollection that, you know, at one point, it was like I didn't know what Popsockets were. And then they were everywhere. Like they were just like, everywhere, like and people had them and they just became they just became part of you know, popular culture. I mean, it was that the way it felt for you? Or was the getting the standalone product to get traction was that was that a challenge?
David Barnett 48:29
It certainly took some effort that first year, I mean, we flip the switch and turn on the website. And I had no marketing dollars, I had no experience no connections to retailers. So I just turned on a Shopify website, I hired a couple of, of people who had been doing some landscaping. So they were in my garage, little big hands and war bear these two huge guys that were selling sitting in my garage ready to fulfill orders, I flipped the switch. And nothing happened. Of course, we got no orders, we got no orders the next day or the next day or the next day. And I thought to myself, hmm, somehow we got to get the word out that this exists. And I went to a promotional Trade Show in Las Vegas, just by chance I had a friend who offered to share a booth. And it was a huge hit there.
So that was my first break. These are people looking to put logos on products and give them away for free. And it was clear to the distributors at this trade show that the Popsocket grip was a perfect billboard for your for your logo and for getting impressions. So I had a big crowd around my booth. And over the course of the next four or five months, I ended up selling batches of 3000 5000 7000 to T Mobile Yahoo, you know these big brands through distributors that then got them into the hands of thousands of people. And then I started seeing the traffic come to the website because we had a I don't know if it's a critical mass but we had enough of them out there. Public, that word of mouth was spreading. And then two other things were happening at the same time that year celebrities somehow got ahold of them the first year in 2014.
To this day, I don't know how but Gigi Hadid, Ryan Seacrest, and remember Woody Harrelson, his wife, somehow, I got word that she was calling it a life changer from somebody that heard that. So they were showing up in People Magazine and on social media using the grip, and we saw a hotspot in LA on our website, customers around Los Angeles. And then third, we were planting these grips in middle schools in Colorado. So we're encouraging these schools to use them as fundraisers. And that started a third flame, you could say, the middle schoolers took to this product and started telling their friends about it. So those three elements came together. And by the end of 2014, we were seeing some really nice growth month over a month, it was starting to you're starting to see that hockey stick growth. And then we saw about 10 times we were selling each month, we were selling about 10 times what we were that month, the prior year, for the next couple years. 1516. And we were named the fast second fastest growing company in the US in 2018, with a growth rate of 72,000% over three years. And it was mostly just a viral phenomenon over those few those first three to four years, I'd say. And then exploded into retail, in I think 2016 and 17. So over the course of a few years, what you described as correct.
Marc Gutman 51:31
Yeah, and prior to that, I mean, really before this, this validation moment where you go to the trade show, and and for promo products, and people are like, okay, like, and I have to imagine that, like when you got those first orders, you're like, Alright, I'm on like, I'm not crazy. But so but you know, prior to that, I mean, are you thinking of giving up? Are you thinking of like, hey, like I have sunk enough money into this, I have put enough energy into this, this just may not happen?
David Barnett 52:01
No, I hadn't considered giving up. There was one moment that I vividly recall, where, where I did for the first time, I feel that I might that I might be forced to give up. So it was when we had an office on on Pearl Street in Boulder. And we received a shipment of about 30,000 grips and packaging. It was maybe the third major shipment we received. We weren't in any retail stores yet. So we're selling on the website and promo. And they were all defective. This was the third time in a row.
So I had never gotten a pure, high quality product, I had always received shipment of defective product that gel was defective on the first 30,000 I received my friends and I had to pull off, it's tough to get gel off these by hand, pull off 30,000 gel stickers and put new gel on the bottoms of them. But this third shipment, the packaging was all just blowing out and the plastic from the accordion was sticking through the gel so far that it wouldn't—it hit the back of the phone before the gel did. So the grip would just fall right off the phone. My stomach just sank when I opened up the shipment and there was $1,000 in the bank account, I probably owed $30,000. And that was it.
I had no more cash. I didn't have any investors lined up to give any more money. And we were sitting on defective products. So I remember taking a walk on the street thinking to myself, this is not good. And it could be the end of us.
Marc Gutman 53:35
But here you are today. And you're the you're the CEO still have Popsockets and give us a sense of what Popsockets looks like today, like how many employees and like approximately how many units are going out at this point?
David Barnett 53:48
Sure. Well, pre COVID, we were about 300 employees headquarters in Boulder. We have a design office in San Francisco with about 20 people. An office in Europe offices in Singapore, Seoul, Korea, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong, we now have an office in Colombia in Bogota. So we're a global company now. We've sold well over 200 million units, I'm guessing probably closer to 300 million I haven't checked in recently. But you know, we're going through a high volume of grips each week and post COVID we have fewer people. So we unfortunately did have to lay off quite a few people. For a low quite a few to preserve our cash when COVID hit and the stores all shut down globally. We are coming back from that though we're doing quite well and we're hiring again.
So that should give you a sense of the size and we have ambitions to be far bigger mostly so that we can make a more positive impact. We have a poptivism program. It's really important to me and the brand that gives back to Whatever charity our consumers chooses, choose, so you can come design your own group on our website and tag any charity and half of the sale of that grip will go to the charity. And the bigger we are, the more we can invest in programs like that.
Marc Gutman 55:14
Yeah, and I was planning on asking about there's anything else that you'd like to talk about? I mean, why? Why poptivism? How do you say that again? Like it's like a tongue twister,
David Barnett 55:23
poptivism kind of activism activism with a pop at the beginning.
Marc Gutman 55:27
Yeah, I just need to like practice it. Poptivism, poptivism. So, you know, like, why, like, Why use the thing you built for that?
David Barnett 55:36
Sure. So my, one of my original goals, when I decided to commercialize this invention, was to generate wealth for myself so that I could use that wealth for good causes. I personally care about animal welfare issues, hoping to end factory farming. And also climate change, particularly as it relates to these the former issues. So those are my personal causes that I would support. But I realized a couple years into business that all of the employees wanted to make a positive impact in the company is probably positioned better than myself to make that impact. And at that point, I created a department of do goods, I hired a director of due goods, her sole responsibility was to do good. she teamed up with some nonprofits that support people with mobility issues, Parkinson's, ALS, arthritis, we raised money for these organizations that support people with these challenges. And then we got 10s of thousands of grips into their hands, because it makes it easier for them to hold their devices and the grip.
But we thought we can make a bigger impact if we open this up as a platform to everybody and all charities. And that's positivism, positivism is a platform that encourages people to make a positive impact by designing their own grip. So you can come on you can do right now you just go to our website, you can design your own grip, you tag a charity, a 501, c three, and the grip will go live, maybe in a week, 50% of all the sales will will go to that charity, and you can start seeing the impact you make
Marc Gutman 57:16
right away. That's incredible. And do you ever like just like, look around and you know, as I heard you talking about how many employees you are employing and and where you're located globally and poptivism and like, do you ever just look around like, this is a I created this? I don't mean, I don't mean it like in a in a vain way or an arrogant way. But like, I created this out of an idea. And that idea was like these little plastic things that you stick on your phone, you know, like, like, it just must be an incredible feeling.
David Barnett 57:51
Yes, It's surreal. It used to be more surreal, I spent a decent amount of time standing in this one office room have one of our offices that had a glass wall overlooking the warehouse, the production facility. And I look out there and think this is just insane. I mean, it's a, it's like a crazy dream. All of these people are working on this little doodad that I created in my living room with all this hard work. And then when I traveled to China, and I'd walk into these factories where there were hundreds of people, just lines and lines of people sitting working on this product, there were huge crates out in the parking lot, just giant stacks and stacks of boxes. With tractors and these trailers coming to pick them up. I thought this is just insane. It's so crazy.
Eventually, I came to accept it. So this the surreal nature of it started to fade. But I still have that sensation, especially when we hire really talented people who have these amazing backgrounds, I think to myself, how did we get to this point where we could attract talent like this? All from just messing around on the computer in my living room? So many years ago?
Marc Gutman 59:03
What do you think it is about the the grip, the Popsocket that just is that just speaks to people that just says hey, like, I want that because I do think there's something there's something special about that inanimate object.
David Barnett 59:16
Sure. All of our products, we we try our best to include three, three ingredients which the original product has. One is the empower empowering, quality, so it just makes using a phone so much better. The second is the fun or magical feature, that it's surprisingly fun, and surprisingly useful. I mean, look, you've got the most valuable company in the world or at least was at one point Apple creating this device that has a massive flaw. You can't hold it and it's just an awful experience. Once you've used a popsocket grip for a couple of weeks if you try to hold an Apple phone It's almost comical. It's just an awful, awful experience.
So I think it is sort of a magical experience when you start using this and you think, Oh my God, what a much better experience. This is even if you didn't think you needed it. And then third, it's the expressive feature people love to express themselves. With grips, it's a much easier way than changing up their cases to put a different style on put a different statement on like a bumper sticker, or a different utility piece. So you could have lip balm on one day, or a little storage for, for something that you want to keep with you one day, and we have a bunch of other functional items coming out soon.
Marc Gutman 1:00:40
And we'll make sure to link to all that in the show notes. And David, as we come to a close here, we're coming up on our time, I have two final questions for you. The first is, what's the future look like for you and Popsockets?
David Barnett 1:00:52
Sure, well, I'm staying with Popsockets for the future, I'll be the CEO. I have been working hard recently to rebuild our teams post COVID. And post a big transition with leadership. And we intend to build a strong, global brand that makes little life changers. So all of our products, we think will will increase people's happiness, even if it's just a little bit every day. And positivism too, these programs we think of as little life changers. We're not curing cancer, but everything we do, we hope makes people just a little bit happier. And you'll see in two to three years, you really see that the brand we have here in the US will start spreading even though we've been international for a few years, our brand strength, I think will will start catching up to the US and will be a significant global brand, making a positive impact every day.
Marc Gutman 1:01:51
So David, if that high school version of you that high school, David, that was in the after school sport dork crew ran into you today, what do you think he'd say?
David Barnett 1:02:04
That's really funny, I have a video of this that I can share with you. We had sorry, there was an award ceremony for some Entrepreneurship Award, I think that I won, and I couldn't be there. So we made a video, an acceptance video. And we had a boy who looked kind of like me when I was a kid. And after school sports dork, and he accepted the award. And part of what he said was He's like, I think and maybe someday I'll invent something, something kind of useful. Maybe that helps you listen to your music better. So what would he say? He was probably cocky. He probably said, Yeah, I knew this.
I'm a little disappointed in you. But I thought this would happen.
Marc Gutman 1:02:46
Whoa, whoa. And that is David Barnett, the founder and CEO of Popsockets, I still can't wrap my head around a little plastic extendable button, becoming such a part of our culture, employing 300 people, and continuing a movement all over the world. This is the power of entrepreneurship, literally thinking of an idea, imagining something that never exists, and then making it a reality, putting it out into the world and changing the world. David Barnett and I say this very seriously, is changing the world with popsockets in a way that will have an impact forever.
Whether it's bringing joy to someone with mobility issues, assisting in a selfie that captures a special moment, are using poptivism directly to give back. He is making a difference. And I keep coming back to something that Jeff Hoffman, co founder of priceline.com and our very first guest on Baby Got Back story said entrepreneurship is not the purpose. It's the tool. We'll be linking to all things popsockets in the show notes, so please check them out. And thank you again to David Barnett and popsockets. We can't wait to see what the future holds for you and your team. I know it's going to be something big. 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. i like big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can't deny
1 hr 5 min
October 21, 2020BGBS 044: Mark O'Brien | Newfangled | I'll Do Anything
BGBS 044: Mark O'Brien | Newfangled | I'll Do Anything
Mark O’Brien may currently be the CEO of Newfangled, but you’ll soon learn that he is a man of many passions. Growing up, Mark had his sights set on pursuing a career in the Catholic Church. As a young adult, he landed his dream job at a restaurant he idolized while working toward a degree in poetry. Finally, he worked his way up from an HTML intern position at Newfangled to find his true calling as the owner. Fascinated? Us too.
And of course, we can’t forget the patented Mark O’Brien phrase that guaranteed him his dreams along the way: ”I’ll do anything.” As the CEO today, Mark believes in making his business something he loves so much that it’d be crazy to step away from. That means facilitating Newfangled to reach new heights at what it does best, “helping marketers market.” Ultimately, Mark inspires us with the idea that we can absolutely be the best in the world at anything we put our minds to. With our minds open to the possibilities, we encourage you to look inward and ask, what do you want to be the best in the world at?
In this episode, you'll learn...
Mark originally went to liberal arts school for a specialized poetry education to serve his musical interests
Catholicism was a huge influence on Mark, prompting him to pursue becoming a deacon until a change in events led him to turn away from religion altogether at a young age

Mark found solace in the Bentleys, a healthy, semi-parental relationship he made at an otherwise dark time in his life

Richard Bentley taught Mark a Chinese martial art called Wushu to protect himself at a time when he literally feared for his life at school

Food is 100% Mark’s primary love language!

Mark’s goal in life was to work at his dream job, Al Forno, for 10 years until a realization became the catalyst for his first midlife crisis

While working 3 jobs at 90 hours a week, Mark offered to work for free at Newfangled Web Graphics and got a response that turned his world around

Moving to North Carolina kick-started a remote role for Mark (which was rare at the time) where he was able to flourish while selling for Newfangled

Mark was a jack of all trades with many hats within Newfangled. His dedication to the business led to a life-changing offer that he couldn’t refuse

Newfangled is serious about working with companies that desire a stark culture change and better control of their future

"Never sell, never retire" - a life-changing value that inspires Mark to be the best he can be at his business
Resources
Newfangled
Mark O’Brien LinkedIn
Quotes
[15:11] I was terrified. So my dad had moved away, my religion fell apart. I was truly afraid for my life each day I went to school. These are tough times. But the Bentleys were this rock.
[24:01] I got my dream job. And within six months through all sorts of contortions of the universe, I was running the place. I achieved my 10-year goal in six months
[44:20] If you're properly specialized, you absolutely can be the best in the world at something.
[49:32] I'm so grateful for what I get to do every day. This is an incredible business. It's an incredible business full of wonderful people. And we do work for wonderful people.
Podcast Transcript
Mark O'Brien 0:02
I wanted to be a priest but I didn't—I would have liked to have been a priest but I didn't want to because I knew I want to have a family. And so as I go, I won't become a deacon I grew up I was an altar boy, I was the head of the see why oh, I was in. I was in and loved it until the priesthood mentoring for six years. Once my parents divorced, he tried to have relationship with me. And that was the end of Catholicism for me and the end of Christianity for me. I'm starting to come back around a lot now. But what happened was it that door just closed my mind as soon as he made that advance. And thank God, I was big enough to get the hell out of this room. But as soon as you made that advance, a door instantly closed my mind. I don't even know it closed. I didn't know close till years later and look back, but I just never I wanted nothing to do with any organized religion at all. From that second onward.
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 back stories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby Got Backstory. We are hearing the story of Mark O'Brien, CEO and owner of the marketing agency newfangled. Alright, alright. Now if you like and enjoy the show, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over at Apple podcasts, or Spotify. Whichever one you listen to most, Apple and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithms that determine the ratings on their charts. And ratings help us to build an audience, which that helps us to continue to preach the show. well enough of that. Let's get into today's episode is you're about to hear Mark O'Brien has quite a story.
As a young child, he thought he was going to have a career in the Catholic Church, only to become disillusioned and disconnected from that organization for reasons you'll hear early in the episode. After landing his dream job working at the fine dining restaurant he idolized, Mark found his true calling, leading a creative agency today, Newfangled, what a great name is the marketing agency for well, marketing agencies. If that sounds odd, it makes perfect sense when Mark talks about it. But this episode really isn't about marketing agencies. It's about the fascinating and twisty journey of Mark O'Brien. And this this is story.
All right, I am here with Mark O'Brien, the CEO of newfangled. What a great name, I love that name. And I want to get into where that came from. And he says he's the CEO, but not the founder, and which is pretty cool. And we're going to talk about that. And, Mark. Welcome. And I want to say when when you sent your bio to us, which we have every guest Do you know you had your like kind of normal bio, but actually leading that bio was the brief version that went cook, intern, coder, President owner. And I just think that is a so awesome. I believe less is more, you know, I love the old quote, I would have written a shorter letter if I had more time in the economy of words. And I think that says it all. So we could probably wrap this interview right now. What do you think?
Mark O'Brien 3:35
Enjoyed it! Thanks, Marc. Bye.
Marc Gutman 3:39
Well, thank you very, very much for coming on the show. And when you were growing up, like young Mark would did, were you always destined to be a marketer?
Mark O'Brien 3:51
No, no, I actually had a fair bit of stress growing up, because I had no idea what I what I could possibly do for a living. And I had no idea what I how it could get by I remember thinking, wow, like look at in my parents house, like look, look at that, washing machine and dryer, how could I ever afford to buy a washing machine and dryer? Yeah. The whole thing seemed quite daunting. And I had no idea at all what I'm doing, which makes sense now because what I do didn't exist then.
Marc Gutman 4:24
And like so what did your parents do? Like what gave you that sort of impression that a washer and a dryer was just unattainable? Like what were their careers?
Mark O'Brien 4:36
I don't think they did anything to damage me in that way. It was just all inside my own head. My dad is a scientist, primarily a biochemist, but he's in all sorts of other things as well. And my mom when I was growing up was just the consummate Mom, you know, she she was there. She did start working once I got a little bit older, but she was awesome. homemaker of the highest order and took took a deep, deep deep pride in that rightfully so.
Marc Gutman 5:08
It's funny like like I have the reverse problem now I look around I'm like how do I afford that washer and dryer doesn't even work this isn't this is insane and I don't want to think about it you make you're giving You're giving me anxiety go back to go go back to childhood or go back to so. So where were you growing up? Like what was? Where did you grow up? What was the town like what you know, what was life like for young Mark?
Mark O'Brien 5:35
Young Mark. So I'm born in Providence, Rhode Island, and it was so it's a city a small city, but a city and then moved to Danbury, Connecticut out in the country when I was six. So I did most of my growing up in Danbury, it's about 10 minutes for the New York border, spent a lot of time in the woods in the reservoir, just camping out and playing with friends. So it was it was a real idyllic upbringing, walking to school, through the trails, things like that. playing outside and swimming and canoeing in the summer and ice skating and sledding in the winter.
It was wonderful. I really fell in love with the country in those 12 years I was in Danbury from six to 18 and actually end up going back to Providence for college and stayed there for Gosh, about eight years or so total not not college, just Providence and and I missed the country deeply when I was in the city so when I moved down to North Carolina in oh three I made sure that I found a place deep in the country which I did. I'm at Chapel Hill still today but you know the chapel is a pretty rural area I'll hold hold on.
Marc Gutman 6:44
I love that and that's interesting like I haven't like had a lot of experience with Rhode Island but not you and the guests right before you Foley Fish and only if you're familiar with them but Rhode Island isn't the the biggest place they're in that area and that they're efficient fish processing and market so pretty interesting. It's like
Mark O'Brien 7:01
Foley Fish?
Marc Gutman 7:02
Foley Fish Yes, yes,
Mark O'Brien 7:04
I know Foley Fish really well actually mentioned them, so what's your connection to Foley fish?
Marc Gutman 7:10
They're the guest that's preceding you on Baby got backstory so they're gonna you know people who've listened about Foley Fish will now be getting into Mark O'Brien and hearing all about Rhode Island and and outside of like Dumb and Dumber and fairly brother movies. You know, like I you know, I don't have a lot of Rhode Island experience
Mark O'Brien 7:30
Rhode Island's a wonderful place, particularly the summertime, it's wonderful, but Foley Fish. So my very brief bio there, part of it was cook and I ran the kitchenette, a quite prestigious place. There's a story behind that. But I found myself doing that, to my surprise. And their supplier was Foley Fish. And we went in toward the entire fully facility. And it was amazing. They're they're an extraordinary organization, that they're one of those organizations that you know, the people who run it, it doesn't matter what what business they ended up in, it was going to be an excellent business. You know what I mean? Like they they're not in the fish business. They're they're in the I don't know what business they're in.
But Gosh, they they are operating a level head and shoulders above everybody else in that marketplace. And the good, amazing innovation in terms of you know how to keep fish fresh, everything else. Incredible, incredible customer service and just impeccable, impeccable product. They're there. They're really an extraordinary, extraordinary organization. And one, I wouldn't mind modeling some aspects of Newfangled after even though we're in marketing and they're fishmongers.
Marc Gutman 8:41
Yeah, I mean, we're not here to talk about them, but they've been in business for 114 years. And to me, you know, I've worked with some iconic brands, where basically the the model is don't mess it up, you know, but, uh, you know, but like, very few businesses have been around that long. So super, super cool. And if you've listened to that episode, and you're, you're coming in now, you're gonna have a little bit of context, and if not go back and listen to that one. But I want to get back to you know, you mentioned you were back in Rhode Island, you went to college, where we were interested in and what were you studying at that time?
Mark O'Brien 9:15
Okay, so my interest then, so was cooking. Okay, so I, I started working pretty young. My first job was as a caddy at a golf course. I think I was 12 or 13. That was a terrible job. Did not enjoy that. And then I was a busboy at a Chinese restaurant. And then my friend Rosie, she worked at this Italian place, and is small, like 30 seater, run by husband and wife and they needed a busboy and so I left the Chinese place to go to the Italian place and it changed my life. I start in the front of the house with Manuela then with a Bentley, the wife of the husband, wife and got to know Richard Bentley. And the the Cook, or whatever. And I fell in love with and with cuisine, and my mom was always a fantastic cook. Again, under the heading of homemaker such as existed in the 80s.
It was, you know, the classic stuff lasagna, shepherd's pie, chicken pot pie, apple pie, a lot of pies. But she was the best cook on both sides of the family. She was amazing cook. So I always grew up around really, really good food and well prepared food. But actually learning how to do this in a modern way in a restaurant was very different for me. And I wanted to go to culinary school I was I was dead set on going to culinary school, but my mom was the boss. And she basically forbade me and made me go get a liberal arts education. I'm very glad she did. So I went to Providence College. And I decided to and so I went to Providence College. And I was very happy to do that. Because Al Forno my dream restaurant was there. And that's, that's why I made the full connection. And and I went knowing that I was going to work full time in restaurants the whole time through college, as I did through high school.
And I did, and I'm also a very big music fan always have been. And so I decided, well, I'm going to take a specialization in poetry, after falling in with a poetry professor who was just fantastic, and actually just won a Pulitzer recently, which is great, and he very well deserved. And I took a specialized major with him basically for poetry, in order to become a better a better lyric writer to serve my musical interests. So I was like, Okay, I'm going to college, I'm not doing this for money, I'm not going to get a job in, you know, in the liberal arts or any related field. I'm gonna cook for the rest of my life. Because of course, I'm 18 I know everything. And I really did. I was a real jerky, 18 year old, I really, I really know everything.
And so I went to Providence and I studied poetry with Forrest Gander. And it was incredible, and a wonderful educational experience, and work full time restaurant. So I applied to Al Forno like five times, and they kept on rejecting me, didn't even reply to me. But then, of course, I met somebody who knew somebody, and then I got the interview that we can get in. So if you want it's a pretty good story, it does relate to the overall newfangled story as well. But I'll let you guide that.
Marc Gutman 12:12
Yeah, I'd love to hear about that in one second. So the before that I want to hear like why cooking like what do you love about it? Like, why was this the thing that that captivated you at such a young age? had made you so sure, because I also was a bit of a jerky, a 18 year old, but I had no idea. You know, I didn't know anything about anything. You know, I didn't know about the world. I didn't know what existed, you know, so I was very unsure with what I wanted to do. So I find it very fascinating that that you were very sure. And it sounds like you still like hold cooking really dear in your heart Even though you're not doing it right now professionally. So like, what is it? Like? Why is—what's so great about cooking? Was it mean to you?
Mark O'Brien 12:54
Yeah, so um, yeah, there's an answer to that question. So I started Bentley's, about age 15. And at that time, two other things happened. My parents got divorced. My dad moved away. And that was, that was a big deal. And also, I had been very Catholic growing up. I'm gonna be really honest with you. I don't know how big your audiences here, but I'm going to be pretty open about some things here. I loved Catholicism. I was raised in a Catholic family. I had a bunch of priests, as uncles on both sides, you know, dyed in the wool, southern New England, Italian, Irish American Catholic, right. I wanted to be a priest, but I didn't. I would have liked to have been a priest. But I didn't want to because I want I knew I wanted a family. And so I was like, Oh, I wanna become a deacon.
I grew up, I was an altar boy, I was the head of the CYO, and I was in. I was in and loved it. Until the priest who had been mentoring me for six years. Once my parents divorce, he tried to have a relationship with me. And that was the end of Catholicism for me and the end of Christianity for me. I'm starting to come back around a lot now. But what happened was it that door just closed in my mind as soon as he made that advance. And thank God, I was big enough to get the hell out of his room. But as soon as he made that advance a door instantly closed my mind. I don't even know it closed. I didn't know close.
Well, years later, I look back but I just never I wanted nothing to do with any organized religion at all. From that second onward, holy involuntary mental response. And I kind of packed it away and didn't even process it at all. So those two things happened. Right when I started working at Bentley's and Richard Bentley. Mark, what is it about you? How'd you how'd you get me into this situation so quickly? Richard, was in a credibly strong presence. Very intense, very quiet. very intimidating. Honestly. I was terrified of him. I was absolutely terrified of him. The other thing that was going on at the same time is I moved into a place Public School and there were gangs. And I watched as one of my closest friends who I walked into the cafeteria with, got dragged away by about 15 guys and put in the hospital. So I was terrified. So my dad had moved away, my religion fell apart. I was truly afraid for my life each day I went to school.
These are, these are tough times. But the Bentley's were this rock. And if Richard had been a car mechanic, I would have become a car mechanic, you know, it, I was gonna do whatever he did, because he, he was someone I could rely on. And he was an incredibly powerful, strong male figure. And he happened to cook. Right. And he may well have had a wonderful relationship, and that religion was very important to me, because a very stable, you know, semi parental relationship was going at the same time is that they had decided for various reasons that they weren't gonna have kids. And I showed up at a time in their life that where they were, they had a bit of a gap. And we just, you know, sometimes you have chemistry people that is special.
And so what also happened with Richard, it was, he had heard about me talking Manuela about what's going on at school and how afraid I was. And this is it's, this is funny. So I would go to their house to do yard work for them outside of the work hour, so I'd go and like, clean the leaves because they were the restaurant 24 seven, so their yard was like in disarray, but they, they were actually exceptional gardeners, but there's lots of chores to get done. So I'd go do manual labor for them, basically, when I was at the restaurant, and one time after I did my chores, but my mom had to come pick me up yet. He said, Oh, come on back, I'm gonna show you something. And he started showing me some self defense movements.
And I knew I knew he was like a martial art kind of guy, but I was I didn't really know much about it. And, and he starts showing me things like, okay, you know, for next week work on these three movements, as Wow, because it was, it was the real deal. It was clearly the real deal. I tried taking some Taekwondo classes for self defense, because I was scared. And it was all about like, points in belts in like getting awards. I'm like, No, no, I'm not here. This is not a sport for me, I need to protect myself. I don't need a point because I like I tap someone on the shoulder like, this is not what I need. But it was very clear from the very beginning, what Richard was doing was the real deal. There was a thing called Wu Shu.
And, and so I did, though I practice those things. Then I started going with him to his teacher jayadev, about 45 minutes away. And so twice a week we're drive to take these martial arts classes with Richard and his teacher and a few other guys. And it was incredible. It gave me so much confidence, and it filled such a massive gap for me. And on the way back and forth would listen to tapes, like books on tape, literally, about the restaurant business, like kind of like collect self help books. This is like educational books about restaurants. And Alfredo was always the rest of their department was always offered as a software does that and in Alberta was clearly the gold standard. And Al Forno, it was a Providence and I grew up in Providence had some connections there.
And so so the answer question is I got into cooking, because that's what Richard Manuela did. And that became my rock. And it clearly also resonated with me, and I'm pretty artistic. That's naturally wired that way. And cooking. Cooking does really speak to that. And I also love food. I love wine I love I love sensations. Right, I love like physical experience. And food has so much to do with that both know it, it touches all the senses in a really impactful way. And so it's like an endlessly interesting area of pursuit. And I got just an incredible foundation from Rich & Manuela.
Marc Gutman 18:48
And for you, It sounds that food is comfort. It's love it's family. And you know, in that time that you shared and thank you for sharing that. It's exactly what you needed. And I can imagine now that that's probably a way that you express love and how you care about people with that, would that be accurate?
Mark O'Brien 19:07
100% 100% I cook for people all the time. Now fewer people because you know, when I was many people in our pod because of COVID But yeah, that's 100% were my primary love languages. And that's how I grew up to that's my mom's love language. That's how she tells you She loves you. And like I grew up in that I didn't learn that from the Bentley's I learned for my mom, the Bentley's just allowed me to make it my own and to make it something could actually make a career out of so but yeah, 100% a love language.
Marc Gutman 19:33
And so tell me about it and then have the name or is it al furneaux or foreknow foreknows the restaurant
Mark O'Brien 19:38
Al Forno. Al space f o r n o.
Marc Gutman 19:42
Al Forno. And so, you know, sitting sitting in the car listening to these tapes and hearing the name of this restaurant and setting you know your intention and your dream and you know I tell the story about how I was a skateboard kid and I used to look at Thrasher magazine and I used to just dream about Like how great and cool those kids were in Thrasher. And as soon as I had a chance to get out to California moved to Venice, and I realized it was all like, not cool. You know, like, those kids, those kids all had like, horrible upbringings. And they and at the time when I moved to Venice, it was awful. It's super cool now, but it was like scary. And I was like, wow, like I, the dream that I had in my head did not match the reality for you. In getting in to that restaurant. What was that, like? Did that that live up to the billing?
Mark O'Brien 20:32
It was every single thing I'd ever imagined to be in so much more. It was incredible. Absolutely incredible and life changing. And it also made me decide that there was absolutely no way I was gonna make my living and food. Why is that? Well, so so I finally got enough or no, I, I met a guy who was very good friends with the guy who was like that the second command there. And so I got an interview with George drumond George Osborne was owned by George drumond. And Joanne clean husband, wife, team, and I can invert George and I did what I have patented patented as the monopoly patented but you know, air quotes patented as the Marco Brian, it's a move that cannot be resisted.
Okay, and here's the move. So, I'm, I'm a senior in college. So I'm only 21. I've been hearing about all for now. And like idolizing photos that was 15, six years a big chunk of my life, right? More than a third of my life. Or so No, no, no, but ever. And finally, I'm sitting down with the owner, the founder of alpha widow, George, and he says, What do you want to do? And I said, I'll do anything, I will do absolutely anything. I just need to be in these doors. I'll do anything. I'll clean the floors of my hand. And that's what the job you need done. Honestly, I will do anything. And they said, All right, you start salads on Monday. So I started the salad, the garbage station, the salad station.
And I was over the moon I mean, probably one of the top five happiest most my life honestly, when I found out that I was going to be working out for now I just felt so successful. It was so incredible. And I was gonna earn $7 an hour. And that was that was really bad pay even then, really, really, really, really basically minimum wage. But that didn't care about one bit because I was going to be enough for now. And my first week or second week on there, and I learned so much that that salad session it like so many of the recipes I hold today and my favorite last night I made a pseudo salad and it's that recipe.
I learned so much about cooking. It just opened my entire world. I learned so much my mom I learned so much from the Bentley's when I went to all four No, it was that next exponential level up from that in terms, my learnings. And there was a weekend. And there's Guatemalan guy, Tony, who ran the kitchen downstairs and he was fierce, fierce, fierce, unfair, vicious, but amazing cook. And if he said a kind word to you, it like brighten your whole day, you know. And so in the middle of a service Saturday night, everyone's slammed, everyone's literally running around everywhere. And my back is to everybody else, because the soundstage is up front, but it's on Oh, it's an open floor plan. You can see the dining room, everything in the kitchen. And George comes in. And he nods to me he's like how's this how's the new guy doing? And Tony said he's the best we ever had. And I heard that it wasn't meant to hear that.
But I heard it. And my confidence was went way. And that's because my training guy trained at Bentley's, like I learned the right way to do things from the beginning. And so I was able to, I was able to take on that next level for now. And within six months, my goal is to stay at a for over 10 years. That was my goal when I got there because I'm gonna stay here 10 years, I'm still in college, I'm gonna finish college, who cares about college, I've got my dream job. But let me get back to the college a mo, who cares? It wasn't really very fair. But I got my dream job. And within six months through all sorts of contortions of the universe, I was running the place. I achieved my 10 year goal in six months at all for now.
And just about 18 months after that I was gone from not only a photo but from cooking, because I realized that but again, much like the priests thing, it could be a prison one family well can't get I can't cook someone a family because I saw if I'm if I'm going to do if I'm going to ever make any money at this, I have to own my own place. And if I own my own place, I'm gonna have to like live in that place for good and my kids wanted to live in that place. And that's just not what I want to do. I love cooking, but I don't love it enough to sacrifice everything else. And so I decided to leave. And so at that point, I've dealt with cooking, I already graduated college, I've got my specialized poetry degree and I have no idea what to do with my life and I was 23 and That was my first midlife crisis. I it was it was. I've unfortunately had a second sense. But But prior to having the second one, I said that I had my midlife crisis at 23 that was just part one. And that was a very, very, very scary time. I still worked in restaurants I worked as a bellhop, I was working all kinds of jobs. I could I could employ myself, but I, I didn't know what I wanted to do for a living. It's very scary.
Marc Gutman 25:24
Was there like a specific moment or day where you had that realization that this isn't for me?
Mark O'Brien 25:32
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, there was actually. No one's ever asked me that question.
There was this a waiter. His name was Tony to the Tony I think was Tony. And he was he was tough. He had a lot of attitude. He wasn't very nice. He he he liked start fights. And there was no not another Saturday night super busy tons of stuff going on. And he screwed up but didn't want to admit it script in order at a point a script or some big deal because everything's made from scratch. It's like everything's time to be in perfect use of everything else. It's like it's pretty high cuisine. And he came in and I just lost it. I completely let started screaming at them. And I lost it and it turned my screaming like turned into like, almost like a breakdown started crying. And in the scream is like his cry scream. And then I just laughed, I just left and went to the bathroom is like what the hell just happened? Thank thankfully, it's never happened before or since.
But like it was a breaking point for me. And in the stress was insane. I would yell at people all the time. Everyone yelled that everybody was it was just a vicious atmosphere. And it doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of reasons where it's not that way. And but you know, I worked by that point. I did work in a lot of restaurants. I knew the deal. I know what was going on. And I just realized, no, this is not my this is my thing. And it was hard because, you know, I learned how to make scrambled eggs from Julia Child. She candell for no and we open special for her on a Saturday morning for her 92nd birthday, which is one of her last birthdays. And she stood by the stove with me and taught me to mix reveled eggs and you know, George Harrison would come in and Wolfgang Puck, Emeril Lagasse, Steven Spielberg, I mean, this place was the place, it was really hard to leave that job and decide that but I had, I had seen enough where I realized this not my future.
But it was great because I got to make that decision from a fully informed perspective. And I did what I came to do, I had a 10 year goal like it comes in six months, and I kicked but I worked so darn hard for them I, I really gave it my all, then realize and move on.
Marc Gutman 27:38
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So like how do you handle that when you realize the reality doesn't match the dream or the dream doesn't match the reality? Or that you know, I think a pattern in my life. And the reason I asked this it's a little bit selfish is that I dream big. And I hop right in and I think I'm so sure of what I want and then I kind of like oh, that dream doesn't really match reality and and I get a little heartbroken or a lot heartbroken and take it pretty hard. Like how did you take it? Like, how did you have it? I mean, it's one thing to know and have this blow up at work and be like, are I like, this is not for me. It's another to settle in with the reality of like, hey, the thing I've been chasing, I was wrong about
Mark O'Brien 29:21
Yeah. No, it was hard. It was hard. And you asked, you know, did a foreigner match up for the dream and a photo did match up to the dream. It was everything I had imagined so much more it was it was the exact right thing for me to do. But yeah, the bigger picture dream of cooking for a living was not correct. And yeah, that was that was like I said very hard and very scary and incredibly and I was also like certain lose my hair at the time. And I was like oh my god, I'm ancient. I'm losing my hair. Yeah. And I was I was in a pretty bad relationship too. So it just was a pretty dark time but you know, that's how it goes. Right? So it gets I got 15 dark time but also many beautiful things came of it then 23 another another shade. Up in the rest of my life came from that. And so what happened was I was this probably a good point to get this transition. I had a buddy I grew up with a Danbury, Chris.
And he was he was a geek out of the womb. He's just a natural born geek, you know, just loves computers got his first Macintosh in 1982 when he was seven years old when most adults didn't have a Macintosh very families dead he got he got a computer. And he was he was just all in from the very beginning. It's just who he is and always has been. And so we were living together downtown Providence and I was just working different restaurant jobs and I was a bellhop. That was the worst I've actually ever had being a bellhop was so demeaning. It was really, it was it can't be done well, but just the way people treat you is really, really rough. And there was no graduate college I had I was running out for no it which was there in a city ruled that city, I had the best job, you know, one of the best jobs in the city, in terms of a prestige perspective.
And now I'm a bellhop outside this hotel is really difficult, or really, really difficult, but good, good character building and very motivating, like, Look, I'm not going to do this, I'm gonna figure my life out. And so I live with Chris, downtown, and he had an awesome job in Boston, you know, made a billion dollars from my perspective. And it was 1999. So the.com bubble was still still ever expanding. And he said to me one day is like, you know, you could make like, 40 grand a year tomorrow reading HTML, and doesn't know and I was like, That's ridiculous. I don't know anything. I literally knew nothing. Nothing about computer. I was the opposite of Chris. So whatever that is, I'm busy. No, you can't, and I can I can teach you. And so I said okay.
That night, I fell asleep like this dream of $40,000 you're like, Oh, my God, wow, that would be on a match. I could buy the washer, dryer and dryer, you know, because I never been good enough for seven bucks an hour, never made money. And, and so we convinced the restaurant I was working for Empire to, to do the website, and there's a shorter and we did the website. But Chris did it. And I just kind of like literally sat over shoulder watched. And then we did it and went live. And it's a beautiful site. It was a great experience. I did learn a ton. And he's like, you know, that place that we walked by a Thomas tree, that New England place? Like you should just talk to them. And I was like, Yeah, they had a sign out. And there's a sign I'm looking at right now actually, on the street.
And it turns out didn't say New England is that Newfangled, Newfangled web graphics. And so I went and I went to the website, and I spent like, an entire afternoon writing the longest contact form ever. And of course, I submitted it, and it didn't go through. So I had to do it again. And I wrote this just like this giant case for for, you know, speaking with the owner, and I said, it is a total the whole truth.
I know nothing. I did this website. Here it is. And, and and I pulled the markup, Brian, I will do anything. And I had three jobs at the time, I was working 990 hours a week between the hotel and to restaurants. And I didn't want money. I just wanted to experience and I told them, this is more than I said to George, as I said, I'll work for free. You're not paying me. I just I just want to be there. And he had me in for an interview. And he hired me. He said, I'll give you 10 bucks an hour. And you can work as many hours as you want to right there hit the jackpot. So I went and I it was a joyous like victory lap it went to all through my jobs and quit. And I started that next Monday on June 15 at new fangled as, like an HTML guy to be to be. And that was that was the beginning of the beginning.
Marc Gutman 33:39
Then do you know where the name came from originally?
Mark O'Brien 33:43
Newfangled? Yes, yes.
So Eric Holder, founded the company in 1995. with Steve Brock, I joined in 2000. And they both went to RISD at the Rhode Island School of Design a very prestigious art school, which, ironically, George drumond from Florida also went to, and he went to Disney and the company, the actual name of the company originally and 95 was newfangled and old fashioned graphics. You could hire new fangled and old fashioned graphics to either build your website or do woodblock printing grabbing for you. Those are the two services offered, actually,
Marc Gutman 34:20
Still trying to figure out who they wanted to be at that time, apparently.
Mark O'Brien 34:24
Like that's what Eric studied in college. So Eric, what turisti he was a he was a fine arts guy, right? And so he was actually extraordinary. I would engraving and presses from that there's a word for that, but I don't know the word is. But he got out here to get a job. And so he started working for an agency, and it was 9594. And the agencies like this web things happening, can you just do that web stuff for us? And so we got a book and learned it and figured out the basics and started building websites and realize, wow, this is like a big deal. I should make a company doing this. So he did.
Marc Gutman 34:53
And so you're building websites, and I'm assuming that it's in the time when making a website was kind of hard, you know, like now, we have have all these templates and wicks and Squarespace and now web flows coming on and even WordPress is and it was so much easier than then than it was. And so what was that? Like? I mean, what was what was building websites when you started, like and how has it changed?
Mark O'Brien 35:18
It was thrilling. It was, oh, gosh, it was so wonderful.
It was just it was just fantastic.
And it was very manual, right. And back then there was Dreamweaver. And so you could use Dreamweaver to kind of fake it like it was a wiziwig have etiquette editor, but newfangled, didn't touch that we pride ourselves on that, you know, we just it was all custom code, right? And we had a guy Mike boulais, who was more senior person and he created a CMS, new newfangled CMS, we call it webtop. At first and so it was super fancy. So I started learn how to program and I got into that and then I learned I do systems administration, and that was really exciting. But you know, the truth is, I didn't realize this, but I was never really good at any of them. What happened was, I decided to move North Carolina, and I actually met my, my ex wife, as a bellhop. When I went to the three months I was at about as a bellhop at the Biltmore in Providence, I met my wife, she stayed there for a weekend. And she was awesome.
She kept asking, like, well, where should I go? Should I go here to go there and I kept like, is like pointing different directions, go go do that thing, go to this thing. And I'm just really impressed with how like courageous and and curious she was. And we traded emails, at the end of it, we kept in touch. And we ended up, you know, dating about three months later from afar, and decided to meet and we did that for a couple years, I decided to meet in the middle. She was in Mississippi at the time, and we decided to move North Carolina. And so I go to Eric, I said, Listen, we're North Carolina. But I'd love to stay with the company. There was any way we could do that. I figured you'd say no, because no one worked remotely. And not It was crazy at the time. And he said, All right, yeah, we can do that. But if you're gonna be in North Carolina, you've learned how to sell because, you know, because we got the time.
It was a very local business. We were in Providence, were we there, Southern England company. And as and as like, he said, You should build a book of business out there. So sure, I'll try that I've never sold anything, but I'll try it. And so he started taking me in a sales calls with him, which are all in person, of course. And he and I both realized very quickly that Oh, that's what I'm good at. Forget about this coding stuff. Because no one had newfangled, like selling it all Eric hated it. Most people hate it. But I loved it. I loved every single thing about it. And so then I started selling for newfangled. And that's when everything really changed for me. And really, honestly, I'm not to take too much credit for this, but everything changed for newfangled as well.
So I moved down here in the beginning of '03, and started building a book of business down here. And it was very successful in my first year selling was the best year we ever had in the history of the company. And my second year selling was, I think it was one and a half times that it was just two great years in a row that really changed the foundation of the company. And Eric may be president of the company at that point, which was amazing. At that point, I really started running it. And I realized that I like that even more than selling. And in 2008. Eric, Eric, Eric is a classic entrepreneur, entrepreneur, he kept coming to me like, Hey, we should do this, which is that he always had ideas. And I kept saying no, it's like, No, listen, we're not good at this thing. Yet, we've really got to dig deeper to this thing.
We can't let ourselves get distracted. Let's stay the course on these few initiatives we got going on. And we can get to that idea, maybe in six or 12 months. And each time you know, he was a very balanced guy with very little ego and he would see the wisdom in it. And it's okay, you're right, that's fine. But he got sick of it. He got bored. And he didn't really have a place in newfangled anymore. And he didn't like that he understood what I was saying was right for newfangled, but it wasn't right for him. And so he decided to hire David Baker who introduced you and I, and he went for a consulting consulting. He went, he hired David to, to consult them on how to be a consultant. And David said, Okay, so you're gonna start this consulting business, but you've got a company, like, Who's gonna run the company, and music will go so well, Mark Mark does a lot of that is like, Well tell me what Mark does.
And at the time, I was a salesperson, I was the only project manager we had, I was one of our three developers still, and I was our sysadmin all those things at the time. And he said, Okay, so here's the deal. After you get back from our visit here, you're going to go back to the office, you can do one of two things. You're either going to fire bark on the spot, or you're gonna sell the company, that those the only two options. He's got too much control. And so yeah, it was January of 2008. In was like the first or second business day of the year. And Eric in my office is like, Hey, can we go get a coffee? And I was like, sure. And he's like, so you want to buy it?
And I was shocked. I was shocked. He said it's roughly 1.1 X of last year, which is the same as the year before. And I said, Yeah, what are percent I absolutely want to buy Gottschalk, my wife got to figure out how to hack it. possibly could. But intent wise, yes. So 100% lot that says it Yes, immediately. And it was 2008. And you might recall, 2008 was a rather interesting year in the economy, especially the fall. So we had a whole plan worked out, everything's good.
And then the entire economy fell apart. And so we had like, it was it was amazing it, Eric and I both really trust each other and love each other implicitly, we both wanted was best for newfangled and each other individually. And it was almost impossible to figure out a purchase, it was almost impossible. And aboveboard purchase, I've checked out with the IRS and all the rest. But we did we figured it out. And I became CEO, January 1 2009, Eric lefs, do all kinds of other things. And I began the person buying the company. And that was that was that was that I did not answer your question, which is how was it? How was it being Baudrillard back then, but I, I got into a story, I think it's more interesting.
Marc Gutman 40:51
I think so too. And, and, and I love that story. And, you know, like, and I could feel, you know, my heart dropped a bit when you, you know, you purchased in 2008. And the economy changes, and you have to be thinking like, Oh, my gosh, like what just happened, I kind of similar to what we're feeling now. And a lot of ways, a lot of businesses where there's just a lot of external pressure that's out of our control, but doesn't really change the plans we have for ourselves or for our companies. And so back then, and and you were servicing, from what I can tell local clients, kind of just like your run of the mill webshop. And please correct me if I've got that wrong, but at what point did you shift to become more focused on working directly with marketing, creative firms to help them do their marketing?
Mark O'Brien 41:37
Well, we always had the agency angle, because again, Eric came from an agency from the very beginning. So we always positioned ourselves as partners for agencies. So basically, the deal was where the web guys, you're the creative people will do all your web work for your clients. For you. That was the deal, that that that was the promise from the very beginning from 95. On, and so on. So that element of the business never changed the working closely with, you know, small to mid size creative shops. But yeah, in 2000, it was local shops. And then no, three, when it came down here, well became local to locales. And, and at the same time, you know, Eric had started doing more on a national scene, David connected with them with Howe magazine. And that started some nice articles and things and, and we started really pushing hard on being more nationally recognized. Eric had started his own content strategy for newfangled, in 2000, running a newsletter. And we always took our own strategy very, very, very seriously. And that was really the heart of our growth in terms of our national reputation building.
And, and then, around 2008, I started doing a lot of public speaking and got onto the conference scene and everything else. And then Chris Butler, newfangled balls got into it. So so we pretty rapidly became a a continental partner instead of just a local partner, which was great, that flip was essential, but it's because of our expertise. We were great at partner with agencies, that was our sales prop. And, and we had really good systems were great web developers, we had excellent systems. And so so yeah, it was always about the agency.
What changed was, what we do today is that we we help the agencies market themselves, it's not at all about the client work, we almost never touch any client side things with the agency, it's all about the agency, which is kind of a funny thing we do we help marketers market. But it's, but it's wonderful. So in working with agencies, from 95, to 2015, we just learned so much about how they operate in their culture, and our culture sort of grew up to mimic theirs, like we became much more closely aligned with them as we work with more and more of them. And it was in 2015, that we realized we needed to completely change the business. And that realization was instigated by a combination of us adopting the attraction EOS methodology, and my involvement in the Strategic Coach program.
Marc Gutman 43:57
I'm familiar with both of those. Very cool, very cool. And so how does an agency know that they need to be working with new fangled? Like, what are the telltale signs?
Mark O'Brien 44:09
Well, yeah, let me let me explain a little bit about that transition. And then I can get to that question, because it'll be helpful background or So basically, what happened in 2015? Is those two systems, EOS and coach forced us to look at like, what can you actually be the best in the world that truly, and when you hear that question, you think it's a joke, and the best in the world at anything, but that's not true. If you're properly specialized, you absolutely can't be the best in the world at something. And this is coaching we give to our own clients as well as our agency partners.
And we realize, you know, to your point, like well, this web stuff isn't the problem anymore. Like agencies are able to build their own website, that's not anissue. It's everything else that they struggle with. The content creation, the emails, the email, work, the CRM, the paid media, like all the all the other stuff, that's that's the problem. And so we decided to completely reinvent the company to go to where the pain points were. So we would coach them on the websites or the build the right business development website. But then we spent a lot of time working with them on the content. The two hardest things about marketing are one positioning, and two, documenting your expertise around that positioning, which is content creation and distribution. Those are the two hardest things about marketing. And so we decided to go really, really hard at the marca the content side specifically.
And that built the modern modern-era of newfangled, where we focus on website coaching to make sure the websites the best business development tool possible, work with them on the content to make sure they're producing the right volume and specificity of content from the right audience all the time, constantly forevermore, making sure they're using email properly to nurture their prospects, the different stages in the buying cycle, in now paid media to generate, you know, near immediate and significant results, because we're driving the right kinds of people to these wonderful expertise, latent assets.
So that's, that's, that's the thing, the four pillars of website content, email, paid media, now an agency to your question, an agency decides it's time to talk to us, when they're sick of the same, they're sick of the same that they've been living off referrals, and reputation of a few key people. Maybe they're used to going to trade shows, and just kind of, you know, rubbing elbows, things like that. And they're either sick of doing those things, or in Cobra times can't do those things. And they really want to take control their future, they want to change their future and, and be known for something different and, and be treated like an expert and command higher prices have more control on the buy sell relationship with their clients, that's when they come to us.
But we're expensive, you know it, our price point is six to $7,000 a month, and we work in year long programs minimum, and so like it's a tall, tall, tall, tall ticket. And so unless you really want to change, you're not gonna hire us, you've got to really meet it, in order to work with us. And that works well for us because we end up with a roster full of amazing clients who have a deep, deep desire for real cultural change. And that's, that's what we do.
Marc Gutman 47:02
That's, that's incredible. And what are you seeing now, especially during this time of the pandemic? Are you seeing your clients thrive? Or are you seeing them struggle? Or what's what's the outlook look like right now for for what you're seeing?
Mark O'Brien 47:17
That's a great question. And I'm surprised at my response here. But we we do see, I think, a very specific and I'm not above, I can't find the right word we, the slice of the marketplace we have immediate access to is a fairly representative slice of a certain portion of the economy. Okay. And so we work with bitesize agencies throughout North America, and a little bit in other English speaking countries, Australia, UK, etc. And so, but in the US and Canada, in all brightens just specialists, they have to test specialists they get they're not specialist, they can't work with us, we can help them. And so they're working in very unique and Audrey's discreet industries themselves. And so it's a fair slice of the economy that we can see. And we're deep in the business, we really understand how things are going and their business. And most of our clients are doing pretty well, which is interesting. A few are having a hard time, but only a few and an equal amount, if not more are seeing exponential growth.
They're thriving in this environment because it plays to their skills because people can't go out and do certain things anymore. And so I've been heartened, it's surprised to see that, but our average client is stable at least. And many of them for many of them, the targets they set in January for the year. They're still looking to hit this year, which is incredible.
Marc Gutman 48:48
Wow, that is incredible. And that's a testament I think to what you're doing with your clients and super, super impressed with that.
Mark O'Brien 48:56
So I actually stop you there. I can't take credit for that, Newfangled cannot take credit for that. That would be that'd be overstepping for sure. I mean these businesses are extraordinary businesses on their own. And they made a lot of brave decisions. And that's why the experts they are in the first place it's that we just shine a light on it that that's all we do. But it's it's if the truth weren't incredible and compelling. The light we shot on it would be useless. It's all about their work.
Marc Gutman 49:19
That's very generous of you. And I get what you're saying. And so what does the future look like for newfangled? What do you think? What what's the future look like? You know,
Mark O'Brien 49:29
I've got to say I'm so grateful for what I get to do every day. This is an incredible business. It's an incredible business full of wonderful people. And we do work for wonderful people. It shocks me that we get to work with a client base that is so smart, interesting, kind, and appreciative.
As the ones we do, like I feel bad for our client cause they, they work with like lawyers and stuff. And you know, I've got a lot of good friends who are lawyers, but you know, the agency market as a as a focus and to get to work with the owners and leaders of these really smart, interesting, nimble, creative, and digital shops, you know, all over the world is just incredible.
So I love what we do, we're having more impact on our clients than we've ever had significantly more impact on clients we've ever had. And so we've really found a nice rhythm in terms of our service offering, and the staff that we've got the expertise level in the staff, so it's part of us, you might be familiar, you said, 10 year, three year and one year goals. And so the three year goal is to really do what we're doing, we've hit a groove now that we've been trying to find for a long long, we're 25% we've been working on this for a while. And we've we've hit a groove that we've been trying to find for a long time. And and I intend to make sure we stay on it for for the foreseeable future. And, you know, measured growth even even probably throttled growth, I'm intentionally throttle growth just to make sure that we maintain a certain level of excellence inside the organization. So that's kind of a boring answer.
But my first session at Strategic Coach, Blair Ends and I attended together, and the very first session of the 12 sessions we attended together in Vancouver was the headline was never sell, never retire. And Blair and I both absorb that and completely took it hook, line and sinker. And that's how we run both of our businesses never sell, never retire, make build your business to be something you love, and you love so much that you'd be crazy to step away from it. And and that's what's happened. That's really what's happened. So, so I'm not looking to get out, I'm not looking to, you know, hit some dollar mark, Mark, and exit. None of that I'm looking to continue to work with this amazing team, we've got an amazing class, we have to just deliver as much possible value as we can, while maintaining our core values.
Marc Gutman 51:56
What's hard about running a firm like yours, What don't we know? What don't we see? Like, what is the average person missing?
Mark O'Brien 52:03
I think I think the hardest thing about us about my role specifically, it sounds like I am, yeah. uncertainty and you gotta be okay with that. You have to be okay with that. And if you're not okay, with a certain level of risk and uncertainty kind of permeated throughout your entire life. because everything's on the line, it's not gonna work out very well for you.
But if you are, then it's an option you owe it to yourself to very deeply consider.
Marc Gutman 52:31
Well, Mark is we come to the end of our time here. I just have two more questions for you. And the first has been rattling around in my head ever since you you made mention of it. But what makes a great Caesar like, what's the secret? Okay,
Mark O'Brien 52:44
Here we go. I'm ready to give this to you. Right now. There's a recipe. in a blender. any old Blender will do two egg yolks. Five close with peeled garlic as much black pepper as you can grind in there. About a half cup of parsley, flat leaf parsley leaves, tablespoon of Wilshere sauce, the juice of one full pretty big lemon.
And that's it. Put that in a blender.
Blend those things together. And then open up the top. There's no blenders have a little like thing you can open the top. Open that thing up with your hand over and it's going to splatter in very slowly pour olive oil into it until it thickens. It'll take you about a minute of slowly pouring it and you'll hear it'll sound like a liquid then all of a sudden they'll sound like a solid. And that's when it's done. That will be the best caesar dressing you've ever had in your life.
Marc Gutman 53:34
No anchovies.
Mark O'Brien 53:35
Oh my gosh. How did I forget the anchovies? Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, yes, of course. anchovies. Thank you Marc. That's what I get for rattling off top my head. Yeah, we want we want about five or six filets of Ortiz brand anchovies. Specifically, it has got to be Ortiz. Brandon, have you ever had an rpz anchovy?
Marc Gutman 53:53
I don't think so.
Mark O'Brien 53:56
And I'm about to find some go find some right now. They sell it at most wholefoods. You can buy them on Amazon. They're like 16 bucks for a one-ounce jar.
They're expensive. But oh my gosh. And I'm not a like, straight anchovy guy at all never been. I can eat a jar of those in a sitting just by so they're amazing. They're they're incredible. They're like something other than Anchovy.
Marc Gutman 54:16
The first recipe rattled off by memory on the Baby Got Backstory podcast. First of all, thank you for that. And second of all, it's a real takeaway. I'm gonna go make some Caesar.
Mark O'Brien 54:26
Romaine lettuce, of course. Right.
Marc Gutman 54:28
Yeah. And my last question for you. So if that 15-year-old Mark, who you were talking about, ran into you today? What do you think he'd say?
Mark O'Brien 54:44
He'd be shocked across the board. It'd be really mad at me. And he'd be really happy for me. That's the best I got for you.
Marc Gutman 54:58
And that is Mark O'Brien. From Newfangled I need to try the Marco Brian move that can't be resisted the all do anything. I've done that before in my career and I can attest, the great things happen. If you can just get into the middle of where they're happening. Once you're there, you at least have a chance to show what you got, and make your own way. And we'll link to all things Mark O'Brien in Newfangled in the show notes, so please go and check them out. Thank you again to Mark and the team at Newfangled. Yes, I'm trying to set a record and how many times I can say the word Newfangled, Newfangled, Newfangled. Well, that's the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstorm.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS, so you'll never miss an episode. A lot big stories and I cannot lie, you other storytellers can't deny.
56 min

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Baby Got Backstory is the ultimate insider’s guide to business storytelling, brand storytelling, messaging, and communications for entrepreneurs, visionary leaders, and progressive businesses of all sizes. We ask inspiring creators, entrepreneurs, and storytellers to share their backstory by answering the questions: “Who am I? How did I get here? And Where am I going? Listeners will not only hear the story behind the story of our guests but understand how their own story and backstory have shaped who they have become.

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