Podcast

Dr. Bruce Murphy 0:00
To do anything successfully in life, you can’t enter into it knowing that you’re going to be successful, you need to do it in stages. Okay, let’s test this hypothesis to see if this works. Then let’s test this hypothesis to see if this works. Now we’ll put them together. We’ll test this. This is the business way to do it.

Nate Disarro 0:19
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro, and welcome to Titans of Industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I speak with Dr. Bruce Murphy owner and CEO of Arkansas Heart Hospital and a pioneer of modern cardiology. At the time of its founding, Arkansas Heart Hospital was the nation’s second standalone cardiac hospital and there was no blueprint for success. Overcoming criticism from the medical community, Dr. Murphy went against the grain and ultimately bought the hospital with one major caveat. He had to forfeit his medical license in order to take ownership. This year, Arkansas Heart Hospital is celebrating its 25th anniversary and has expanded its presence to provide care in over 30 locations in multiple states. With a thirst for knowledge and an unstoppable drive for innovation. Dr. Murphy is truly a titan of healthcare leadership. Now let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and Video for marketing your business. Our team at Content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in, it’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience. And video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit contenttitan.co to learn more. Now, here’s my episode with Dr. Bruce Murphy. Dr. Murphy, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to have this conversation with you. And in telling your story on our podcast.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 2:13
Delighted. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Nate Disarro 2:16
So I kind of want to get to know you a little bit from from childhood. And personally, I grew up in Plano, Texas, which is often referred to as sort of the white picket fence of America, your middle class, everything’s great, no problems, you know, T ball fields look nicer than a lot of college facilities. But from my understanding your childhood might not have looked that way.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 2:38
Well, no, I was very fortunate in that I grew up in rural Americana in rural Arkansas, and I grew up in a you know, tiny town of 1500 people or so called Stephens, Arkansas. And I was I have all these advantages in life because I grew up in small town. And he said, Well, what what are your advantages? Well, they have to do with durable relationships, they have to do with respect, mutual respect, and they have to do with a lot of the, the, you know, the morality of Americana in a small town. And the fact that we lived in small towns to each other, and I knew every last person in town, every last person in town I knew. So I had this tremendous advantage. I didn’t realize at the time, I thought it was a disadvantage. But when I got off and went to meet people that had different viewpoints on the world, I realized that I had the advantage. So anyway, thanks.

Nate Disarro 3:39
Yeah, and you know, it’s interesting, you view it now as an advantage. Whereas from my childhood, I thought the world was great, and everything’s easy. And this is the way life is gonna be we’ll come to find out when everything’s sort of handed to you and you don’t have anything to work for. Life gets a little more difficult the older you get, and you have to figure out what hard work actually is and what not having things looks like did you experience?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 4:02
Yes, I did. Matter of fact, you know, I recall distinctly the seventh grade, I had two pair of pants and T shirts for the entire year. That was spring, summer, winter. Okay. And so you knew what I was gonna wear tomorrow. Because Mama was one of those one of those every night. And so I think because of that, when I became, you know, a businessman at at the age of 12 or 13 or so, and started running my own business in town. I probably over compensated for that. Alright, because it was a lot of peer of, you know, Bruce is back in that check shirt again tomorrow. And so, if anything, I turned into a clotheshorse because of because of my early childhood, but it was again I see that it is advantage, I just see it as advantage.

Nate Disarro 5:02
So as you grew up and determined you weren’t going to stay there your whole life, where did life take you? Where did you go to college? Right away? Yeah,

Dr. Bruce Murphy 5:09
I thought, first of all, I was the oldest of five children. And my father was a Baptist minister and a very small church there, probably less than 150 souls. And I, I decided a couple things. Number one, I loved jet airplanes. And I love the idea of me being a fighter pilot, I just thought that was great. And I thought about a few other things, too. It had been mentioned to me by one of my mentors at the time had I ever thought about being a doctor and, and I didn’t until later I mean, I was in my senior year in high school, and I actually thought about it, but by this time, I was committed to the Air Force Academy and, and went there with the idea that I was going to be a pilot and but in fact, fell in love with biology. And so, you know, within a short period of time I changed my mind to, from trying to be Superman to trying to be a doctor, a researcher, I wanted to be a medical researcher is what I changed my mind to. And so that that meant I applied to and went to graduate school here in Little Rock at UAMS. And the department of pharmacology, I became a biochemical pharmacologist, which means studying the science of drug action. And it has nothing to do with farming, it has nothing to do with pharmacy, all right. But it was more about cell biology. And in quickly after a couple of years in a graduate program, which I thought was really difficult, I think thought Military Academy was medium difficult. I thought graduate school was really difficult. That one of my major professor said, Well, you need to go to medical school, if you’re going to be a cell biologist, or whatever you decide to do. Because basically, practically speaking, if you’re a PhD, you’re gonna make half as much money as an MD doing the same job. And I said, Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense. Because medical school, I was able to accomplish both in five years. And, and actually, I thought medical school was easiest thing I ever did, compared to how hard you had to study to be a graduate student. But anyway, that’s kind of how I got into the doctrine business. I, I always had thought I might be a doctor after Mr. John Barbara Davis mentioned to me in a truck one day coming back from Magnolia right past McNeal. And on the way back to Stevens, and, and it happened, and it happened just like that.

Nate Disarro 7:52
Now, we share that love of jet aircraft. But do you ever regret not going that direction?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 7:58
No, no, I don’t, you know, I wouldn’t be flying an airplane right now. And fortunately, I got over it.

Nate Disarro 8:07
So the the mentality of becoming a doctor was something that was cemented from somebody from from where you grew up. Somebody

Dr. Bruce Murphy 8:13
else mentioned it. Yeah, they did. And I, I, I hadn’t seriously looked

Nate Disarro 8:18
at it at the time. Was that somebody that that was sort of a mentor to you at the time? Yeah, I worked

Dr. Bruce Murphy 8:21
for him. He owned Stevens hardware. And I work in Stevens hardware for since I was in the eighth grade. And so that was this unbelievable advantage of working in this old old hardware store that was 125 years old at the time and, and to be able to understand how to connect a piece of PVC to something stainless steel, and how do you get that done? And what is a 20? penny nail what is an eight penny nail? I mean, all those advantages I got were I’ve used all my life.

Nate Disarro 8:52
I’ve never heard in my entire life, somebody say that medical school was easiest thing they’ve ever done. Granted, coming out of a graduate program that was very difficult, but looking at all the challenges, all the things that you had done to that point, did you feel like walking into becoming a physician would was something that you felt comfortable doing? Or did you see a lot of challenges ahead or,

Dr. Bruce Murphy 9:13
you know, I actually dreaded medical school because I had up till that point not had clinical interaction of any sort in medicine, okay, I’d really not seen a patient’s or worked in a doctor’s office or, you know, being a physician assistant or whatever, I had not done anything. And so I was kind of fearful of this. What will happen when you know, you’re actually supposed to interview patients and do a physical on patients, etc, etc. Because I knew that all my classmates and when I joined the class in medicine, they already had three years of that experience that I didn’t have. But now I said it’s easy. Yeah, it was easy because all of the subjects I had either taken are taught in graduate school I was I was teaching medical students at the time in pharmacology. So it’s not, it was that part of it, the academic part was really easy. The clinical part was, was worrisome to me. I mean, it worried me.

Nate Disarro 10:16
So at some point, you had to pick a specialty and become a cardiologist. Correct? Yeah. So what, what took you down that path?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 10:22
Okay, well, I thought I was going to be a pediatrician, I really did. I just love babies who doesn’t love babies. But you know, The Little Rascals when they get sick, they just scream bloody murder. And there is there is something in everybody’s DNA, especially females more that you know, wants to help the screaming, crying baby. And so that’s what I thought I was going to do. And even in my senior year, I did extra rotations in the in children’s hospital. But I decided I was going to go into internal medicine. And it was in internal medicine, that I had my first real encounter with cardiology. And in getting my first encounter, in cardiology, I was I was in the very early stage of what was the golden age of cardiology. And that’s when we developed abilities to actually measure the heart to image the heart, and then to actually stop things from happening through the right diagnosis and, and then later through the right procedure. So when I had all these great gadgets, I mean, the head the all of these great little things to use. And, and I was I was, I remember one important event that happened that I was when I was, I was still in medical school at the time, actually, in this, this cardiology fellow was going to do a right heart catheterization, which is a very simple, relatively low risk procedure on this patient over at the VA. And I was assigned to that patient, I was that patient’s Junior medical student. And so when we took him down there for his right heart, Cath, he said, you want to do it? And I said, Well, talk me through it. Sure. And he did, we were both gloved. But that I mean, I was addicted right there. I mean, when you got to do your first procedure on your patient, you see the you see the balloon goes through the right atrium, through the right ventricle out and the pulmonary artery out into the lungs. It’s like, okay, that was fun. That was fun. I’m helping this person by measuring these blood pressures in his lungs that really important for our right diagnosis. And so that got me.

Nate Disarro 12:43
And my understanding, you have a very successful practice, and ultimately, the opportunity came up to start a hospital. Well, this idea come up. So

Dr. Bruce Murphy 12:52
what happened in in the backdrop to all of this is that we, in a very short period of time, went from not being able to help a patient with a blocked artery, to being able to help a lot of patients with blocked arteries. And this happened just in a very short time twinkling of an eye between 1977 and 1985. We went from never having opened an artery in the human heart without surgery, to opening a much. And so I grew up in that era, which is called the golden age of interventional cardiology, where all of these gadgets were invented, that were so profound in the ability to change the course of an otherwise fatal problem. And so what happened was, is that because of that, so many patients now were candidates for an arteriogram of their heart. And the hospitals were not constructed for that. I mean, they only had, they only had, you know, two cath labs, one very primitive at Baptist and two cath labs at St. Vincent’s. And so they were basically overwhelmed. And so I distinctly remember one I got a referral of a patient with a heart attack in Malvern Arkansas. And there was no bed CC better or otherwise in Little Rock to send them to and I was on staff at Baptist St. Vincent’s and, and that patient had to stay down there with a big heart attack for five days with no treatment other than oxygen and morphine. And that didn’t that didn’t help a lot. And so by the time I got to that patient five days later and did the right test is way too late. Just way too late. The whole front wall, his heart was dead, he’s in heart failure. You couldn’t get him out of it. And it was only because we didn’t have the facilities. And I reach I’ll call also getting, you know, setting my alarm clock for 1am not being on call to get up at 1am Get dressed drive to the hospital for a plan to am I like the procedure, because it had been added on to the day. And so now, we were doing procedures at two o’clock at night in the morning on patients who had waited all day long with nothing to eat on families who were standing there waiting to know what is going on with the heart. And so you do the procedure go out and talk to the family, and come back if you didn’t go home and try to go back to sleep which impossible. But the point being is that suddenly we had a lack of major infrastructure and on a grand scale. And when we asked these hospitals to respond to us with more cath labs, more CCU beds, they had too many other departments to take care of, and 17 other departments. I mean, you we got to treat the neurology, the people in the neurosurgery people in the OB Jin people in the cardiology people with relatively equal apportionment of resources. And so infrastructure was a, it was just pitiful back then. And that that’s where this whole idea that, well, we need a cath lab. And then the question was, oh, Archie thinking too small, don’t you really need a hospital? And the answer was, I think he might be wrong.

Nate Disarro 16:09
Was a heart specific hospital a thing in America, I don’t know.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 16:14
And nobody had ever heard of it. There was one being constructed that had had didn’t even have the walls up no roof in McAllen, Texas by this group that I became affiliated with, or was introduced to. And so we met, you know, we got on a, we rented a plane and had somebody flies down there. And, and just to be sure, it was real, it was real, they were real. The idea was real. And within three weeks, we’d signed up to build a hospital in Little Rock. And you know, it, it began as a relatively small mall idea of a cath lab that went all the way to, you know, Cath Lab, oh, RS ICUs, to, to, you know, a, a program now that literally, our Kansans cannot live without, if we weren’t here, right now, there’s no place for them to otherwise go. And so we’re just an essential part of the fabric of healthcare delivery for Arkansas and, and in the course of that my job changed pretty radically,

Nate Disarro 17:27
I can imagine. So I want to shift gears a little bit and move into the business mindset for a second, because your whole practice at this point was, you know, on staff at hospitals, and really, you took care of patients, and that was your job, right. And now all of a sudden, this idea of a hospital comes up. And I think there were some other people involved, and you kind of have to shift your thinking a little bit and become a little bit more of a businessman as well.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 17:50
Well, I that it’s absolutely true. And I will tell you that I had once I had the idea planted in my head, and I did one week of due diligence and three weeks of negotiation, we signed up to do it. And, and I did that because I had really strong senior partners, but I was still the managing partner. Okay. And so if I hadn’t had them to help me with sharing the risk, and, and we started off with the idea that we were going to build something that was called patient focused care, in which we deliver all of the services directly to the bedside to the patient, and we focus on the patient, we don’t focus on the procedure, we focus on patient care. And that was what set us apart. I mean, that was the whole idea of what set us apart. But yes, we were sub specialty cardiology, cardiovascular surgery, etc. But it was the patient focused care that just had this astronomical thing ring. That patient satisfaction just became our marketing agent is people that came to us now they, they want more, they want more so

Nate Disarro 19:00
so to get a hospital like this off the ground, you can’t just sit in an office somewhere, think of it and go out start signing paperwork, and here it happens, right? Like, what’s the process look like to get because a lot of people go out and start businesses, they raise a little bit of money or go get a bank loan or whatever. This is a whole different beast.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 19:18
Yeah, it’s, it’s, if you knew how big it was, when you started you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t be as inclined to do it. The deal is once you do it, it becomes such a you know, a durable part of the fabric of helping people that you would you might rethink that and do it for that reason. But basically, you know, we we became friends with and partners with a a hospital management hospital building subspecialty building. entity that initially was private and then public then back private, then public but any event, they became our partners and the physicians raised. I think total, we raised $3 million at the time, which was a lot of money for all of us, because we had to borrow it. And most of most of it personally on a signature, and and then we borrowed the rest of the money for the whole hospital to be built. At that time, you could get 100% financing. All right, yeah, it was 100% financing. And it wasn’t bank loan, but it was, it was a REIT loan. And, and then it took, you know, it took 15 months to build the hospital, the first hospital 27 months a second hospital, but it, it and then to do anything successfully in life, you can’t enter into it knowing that you’re going to be successful, okay. So in order to test the hypothesis, you need to do it in stages. Okay, let’s test this hypothesis to see if this works, then let’s test this hypothesis to see if this works. Now we’ll put them together, we’ll test this, this is the business way to do it. Okay. So we started off with, you know, I think maybe 20 beds, 21 beds open, we’re in seven, we have a we have 112 beds at this one facility now. But we started with minimal number of beds open and, and then started just testing these various stages of now we’re going to do a balloon angioplasty on a patient. Now we’re gonna put a pacemaker into patient, now we’re going to put a defibrillator. But now we’re going to actually do heart surgery on the patient. So each one of these stages that we went through, and we were successful is like, Okay, this, we can put it all together now we can put it all together as a product. And, you know, if I were even starting a nursery business, I think I would start it in stages. I mean, I think I’d start off with hydrangeas, and then get into Japanese maples or whatever. Alright, but it would probably be done in stages. And I would, you know, I would strongly advise people in other businesses and in this business, to take the lowest risk, highest opportunity to help people approach. And you’ll probably be successful.

Nate Disarro 22:18
You said something that’s very counterintuitive to most mindsets. And that is that in order to be successful, you have to go into something not knowing if it’s going to be a success. That’s correct. How many times have you had to implement that strategy? Oh,

Dr. Bruce Murphy 22:33
well, is that training for the business yet? You betcha. Absolutely. You betcha. Because you’re thinking on your feet. I mean, literally, your next move is either life or death, maybe you don’t know. And so this whole notion of dealing with something that’s broken that you fix, but you break it worse, and now you got to fix what you broke in and patch up what you. So it’s that part of it, gigantically prepared me for the ability to doesn’t realize you got to think on your feet. Now you got to problem solve this, you got to problem solve this in such a way that you got to go through the the list in your mind’s eye exactly what your options are, and choose the best one you think.

Nate Disarro 23:21
Now, the my understanding of the healthcare industry over the last several years is that it’s sort of gone in the opposite direction of the way that the Arkansas hospitals gone in that a lot of health care groups are now forming these huge conglomerates and have ownership of large corporations. Whereas at one point, you took full ownership over the hospital from a larger entity. That’s

Dr. Bruce Murphy 23:47
correct. I did not plan to retire from the practice of medicine until I was in my late 70s or mid 80s. So when people ask me, What are you going to do or when you’re gonna retire? It’s like, I hadn’t thought about it. I’m, you know, I’m 60, approaching 60 years old, and why would I be planning retirement? I feel fine. And I’m probably at the top of my game. And so when the resource became endangered, and I’m talking about the heart hospital became endangered. Health care is local. Now, it’s a locally administered a locally decided industry. And there are other industries that are all local to their depend on the local terrain, the local, or even the car industry, which maybe comes out of, you know, Nagoya, Japan or comes out of Germany or comes out of the Detroit. It’s still locally delivered locally. I mean, it’s all it’s a local thing. And so, the likelihood that if you’re that an out of state entity would have the same local interests that we wanted for our patients is a great fear for me, I thought we were in danger. When when when Metcalf the apparent Corporation said we’re selling all the hospitals, and then we’re liquidating all the assets to the shareholders. It was at that point that there was a series of visitors that they brought to town to try and sell the hospital to. And these were mostly growing medium sized or large corporations that really weren’t interested in the story. Okay, they were interested in the balance sheet. All right. And so is like, okay, you know, your questions are not, can I take care of this heart attack from Melbourne? Again, your questions are, can I hit an EBITDA number that suits you on an income statement. And so it became clear to me, after going through this maturation process of figuring out what these guys were really about, and they were nice, people don’t get me wrong, they just had a different business plan. That somebody local had to do it. And then I was obviously pointed out that I was probably the right person to do it locally. And at the time that I did, I didn’t realize completely that I was going to have to completely stop the practice of medicine order to do it. However, doing what I’m doing now is not much different than a teaching somebody and that, in that when I went to clinic, or I went to the heart cath lab, you know, I’m one on one with the patient, and you know, your one on one, you figure out their problems, you try and fix their problems if you can, or at least for me to them. But when you’re a healthcare professional or business owner, now I can simultaneously treat hundreds of patients in 30, clinics to hospitals all simultaneously. I’m not treating them directly, but I’m providing the basis for their providers to treat them directly. And so just like a teacher can teach one on one, or one on 30, or one on 500. It’s it’s a lot more economical to treat one on 30, or one on 500 than one on one.

Nate Disarro 27:23
So you mentioned having to relinquish your medical license in order to take ownership of the hospital. What’s the purpose behind that? Why? Why is that a

Dr. Bruce Murphy 27:32
great question, because most people don’t wouldn’t have any clue that there was a relationship between those two, what, but back in the 70s and 80s, a congressman named Stark from California passed, some had passed or sponsored and had passed in Congress, some anti referral legislation. All right, in that it was we normally think that every doctor is crooked, and every doctor is trying to self refer to himself so he can get compensation rather than patient care. That was the basis of the legislation which passed. All right. And so it was then part at the last minute of the Obama legislation, the Patient Care Act, that the Hospital Association came and asked to be inserted rules that said that doctors couldn’t own hospitals. And why would the hospital association go against doctors owning hospitals? Well, the reason was they they couldn’t compete with Doctor owned hospitals. Because the the patient satisfaction and the quality outcomes, were far in excess to a general acute hospital. It’s got, as I said, 17 different product lines. They’re trying to espouse and make business simultaneously. So because they couldn’t compete with a hospital based, a hospital directed physician on hospitals, they made it illegal for a doctor to own a hospital. And it’s the only profession. I mean, it’s like, you would never think that it’s illegal for a lawyer to own his law offices. Well, where’s the doctor gonna practice he has an office or a hospital, I mean, so they made it illegal for doctors to own even though doctors had been, you know, forming hospitals to put their patients in for hundreds and hundreds of years. But that was the presumption is that you can’t trust doctors. And so Obama actually didn’t want the legislation in there. But in order to compromise with all the other people he’s trying to compromise with at the time, he was inserted the moment he signed it, it became law all right, and not not at any point in the future at that instant. Well, the banks the consequences if you are considered a referral to that’s inappropriate referral to the hospital because you’re self serving. is basically the closing of the hospital. And so the banks, what didn’t want to sin, you know, they didn’t want to spend the money or invest the money with us in buying the hospital, unless it was absolutely no way that any action that Bruce Murphy took could be considered a physician action that is directing care in his direction. All right. So I resigned my medical license, I did not resign my MD or my PhD, those are still there. But the transition has been a wonderful transition for me.

Nate Disarro 30:38
So did you have to hang up the white coats forever? Do you date those hanging around?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 30:42
They’re in there in one of my old closets? They are. Matter of fact, my old nurse had Dr. mirboo, you need to put this on eBay. And I think no, Ronita I’m not going to put this on eBay.

Nate Disarro 30:54
So, you know, medical profession is probably the longest training period to become a professional, a practicing physician. So you spent your whole life you know, getting certified and then going out practicing. Now you got to hang that up, and you got to put on a CEO hat. What’s What’s that transition like? And was it drinking from a firehose? Yeah,

Dr. Bruce Murphy 31:16
it was I thought I had been running the hospital all along. I was wrong. I didn’t realize we had 46 departments. And I only knew about three or four of them. And so it was not like, I mean, it was there were many things that I have learned many things I have learned. And you know, not having the lingo. The the GAAP lingo, the all of God is the hardware store lingo. Okay, for business. I was not, I was not familiar with accrual based accounting. All right, I was not really, it had to be taught to me, all right. This is not checkbook accounting, this is accrual based accounting. And so it’s not a hard concept. I mean, when you’ve been a, you know, a practicing physician for a long time, but there is a huge list of things that you need to know it’s huge. And so I’m at the point of continuing to learn on a daily basis, every day, I’m continuing to learn about business. I continue to read about business, I am a addicted to training my own brain. And most of my hobbies have to do with things like that. And so it is no question that having it was going from the clinical side to the business side exclusively, was a big jump, big jump.

Nate Disarro 32:54
So through this process, obviously, you learn a lot, a lot of things that that you probably wish you knew a long time ago. So what what is what’s something that stands out as a monumental piece of information that’s really helped over the last 10 years, 15 years,

Dr. Bruce Murphy 33:09
let’s say over the last 10 days, all right. And it’s a real easy concept, and I’m going to explain to you but it’s so easy, that you’d say well, why didn’t somebody explain that to you? 10 years ago, and I actually came in contact with this particular concept about three months ago, but but and it’s, it’s so simple as third grade. Alright, so if you want to grow the income of business, and right now, all the hospitals in Arkansas are in trouble. All right, there’s 77 hospitals. 74 are losing money. All right. And it’s the consequences of Coronavirus, 19. It’s all those consequences. And but if you want to make income, if you add revenue, let’s say we got 10 more heart surgeries. Great. We add all of that revenue to income. No, no, no, no chemotherapy. You added. You added let’s say you get $30,000 for heart surgery, okay? Well, you only added the difference between your overhead and the top line. So, overheads, 85 to 90%, you added 10%. So you only got put, you only put $3,000 on potential bottom line money. However, if you cut something that’s unnecessary as an expense, no overhead subtraction, that is 100% goes to the bottom line. All right, so a bottom on me income. So if you cut $30,000 In expense, you just added $30,000 to your bottom line, not $3,000 to your bottom line. So third grade concept, all right, but no one ever taught it to me until recently and actually I picked up on it from an Have the conversation.

Nate Disarro 35:01
Yeah, it’s valuable. But But I think the important thing is what you talked about. And that’s to always keep training the mind always have

Dr. Bruce Murphy 35:07
to train the mind you have to.

Nate Disarro 35:10
So the medical industry, from from a consumer of the medical industry, you look at it and you say, Well, I want the tried and true method. I want what’s going to work? Because it’s worked for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. But it’s also looking for disruptors, how are we doing things different? How are we advancing the practice of medicine and technology? Is there a fine line between those two? And do you see yourself and the organization as someone that’s more on the disruptor side are more, let’s do what we’ve always done so we can get consistent results.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 35:42
Our very existence is a disruption to medical care in Arkansas, because they all try to put us out of business. And that’s a whole different story. But But no, our very existence is a disruption. And we we think of ourselves as disruptors. Now, any that’s not always true. I mean, sometimes we’re thinking in too far a traditional way of of never saying the words, because we won’t say them out loud, of this is how we’ve always done it. But we have to be thinking in terms of disruption. Because this is not the situations that we’re in right now are not durable. And we have, we have this obligation to manage these healthcare assets. And it’s temporary, our obligation here is temporary. And our our quote, you know, being in charge of these assets is temporary. Because if 50 years from now are less, probably far less, somebody else is going to be managing these assets. And so we’ve been given and I see it, and I try and teach my staff is that we’ve been given temporary stewardship of these assets. And so our job is to pass them on better. But we have to disrupt in order to do it. Because we there’s no way we can live with the expense side, the way the expense side is going right now. And Shabbat.

Nate Disarro 37:14
door to balloon time, in one statistic I saw the national average is about 90 minutes. But I saw that Arkansas hospitals around 30 minutes. That’s a dramatic difference. How on earth can an organization be that much better than the national average?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 37:35
Ah, it’s commitment. It’s it’s the, the protocols, I mean, we we can’t have people that are on call to help us open up a blocked artery that live 30 minutes away. I mean, we can’t do it. I mean, you’ve got to be within a short period of time in a short period of time to get to get there. And then there’s a commitment by all of our doctors to when you get into this, we’ve got a heart attack in the IDI. Now everybody’s running, we’re absolutely running and is part I’ve witnessed and done myself pushing a heart attack down the hall on the gurney, and I’ve done it myself by myself, getting him out down to the cath lab. So it’s this, it’s this cultural need to save somebody’s life. And there’s not that many times you get put in the place where you can say, I saved his life. But that’s one of them. That’s one of them.

Nate Disarro 38:35
I mentioned we share a love of jets. I think you still do I don’t know. But you know, when you look at and I don’t know if you’ve seen the new Top Gun movie, but but there’s this this conflict between the future of pilots, right? Where it’s all becoming drones, pilots in the Air is just not a thing anymore. And we look at health care, you look at all the technology and the advances and you wonder, are doctors still going to be as important in the same roles that they happen? Where do you see the future going in cardiology and heart care

Dr. Bruce Murphy 39:06
robots? Absolutely. Robots. Now their, quote robots in medicine right now they’re not okay. The robots in quote in medicine right now actually emulate the human movement. All right, they don’t they don’t initiate the human movement or the robotic movement. They emulate it. And but I guarantee you that you’re gonna have a dog bite 20 years from now and the ad and you’d call an ambulance because you’re bleeding and you’re gonna tell them I only want to go to a hospital. It’s got robots, because you know the way they stitch it is gonna be perfectly straight and perfectly done well, so between artificial intelligence AI, and humanoid robots, that’s where we’re going. It couldn’t. It will be very fast. Once it happens. It’ll be like to change From a horse pulled on a buggy and a car, when Henry Ford did it from 1908 to 1913, it’s a dramatic change in Wall Street because they’re first of all full of horse drawn buggies. And now they’re full of cars. There are no horses at all. So I do think that there will be a role for the human touch. I think that a lot of doctoring and diagnostics will be done by robots, and also believe that the robot will have built into them all the facilities that the doctor doesn’t right now. Okay, so if I need an echo, oh, it’s just, it’s just right here, I just, I have the echo. All right, I need a chest X ray gene, I take a chest X ray, I need a CT scan. Okay, I can do the CT scan. So that’s where we’re going. That’s where we’re going. And, and, and, you know, it’s a little worrisome, frankly, because some of the super intellectuals of that are futurist. Worry about AI. And AI becoming dominant at the moment of the singularity. So at the moment of the singularity, when artificial intelligence is superior to all human collective intelligence at that moment, which is predicted to be in 2042, very soon, at that moment, AI will dominate the intellect of humans. And so it’s a matter of who’s in charge. Is it AI because we can self replicate? Now, we have all the things you’ve taught us how to do it. So it’s a scary time. I mean, there are a lot of really intellectual futurists that are very, very worried about AI. But I’m not worried in medicine, I think that that built in quality will be built into the robot, to you know, want to help people and help each other.

Nate Disarro 42:02
That’s a fascinating conversation, it could probably take up another hour, but we’ll move on from that. But But I think something that ties in really well to that is this idea of recruiting new talent, and bringing new people on staff who not only have the experience and mindset to do the job, but are thinking ahead far enough. So how do you approach recruiting and bringing in new people to the organization?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 42:28
Well, right now, you know, we need many, many nurses, we need many other providers, and a variety of of things, everything from support services, to biomed, to to culinary. But our method on doctors is real simple. We want new grads that have not had a chance to develop bad habits. We want to put them in our boot camp. We won’t stars now don’t get me wrong, we won’t stars and we don’t go through recruiting services to get them we get them through a different method, but it’s a it’s a tried and true method. And then we put them in our boot camp and our boot camp last four or five weeks, and they have absolutely no real clinical responsibilities during that period of time. But we’re role modeling them with good doctors that we know are good doctors that are good doctors teach them how to see patients in the clinic, teach them how to see patients in the cath lab teach them how to do casts differently than they were taught in academic medicine by academic cardiologists are surgeons. And then they get to have to get to know everybody in the whole organization virtually, and the geography and the marketing and all of this and then when we turn them loose, and once you turn somebody loose like that, that has had great role models, has a great talent, but also has great ambition. They’re just they soar like rockets. I mean, they just absolutely go straight up. And it’s so exciting every year in August or September, September. We get them in July, when they finish their their fellowship. And generally they’ll take a week or two or three off and then then we started the bootcamp in mid August and they get through it in mid September, then the next few months are just unbelievably all you do is walk around smile and when you see these guys, because they’re just killing it. I mean, they’re just seeing patient after patient after patient their want to become involved in the patient’s life. I mean, they’re, it’s amazing. It’s an amazing transition.

Nate Disarro 44:39
And I’ve heard you say something interesting with with your philosophy on teaching and that is that if you can teach something, it means you understand it. You have to So what where’s your role as a teacher these days versus sitting back and letting the machine run itself?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 44:57
I I started making power points for my executive management team, which has got about 1215 people on it who meet every Tuesday. And I started making PowerPoint presentations for them early in the time course of the pandemic, with an update of what’s happening here and there. And how do you understand what a vaccine? I mean, how does this work? What does it really? What does a CD 43 sale, what does a CDA sale I mean, all of these things, so I started with that, and I, I have changed course into things that interest me. All right, that I think that they were never taught, alright. And so I’ve put PowerPoints together for my staff, that are 1520 minute talks of trying to let them understand something that I just understood for the first time. And, and that can be very diverse. One of them is one of them had to do with the geography of the earth during the last six ice ages. And how that changed where were animals are all over the world. One of them had to do with how the geography of China has affected the fact that it’s only been attacked from the Mongolian plane. I’m about to give them one next Tuesday, on the atoms in your body are 4 billion years old, not the molecules, the atoms that make up the molecules that make up the proteins that make up the sailor. All of this is made from atoms that go back in time, 4 billion years. So there’s atoms in your body that were in dinosaurs, there’s atoms in your body that were in trees from 5 million years ago. And all of the water in your body has comes from some prehistoric ocean, our ice glacier, almost all of it. And so it’s now how does that affect the executive management team? So hard hospital? Science is not about remembering facts. Science is a method of thinking. And you want to teach them the method of thinking as scientist. And that’s my only purpose. Plus Andrews, me and I like talking about it.

Nate Disarro 47:21
Well, you’ve certainly given me a lot to think about now I am trying to think about which dinosaurs I might have been a part of. But that also is another conversation. You also referenced my favorite word earlier in the conversation and you use the word story. And you were talking specifically about the story of the Heart Hospital and the ownership group and where they may take it. And but but to me storytelling is is this idea of creating a human to human connection? Yep. And that connection creates emotions within us and those emotions result in actions. And so from your perspective, how important is storytelling in the role that you play? And the role the heart hospital plays in the community? That’s

Dr. Bruce Murphy 48:04
correct. It’s really that’s a really nice question I’ve never been asked. Storytelling is crucial for leadership development. All right, actually, standing up in front of a whole bunch of people that you don’t know very well, and are either peers are underlings and start talking. Intellectual teaching fashion, is a method of developing leadership inside your organization. It’s just one, but it uses the storytelling approach in order to do it. So leadership and storytelling is itself a hand in glove sort of relationship, you got to be able to relate what you’re thinking to somebody else in the form that they will remember it long term. And, you know, a lot of that is, you know, there’s very, very famous line about, it’s not what you said, but how you make them feel. But it’s crucial for leadership, absolutely crucial.

Nate Disarro 49:02
When it’s interesting that, you know, the first opportunity I think I had to interact with you was several years ago, we were telling the story of the transition in the culinary program at the hospital. And, you know, there was quite the dynamic that happened there. And what it ultimately is, is is using a story to help tell your patients we care about you beyond what we’re doing with your heart or the actual procedure. So are there any pivotal moments or stories within your time as the top leader of the organization that really stand out as pivotal moments in the history of the hospital?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 49:42
I think the story of our initial rejection by the healthcare community here, and now our embracement of it is a story that’s worth hearing by many people, historic historically for us to know What, what in what happened in, it was just a misunderstanding. All right, is just a misunderstanding and that, that one of the principles that we’ve never really talked about is that Arkansas has so many patients that have cardiovascular needs, that it There literally is enough business for everyone. There’s no reason for us to fight over this, because we can’t take care of it if we all got together and formed a pact to take care of it together. But I think they’re just a misunderstanding, when we showed up, that these you know, cowboys is what were recalled by other people, not in a pleasant way. But these cowboys that were going to be reckless with your dollar and reckless with your life. And story pick, just cherry pick the easy patients to take care of that story was promulgated by our colleagues. And that led to probably a lot of unnecessary meetings, some of them down at the county courthouse. And so, but that’s one very pivotal thing in the life of the hospital is that we were able to get past that we were able to get around it. And now we’re really good friends with all of our colleagues right now. And they have, I think, the same level of respect that I have for them for the enormous works that they do. That colleague hospitals are full of extremely smart people that are, are all intent on helping patients. And that’s all of our jobs.

Nate Disarro 51:46
I want to shift gears just a little bit talk a little about the personal side of Dr. Bruce Murphy. I understand. Well, first of all, for anybody that sees a video clip of this interview, we’re sitting in a Japanese garden is that what it’s a

Dr. Bruce Murphy 51:59
walled garden? It’s a walled shade garden that I created as somewhat of a reflection of some places I had been. Yes. And I

Nate Disarro 52:10
understand you’ve been to Japan a number of times or have a an interesting connection hundreds

Dr. Bruce Murphy 52:15
of times, hundreds of times and have businesses in Japan.

Nate Disarro 52:18
So how did that connection come about? And what what’s your interest with Japan,

Dr. Bruce Murphy 52:23
it came in, it came through, it came through a one of the pioneers in Japan, the father of interventional cardiology, for all Japanese was a friend of mine, and a good friend of mine. And so I visited his hospital, he visited my hospital, I visited his hospital, he wanted to hospital like mine, we tried to get him, any of it. That’s how it got started. And then it was very clear that there were certain areas in which the US protocols are far superior to the Japanese protocols. Not that they were not being run by very smart guys don’t believe me, but they just had a very traditional kind of old fashioned way of doing things. And so we got into the business of trying to help them and teach them and did and have. So that’s how I got into Japan.

Nate Disarro 53:17
So if I take a trip over there, what’s the one thing I have to make sure and accomplish while I’m there?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 53:23
Well, you have to go to the ancient capital of Japan, which is Kyoto, which has 1300 temples in it, I’ve been to maybe 70 or 80. But that Kyoto is essential for you to understand. And then modern Tokyo is also essential as well. For you to understand the vibrancy of this city. It’s just, it’s my favorite. I’ve been a lot of places. Tokyo is my favorite city.

Nate Disarro 53:54
That’s amazing. Okay, I like to ask just a few kind of quick hit. Chips. Get to the crux of it quickly. First of all, are you a Netflix guy or a news guy? Netflix. All right. What’s your favorite show recently?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 54:08
They’re mainly they’re mainly they’re mainly Japanese. There’s one called Midnight diner. And it’s a 30 minute that is centered around a diner that opens at midnight. Interesting. And guess what kind of people attracts weirdos, weirdos they can’t sleep or want to drink? Are they gonna get they’re hungry or whatever. But I enjoyed that I enjoyed midnight diner.

Nate Disarro 54:39
I’m gonna have to check that one out for sure. Best or latest book you’ve read. And beginning

Dr. Bruce Murphy 54:45
to read it was given given to me two days ago, the real Anthony Fauci.

Nate Disarro 54:52
That’ll be an interesting one.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 54:53
I think it will be interesting. I do.

Nate Disarro 54:56
What is something that’s a part of your daily routine that you cannot I go through a day without doing

Dr. Bruce Murphy 55:05
it’s weird. I shave twice a day. I shave twice in the morning. It’s kind of weird. And it’s a throw over from being in the military academy, alright? I can’t walk past an unmade bed is impossible. I’ll turn right in and start making the bed. Even if somebody else’s bed are in hotel room, got to know somebody’s gonna make it up. Those are some Essentrics

Nate Disarro 55:37
I like I like, best piece of advice you’ve either given or received.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 55:44
If your employees work like they own the company, they’ll be with the company for a long time.

Nate Disarro 55:50
I like it. What’s the best item you’ve bought in the last year under $100?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 55:56
A, a long spoon to put your shoes on with. So you never have to bend over. It’ll change your life.

Nate Disarro 56:09
I will look it up on Amazon right now. I think every passing year, I realized how much more those kinds of bending

Dr. Bruce Murphy 56:17
over and I mean, come on.

Nate Disarro 56:21
I think I know the answer to this but favorite destination you’ve ever been. Yeah,

Dr. Bruce Murphy 56:24
well, favorite destination is actually Antarctica. For which I’ve been twice, and I hope to go again and again. But it’s like time travel. It’s like going. It’s like It’s like going back 10,000 years to the Ice Age. It’s not about the penguins. It’s about the ice. That’s the reason to go to Antarctica. It’s amazing.

Nate Disarro 56:51
Interesting. I’ve not heard that question. But I am curious about is there anything there other than

Dr. Bruce Murphy 57:00
Oh, the sea is full. I mean, I’d see normally 300 or 400, humpbacks and maybe 200 killer whales. And of course, all the ice. The Pancake ice is full of all these bloody leopard seals and crab seals and I mean, it’s so it’s full alive. Mainly WaterLife there are no vascular plants in Antarctica. Okay, so they it gets water from a different by different mechanism.

Nate Disarro 57:33
That’s fascinating. Okay, favorite artist or musician?

Dr. Bruce Murphy 57:40
Van Gogh, Adele.

Nate Disarro 57:42
I like it. And favorite food drink or restaurant.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 57:47
I don’t drink them anymore. But Moscow meal is probably my very favorite alcoholic drink. A and they have too much sugar in it. So I can’t. I don’t want to. I don’t want to deal with that. It’s probably my favorite foods. Probably king crab.

Nate Disarro 58:06
Yeah. I love good king crab. Yeah. Okay. Dr. Murphy 25th anniversary of the Arkansas Heart Hospital. What’s What does that mean to you personally, having

Dr. Bruce Murphy 58:18
a complete surprise, stunned surprise. Who would ever have thought that? You know, I’d be sitting here 25 years after we started this as you know, just a ambitious cardiologist at the time. We wanted to take care of people one at a time, but the fact that it’s been durable, it’s expanded, it’s grown. You know, we’re gonna take, we’re gonna see 150,000 office visits this year. I mean, unbelievable. You know, we’re gonna do bypass surgery and close to 1000 people. And so, surprise, absolute surprise.

Nate Disarro 59:00
Well, I’ve absolutely loved this conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And I My pleasure, best of luck with the next 25 years.

Dr. Bruce Murphy 59:07
Thank you very much.

Nate Disarro 59:10
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Jason Brown 0:00
My daughter, if I didn’t work in agriculture would have no reason to be on a farm. She would think all of her food came from the grocery store would not know anything about where any any of the food that we eat comes from, which is largely a part of my motivation for working in agriculture is to bring that connection to the farm back.

Nate Disarro 0:20
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to Titans of Industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I sit down with Jason Brown, a PR executive for the Arkansas Farm Bureau, which is a nonprofit private advocacy organization that worked with families throughout the state to improve the livelihood of farmers and their families. Jason is also the host of the Arkansas ag cast a podcast discussing the latest agriculture news in this state. And he’s the former president of prsa Arkansas chapter, he shares his insight about industry trends for the modern farmer and the importance of honoring where our food comes from. Now let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and Video for marketing your business. Our team at content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in, it’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience. And video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit content titan.co to learn more. Now, here’s the episode with Jason Brown. Jason, thanks for jumping on the podcast. Hey, appreciate you coming in. It’s weird. I’m having some strange deja vu. But you know, sometimes that just happens. We’ve been here before. Well, you have your own podcast that you host. But I’d love for our listeners be able to just get a little insight into who you are what you do how you got here. Yeah, get away.

Jason Brown 2:10
So I guess I’ll start from the President. I’m Director of Policy communications at Arkansas Farm Bureau. Everybody is when they hear from Bureau they think about insurance. Little do they know that insurance, the insurance companies owned by something called the oxtail Farm Bureau Federation. We’re a much smaller organization. We are advocacy based and work to help advance the farming and agriculture industry in Arkansas. So I’ll work on that side of things. I don’t I don’t know anything about your insurance rates or things like that. Yeah, so I’m Director of Policy communications. And that’s important because really, we were policy based organization, everything we do is about developing policy from from the ground up and policies that help again help and advance the ag industry in Arkansas. So. So really spend all my time thinking about agriculture. And that makes me really happy. Because several years ago, when I started my career, in public relations, agriculture would played a role a small role in in the work I did every day, in addition to manufacturing and healthcare and education and things like that. And over time, I became just really, really interested in agriculture and wanting to spend, find a way to spend all my time working on and thinking about agriculture. I eventually went on to a startup out of Boston, Massachusetts, it’s the first unicorn in ag tech. And that was really exciting, spent a couple years there left there, to do consulting work for them and some others in Arkansas Farm Bureau and eventually joined up and have been there for some time now. And

Nate Disarro 4:13
yeah, have fun.

Jason Brown 4:14
Yeah, it’s great. It’s, as I was telling you, I spent the morning in a bee suit. And had been in meetings since lunch, and now we get to talk. So I never know what my day is gonna be like. And that’s one thing I love about working in agriculture. Well, that’s

Nate Disarro 4:33
one things I love about the industry. We’re in to, you know, we’re out telling stories, meeting people talking to people in different industries all the time. And we never really know what what’s going to happen day to day, you know, we plan we schedule things. We think we have an idea and then we show up and you know, there may be somebody in a bee suit that we had no idea was going to happen. Yeah. So we’ll get to that a little bit more in a minute. But PR communications you know, it’s a world that sort of sometimes gets meshed in with the rest of marketing or in some industries, just general communications, but break it down for me from, you know, the work that you do, because you’re both advocacy at a public level public advocacy as well as the PR side of things, right?

Jason Brown 5:19
Yeah. So sometimes, sometimes that involves media. Sometimes that involves educating consumers about farming practices, or different applications of inputs and things like that. Sometimes it involves taking the work that we’ve done supporting FFA or four h, something like that, and amplifying that to a level where, you know, so many more people can hear about it, you and I’ve talked on occasion, and we talked about sort of defining the role or the industry of public relations and, and it’s simply just building and maintaining relationships between an organization and its audience or a company and its stakeholders or its customers, whatever, you know, whatever that language may be. It’s, it’s, it’s making and maintaining relationships. So, you know, that can be that can be done in a number of ways. Certainly, you know, a lot of people mainly think about media, I don’t know, you might think about cocktail parties, when you hear public relations. I don’t know, I think about that meme that went around a few years ago. It’s like what my parents think I do what my friends think I do, you know, that sort of thing. I think public relations fall squarely into that, like, no one knows what I do. My wife, we’ve been married 12 years, she doesn’t know I do but. But it’s really about those relationships, building and maintaining those. And that can be through media, that can be through using our own content channels, whether it be social media channels, the website, a newsletter, it can literally be through the spoken word, someone walking up in front of a group of influencers, or legislators or Kiwanis club or something like that, and just communicating about things that are important to us or issues we think you should be thinking about, you know, so a number of ways to, to it can it can wear, we wear many hats, because our job is is ultimately building and maintaining those relationships through communications.

Nate Disarro 7:34
Farming is a is one of those industries that probably the majority of city dwellers like myself, don’t think about every day, we eat three square meals a day and you know, show up at a restaurant or the grocery store, and there’s the food and we just take it and we go home and cook it or somebody cooks it for us or whatever the case may be. But it’s it’s probably one of the biggest and most complex industries there is and you know, certainly covers the most square footage, square mileage square acreage worldwide, but what’s it like being able to communicate, navigate on the, you know, for these people that essentially without them, none of us are around? You know, we’re back in the stone age’s.

Jason Brown 8:21
Yeah, so one cool thing about farming is farmers enjoy, like a 90% Trust, right, I’m paraphrasing of a language here. But with the rest of the world, like it’s one of the most respected, trusted jobs, professions in all the world, and that’s a really good thing. You know, you talked about food, farmers are also producing the products that made the clothes that we’re wearing. In some cases, providing, you know, the the energy that is operating the building, or vehicles and, you know, touch a touch a lot of different aspects. And it’s really, when I think about that, it’s really a gift. You know, I think about the opportunity to be a part of an industry that that has such an impact. It’s it really is a gift to be able to be involved in that. One of the challenges is in the 30s. In Arkansas, we just went back and pulled a bunch of census data a decade, but by every census from 1935, and in the 30s 80% or so of our Kansans lived in rural areas of the state. Today, it’s the exact opposite 80 Over 80% of our population lives in urban areas. And so we’re so disconnected none of us are probably more than three generations from the farm if I had to guess. I think it’d be really hard to find someone He was further than than three generations from the farm. But you know, what, we are steadily losing our connection to the farm, my daughter, if I didn’t work in agriculture would have no reason to be on a farm, she would think all of her food came from the grocery store would not know anything about where bacon comes from, or where, you know, any, any of the food that we eat comes from, which is largely a part of my motivation for working in agriculture is to bring that connection to the farm, back, there’s a huge trend of knowing where your food comes from right now. But really, what that has been is maybe meeting the farmer at a farmers market or something like that. We don’t really know how our food is grown anymore, we don’t really know that processes, even the path that it takes from the field to get to your table. And I just have, over over time, just developed a real personal passion for understanding that and helping other people understand that.

Nate Disarro 11:09
You mentioned that. I know we’ve talked before that, you know, farmers and generally the people that that live and work on farms may not fit the bill of what we might think of stereotypically, as you know, a middle school education can’t complete their sentences. You name it, often ever

Jason Brown 11:30
seen a farmer wear overalls? Believe it or not. But often

Nate Disarro 11:35
there’s some of the coolest people we’re gonna meet. Right? Talk to me about just sort of the mentality of your everyday farmer. I mean, is it somebody that, you know, drives a 1972? Ford pickup? And you know, I don’t know, you know, you see these movies and the stereotypes out there. Sure.

Jason Brown 11:52
Yeah. I mean, even now, even current movies being made, sort of facilitate some of those stereotypes that we have. Yeah, we joke a lot. I keep a photo art project that my daughter did in kindergarten, I keep it pinned up in my office. And it’s, it’s her face on a on a farmer’s body. And it’s literally a straw hat on her head in the picture. And wearing overalls and like, you know, black boots or something like that. And, again, I’ve never literally never seen I’ve worked in this field for over a decade, never seen a farmer wear overalls, you know. And so we do have that stereotype. But you know, we talk a lot about broadband. You and I have talked about this issue, rural broadband. If you read, if you read the newspaper, if you read Twitter, if you watch the news, if you listen to the news, especially in the state of Arkansas right now, you’re hearing though the word broadband or rural rural connectivity, you know, you’re hearing something along these lines. The reason is, there’s a lot of reasons but one big reason is our, our farmers use technology every day in the work that they do. It’s nothing to open a combine door, crawl up in it, and see 234 iPads, their GPS guided, we think our podcast plays pretty well, because farmers need something to do in the combine in some cases, you know, because it’s being driven by GPS coordinates. A farmer could be sitting at dinner and pull up and say, well, they’re harvesting this field. And we’re we’re averaging 65 acres 65 bushels an acre of soybeans right now. Like, that’s, that’s really good. I can make a marketing decision, right, I can sell some of those beans, because I know how much I’m harvesting right now. It’s really a tech forward work like the rest of us, you know, but it’s really a tech forward world. I know, traditionally, you’ve seen wives involved in a farming operation, they sort of cooked lunch or took took that, that role on that, that that we sometimes used to see on television, and now, you know, they are a big part of the operation. I mean, you know, in making some decisions, or acting as an influence or acting as that Chief Communications Officer, in some cases, you know, playing a very different role on the farm than we used to than we used to see. So, yeah, I mean, farmers are not who we’ve been taught to believe they are in a lot of cases, they’re, they’re really interested in doing things differently. They’re really interested in doing things more efficiently. Because farming is fairly simple. Someone will call me out on this but I’ve many times I’ve not heard objection. Farming is really simple. There. My outputs outnumber my inputs. And it’s, it’s really that basic. And so farmers want to be as efficient. Use as little inputs and products as possible. Because it cost them money, they can make more profit when they do that. So farmers are really, really running a front office business now more than more than ever, to make their their operations more efficient, which workout for us, it means there’s food in the grocery store when we go there.

Nate Disarro 15:32
You mentioned how advanced farming has become as far as the technology involved, and you spent time at the first unicorn in the ag tech world. So what are some of the things you know, GPS guided combines? Or, you know, whatever? Yeah, what are some of the cool things that are happening in the in the ag tech world that you see? Yeah, so

Jason Brown 15:52
tech is, is really would be at the forefront of that. And, and, you know, some of these things, we’ve mentioned GPS guided tractor. That That means not just within a harvest scenario, but in planting scenario. So I can plant a straighter row, which means I can get more rows I can, I can be accurate on the spacing between rows, which means I can get more rows, I can do some things like you know, I can, I can be more efficient in the planting and harvest of the crop. There’s also technology with within irrigation, we talked about poly pipe irrigation. This is a large plastic, it looks like you’ve laid out the longest trash bag in the world at the end of a field when it rolls out. And then we tie one end of it to a to a whale. And then the other end of it we close off. So when we turn the water on, that thing fills up with the water. And then we go through and we punch holes in a way that all the water gets to the end of that field at the same amount of time. So if that field looks like a triangle, water would traditionally get to one in faster than it does the other. This gets the water all there at the same amount of time. So different flow rates based on the shape of the field means much less water usage, which means we’re taking less water out of the aquifer, which means farmers utility costs are down because they’ve got to use a fuel driven pumps to get that water out of the ground. So we’re using less water, we’re using less full fuel we’re using. And we’re capturing that water sometimes at the end to pick it up and use it somewhere else. So that’s somewhat of a technology efficiency. But it’s also efficiency just in how we use the resources that exists. And then in some cases, it’s pulling back on practices. So we’re almost feels like we’re taking a step back in time. No Till. So that’s a that’s a production practice where at the end of the year, we’re not going to go back and tool that field up, we’re just gonna leave it alone and leave the roots there, the residue of the plant that we harvested there, which, again, is an efficiency of sustainability played. When the roots when there’s roots in the dirt. When that wind starts blowing in wintertime, that dirt won’t blow off, it helps capture more rainwater, which means we have to apply less water, with our irrigation systems, all because we’re doing things the way that we did 6070 years ago, you know, so in some cases, we take setback, and a lot of cases we take steps forward. Those are just a few really basic examples of how, you know farmers have evolved over time. And in really it all of that is driven by technology, even no till was, you know, was was was generated because we use technology to measure data points and things instead of making assumptions. So technology plays a really important role.

Nate Disarro 19:06
Well, you know, talking about the the plastic piping, quick shout out to Delta plastics, we’ve done some work with him in the past and, you know, other great companies doing the same thing but But the coolest part of that is it’s a very simple piece of plastic that you roll out. And you literally take a thing with a point and poke holes in it wherever you need to. Yeah, but they’ve also got really advanced software that’s helping to understand the grain of the field and sort of all the angles and everything that goes into it so that the farmers not guessing there’s no guesswork involved. Yeah, it’s a high tech operation even though you’re using some seemingly low tech tools to go with that.

Jason Brown 19:46
I may have shared this with you but last summer I spent some time with a with a water engineer with the University of Arkansas Division mag, Dr. Chris Henry and he really There’s a lot of research within soil moisture sensors and your listeners and viewers certainly didn’t come here to get a lesson on how to farm. So, but I think this is just speaks to the point of things that that the general consumer audience does care about. And that is, the farmers being the best steward of resources that they possibly can. So moisture sensors, farmers have, almost always since irrigation has been around irrigated on a schedule, hey, we haven’t had an inch of rain this week. So let’s give the the crop an inch of rain, the sensors are actually telling the farmer with through the use of an app or an iPhone, hey, look, you don’t need to water because your your ground is your soil has held on to the last rain that we’ve gotten, or you should water, but maybe it’s half what you think it should be. So we’re using real data, real ground truth to input or to educate us on the input decisions that we’re making. Again, some of that stuff’s not possible without Wi Fi, you know, without, without some of this infrastructure being built out in rural communities. And not to even think about the fact that, you know, farmers or people to they, they have spouses or partners that want to work from home, or kids who might need to do remote learning for one reason or another. I tell them that appointment, you know, I mean, all other aspects of life. And I think, I think that rural Bob broadband, which is a soapbox you didn’t expect me to get on. But I think that that’s one way I’m going to bring it full circle, that’s one way that we can get back to growing that rural population, again, like we were back in the 30s is when you can move out into a rural area, a county or the country, as we used to call it, I guess, and you can do that and still maintain the life that you that you had in the city, I think I think these things are important to grow back some of our rural communities. So

Nate Disarro 22:14
I think it’s 100% True. And, you know, we just had the opportunity to tell a story of former governor who was essentially partially responsible for the predecessor to rural broadband, which was rural paved roads, which you don’t even think that would be a big deal. But back in the day, that was their access to the market. And the you know, they had to get paved roads back there, so that they could, you know, get these trucks and probably before the trucks, the horse and buggy isn’t all that, you know, it’s, it’s not easy to go on a muddy dirt road or slightly gravel road to get all your, all your products from the farm to the market. And so we’re just really in the next phase of that sort of shift in society. And, you know, roads back then were important. Now, broadband is equally as important.

Jason Brown 23:01
Well, you know, Arkansas Farm Bureau, really, it came about it was a group of farmers that wanted to, you know, really make sure that rural electrification made its way to Arkansas, and they had electricity out there, just like you experienced in the cities. And we really view that broadband access, as being the same as electric electricity was back in the day I, I had an opportunity to talk to the grandson of the man who really started introducing the practice of pulling timber out of out of the woods with a truck rather than mules. And just think, if you’ve got the truck, but no roads to facilitate that, then that advancements not doing you any good. So these tools like sensors, or GPS, or, you know, whatever they may be a number of these tools that farmers are using, aren’t really doing that good if you go and pull up your speed test, and you’ve got two megabytes per second, you know, at home or at your farm shop. So we view this as a necessity, it’s no longer a luxury item anymore.

Nate Disarro 24:18
Okay, so with the advancement of tech, and the I would assume there’s higher efficiencies that now farmers can use on the farm with, you know, do people need to be behind the wheel of a tractor, if it’s being guided by GPS, things like that the way farms are run is much different now than than they used to be. Is it still is as manpower intensive, or are there a lot of technologies that are pulling some of that out and you’re using more machines and automation?

Jason Brown 24:50
Yeah, so, you know, I don’t know. You know, I’m not the certainly I’m not the expert on autonomous farm. equipment and implements like, you know, surely that’s in development. In another life, I worked with the number one forklift manufacturer in the world and got to see some of the coolest for self driving, you know, autonomous forklifts and pallet jacks and things like that. I’m out of my realm there when it comes to farm equipment. But but you know, labor is an issue on farms, just as it is at your local restaurant who’s cut service back to four days a week, because they can’t find labor, you know, farm, farm work is hard work. It’s not nine to five, it’s outside regardless of the ailments, it’s, you know, it’s it’s heavy lifting, it’s it’s hard work. And we’re finding the ag industry is finding it harder and harder to identify. And remember, we’re in this factory is sitting in a location where the population has reduced immensely over over time. So if you think about farming is a in that way. So the the, the labor pool is really not that big to begin with. And then you take the type of labor that you’re working with, it really becomes a challenge. So h2 a labor has really become has really gained a lot of momentum in the in the state, and that is Hga labor. If you’re not familiar, this is international labor force to come here, whether they be from Mexico, South African, you there’s even some European labor being utilized here in the state, it’s really become a growing part of the labor force, because we are back to your original question. I wandered a bit, but we are still really intensely relying on physical labor and don’t don’t see that changing drastically. And then in the near future, at least.

Nate Disarro 27:16
Talk to me a little bit about the the tourism side of the ag industry because that’s become something pretty interesting. We were talking about, you know, honey farm earlier today and and a lot of people are more interested now than they used to be about where their food comes from, and what is what actually happens on the farm. Are we seeing an increase in tourism?

Jason Brown 27:42
Yeah, so ag tourism is really taken off. You know, I’m certainly not that not the expert on on really any anything agriculture, I can share my perspective, but I believe Arkansas, I believe Parks and Tourism has added an element of agri tourism to what they’re doing. I know certainly Arkansas Farm Bureau has some interest in many others have interest in that. And then you’ve got national or international organizations. Harvest host may is one of them that that is really trying to draw upon that experience of being on a farm. The farm I was I was on this morning, has an aspect of agri tourism. Number one, they teach beekeeping classes, just about year round, which is really cool. You know, I asked about that. You know, in the city I live in I live in the city and and you know, I was asking like I’m always trying to think about ways that I can incorporate agriculture in my house or bees one of those things. Oh, yeah, totally, you know, the Yeah, beekeeping is, is totally something you can do in the backyard of your neighborhood home. But, you know, they have a tree farm out there. They sell some of the products that they raise. I saw I know, I saw goats out there. You know, we’ve got a couple of vineyards here in just in Central Arkansas, that offer event venues and things like that. Of course, you know, I don’t know when when this episode will air but in the fall always, you see pumpkins, pumpkin patches and corn mazes and, and hayrides in these types of activities is well you know, so there there’s a lot of different ways to be exposed to the agriculture industry as a consumer, I think about farmer’s markets. You know, as we talk as we are right now, farmers markets are starting to wrap up. But, but you know, farmers markets almost always have the farmer as their that grew that product and produce that food, and now they’re selling it to a great way to interact. And I guarantee you if you go out and you talk to those folks, they’ll say, Hey, you’re welcome to come out, you’re welcome to come out to my farm and see how I produce this. This food that you’re eating in, there are some notable farms around the state. Rabbit Ridge Ralston, you know, that invite people out on a regular basis, there’s, there’s some of those that are, you know, more of a more of a special occasion like the the events that I was talking about earlier. But But yeah, there’s agri tourism has been its, I’ll call it a win win. I know that’s a bit of a cliche, but it’s been a way for people to understand where their food comes from be educated in that perspective. For farms. It’s, it’s been an added revenue stream, in some cases, and been a way to help maybe do some things or expand here, where they were, they might not have been able to do that. Otherwise,

Nate Disarro 31:05
when you mentioned a couple vineyards here, and one of the best examples, I think of agritourism that you don’t often think of as that is wineries. Right? Yeah. You know, all the winery is really is a great farm. Yeah. And it just it happens to make a product that people really want to go sit and enjoy and understand where it came from the stories behind the the flavor notes and get to meet the people that actually, you know, bottle that wine, and there’s a lot of interesting thing. I think, some dairy farms with cheeses are the same way. You know, wine and cheese, great pairing. But yeah, but do you think or I mean, not that you’re the expert, as you say, but, you know, using your your PR brain? Is there? Is there a way to turn more farms into those kinds of experiences?

Jason Brown 31:58
Yeah, so we’ve been working on a fun project that is focused on road safety for farm equipment, and just really helping consumers understand how farm equipment operates. And and and what it can and can’t do. A lot of people don’t understand that farm equipment doesn’t move faster and 20 miles an hour, some of it. There’s an exception to some of it, but you know, or, you know, they don’t always have blinkers, you know, things like that. In Northwest Arkansas, we’ve gotten that we’ve gotten that community engaged some and they say, Yeah, we love it. Let’s talk about bikes. And we’re like, oh, wow, we we’ve been thinking about cars and minivans this whole time. We didn’t really think about bikes. And you know, when you think about it, I mean, you know, a lot of these at least longer range know, I’m a river trail guy, and I’m riding seven or eight miles, and I’m out. But you know, we were with a local shift this morning. Who is okay, are we done now I want to go ride my bike I’ve got to get in 50 miles today. And he says he often rides by the farm that we were at. You know, that’s an opportunity to engage that crowd. If you’ve if you’ve ever been to me and muggy market in North Little Rock. Anytime on a Saturday morning, at any given minute, you’ll see folks in cycling get up and bicycles there at the at the market and there, they may be having breakfast, they may be doing a little shopping, whatever that may be. But they have, you know, the market when I say they has taken advantage of a captive audience, you’ve got a crew coming through on bicycles that need a break or need a bottle of water or whatever that may be. So we’ve talked about this with in Northwest Arkansas, maybe putting out some signage on your farm to educate those cyclists as they drive by, hey, maybe you’re not to the point of wanting to host to host a tour bus like P Allen doesn’t his place and rollin or whatever that may be, but maybe start by a little bit of signage, hey, on this farm, we grow XYZ, you know, and do a little bit of education just on your own property and sort of work your way there. I believe there’s some agri tourism classes that you can take that may be offered by different government departments here in the state. I certainly know there’s resources nationally. But the more that stuff that we can do, you picked we talked about you pics a lot. So I’m using a little bit of jargon but these are the imagine a bit we’ve all been to a strawberry patch at some point and picked our own strawberries and weighed them paid for them on the way out. We’ve got several those types of places here in the state. You know all of these all these places are agri tourism. And there are ways for you to get closer to the farm. Some of them are going to feel really touristy, I’m thinking of a pumpkin patch that we’ve been to several times with our daughter. You’re not going to show up at a pig farm and see pig races. That’s not going to happen. You know, some of these things are kind of glamorized for your experience. But there are opportunities to have a more realistic more real deal. Ag experience out there, and you should take advantage of those. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 35:26
Yeah, I think we’ve all been to pumpkin patches. We’ve all been to, you know, pick our own strawberries. But there’s so many other ways it seems like that, you know, and hopefully it continues to advance as broadband advances as technology advances, more ways that city people can interact with and have a good time. Out on the farm.

Jason Brown 35:47
Yeah, farmers till they’re good storytellers. Like, I’ve never never met a farmer, you know, who didn’t want to share about their operation while they make the decisions they make. And things like, and especially my gosh, if kids are involved, I’ve taken my kiddo on more farms. And I’m, you know, I’m always like, Is this the time that I get called into HR and like, don’t, you know, but, but it’s because I want her to be exposed to that. And every time they’re, like, forget, I’m even there. And they’re taking her and showing her a farmer like, to to selfie a couple months ago. And he’s like, Okay, now you got to come back and see how tall you are, how tall these beans are when you come back, you know, but, you know, ask SAPA farmer and ask them like, what do you what are you harvesting? What’s, you know, what’s your process, you know, teach me something, you know, and just kind of take that as an opportunity. I mean, be respectful of their land and, and things like that. But, you know, if you’re, I see a lot of fall family photo shoots, and in a field, you know, ask that photographer, hey, do you know the farmer, after we get into photo shoot, can? Are they going to be there? Can we talk to them, you know, take advantage of these moments where you’re in front of a farmer and ask them, ask your school’s teacher, you know, hey, can we get a? Can we get a, you know, do you have a farmer who can fill me up for career day, every school? I think, as an Arkansas week, you know, that’s a great opportunity to do something like that. If you don’t, no one, call us will call me. I’d be happy to help you. Get a farmer to your school and talk, talk to those kids. They’re happy to share. And that’s what agri tourism. I know I kind of went off on a rant a little bit, but that’s what agri tourism, tourism is all about, is bringing that connection back to us who don’t ever get to visit a farm or be on a farm anymore, like our grandparents or great grandparents used to

Nate Disarro 37:51
be? Well, you know, I’ll go back to wineries because clearly I’m well versed in that. Well, I was fortunate enough to go to Italy earlier this year and went to a winery in Tuscany, you know, get to go experience that whole thing. And what happens when you do that is you hold that product in a higher regard. You know, a little more about it. Yeah, it’s it’s ironically, it’s the more special wine even if it wasn’t the most expensive, right? Yeah. Because now you know something about it. So you want to go tell other people about it. And you want to kind of feel like, you know, something that they don’t? Yeah, I think we want that with everything in life, right? whether we’ve been to Disney World, and we want to tell our friends about the coolest thing apart about Disney World, because they haven’t been there. Yeah, or whatever. If it’s a story of, you know, crop from a farm like, yeah, once we get that experience, we want to share it with other people. And I think there’s there’s incredible value to that. And I think if we can capitalize on it, and continue to grow that sector, I think it only benefits farmers, they can do more, if they’re getting different sources of revenue and everything else I do want to jump into because this is another important thing. I think about the industry. The business of farming is a really unique business. It’s one of the only ones I think that farmers pay retail and sell wholesale, is that

Jason Brown 39:15
right? Yeah, they buy retail and sells wholesale.

Nate Disarro 39:19
Yeah. And and, and they’re not guaranteed based on their input, x number of output. You know, when airline fills up an airplane, they know exactly how much money they’re gonna make on that flight because they got X number of people that X number of dollars, and that’s not going to change. Farmers, on the other hand, could be a bad store. You know, I mean, it’s a weird business. When you look at it from a business model. It’s typically not a business model. People would be like, Yeah, I’ll get into that business.

Jason Brown 39:48
Well in row crop, you take the thing about row crop and specifically, you’re borrowing money at the beginning of the year to operate and then you owe that money. money to somebody whether or not your crop worked out or not, you still owe that money to somebody. So it’s it really is a fascinating business. I think I said that before you finish your question. But

Nate Disarro 40:11
no, I’m just curious. I mean, you know, do we see the same business models business practices is, are there shifts in those that allow farmers more leniency if something goes wrong? Or is the technology allowing for for better business practices to exist? Yeah, so

Jason Brown 40:27
technology is playing a role on this, you know, you know, we, when I was talking earlier about things like, you know, soil moisture sensors, I’ll pick on those things again, which are really just fancy looking PVC pipes that go on the ground and having a tunnel on them to communicate back to your phone or, or something, you know, those types of things are helping on the money that it takes. So if I can water less, then if I come up on a two month drought, like we had in the state of Arkansas, and I haven’t spent as much on, on watering my crop, then maybe I’ll be doing okay, you know, I might, I might be a little bit better off. Or if I can leave, if I can plant a cover crop in to help my ground absorb more water every time it rains than it used to, then that’s less money I have to put out. So when those adverse conditions, weather and bugs, I guess, would be what I would call the two most notable pressures a crop can face when those things come along, I’m better prepared. We do things like crop rotation. So we don’t grow corn every year on this same field, we rotate it out with other crops. That way, when bugs come along, or fungus in the soil or something like that, it’s better suited to fight to fight that that pressure technology helps us identify those problems earlier, helps eliminate them more efficiently. And, and do so across the large landscape that that is a farm, you know, you know, I’m talking about mostly commercial production. But you could apply this to even a backyard, you know, farm in some cases or backyard garden rather. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 42:23
Something else you brought up earlier, you said the word and my ears instantly perk up. But you mentioned that every farmer you’ve ever met is a good storyteller. And, you know, the business we’re in. We love to tell good stories, and we love to hear good stories. And when I think of farmer almost every single time, go to the Paul Harvey sermon. Yeah, Dodge Ram, commercial Ram trucks. And that he just perfectly lays out who the farmers are.

Jason Brown 42:57
Every So, farmer, if you’re, if you’re listening, and you’re not familiar with this, you can go to YouTube, probably in search. So God made a farmer.

Nate Disarro 43:05
Yeah. Well, I mean, it was a Superbowl commercial dodge Mayor remitted a Superbowl commercial several years ago. And I think it took the show. I mean, yeah, I don’t think there was a better one out there. But it painted the picture of who, you know, I mean, this sermon, I don’t know how old it is that Paul Harvey gave, but it’s an old sermon, but it’s still the way that it’s told the pictures they use just the storytelling was was phenomenal. But your job of telling the farmer story looks a little different. Yeah, day to day, right. What are some of the ways the mechanisms that you use to get the word out there? You know, yeah, tell those stories.

Jason Brown 43:46
Communicating farmer stories, you know, can be done in a lot of ways and for a lot of reasons, too, for that matter. But, you know, I’m thinking about the drought that we experienced in June and July. It was really extreme for all aspects of agriculture in the state of Arkansas. But especially on our cattle industry. What did they do when those pastures dried up they started getting into their winter hay reserves the the hay that they had grown for winter, started feeding that because there was no food out in the pasture. Hay usually comes in walk in and three cuttings, sometimes two cuttings a year, farmers had gotten through one cutting on when we got into that drought. So now you’ve got a scenario where there’s no food on the ground to eat. We’ve got to food feed the food that we’ve already stocked up for winter, and we can’t make more food for winter to replace what we’re using. So and we were on the brink of a rain, a weakened rain, the first rain we got a few weeks ago. So why is that story important to tell we asked our economist to go out and I start to quantify the damage and explain that a little bit. So we told that story. And we told that story in a couple of ways. Number one, we we, we, we shared some of that information in our podcast, the Arkansas guest. And then we started getting calls from new stations in town saying, Hey, we’ve got some drought. And one reporter specifically called and said, Oh, nevermind, it’s going to rain this weekend, I said, Whoa, don’t hang up, don’t hang up. Let me let me share something with you. And I started to explain this, why rain this weekend, doesn’t doesn’t matter to cattle farmers, because they’ve done the damage for January, February, March. And beyond. Once you sell cattle off, it’s really you’ve either got to birth them or bond. That’s it. And when you sell them, you’re not getting nearly the profit, because those people have got to feed them, you know. So it takes a long time to recover from an event like we experienced this summer. And in some cases, the USDA just added four more counties to our disaster declaration last week. So in some cases, we’re still growing in that in that damage. But we need to tell that story to consumers. High beef prices maybe a little bit higher, here’s why. But we need to tell that story to lawmakers and legislators, people who can make the decisions, to provide some assistance to get some help back in the hands of our farmers and ranchers. So that number one, there’s beef on the, um, I don’t mean to create pandemonium, it’s all going to be okay. But that way producers can continue to put that protein on the shelf, and do it in a way that is still cost effective or cost efficient for us. So we’ve got one story to tell, rain doesn’t fix a two month drought. But we’ve got to tell that story in different ways. So in you know, in one case, with the with the podcast, that’s me and my co host, reading that news and getting giving a little bit of context. When the television station showed up, we put an economist out there to explain this, when you’re talking to a legislator, let’s get let’s see if we can get a farmer or rancher there to tell that story and or invite that legislator out to their farm or ranch to see the actual impacts of that. So you can see one one story to tell. And in that example, one story to tell has a different message for different audiences and a different purpose. And we use different channels to tell those those stories.

Nate Disarro 47:44
Well, I think that hits the nail on the head. Because, you know, we talked to people all the time about how, you know, oftentimes they think they have one story to tell, really, the story the rain doesn’t fix a two month drought. That seems like one story, but there’s so many different ways and angles and and stakeholders that need to hear that story that you have to do it different ways. Yeah, you can’t just focus on one method one dark one, whatever you want to call it, and hope that that solves your problem. And you know, you mentioned it from a, you know, the USDA ads for counties will some people hear panic, or pandemonium or the government stepping in order to disaster, whatever, just like, you know, when the pandemic first hit, and airlines and hotels are getting, you know, bailouts or whatever, you know, yeah, everybody just hears that piece of the story. They don’t understand the why behind. They don’t understand you got to keep these industries afloat, or else it’s bad for everybody. Yeah. And you know, so I think you guys telling your own story, instead of just letting people hear one piece of something from, you know, without context or disconnecting. Connecting the Dots, certainly adds chaos. But that’s why you have a job, right?

Jason Brown 49:01
And in different ways, like with this story, you notice I told you that entire sort of story about the drought impact, and I didn’t use a single dollar figure. Now the report, my economists are probably texting me right now because the report quantified that impacted $95 million for Arkansas cattle producers that that two months of drought. But here’s the thing is like there’s I’ve got a we’ve got a three or four page report on our website full of data and tables and things like that. At the end of the day, that’s not meant for everybody, I can’t go stick that one report into every person that we can see from our seats right now and expect them to care about it in the same way. So understanding who Who are you talking to what is the most important thing to them and then saying that thing to them is is effective communications and what Not say, thoughtful communications. And that’s how you make storytelling productive.

Nate Disarro 50:05
Which is ultimately the point. I mean, we do it with a purpose, you know, unless we’re gonna go write books and sell them.

Jason Brown 50:12
I don’t know. Fine Art. So you know?

Nate Disarro 50:16
Well, so let’s, let’s peel back the curtain a little bit, figure out a little bit more about who you are. We’ll do a few quick hit questions and wrap things up. Yeah. So first and foremost, are you Netflix guy or news guy?

Jason Brown 50:32
Probably a news guy, I check. A check than the news have a ridiculous amount of news subscriptions.

Nate Disarro 50:40
Alright, so what’s your favorite book or the current book you’re reading?

Jason Brown 50:44
Yeah, sure. So the the book I’m reading right now is pretty fun. It’s called What If, and the author was a little rocket scientist. He was a contractor for NASA. And kind of as a side hustles, a lot of us have side hustles. These days, he had an internet cartoon, that he that he created on a pretty regular basis. And I guess on this, on this website, he had just an open forum for questions for people to ask questions. And so he began to feel like all these ridiculous questions that had nothing to do with this cartoon, which is like why qcb I think, is that I’m a cartoon anyhow. So he wrote a book where he gives the question, he restates the question and the person who asked it, and he gives the answer to this question, based on physics and science, so it’s things like, what if I started, what if my body started floating upwards in the air 10 seconds, or 10 feet every minute, I think, what would happen and he like, goes into a whole scenario and like, you’d be okay, until you got to this elevation, and then you’d probably need a jacket. And it just really fun. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s learning science and in a pretty entertaining way. And he’s got a great sense of humor. And I think he’s written at least one follow up, if not two follow ups now, but I’m still in the first one. And it’s, it’s pretty fun.

Nate Disarro 52:17
Nice. I’m gonna have to check that one out. What if, what, alright, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve either given or received

Jason Brown 52:24
never present a problem without a solution. We all like to talk about our problems. To a point sometimes of comedy, you know, we joke about first world problems and things like this. But you know, we’re all really quick to talk about the things that are bugging us and given us issues. You know, especially in a professional setting, if you can always make it a goal, to never introduce a problem without introducing a solution to that problem. I promise you people will notice, this advice was given to me really early on in my career. And it took me a long time to really understand it. And, honestly, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, like, the more I think about it, the more meaningful it is to me, and we’ve we applied at home, we’ve raised our daughter, hey, don’t come in here and tell something’s wrong, unless he can tell us, you know, give us an idea what we need to do to fix it. It really is, and people will understand people will not see you as the person who complains or just those the red flag, you know, we’re in a time of, of issue or time of trial, you start to be seen as the problem solver or the the solutions oriented team member and things like this. So that’s it,

Nate Disarro 53:45
because it’s the absolute truth. Nobody wants to live in a world of problems. But we want to live in a world of problem solvers.

Jason Brown 53:53
And we all have something to gripe about, look, at the end of the day. I can I can gripe about to you about three things that happened today. And that’s an important thing to process. I say that for a beer or something like, You know what I mean, do that over a beer and just kind of gripe and moan. But if you’re really if you’re stepping into say, Hey, we’ve been losing website traffic for the past three months, don’t put a period on the end of that statement, say, I suggest we do a content audit of the traffic that’s driving, what the content is driving traffic to our website, or some have that other part. And that might not be the solution that we end up with. And don’t get your feelings hurt if that’s the case. But you’re being proactive in in draw, and you may be a leader in that conversation that somebody says Well, I don’t know if we should look at the content. But what if we did this? Yeah, I think that would be helpful, you know, just make yourself the solutions. person here for

Nate Disarro 54:55
it. Alright, what is the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for under $100?

Jason Brown 54:59
I have Way too many, but a reasonable water bottle, you know, the environment is a big reason why I got involved in agriculture as well because I believe in the farmers power to, to address some of the climate challenges that we have and, and you know, everywhere I go, I see water bottles, we became campers during COVID and we still continue that lifestyle. And you see a lot of water bottles showing up at campsites and things like that and and I think you know, any little bit that you can do spend 10 bucks and maybe save some money on that case of water and and just think about the decisions that you’re you’re making as you move through your day. And so there there’s I don’t know there’s there’s a little bit cheaper than 100 bucks purchase.

Nate Disarro 55:57
I love it. All right, let’s wrap it up. best meal. What’s your favorite meal? Favorite restaurant? You mentioned a chef you’re hanging out with earlier?

Jason Brown 56:06
Yeah. Yeah, that was a good one. Um, oh my gosh, if I’m eating, my wife can tell you to suffer if I’m having one meal. It’s probably shrimp and grits. And I’m a Southern, local vor to the, you know, to all ends you know, I love all things about Southern culture. And food is probably at the top of that list. And grits are something that are so subjective. We have a bakery, right? A restaurant right near our house that this weekend I had a bacon and grits quiche. So grits are sort of like, you know, the all part one of the all purpose foods and when you know, I’ve seen someone say I don’t like grits. And you give them a bite of grits. And they’re like, all right, you changed my mind. recently was at the Oyster Bar and Little Rock and had their grits and I’m telling you, man, it’s a game changer. So shrimp and grits all day every day. If it’s on the menu I’m getting.

Nate Disarro 57:14
You haven’t had him in loco Luna. Local Luna.

Jason Brown 57:17
I have had them. I’m sorry. Red Door red door. Yeah, yeah. Right across the market. There. Yeah. The other great recommendation I have for you and I don’t like just seek them out. But you know, when you have memorable ones, my mom was with me at at the corner. And she’s like, Yeah, who wants my grits? And I’m like, Just try them, you know? And she ate the entire bowl. You know? They were really good at the corner. Two sisters Canadian so Oh, really? Okay. I did not know that. Have they been on this podcast? That sisters are no no. Okay, get them on here. Yeah, you started this season with food, didn’t you? Kevin? Yes. Kevin on this

Nate Disarro 58:02
shaylen We got started with with the mighty rib and yeah, you know, and then he right after we recorded he went off and you know, made a silly little comment. In fact, I need to start adding. The first time we add this question to the quick hits. Okay, dinner or supper?

Jason Brown 58:20
Ah, Kevin would be so proud. I know, Kevin and personally, I know we would dinner all day. I tell you I’m southern to the core and all that. But it’s, it’s it’s dinner. It’s not suffer. I’ve got to ask you now. Oh, well,

Nate Disarro 58:36
my answer shall remain. No, I’m kidding. No, I’m a pretty literal person in a lot of ways. And I think supper is a slang term. That’s how I know other people will come at me with pitchforks. But yeah, I think suffer is a slang term. Yeah, in my mind. Yeah. But you know, to each their own. So, supper clubs used

Jason Brown 58:57
to be a big thing. You know, I mean, so I don’t know. But yeah, now it’s, it’s it’s dinner for me. Breakfast, lunch, dinner.

Nate Disarro 59:04
I love it. All right, Jason. Thanks, man. I really appreciate you coming and having this conversation. It was a lot of fun.

Jason Brown 59:10
Thanks for having me. So, so much fun. And yeah, best of luck with the rest of the season.

Nate Disarro 59:17
If you like this episode of Titans of Industry, head to contenttitan.co/podcast for more episodes or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening

Jeston George 0:00
Being entrepreneurial minded, you have to be a learner… every step of the way. That means, that’s all you’re doing. You have to be extremely curious. Can’t be set in your ways you can’t be arrogant about anything, right? So at all times, I am learning and that is extremely fun for me.

Nate Disarro 0:15
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to Titans of Industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I speak with Jeston George, CEO and founder of Apptegy, an education technology and marketing startup, Jeston realized the need for Apptegy when he wanted to receive the latest news from his nephew school. Realizing the gap that existed in public education, marketing and communications, he created Apptegy to offer app-based solutions. Apptegy is now booming with 350 employees in multiple countries, a spectacular new office space, and a culture that values customer relationships and innovation without sacrificing quality. Now let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and video for marketing your business. Our team at content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in, it’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience. And video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit content titan.co to learn more. Now, here’s the episode with Jeston George. Jeston George, thanks so much for jumping into the podcast with us. I guess we’ve known each other for several years. But it’s been a while in your your new office space now and can’t wait to kind of dive into the story of how you guys ended up going from a small startup in Little Rock, Arkansas to Now, essentially an international company. I think you’re operating in what 46 states you have clients or something like that.

Jeston George 2:11
Yeah, we’re in all 50. Now all 50!

Nate Disarro 2:14
So why don’t we just start with with kind of give me the background? What Where did you get started in your career? And then ultimately, how did you decide this was a company that needed to happen?

Jeston George 2:23
It was there’s actually a running joke here that I found that at a very early age, I was a bad employee. So I had to start companies. And so that’s what led me to this. Most of my background has been sales or sales management in some way, shape or form. But really serial entrepreneur at heart had a direct marketing business before this is your big your stereotypical small business, right? We were five employees extremely profitable. You couldn’t quit it. It was doing too well. But it was a nightmare to run it and a really interesting story, a business broker locally that knew about us came by and said, Would you ever sell I’ve had people ask about you. And we were like, Heck, yeah, we would never heard anything. And then six months later, this guy shows up with three offers. And so like we took the all cash offer, it’s like, let’s get out of this as quick as we can. So I feel like we’ve kind of got a little bit of a lucky break there. But from then it was just like, obviously, for me being an entrepreneur at heart had to figure out what’s next. And really interested in software technology. I don’t know why I’ve never written a line of code. And I set up a little agency and started actually taking on some web projects and hiring out the work. And around that time I found out what startups were. So when I say startup about Silicon Valley style tech startups, this is really intriguing to me, but didn’t have an idea. And then shortly after that, was around the time of my my nephew’s mom would call up my wife and I and say, Don’t forget Aiden has a play today. Alright, and has a play tomorrow. And we’re like, you gotta be kidding me. There’s gonna be a better way to keep up with this kid. Does this school not have an app? And that question, basically started this entire journey.

Nate Disarro 3:51
I love it well, and give me a timeframe. When was that conversation

Jeston George 3:55
2013. So I actually don’t know the exact date. And so I had this webpage that set up and we actually transition that into Apptegy. So there wasn’t an end date of that and a starting date of, of Apptegy. So it was around 2013, about mid 2013.

Nate Disarro 4:10
So mid 2013, iPhones have been out now for what, like six years. And apps are a normal thing on everybody’s phone. And everybody’s starting to adapt this technology. And there’s not an app at your nephew’s school to help communicate extended family or even immediate family of what’s going on. Yes. So you see a niche, and you what is your mind say like I can do better? Or I need to go find somebody that can develop this or as an entrepreneur, how do you take that first step to solving that problem?

Jeston George 4:44
So if you’re talking about an entrepreneur, it should always be as a delusion entrepreneur. What are you doing? And so I think back to all the things that I thought I was going to do, like I realized how ridiculous it was right? It just happened to work. Right? So for me, it was an interesting problem. So offers like, Hey, can I actually do something here. And at the time, I was really interesting startup and I was reading this book called Startup owners manual by Steve Blank. He’s kind of the godfather of the lean startup methodology. And it was really intriguing. And one of the big things it said was, you’re not gonna ever build anything, sit behind your computer, right? Get out and talk to the customers, I just kind of took that to heart and just started traveling. It’s like, I have this idea. But let me just go talk to the people that would be using it. So I actually drove around to school districts across the state of Arkansas and talk to school superintendents and technology coordinators and communication directors, and tell them what I was thinking it was coming. And just to hear what they would have to say, right? It was pretty interesting, right? We were going to build this mobile framework and made it easier for them to have native apps, whereas the opportunity that they really had a really html5 app, html5 or glorified web apps really wasn’t a great solution. So it was going to happen as mobile was next. But the big incumbents that already sold to the school districts were that was going to be the next way that they were going to monetize them. Whereas we felt like there was an opportunity to create a great solution. I’ll go out and I’m talking to the school leaders, and they’re like, You got to be kidding me. Like, we have no idea how we’re going to update another system. Right? Our staff is already overwhelmed. We know mobile is next. But and so really what it is a situation where as more and more technology comes out, the schools don’t get additional staff, but they have to figure out how to be everywhere at all times. And so it kept getting the same pain point over and over again, about all the systems that they had pretty interesting, because I kind of had that same problem as a small business previous I was using one system for accounting, another system for invoicing, another system for proposals. And so that’s where the idea of brochure came about. It’s a single place for schools to manage and distribute their content, you know, put information in our system, and it automatically updates our website, iPhone app, Android app, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, sends push notifications, text messaging, and voice calls, all from one system. And then we also did the mobile app and the website for the schools.

Nate Disarro 6:45
Now, here’s where the rubber meets the road. You had had your own small business with a handful of employees was doing well. Now you are at the helm of a company with what 350 employees Yeah, 350. Yeah. The product side is one thing, the people side, the growth side, the scaling the financial side, that’s a whole bunch of things to figure out along the way. And I think that’s the true heart of what entrepreneurship is. So I want to talk a little bit about sort of what that journey has looked like for you as, as the guy with the idea, and still at the helm of this company. And I want to start with what’s been the biggest challenge that you face throughout this whole thing.

Jeston George 7:29
The biggest challenge has been every step of the way. It’s been the whole journey, right? You talk about entrepreneurship. And as an entrepreneur, you come up with the idea, but this is what’s fun for entrepreneurs, right? It’s having to figure things out, getting to drinking from a firehose at all times. And that actually being fun and exciting for you. Right? If you’re not excited about being overwhelmed, or that stresses you out to where you can’t operate, then entrepreneurship isn’t for you, right? Luckily, for me, I found my calling like this, this is what I want to do. I need things to be on fire at all times. So I couldn’t have signed up for anything more suited for me than this. It’s so interesting, I think back to the early days, and how little I actually knew, right? But again, this is what I wanted to do, right? I want to drink from a fire hose and figure out what is this next thing that I need to learn, right? As far as the biggest challenge, no matter what you do, that you have success with, you never get to rest on your laurels. Because that next level or that next size that you’re going to get to some of what you did that worked excellent for you may work again. And some of it may not. And there’s nothing that tells you ahead of time, what’s going to work continue to work and what’s not. Right. So it is it’s hard for me to identify a single problem, right? Product Development, and scaling the product engineering team was just more of a challenge I could imagine, right? At a time where engineers are becoming more and more art attire, right? Sales. That’s great. It’s real cute in the early days when I’m driving around to schools and making a few sales. But now there’s an entire sales organization. That’s extremely difficult. How do you scale lead lead generation as you as you’re growing? I think the biggest challenge for me has been transitioning from hands on doing everything operationally into leading other leaders and be and stepping out of the way. Right. I was a control freak and felt like I needed to have my hands and everything. And that transition is happening. Right. And it’s and the great thing about it is I’m actually enjoying that piece of it as well. But leading other leaders versus being an entrepreneur in the early days and having your hands and everything and making every decision are two very different animals. And that transit transition has been a lot more difficult than I thought it was going to be originally. And it took me a lot longer than it should have to do it.

Nate Disarro 9:44
Do you still find yourself as excited to get up every day and come manage other leaders and work with other leaders as opposed to the early days were you kind of involved in a little bit everything

Jeston George 9:55
I have. I have so it’s it’s I’m as excited as I’ve ever been in the business. And so we’re venture backed and great conversations with our, with our partners. And one of the conversations they have with with me is that, you know, how are you always How are you feeling? Like, is this what you want to be doing? Right? And another question that, that you talked about in the early days is that these phases of the business are extremely different. And there are certain parts that are suited for you. And there are certain parts that are not. And something interesting, something unexpected for me has happened is that I’ve liked the next phase, that has happened as much or more than I’ve liked the previous phase. And I, that’s another thing that’s been extremely surprising, I really thought that we were going to get to a size I was like, Okay, this isn’t for me, but every new challenge, like, Oh, this is fine.

Nate Disarro 10:39
So as far as you know, as far as you’re concerned, the conversation you have with your venture partners. That’s not always the case. Right? A lot of people end up to that next level. And they’re like, no, no, take me back. I just want to be the CEO, or I want to be a VP of something and not run this whole company. How do you ensure that you have the right skills and tools to then move to that next set? What’s your educational process look like?

Jeston George 11:06
I don’t know if I have an actual process. But again, being entrepreneurial minded, you have to be a learner every step of the way. That mean, that’s all you’re doing, you have to be extremely curious. Can’t be set in your ways. You can’t be arrogant about anything, right? So at all times, I am learning and that is extremely fun for me to learn, right? The other thing is you got to surround yourself around with people or at least a network of people that have been at those next stages and have conversations with them about what’s coming. What are the things that I’m not going to realize that I’m have to face? Have those conversations, figure out what that means for you figure out where you need to grow or figure out who are the people that you need to bring on to be able to handle those and the rights?

Nate Disarro 11:43
Well, as Jamie was giving me the tour, which I mean, I mentioned the last time I was in yells office was probably 2016, or somewhere around there. And it was in, you know, one of the towers downtown, which is what I refer to as a little rock startup. And then I came to this office. And now we’re in a Silicon Valley startup, right. That’s what kind of goes through the mind as we see the gym and the catered lunches, and all the things that kind of are representative of what we think of as sort of the more Silicon Valley tech startup. And so as you continue to, you know, use the vision that you’ve got to expand the company, what are your biggest hurdles that you think you still have to overcome with growing this this organization?

Jeston George 12:28
It’s taking what we’ve done and figuring out the next level of scale for it. It’s interesting, like, we’ll change up a process or something, because we’re getting to a certain size. And what we did before won’t work. By the time that gets implemented, it’s time to change it again, right? So hiring and finding the level of talent that we need to find at the velocity that we need to that’s what’s really hard, right. So if you need to add 200 employees, that’s great. But if you need to add two employees in nine months, that becomes really, really difficult, right? And so scaling challenges is what we are paranoid about. We’re paranoid about all the things that has worked for us up to this day, not working, moving forward. And there’s just a lot of decisions. The other thing I’m really worried about is kind of losing that entrepreneurial spirit as we get bigger, right? Because you do have to have more processes and systems in place, you do have to get organized, but in that how do we not lose that sense of hustle that we had of just by any means necessary, you figure it out? So those are some of my concerns, it’s scaling issues and losing that entrepreneurial spirit as we get to a certain size.

Nate Disarro 13:29
I read something where you mentioned that one of the skill sets that you didn’t think you would need in order to scale his business was creativity. Yeah. Talk to me about why you said then what that means.

Jeston George 13:41
Yeah. We have a saying here that processes and systems are easy. And everybody else has the people are the hardest thing about business. So we think people are really hard when we think creativity and originality is the hardest thing about business. I think with marketing, everything turns into a playbook. Right. And and so there’s different ways, this is how a successful company has done something in the past, and you can take their playbook and you can do it. Now people ops has become really important and culture is being important. Now there’s playbooks on how to do that the correct way. As soon as there’s a playbook around creativity, it’s no longer original, right? And so that we put a big emphasis on creativity and originality as the kind of the heartbeat of our business from the very early days. If you don’t separate yourself, then you and everyone else are playing the exact same game with the exact same spreadsheet and the exact same metrics and you’re looking for those little tiny pieces of incremental improvement over somebody else. The only way to truly separate yourself is through creativity. And if you ask me what would have been one of our biggest competitive advantage in the very early days over everybody else, I would never would have thought it was going to be creativity. Right? But we do a very good job of separating ourselves from everybody else that we compete with, by just being creative and original and willing to take chances on things. I read an article, an essay very early on that influenced me. It’s by Paul Graham. founders of Y Combinator is called do things that don’t scale. So everything about a tech startup is about scaling. So how do you in your mindset, be okay with doing things that don’t scale, and kind of our framework around it is that we come up with an idea to do something. And to be creative, you don’t have to come up with things that no one else came up with, you just have to do things that no one else is willing to do. And that’s actually what creativity is. So we might have an idea around how we’re going to approach our customers. And it’s nothing that our competition ever came up with. It’s just that when they built the model, and when we built the model, the return on investment said, this makes absolutely no sense. When we see something that makes absolutely no sense, we get excited, because for us, it’s not that there’s not an ROI. To us, that’s evidence that the competition won’t do it. We know how everybody else runs a business. And it’s through the spreadsheet. And so when something goes against the spreadsheet, that’s a guaranteed way to separate yourself into stand out. And what we’ve realized is that if we’re willing to take those chances and do that, the gains from separating yourself from the competition, more than makes up for any short term loss and return on investment.

Nate Disarro 16:02
So pretty much everything you just said right there. There’s a number of people in the world that understand that and get that and are willing and able to execute on that. But there’s the majority of people that don’t, it doesn’t compute, they don’t execute on it. How do you take that mindset and something that you sounds like you understood early on from NASA, you read, you know, whatever the case may be, you get that. And as the company scales, you’re able to cast that to the leadership, and then implement that same principle.

Jeston George 16:32
This is that other piece about the challenge of moving forward, I am very worried that this is part of losing that entrepreneurial spirit. How do we make sure this stays a part of our DNA as we scale, right. And another thing that happens as you’re growing is you bring in really great talent, with a lot of amazing experience. And these people have been extremely successful doing what they do, then they come here, and we challenge every piece of that. And so we’ve got to get people that are comfortable with knowing that they’ve been extremely successful, successful, but open to thinking a little bit differently, or potentially doing things our way. So this is a current challenge. And I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be a pretty big challenge. Challenge moving forward.

Nate Disarro 17:11
Let’s, let’s talk about some general philosophies. I love to dive into this with people and kind of understand from a philosophical standpoint, you know, where you stand and how you kind of look at things. But do you have any general philosophies that you follow, either in life or as a entrepreneur, which probably cross check both boxes for you? But you know, are there any specific marketing systems or productivity systems or frameworks that you kind of look at and say, Alright, I know this is going to work for me and my team, and I’m going to implement this at all costs.

Jeston George 17:48
I think as far as philosophical way of looking at things, first principles thinking, is I think that defines a lot of what we do. One of the things that we say here is that we’re going to challenge the status quo, and absolutely everything. We’re okay with the answer being status quo, we’re okay coming back to it, but only after it’s been challenged. And I think in business and in life, most of the things that there’s data around, there’s no context, right? And when you start to break down what the real problem is, like, what are we actually trying to solve? And then you build back up using first principles and asking why 100 times, what you realize is you’re now you start to wonder why on earth did people do it the other way, right. And a lot of times, they did it the other way, because that’s what the person before them did it. And that’s the way the person before them did it. And you don’t ever get to those if you accept the way that business is supposed to be done. And so for us, it’s using first principles thinking to challenge status quo. And just to see what do we uncover? Right. And sometimes what we uncover is, the way that it’s being done is the best way to do it. A lot of times what we uncover is, we have no idea why people are still doing things that way. And so I think that’s a big thing for us as freshmen as well thinking every every any chance possible.

Nate Disarro 18:57
Yeah. I completely agree with that. I think there’s so much, especially in the world that you guys live in with, you know, constantly evolving tech, and you guys can’t get left behind. You’re the first organization that you I mean, that would assume us today, that you guys have to be at the forefront of every new thought concept idea. Because if you’re not somebody else is gonna come in, where do you place the ideas and execution of your team versus looking out at the horizon of what your competitors are doing? You know, are you trying to stay a step ahead of them? Or are you not focused on them, you’re focused on just constantly creating the best products and services, we’re more

Jeston George 19:36
focused on creating the best products and services for our customers, right? The very early days. I don’t know where I read this, but the way we think about it is what should the future look like for our customers? Right? What’s the best experience for them five years down the road? What would that look like? And how do we build towards that? Right? If you follow your customers, they may or may not be moving towards that right just because they get a feature that’s better than yours and they use it in the sales process. That’s not getting us to that end state in five years, then it doesn’t matter. And it’s so easy to get thrown off. Right? And so, we are more interested on what is this long term vision that we’re trying to accomplish for our customers? And how do we make sure that we’re going towards that kind of have blinders on to what most of the competition is doing? Obviously, you know what they’re doing, because we’re competing with them, you have to know how to sell against them. But we want to do our very best not to get influenced by them, because they might not be going to the ideal direction of what’s best for a school leader.

Nate Disarro 20:33
Alright, I like to ask this question as well. Ideas, execution and culture. If you have to rank those three, in order of importance. How would you do so?

Jeston George 20:45
For me last place is ideas. That’s easy, right? It’s just so easy to come up with a bunch of ideas, right. And I think a lot of ideas get thrown away, because somebody didn’t execute. They blame the idea. It wasn’t the idea it was you. So for me, one A and one B is execution and culture, right. And and I think the reason culture has to be number one is if you have a bad culture, you’re not going to execute. So because culture is needed in order to execute, I’d say culture one execution two, and ideas have far far, far down number three.

Nate Disarro 21:15
So I’m curious, what would you put above ideas in that equation of how companies kind of have to have this balance of operations, creativity? You know, I mean, all the things that kind of fall into it? What would you put above the idea of peace,

Jeston George 21:32
relationships with your market and your customers, we’ve done a really good job of building a relationship, it’s more than just customer support and customer service. Our it’s interesting, we take a lot of our competitors, customers away from them. And when we do, they have no idea until they finally get a call that they’re switching over to us. Right. So they were surprised. And what we’ve set up is how do we build enough of a relationship that we’re never surprised if someone leaves us? Right? So we have 99%, customer retention, which is kind of unheard of in software, right? It’s usually 94 is considered good. But so we really emphasize building relationships. We do that with our customers. But we also do that internally in the culture that we’re building. And that’s why, for example, we’re morning in office and we are remote.

Nate Disarro 22:15
One of the things I’d like to talk about is this idea of doing business better. And I think, coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people have had to kind of rethink how do we do business? How do we operate? How do we execute? And a lot of people had some bad practices that they were forced to correct. And for various reasons. So just generally speaking, using that phrase doing business better, how would you say that you guys are doing business better?

Jeston George 22:41
Oftentimes, I get asked about what’s the, what’s the most important thing you need to get? Right. Right. And for us, what we realized early on is, there’s actually nothing you can get wrong. Right? And so for us doing business better means that we have to build multiple organizations, right? Whether it’s our medium content organization, whether it’s our sales and distribution organization, whether it’s our people ops organization, whether it’s our client support, and whether it’s our product and engineering, right. So we focus on building amazing successful organizations at every part of the business. And there isn’t one part of us that I think that really stands out a lot of times, there’s a narrative that we put out there, and it makes one side look like it’s, you know, it drives everything. And another time, it’s a different narrative. But we have really focused on building a great business. And it’s actually less about building an edtech company even, right, so the fact that we’re in education is kind of icing on the cake. It’s it’s about building a great business. And I think another thing that we’re trying to keep going is we’ve been very authentic and how we do things. When you’re authentic, it. It’s much easier, right? I think, for example, as a culture, right? It’s become this buzzword that everybody uses every interview you go to. So when culture works is when you create a culture that’s authentic to who you are. And that’s something that we did in the very early days. And an example of that is that why am I doing this? A lot of people that build an edtech company will say that I’m passionate about changing everything about education for the better, it’s like, then you should probably become an educator. Right? They could actually use you right now. Right? And so why did I do this is because I love business, right? And when we think about business, and what successful business means we think about all the stakeholders in the business, your employees, your customers, your community and your shareholders. And we think some of the best companies in the world sacrifice one or two other stakeholders in order for for the betterment of the other two. We said in the very early days, what gets us excited, and what we’re passionate about is how do we build an extremely large successful company where we don’t sacrifice any of the stakeholders. And that’s been authentic to us from day one. And because it’s been authentic to who we are, it becomes easier when you when the rubber hits the road. You have tough decisions to make. But that’s been kind of our driving force and what’s carried us through and so authenticity is really hard in business because there’s so many challenges and it forces you to make decisions that you don’t think it’s truly who you are. So next year we’ll have been in business or since I found it for 10 years. We’ve been operating really for about seven and a half years. Now. You years, and up to this point, fingers crossed, we’ve been able to be extremely authentic to who we are, which allows makes it easier for us to pull off the culture that we’re trying to pull off.

Nate Disarro 25:09
I love it. And good friend Mitch Bettis, publisher of Arkansas business, he kind of has his philosophy around that idea of the five legged stool where all stakeholders have to be balanced and perfectly equal for it to all work out. Yeah. It’s very similar mentality. And you don’t have to give up one for the other and correct. All right, another thing you guys do really well, I think, and because of the nature of your clients, and the fact that, you know, historically, schools and school districts haven’t really had to market themselves, you’re sort of placed into a school based on where you live. And through school choice initiatives and other things. There’s reasons now that schools have to market, but they weren’t really built to market, and they don’t really know what they’re doing. So you guys have to put out your own thought leadership on what that looks like, and how have you been able to become the expert and ultimately, educate your clients and potential clients on how to market their own school district.

Jeston George 26:04
It’s really interesting as far as educating our client base is that this is literally what we do every day, right. So the the thing that they struggle with, that they have to do today that they weren’t trained on, is literally what we’re best at. In the private sector of branding, and marketing. And perception is top of mind in everything that we do. This is the world that we live in, right? Every single day, we’re competing for dollars tied to a customer, every time a customer leaves, there’s $1 amount that leaves, that’s the world that school leaders live in. It’s unfortunate, but it’s reality of it. When they gain a student, they gain funding when they lose a student, they lose funding. So we’re, for us, it’s a very easy conversation, because this is the world that we live in every single day. And the easier that we can make this for school leaders, the quicker they can get back to focusing on the student, the teachers, the principal’s pedagogy, and the things that matters instead of trying to worry about how do I market? And how do I compete for a student? Yeah.

Nate Disarro 26:57
Love it. All right, as as you think back to the early days. Obviously, you’ve learned a lot along the way there’s there’s an educational piece to any entrepreneur that every day, every month, every year, you’re picking up just tons of new experience and, and knowledge for all the young people out there that are interested in either their own business idea, or maybe they’re already into it, but they they’re struggling with something, what’s something you wish you knew early on, that you had to learn the hard way,

Jeston George 27:26
you got to make a lot of tough decisions, right. And I think you know this as an entrepreneur, but you don’t really until you’re in the weeds doing it right. You don’t get to wait for perfect information and data to make decisions. You have to get very comfortable making really important and impactful decisions were 20 or 30% of the information that that you need to make that decision. And I think this is very uncomfortable for a lot of people. I think it’s something that we actually do pretty decent. And having said that multiple times over the last four or five years, we have made a big company decision. And I’m kicking myself on why didn’t we make that decision six months earlier. Right. So even after I learned the lesson, you still catch yourself doing that I think that’s very, very hard for and also we’re becoming more of a data focused society, right, and that and the more you know about data, and the more data resources are available to you, the more information you want before you make a decision. And this is a crutch that I think is going to be really difficult for, that’s going to really set a lot of entrepreneurs back.

Nate Disarro 28:24
I was having a conversation once with John Tyson at third, the current chairman of Tyson Foods. And I asked him, if you had to boil it down to one thing, that’s the most important thing you could tell somebody about business just generically speaking, what would it be? And he said, the thing that that allowed Tyson to see the fastest and best growth years was they tried a lot of new things. But the second that one of those new ideas, one of those new efforts they put into play wasn’t creating a result. They dropped it as fast as they possibly could. And they moved on to the next one that goes back to your idea of, you know, ideas are easy, the execution is hard. So taking an idea going to execute on it. If it doesn’t stick, it doesn’t create an immediate result. Drop it and move on. And I think that boils down to making quick decisions and not lingering on something unwilling to

Jeston George 29:17
it does. And there’s another piece of this kind of excited brings up where we’re a little contrarian here. We think people give up on ideas and things that they’re trying to do way too early, because they feel like the data tells them to. And when you think about data and statistics, right, then these aren’t things that happen in a moment of time. It’s a spectrum, right? So if you have to you’re talking about baseball, right? You got two batters, right? They’ve had 100 at bats. One is batting 500 and the other one is batting 200. Which one do you want on your team? Everybody will say the one that’s batting 500 what they what? The numbers didn’t tell you is the guy that was batting 200 just had a family crisis, and was actually recovering from, you know, ankle surgery. And by the time they were at 1000, at bats, like either his batting 200 is now batting 333. And the guy was batting 500, his batting 200. Right, there was no, there’s no context that comes with data, and we get so reliant on somebody else making the decision for us, and that somebody else is the data. Because I think a lot of entrepreneurs lack the courage to make tough decisions, and then stick with them. Even in the lean startup methodology is to take something tested out and see and see how you assess that you can make stuff work, right? If we want it, we can be successful for the rest of our career, literally taking everything else that someone else builds in education and building it the exact same product building a better and executing a better business. That’s not our plan, right? We want to be creative and innovative as well. But I think there’s there’s this crutch out there called data and people give up on ideas way too early. Don’t do that, especially if you want to be an entrepreneur?

Nate Disarro 30:55
Absolutely. I think that’s a crucial piece. And you know, as a storyteller, as somebody who, who helps people take information and tell their story. I think that more than anything, sums up to many people is taking data out of context, and trying to move forward and, you know, making terrible decisions. And ultimately, what can become fairly finite decisions that, you know, can end a company’s existence. And it’s, it’s always sad to see people take that data, and encompass it as the whole story. So speaking of storytelling, how valuable is storytelling to your organization? And what do you guys do that you think is most effective?

Jeston George 31:40
For us on storytelling, it’s really about being different and authentic, right? How do we tell an authentic story, but come off differently than all the rest of our competition? So the good thing for us is, us being authentic makes us quite different, right? So I think to our customers, we really stand out. And it’s interesting, a lot of times people will research your company, investors will, and they kind of come back and tell you what they heard. And almost every single time they’re just like, these guys came out of nowhere, who are these guys, they’re just, they’re just a breath of fresh air, they’re so different than everybody else we deal with. And that’s how we know that we’re, you know, kind of getting the story across.

Nate Disarro 32:13
I’m a big believer in, you know, the different types of personalities and how they help make up an organization. And that you kind of have to have all different personalities, how much do you look at at personality types when it comes to leadership? And when you add new people to your leadership? Do you play the personality into it? Or do you just look at the resume and the skill sets?

Jeston George 32:31
I think I think that that’s really hard about culture, is when especially when you’re bringing in leadership is, you know, you want to assess for this is a really popular thing, culture fit, right? And you have to be really careful. Because really what you’re you’re trying to see if they aligned exactly who you are. I’ve heard like you want to go grab a beer with this person. And I just don’t think those are good exercises, I think that you need to find people that are really smart, talented, hungry, and curious. If they’re willing to be curious and feel like they can learn from you as much as they can teach you, then your culture should be able to influence them. Right. And so when we think about culture fit, it’s like somebody has to have the right culture already to come to your organization, I think is the wrong way to think about it. So for us, it’s like smart, talented, hardworking, have the right experience, but extremely curious and wanting to learn, but also teach us versus just wanting to come show us how they’ve done it at a bigger company, right? If you get those things in your culture can influence them in the right way, then there’s probably some more things you need to look at internally.

Nate Disarro 33:30
Man, you’re you’re full of sound bites. I don’t know if you know that. But don’t know that. You’re, if you haven’t written a book, I think you should. But it’s so seven and a half years. And when you look ahead, you look another seven years down the road. What’s next for this company? This organization? Where do you go from here?

Jeston George 33:50
Yeah, so one of the negatives about selling in the education market specifically and K 12. public schools in the United States. It’s a it’s a fairly limited market. Right? If you build software like Salesforce or HubSpot, you know, it’s every SMB in the world and enterprise, right. So it’s unlimited opportunity and education that’s a little bit different. So it’d be high growth, when you have a limited addressable market becomes really difficult, right. And so there’s things that we have to do which are, so for the first seven years, we’ve been one product, one market. So this year, we have rolled out our second product called rooms, which is taking a lot of the general communication tools that we built originally, and we’re going into the classroom, parent, teacher, chat, class, other classroom assignments, very, very competitive space, we think we’re gonna be really successful at it. But so this is the first year that we have a second product. So that’s really exciting. Right? So as far as expansion, and this is also the year that we’re gonna go international. So we have an office in Monterrey, Mexico, a lot of engineers, not fully engineers, but that’s not a sales office. This lottery last week was our first few hires in Birmingham in the UK. And so we’ll actually start international sales this year. And so it’s that journey from Single Market single product and multiple market multiple products and multiple geographies. And we’re going to attempt the start of all of that this year. And hopefully it’s a big part of our success next year in the following years.

Nate Disarro 35:10
And for you, I assume that means you get even more excited because there’s more fires coming your way that you get to put out and deal with and, or is it more sleepless nights,

Jeston George 35:20
sleep is not a problem for me. I so excited about the challenges, right? Like, like, this is fun, right? Half of what we’re going to do this year is things that we’ve never done in our history. I’m as excited today as I was seven years ago when I’m getting this going.

Nate Disarro 35:36
Alright, as we kind of start to wrap things up, one of the things that’s really impressive to me and I think is valuable for you to explain is you walk in this building, and from the outside, it’s a little bit unassuming. But you come in and all of a sudden, it opens up and it feels like a Silicon Valley or Austin, Texas Tech startup. Explain to me kind of what the mindset was with putting this place together. And some of the features and elements that you guys have here. For anybody that might be looking for a new job out there, because apparently you’re hiring.

Jeston George 36:08
Yes, yes, we are. Alright, quite a bit. As far as the layout of the space, it’s we got, we worked with the PSW, the architect, firm, local, and they came in and we’re like, I’m sure everybody tells you they want to cool off, it’s right, and probably ends up looking like the inside of a Gohan catalog. Even though that’s extremely nice. That’s not what we’re going for, like we really are a little bit different, a little bit different of an animal, especially for the area, we want the space to reflect that. It was really funny because one of the really architects said, Can I do angles? Like no one lets me do angles, because I wait because you waste space, like knock yourself out. And so this is a really cool looking space. But we actually did it very inexpensively with the use of angles, and paint. Right? And so you see all the crazy paint everywhere and, and there’s no, there’s not that many 90 degree angles in straight lines, which just throws everybody off and looks extremely different. But those little touches just made it right, hey, we want to come off different when somebody comes in here for an interview or somebody comes here to visit, they just have to have this feeling of like, okay, this is not what I expected. And this is a little bit different. And that goes back to how do you create intrigue on the marketing side, we do the same thing, right. So it’s kind of our version of creativity is it’s not what you expect, and it starts to make, it just makes you start to think and that’s what we were going for. And I think that we pull that off

Nate Disarro 37:27
a little bit. All right. Every successful person in my book has other people around them. Who are some of the people I like to call them titans in your world that have kind of been there for you to help you out or that you’ve looked up to and said, you know, they did it. I can do it, too.

Jeston George 37:43
Yeah, I think our investors have been really influential here, whether it’s conversations that are experiences they had with companies that are larger than us or making the right introductions. And also when you’re with a venture group, you also get to meet all of the other companies in their in their portfolio and just having those conversations about what’s next.

Nate Disarro 38:00
That’s great. Perfect. Okay. All right, I want to move into some kind of quick hit questions. And I think these are kind of fun to just kind of get get behind the curtain of Jeston and who he is. So what’s the best or latest book that you’ve read?

Jeston George 38:16
I’m a really big fan of the Steve Jobs autobiography. Right? I really like books written by the entrepreneur or about the entrepreneur, right? There’s a lot of other books I like as well. But if it’s somebody that’s done it, it’s interesting. So anything but Ben Horowitz has a couple of books out those types of books. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 38:32
What’s part of your daily routine that you can’t miss?

Jeston George 38:36
A morning coffee. It’s easy.

Nate Disarro 38:40
All right, what’s a relatively newly formed habit?

Jeston George 38:43
This is probably a very common one, but much more aware and thoughtful about what I’m eating. Right. And so starting with portion control and trying to have healthier eating habits, yeah,

Nate Disarro 38:53
podcasts or Spotify.

Jeston George 38:56
Who depends on the mood, but I’m, I’ve listened to quite a few podcasts. And I’m a big music lover. So both five to pick one. Let’s go Spotify.

Nate Disarro 39:11
All right, Favorite musician or artists? What’s the next concert you’re going to?

Jeston George 39:14
Oh, next concert. The guy’s favorite artists. I grew up on hip hop. So it’s my probably say my favorite but favorite artist or this style of music is probably like Prince, right? So rock and soul combination is my favorite. next concert, if I could go to someone a would probably be some old school hip hop artists that I never got to see when I was younger. I’d go in and see them you know, they’re like really old right now.

Nate Disarro 39:38
It’s just still Biv DeVoe, maybe

Jeston George 39:40
those types of ones. There’s, there’s an old group called Diggable planets that I was a big fan of and they’re still touring, right.

Nate Disarro 39:46
best piece of advice you’ve either given or received.

Jeston George 39:50
One of the big piece of advice that we talked about here internally a quite a bit is that you can do both. And I think in in business, if you think about the business, case studies that are done, it’s On the biggest companies in the world, and we take that as entrepreneurs and study from that, and think that that’s the way to do business at our size, and even though we’re successful and we’re growing, it’s nothing like Amazon or Walmart, where you have millions of transactions a minute, right? And but yet, those are the companies we follow as far as how to do business. And when you’re trying to increase quantity, you may have to give up on quality then. And so for us, when we say you can do both, is it we don’t have to compromise quality. If we want to increase quantity. If we want to do customization, it can still scale our values of thoughtfulness and high performance. Like we love it when there’s friction there. And so I think that it’s a common piece of advice that we give her regularly at the companies that we can do both Netflix or the news. Oh, Netflix, I haven’t watched the news in so long. I used to watch the election night, right? I haven’t stopped doing that now. Right? And so, yeah, I then till someone comes and tells me or if it pops up on my on my Apple app, I have no idea what’s happening in the world. So

Nate Disarro 40:57
do you do you miss it? Do you miss the news? Do

Jeston George 40:59
you not one bit that I’m not interested in which way one group is going to influence me one way or the other?

Nate Disarro 41:06
I know you’re you’re newly formed habit is portion control and being cautious. But when you can go out and eat anywhere you want any meal in the world, what are you going to get? What’s your favorite food?

Jeston George 41:16
Home for Indian food is for me is? It’s obviously that’s where I’m from, right? I don’t get it as often as I would like, right for me, mom or dad cook Indian meal is my favorite.

Nate Disarro 41:29
I love that. Jeston, what have we missed? What part of the story have we not told that, that you think is most important for people to hear?

Jeston George 41:37
I think one of the exciting things for us here internally. And it’s kind of hard to say this, get this through to employees, because it sounds like it’s the soundbite. But it’s like, when we think back many years now, like 90% plus of everything that we’re going to do is actually from now forward, right? Like the what we’ve done up to this date is this going to be right now was 100% of the story. It’s going to be one to 10% of the story. And it’s like, and so I think that’s the part that excites me. And I think it’s a part that’s kind of hard for a lot of our employees to see because they see that they’re a big part of the early days and how much we’ve grown but like, Yeah, this is gonna be a very small part of the story what we got so far.

Nate Disarro 42:15
It’s really cool. Jeston, thanks so much for taking the time to sit down and have this conversation.

Jeston George 42:21
It’s been a blast and I appreciate it. Thank you!

Nate Disarro 42:26
If you like this episode of Titans of Industry, head to content titan.co/podcast For more episodes, or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an Industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening!

Shayla Copas 0:00
And if you ever get someone that says because this has happened before, oh, I don’t believe in contracts. I’ve just want to, you know, I believe in a handshake deal. Run as fast as you can, because there’s not such a thing as a handshake deal.

Nate Disarro 0:13
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I speak with Shayla and Scott Copas, a power couple that are creating an all encompassing lifestyle brand. Shayla has built a very successful interior design business working with people all over to create the home of their dreams. Recently, she’s launched her own design books along with signature furniture, product lines, and now she’s pushing out an elite travel planning business. And Scott Copas is the backend of Sheila’s endeavors primarily working with the operations finance and logistics side of the business. With his background in commercial construction and business management, he completes this entrepreneurial powerhouse duo. Now let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and Video for marketing your business. Our team at content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in, it’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience and video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit content titan.co to learn more. Now here’s the episode with Shayla and Scott Copas. Well, Shayla Scott, thanks so much for jumping on the podcast. I guess I’ve known you guys for a handful of years now. And always, you know, anytime I see you or see what you’re up to, never ceases to amaze me that you’re in a different part of the world coming out with a new book, Scott right there by your side the whole way. So I’d love to just kind of start with give me a little insight to what it is you guys do on a daily basis, and how you know, we ended up having this conversation today.

Shayla Copas 2:16
Wow. So it’s a myriad of things. I’m an entrepreneur. So our businesses lifestyle, which encompasses quite a bit, we never know what we’re going to do from day to day, we started in interior design, and that’s going better than ever. People are wanting to redesign their homes since COVID. It’s just like, they got to look at them for so long. And they realize that they wanted to make changes. So we expect that to stay pretty strong over the next several years. But we also started a travel division of the company, for people who love design and are inspired by design. And I can design their personal travel, as well as our main pillar of that business is taking people on luxury trips. And so I guide them on luxury design inspired VIP virtuoso trips. And we’re touring the world, all luxury travelers know virtuoso, and they get excited when you say, oh, yeah, we’re virtual. So we can make sure you get all the VIP perks, you will be a rock star when you walk, when you walk into that location that day at that hotel. And the general manager will know your name. And they’re actually and some occasions, we send pictures ahead of time.

Nate Disarro 3:39
Well, clearly I’m traveling the wrong way. So I need to sign up for a trip sooner rather than later. But what are some of the places you’ve you’ve taken people? What are some of the most exciting

Shayla Copas 3:49
Well, we’re getting ready to launch taking people places. I’m already booking travel for people that are going on their own with their families, but we’ll be taking them to Scotland, Morocco, South South Africa, where it’s just it’s a large list, Peru, Alaska. The list is long over the next two years.

Nate Disarro 4:12
That’s amazing. Yeah. All right. So you’ve got interior design, you’ve got travel that’s inspired by design. What else do you have your hand in?

Shayla Copas 4:20
We own a marketing company. So the hive PR marketing, we launched in 2020. And it mainly focuses on design designers, architects and contractors. With that, with it focusing on the design industry and contractors. I wanted to stay right down the vein of what I always do as a designer and what I know is design. So the travel has the design aspect to it. The marketing company of course has the design portion to it and then being a designer we also are big into product design right now. Interesting, yeah, we’ve signed several licensing deals in there, we, we expect the portfolio to expand by quite a lot in the next couple of years.

Nate Disarro 5:11
So Scott, I mean, that, that, in and of itself is a quick overview of things that I would see as a bit of a challenge to kind of keep under one header. Talk to me a little bit about your role and all that and how you wrangle the cat so to speak,

Scott Copas 5:27
well, I’ve always handled the financial side of the business. And that one’s probably the easiest part of it, even though I don’t sometimes I don’t even know what the invoice is for, because she’s going in so many different directions. And then I do help in the operational side, logistics. And, you know, and sometimes when she has some construction issues on one of her projects, not maybe issues, but what’s the best way to solve the issue, solve the problem, I’ll go out and meet with the clients and help them with that. But the unique part of this entire business, goes back to her interior design, that is a very personal relationship you have with your clients, you find out a lot about them. And you know, and and that helps in designing trips and travel for them and their family. It is it’s, I would never have thought of that. But I’ve seen it and we really haven’t even officially launched it yet. But it is it’s an amazing part of the business, the product design, I do get involved in some of the product design, when she and her team are presenting that to one of the vendors or manufacturers. I look at it from a constructability standpoint, I have a talent for that. So I’ll I’ll jump in sometimes and say I think there might be a better way to manufacture it. I don’t pretend to know how to design it or or suggest that you might want to do it this way. It’s all from a practicality and constructability standpoint, because and in controlling costs for us and the manufacturer.

Nate Disarro 7:21
Yeah, absolutely. Well, getting into the genesis of this newest business venture, the design inspired travel. You know, anytime I’m traveling somewhere nowadays, one of the first places I go to look where to stay is Airbnb. And when I’m looking through, it’s that very point, I’m looking at the design of the way the places laid out, is it something that fits my taste? Is it something that this is a place I want to stay within? Also, I mean, I just got back from Italy and had a wonderful time exploring Florence and different towns in Italy. And same thing, find yourself being drawn to places that are visually pleasing to you. So is that kind of what inspired the ideas as you saw this niche? Or how did it come about?

Shayla Copas 8:04
So there, it’s twofold. My clients were asking me where they should travel. And, you know, we travel quite a bit. And I thought, you know, I can add that facet to the business as well as my followers, were wanting to go along on the trips with me. They were watching where we were going to South Africa, or if I was going to Peru, and they’re saying, Oh, we want to do this, but we’re a little scared, we’re a little apprehensive to go to someplace like Africa. It is it is a little scary the first time, so we’d love to go with you. And that was really how that all kind of evolved was through my clients asking me where they should go. And then through my followers on social media asked him to go with me.

Scott Copas 8:49
And if I could jump in on that, it kind of evolved. Because if you know Shayla, she’s an interior designer, she posts everywhere we go. And we’ve been very blessed to have gone to travel to a lot of very unique places, and, and posts all of this information and beautiful photographs and actually videos of what’s going on. And that generated all this interest from our clients and from our social media friends. So it kind of evolved that way even though I had no idea she was blended, I’d started a travel business. But you might want to tell tell them what made your mind up on that lot where we were and what made your mind up on on starting travel.

Shayla Copas 9:41
We were on an island. We had just left South Africa. And we went over to Mauritius. And at the time we had a travel agent, so I didn’t own a travel agency back then. And we were booked someplace that we we’d spent quite a bit on this room and we were in the nicest suite They had, and we arrived there and there was no air conditioning. And it was 100 degrees or 90 something degrees. And I was absolutely miserable. So keep in mind before this, I had already had clients asking me about travel, I had already had my followers asking me about going on trips with me. And I’m suffering in this room, and it really was suffering. Plus, there were rabid cats that were and I’m a cat fan, I really am. Because I have the Sweet Little Kitty right now I’m saving. But there are rabid, feral cats on our back porch that we tried to attack me every time I went out the door, and then it was hot. So anyway, it just was a miserable situation. And at that point, I thought, You know what, I really want to prevent these things from happening to other people. And so my followers have already been asking me about this, my clients have asked me about this, this is God telling me, I need my own travel agency. And we just need to add this to che look up his lifestyle. So I literally sat in my bed because I wouldn’t I wouldn’t go outside the rabid cats were there, I was mad at the world. I was there for seven days, I believe five to seven days, maybe it was it was seven days because we were there longer than anyplace else. And they also couldn’t feed me very well because of my allergies. And I was mad at him. So he wasn’t in the room. And so I just got online, and I started researching starting my own travel business. And I realized that I needed a thing called a host agency. So I started contacting host agencies during this miserable jail sentence. And by the time we left, I had my mind made up, I was going to start a travel agency, I realized, you know, people do need an advocate when they travel, they need an advocate. But then also I was like, okay, so this is going to be kind of confusing to people that I have a design business. And I have a marketing business. And now I have this bit, you know, and now I have this travel business, but I felt like if I kept it along the vein of design, that I’d be fine. But then something else happens along the way. And when I started telling people, I was gonna start this travel business, some of them care about the design elements, but a lot of them don’t. And they started calling me saying, Can you book my travel? And we haven’t even launched it yet. And we have a ton of travel clients.

Nate Disarro 12:35
But I mean, how many businesses out there were started because somebody had a terrible experience and realize there’s a better way to do something, right? I mean, that’s the nature of what entrepreneurs do every day is solve a problem that nobody’s taking the initiative to solve, because they experienced the problem themselves.

Scott Copas 12:52
You know, and you think about it, unfortunately, shameless and influencers, you know, and feel a lot more comfortable if you were the person traveling to having that kind of service. So

Nate Disarro 13:03
from both y’all standpoint, the value of having good partners and what that can do to make or break a business.

Shayla Copas 13:09
Oh, absolutely. So good partners will make or break a business, for sure. And I think a lot of it is vetting those partners, making sure that you aligned together. Because I’ve always said if you align with those partners, there’s nothing that you can’t, that you can’t do and no mountain that you can’t climb together. Because people can feel that energy coming from you. It’s it’s in that makes that business really survive and go further than if they were on their own. And I think that’s why I’ve become really involved from a product design standpoint for manufacturers, as well as an ambassador, as well for those manufacturers. And we continue to get more in our portfolio, every year that we’re going to be announcing soon, we cannot wait to announce the ones that we’ve been working on for two years, because it actually takes several years to develop these types of partnerships. You don’t just go in and shake someone’s hand and and it’s done. Right. It takes two to three years to develop a product line and to develop that relationship. You know,

Nate Disarro 14:19
depending on on kind of what your business is, what you’re trying to do what you’re trying to accomplish. I think a lot of people have this idea of whoever the first person is that can help me do what I’m thinking I want to do, let’s just take and run with it. But every partnership just like any, you know, business partnership, any vendor relationship, you’re gonna have challenges and struggles along the way where you might disagree, you might whatever but to your point, the more you kind of align on the front end, then you can work through those problems. You can overcome those challenges. You can, you know, have a real special thing that happens.

Shayla Copas 14:52
Yes. And a lot of it needs to be done contractually on the front end and that’s what a lot of people in business forget about. out, is making sure that they have, they have really solid contracts, they don’t want to pay attorneys, they don’t, you know, they don’t want to go through all the legal portions of it. But in the end, it’ll bite them. So if you have a solid contract, and you go into it on the front end, stating, This is what I expect. Now, tell me what you expect that nobody’s going to be disappointed. If you don’t, people tend not to want to do that, because they’re afraid they’re going to scare him away, right. But they’re not going to scare what they’ll do is scare away a partner they don’t want to have with from the contractual side. So we’re adamant about making sure that we’re very transparent on the front end, and that we also encourage our partners to be transparent, so that there are no surprises, and then things turn out real well. But, and I think that’s why things take so long to is in the negotiation side of it, when we have one that we negotiated, I think it was in 2021, early 2021, that we will not be releasing until 2023. We’ve already been designing things or at the factory in production. But we won’t be telling people about it and releasing it to consumers until 2023.

Nate Disarro 16:20
It’s crazy, I think one of the most crucial things you just said was the fact that essentially, you take long on the front end to get these contracts done. But don’t worry about scaring people away, because sometimes that’s the best case scenario you want to and I think a lot of times, you know, business owners think, well, it’s my one shot at this partnership, or my one shot at this growth stage of the company, or whatever the case may be. But the reality is, there’s tons of opportunities out there, you got to seek out the right ones.

Shayla Copas 16:48
And if you ever get someone that says because this has happened before, oh, I don’t believe in contracts. I’ve just want to, you know, I believe in a handshake deal. Run as fast as you can, because there’s not such a thing as a handshake deal. 30 years ago, yeah. And there’s always going to be something that comes up along the way that that you’re gonna want to address later on, why not address it now and get it out of the way? Yeah.

Nate Disarro 17:16
All right, storytelling, content creation, putting yourself out there. Scott, as you alluded to, it’s vitally important to kind of, you know, let people know what you’re up to. Because you never know what business may come of it, or what opportunities may come of it.

Scott Copas 17:31
There’s no tell them what’s in her mind. That that I don’t know about yet. But she’s the storyteller. She’s the face of the business. And, and so we, we backer, and we want to come in and we want to traveling we want to you prior to COVID, she was doing a lot of public speaking, and that that’s starting to come back now. And we went, what, two years, I guess where she had an entire book tour where she was going to be gone nearly nine months. On this on the first book, you know, she’s working on the sick, but second book, and that got cancelled because of COVID.

Shayla Copas 18:09
And then I got even more serious about travel. You know why? Because I knew that people were going to be stuck at home. And just like they would want to start designing, I knew that they would want to start traveling again. And that that traveling itch, so to speak, would would build and build and build and it’s paying off. That’s all yes, that’s just part of being an entrepreneur, you try to figure out 100% can do do to fill to fill people’s passions, and you go for it. Yeah,

Nate Disarro 18:39
well, you see, use the analogy all the time, you know how many you got to have a bunch of lines in the water, because you never know, which one is going to catch a fish, you know, so you don’t have multiple things happening and figuring out what you’re going to do.

Shayla Copas 18:50
Yeah, no, but the the issue here is all of them caught a fish. So we have to figure out how to how to keep putting the line back out and in and in from a workflow standpoint, because we all know now workflow is so important with businesses on how to keep them all going from a workflow standpoint. So we’ve had we’ve had to invest in workflow software for each business and that all it gets really expensive.

Scott Copas 19:18
And there’s multiple software’s especially on the design side, both on the interior design and the product design side. And and as well as the travels I mean, we’ve

Nate Disarro 19:29
the amount of tabs do you have open on your browser at any?

Scott Copas 19:32
Oh, you ought to go off

Shayla Copas 19:34
for this morning. This is what I had. People always laugh every time we get on a zoom. And I share my screen and you can always hear people like why do you have so many tabs up I’m I’m an entrepreneur and I have several businesses and so I’ve got to go from from my from my travel software to my interior design software to my marketing software all day long.

Nate Disarro 19:59
I feel that it’s It’s, every time I try and close them down. I’m like, No, I need that. I need that. Yeah, constantly go back and forth. So how important is telling your own story? How important is it for you to be vocal about what you’re doing how you’re solving people’s problems, and putting your own message out there.

Shayla Copas 20:16
It’s, it’s important to me because I want to inspire people, I think that people tend to get going in their direction and in their path in life. And they and they forget to get inspired, and they forget what they can do. Sometimes they just go to their job each day. And they think this is what I’m going to do the rest of my life, but maybe they’re not really fulfilled. And I always hope that when I tell my story that I’m going to, I’m going to inspire someone to go out and do go out and follow their dreams and go out to do the things that they’d always hoped that they could achieve.

Nate Disarro 20:54
I love that. I have a good friend who he was telling me one time he said, Nate, people can learn pretty much anything they want to learn. It’s not a matter of knowledge, it’s a matter of inspiration and motivation. They need to be inspired, they need to be motivated. And then they’ll learn whatever they want to learn. And of course, experience and the vision to get it perfect and have a product to sell or whatever, is certainly something that takes time. But it starts with that inspiration and motivation. And that’s really what, what gets us going.

Shayla Copas 21:23
It is it is in even with me, it takes me a while because I’m an overachiever. And so I never want to do anything halfway. And that is a little difficult. So with the with the travel business, you know, deciding in 2020. Or wait, so yeah, in 2020, making that decision in 2000 Sorry, I got a backup 2021 actually making the plunge and investing in it. And now we’re in 2022. So it just it takes time, if you’re an overachiever. And if you are, if you if you feel like you have to have everything? Well, from a perfectionist standpoint, together, it can be it can be a little daunting, but we are, we’re moving.

Nate Disarro 22:11
Alright, Scott, I’m gonna start with you on this one. As an entrepreneur, as somebody that you know, run big businesses, you always wish you knew something, and then you eventually learn it. So what’s something that you wish you knew earlier on in business? Or in you know, this, this role you’re in now that you had to learn the hard way? Or that would have made a lot more sense? Have you learned it a lot sooner? Well, my wife,

Scott Copas 22:40
that’s obvious. I wish I had. And I wish I had left the construction industry sooner. Because I had been in for been in contract for 44 years. So and it the industry was great to me and did well in it. But I got to the point that I was not enjoying it, but I was watching everything that shaylen Megan and her team and their team was doing and I was almost a little jealous. Because they were having so much fun, I was fortunate that I could go to some of the shows, and to different markets. And, and it I just realized how much fun it was and how interesting was and met a tremendous amount of people, because she knows a lot of people. And we had the best time and I envy that. And I wish I had done it two, three years prior to I would have known a lot more about their business and what especially on the interior design side, you know, they and I had some idea about marketing have probably understood the marketing better than I did the interior design side and other than I have a total appreciation for their design concepts that they and I fortunately get to see a lot of the products projects they do and the products they’re designing with their team and and I’m just absolutely amazed.

Nate Disarro 24:18
So what would you say to whether it’s younger people or just anybody out there that’s looking at kind of I think I can do this I think I should do this but I’m stuck in this world or I feel like now’s not the right time. What would you advise someone who’s who’s got that mindset but it’s kind of afraid to take that job.

Scott Copas 24:36
I think Shayla said it well a minute ago is if you have a dream, pursue it, you’ll figure out a way to make it happen. Logistics or just logistics. If you’ve got an idea and you’ve got a dream and you’re willing to take to make the investment, both in time, sometimes money. There’s a lot of you may not have money but people Pull out there do that are willing to invest in you. And so they need to take that opportunity because of the regretted. I’ve been fortunate to counsel a lot of younger people, especially in my latter years. And I tell them that, you know, they say, Well, you know, I’m thinking about moving into mostly in the construction industry, but not all, a lot of architects, a lot of younger architects I’ve visited with, and they’re talking about, well, I want to go out on my own. And that’s what I know, a dozen that have that have done really well. And but you got, you got to take that step. And that getting out of your comfort zone is a problem. And if you’re living week to week on a paycheck, you’re basically held ransom. You’ve got to figure out how to cut your expenses and financial finances probably my strongest suit, and learn to operate in you’ve heard this a million times you can see in books, figure out how to operate on half your budget, then you can take the rest of the money and do what you need to do to move forward to achieve your dreams.

Nate Disarro 26:14
And I think that goes for both the personal side and the business. Absolutely.

Scott Copas 26:18
The one in the same. Yeah. You know, everybody talks about personal life and business law. Art, if they’re wondering the same with us,

Nate Disarro 26:27
when it’s often said that, you know, investors often invest in the entrepreneur, not the idea, you know, there if you have passion and vision, people will give you money, they’ll give you help. You know, that’s the other thing recent conversation is, people always wish they asked for help sooner, because people will freely give help if you ask for it. But way too often, people are afraid to ask or they think they got to do it on their own, and whether it’s going to cost too much money or whatever. I mean, how many times have you voluntarily sat down with somebody younger and offered, you know, a piece of advice or a helping hand? And

Scott Copas 27:03
I can’t count the amount of times and sometimes it was a personal tragedy or a personal issue, not just business, and where am I going financially and all of that it’s a combination of a lot of things. I’ve been fortunate to have had that opportunity to do it many times.

Nate Disarro 27:21
I love it. Sailor I’m curious, what about you, as far as you know, what’s one thing you wish you learned sooner that you ultimately either learned the hard way or are still trying to figure out,

Shayla Copas 27:32
everything does not have to be perfect. And when I started talking about me being a perfectionist, or an overachiever that has gotten in the way of my productivity before, but there’s a happy medium there. So because I’m a perfectionist, that’s why people hire me. Because they know that I’m going to do it to the best of my ability and every detail will be taken care of. But I have to figure out how to, to not expect every single thing to be perfect. Like before we launch like just with the travel business. I could have launched this business a couple months ago, or maybe even six months ago. But I wanted everything to be perfect. And all my you know, T’s crossed and my eyes dotted. And it’s it’s just it’s gotten in the way of that. But fortunately for me, people already know I’m doing this. So they’re hiring me anyway. But

Nate Disarro 28:32
well, great line on that front is don’t let perfection get in the way of excellence. Right? We can still be excellent without being perfect. Oh,

Shayla Copas 28:39
absolutely. And I think we tend to be too hard on ourselves. I mean, do you ever feel like that you’re 100% just too hard on yourself. And I feel like I’m too hard on myself and then and people even when we do something that we feel is halfway. People were like, Oh, it was amazing. You know?

Nate Disarro 28:57
What? Yeah, because we feel like everything as entrepreneurs, everything that leaves the door has, it’s a reflection of who we are. That’s kind of what what our mind says. But the other outside world isn’t looking at you in a mirror. They’re looking at something that they’re not used to seeing. And so they don’t know what to think of it, but they see it and they think it’s excellent. While you think it could be better. You know, so there’s a paradigm shift of what you think matters. And I’m speaking about any entrepreneur versus, you know, what the public sees, and they they may not know, it could be better, they may think it’s already as good as it can be. And I think that’s one of the biggest crutches a lot of people face is just just get it out there. Let the world see it and then tweak it based on the way other people need it to be kind of tweaked their reaction. Exactly. Okay, one of the things that I really liked talking about is personality types. And, you know, any entrepreneur obviously, you have to have people around you you have to have people in your life that either work with you or for you, and your use case, as a married couple, talk to me a little bit about how your personalities work well together, and then maybe how there’s challenges there that you have to overcome?

Scott Copas 30:15
Well, I’m somewhat like her in this, it has to be perfect. I’m not, it’s bad. But I’m pretty close. And so, you know, we we butt heads a lot. But I think that’s what makes us successful, quite frankly, even in my previous business. You know, I discussed a lot of things with her about what was going on and getting her opinion. And she does the same thing with me. Finding that happy, medium and medium sometimes can be a challenge. We’ve been fortunate that that we ultimately come up with the right decision. But it may take a week of arguing about it or not talking to each other to get get there. But that’s what, that’s what good partners do. And so I can’t complain about how it’s worked turned out. The process sometimes can be a little challenging. But we’ve been very, very fortunate. And, you know, this is, I’m like a kid in a candy shop, with all dealing with, with what they did. And I wake up with a lot more excitement and ready to go in and ready to go to work and learn something. And outside of finances, I can do finances all day long. But it’s the other part of it that I really enjoy the most.

Nate Disarro 31:49
So Scott, thanks so much for being here. I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing some wisdom with us and look forward to next time we catch up.

Scott Copas 31:56
Oh, absolutely. And thank you so much night, it’s great to see you. And I’ve looked forward to this and and look forward to hearing the prop the podcast. So thank you again.

Shayla Copas 32:09
So as far as personalities are concerned, we are very alike in personality. But we do like Scott mentioned, because we’re so alike. And we’re and we’re so passionate about what we do. Sometimes we’re we’re very stubborn. And we can’t see the other person’s point of view. And it takes us a while. But we always come to that we always come to that point, it just takes us a while. And that’s the interesting thing about working with your spouse. And, you know, especially if you’re a lot of like,

Nate Disarro 32:46
yeah, I completely agree that, you know, there’s, I’ve been a big fan lately of the Enneagram, if you’ve paid any attention to that, the personality test. And you know, when you boil it down, there’s there’s nine individual personality types. So you’re bound to either be just like somebody or completely opposite. And at the end of the day, we’re all after the same things. But we kind of get there a little different way. And it’s important to understand that there’s nothing wrong with somebody that’s totally different from us. And there’s nothing wrong with somebody that’s just like us, we just kinda have to step back and understand that we’re all a little different. That’s okay. But we’re trying to achieve the same things, we just have to let each person kind of see it their own way for a minute.

Shayla Copas 33:26
Wow. And it’s fun that you mentioned that because we took we didn’t take that particular personality tests. But we took another back in 2016. And it had a graph and several things that came with it. And we were exactly the same every single day, the way that the graph went up and down, and all the different phases of that test was the identity and identical personality.

Nate Disarro 33:54
So give me a little behind the scenes, what are some of the things that that stand out about you as personalities that are similar?

Shayla Copas 34:02
We’re both we’re both leaders, we like leadership, we like we’d like to get things done. We both are problem solvers. So if somebody has a problem, and they call me, I’m likely not to be quiet. And just listen, I’m going to tell them what they need to do to fix it. And we are not scared or afraid to take risks and to go out and do things for the betterment of society as well. We’re both we’re both very passionate about helping others,

Nate Disarro 34:38
which is incredibly apparent. Obviously, any entrepreneur is taking some form of risk, but to do it over and over again and keep launching new ideas, new new ways to do business. You know, you could just settle and be comfortable doing what you were doing. But let’s go out and try this. And if we fail, we fail but we took the risk and What was one of the things that stood out the first major risk you took? And then realize you were successful? Were you paralyzed by taking that risk? Or was it something that you felt like this is going to be fun and exhilarating, and I don’t care if I fail?

Shayla Copas 35:15
Well, I’ve taken a lot of risks. But my first risk was when I started my first business before I even knew Scott, that was my first risk, was jumping off that diving board and saying, Okay, I’m going to start a business, I was a single mom, on my own, and didn’t know if it would work out. But it did.

Nate Disarro 35:36
It’s amazing how often it works out. And again, it goes back to that vision and passion and purpose. And if you can align that to the idea, then it’s really hard to stop people, I think most people that that failed a business or, you know, don’t continue on, it’s because you lose that passion and that drive.

Shayla Copas 35:54
That’s true. And also, when people start looking at what happens to them, and becoming a victim, they, they no longer see what they need to be grateful for. And gratefulness really does promote us to have drive. So something bad. So some, let’s say you’re working on a new business and something happens, and it’s just not so good. And so you become the victim, and you no longer are in the driver’s seat. Once you become the victim, you’re no longer in the driver’s seat. And so therefore, you kind of go down this little hole, the little, little rabbit hole and things in things don’t turn out the way they could have. If you looked at the positive parts of that situation, you know, and sometimes there are physical things that can happen that you can’t, you can’t control those. But it’s the part the part that’s in your mind and in your head that you can control. And that you can you can pull yourself out of any situation, you just have to try. Because it’s never going to be easy. It’s not going to be perfect.

Nate Disarro 37:02
Agreed. Over the last couple of years, obviously everybody’s talked about the challenges that we’ve had to go through with COVID. And in some cases, businesses closed their doors, and in others, people started to thrive and survive because of the business they were in. And everybody’s got a little bit of a different story. But even outside of COVID What’s one of the biggest challenges you feel like you faced and how did you overcome it?

Shayla Copas 37:31
Biggest challenge in my life, face. Pick one, that’s an entire not even one novel that’s like six or seven. So I’ve faced a lot of challenges in my life. I would say being a single mom was my biggest challenge in starting that first business.

Nate Disarro 37:52
What What kept you going? What gave you the drive and desire to overcome you know, the idea that I’m sure there were a lot of days you were like, you know, I just want to go get a job somewhere. This is too hard.

Shayla Copas 38:03
My daughter I think just having someone depending on me for survival was what kept me going even on the hard days.

Nate Disarro 38:12
Everybody has mentors and people they look up to and people that are there along the way. So who are some electrical Titans right? Who are your titans in your life that kind of you look at and are inspired by.

Shayla Copas 38:27
I’m inspired by my husband, I’m not wanting to sound cheesy, but he has really helped me as a as a business owner over the years even though he didn’t work with Shiloh Copus lifestyle. He he was very involved on the back end with giving that advice each day to keep me going. His mother was also one that that was very inspirational to me. She’s no longer with us, unfortunately. But we were very close.

Nate Disarro 39:01
Well, now that Scott’s not here, we can speak freely about him. But you know, his his reputation and community, just the type of person he is and there’s so many people that that look up to him and if kind of really respected him throughout his previous career. And it’s exciting to see what you guys are going to do continue doing and how how big this thing’s gonna get. So what’s next for you? I mean, I know we’ve talked a little bit you tease the the travel business that hasn’t even officially launched but I’m sure you’re not even close to done.

Shayla Copas 39:37
On in close to done with business. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 39:40
Where are your ideas take you. Oh,

Shayla Copas 39:42
there are several working on. We’re now really trying to develop the lifestyle aspect because before we were Shayla Copas interiors, and then when we added the hive marketing and PR in Shayla Copas travel and then our products we decided to really develop the I’m Shayla Copus lifestyle. And with that we have a cosmetic line coming out. So because that really fits in that lifestyle segment, and that cosmetic line will be launched this year, that’s amazing and announced that one. Very cool. Several of them I can’t announce yet, of

Nate Disarro 40:18
course understood. Well, I want to jump one more time back into the importance that the storytelling and specifically your social media has played in a lot of what you’ve done, everybody starts at zero. And some of us get to a few 100, some of us to a few 1000, some of us to 10s, and hundreds of 1000s of followers. But, you know, everybody wants to be there, but not everybody can get there. And so to have the kind of connection and audience that you have, what do you attribute to that? How did you use storytelling and visuals to kind of gain your following, it had

Shayla Copas 40:57
to do with finding my niche. Because when you are on social, there’s a million people on social millions and millions of people on social media. And they’re just so many accounts, and people unfollow and follow each day, but they follow the accounts that have a niche and keep them interested and are authentic, being authentic is the key thing. And then having that niche. And my niche is really interior designers follow me and people that love interior design in general. But my my, my my biggest source of followers is interior designers.

Nate Disarro 41:36
So talk to me about being authentic and kind of telling your own story. How do you keep from straying or at way and just tell the story that maybe isn’t as authentic? Because that’s easy to do? A lot of people want to just show their best world or whatever, you know, but how do you remain authentic?

Shayla Copas 41:54
Well, I remain authentic by by putting my heart first and they tell you, you should always put your head first and you should think first but when you when you think with your heart, and you operate with your heart, but being careful, I’m not saying to you know, be not not think about what you’re doing. But when you really operate from the standpoint of of your heart, that’s when you’re authentic, and you don’t really worry about the money. If you worry about the money, you’re never gonna get anywhere. Don’t worry about that. It will come. And I listened to my followers. So that’s what hence the cosmetic line. I did not want to start a cosmetic line, but they kept contacting me well, what makeup are you wearing? What are you know, what color is that lipstick? And same thing with the travel. And so I talked to Scott and I said, Do you want to start a cosmetic line? It said, Sure, honey, we’ll start a cosmetic line. So that’s where that all came from. And it but it comes from your followers, staying connected to them listening to then leading with your heart and being authentic.

Nate Disarro 43:03
It’s so true. I think everywhere you look anybody you talk to the TAT, any sense of success with social media and storytelling through those platforms, the number one thing they’re gonna say is, Listen, you know, because a lot of times, it’s about what do I need to put out? What do I need to say, but nine times out of 10, if you’re being authentic, and you’re just putting yourself out there, you got to listen to what people are saying back, they’re telling you what they want, you just have to listen,

Shayla Copas 43:29
and you have to respond. So people will sometimes most people that I know in social media tend not to respond. And I always respond when those responses come from me. So there’s not someone on the back end responding for me, those are true shale responses. And I’ve developed deep connections with people I’ve never even met because of that. It to

Nate Disarro 43:53
me, it’s the equivalent of if you go into a big room, and there’s somebody on a stage and they’re talking to you. You want them afterwards to be down, answering your questions and mingling with the crowd. And the best social media accounts. The best, you know, people that you know are on social media are the ones who have something to say that people want to listen to, but then come down to the crowd and to your point, respond directly and aren’t getting somebody else to respond for them or whatever the case may be. But but that’s who we want to talk to. And those are the people we’re gonna go tell other people about, say, Hey, you should listen to this person because they’re willing to listen to you and then give you tips, tricks or advice back to you. Okay, so one of the things I like to do just to get a little personal feedback is sort of some quick hit questions and answers. So I’ll just throw some things out. Give me the first thing that that comes to mind. I know you’ve put out your own books, but what’s the best book you’ve read? Or what are you currently reading? I

Shayla Copas 44:56
actually have it right beside me. It’s called the blessing and it is My favorite book from I, when I grew up, I had some challenges as a child because I was abused as a child. And this book is my favorite book because it helps us to grow and to understand what we’ve gone through and take those things for the positive.

Nate Disarro 45:18
Well, and I want to tack on to that for one second, because one of the ways that we were introduced to each other was through a great organization. So talk to me about some of the philanthropic things that you’ve been a part of, and what what really kind of hits your heart. From that side of things. Do

Unknown Speaker 45:33
you have 10 years.

Nate Disarro 45:36
We’ll start with a list.

Shayla Copas 45:38
Well, CAC Children’s Advocacy centers with with my background, it, it struck my heart, and I’ve been, you know, we I, Scott and I both started the woman of inspiration event that they now I’ve carried on, I chaired it for two years, or we both chaired it for two years. And it was a, it was a wonderful event.

Nate Disarro 46:03
That’s awesome. Well, such a phenomenal organization, the work they do every day, needs all the support it can get, but it’s near and dear to my heart as well. You know, we’ve had the fortunate opportunity to help tell those stories and raise awareness and bring advocacy to a problem that most people don’t realize is as big as it is,

Shayla Copas 46:27
they don’t realize and the way we are treated. And the way we react to it has a lot to do with our future and and our passion for life later on and what we achieve. And so we need to get more awareness out so that we can help these children heal. While there’s still time because many adults, if they didn’t get that healing and counseling when they were young, they’ve gone so far that it’s a lot harder for them to climb out of it.

Nate Disarro 46:57
All right. Thank you for that. Let’s let’s move on. So what’s a part of your daily routine that you have to do?

Shayla Copas 47:04
I don’t drink caffeine. But every morning, Scott go, he takes me we get in the car with our kitty with Prada, and we go to get him a sausage biscuits at Burger King. And then we drive down to Starbucks, and I get a hot chocolate even in the summer. That is our routine every single

Nate Disarro 47:30
day. That’s a unique one. But I love it. That is fantastic. All right, what is the best piece of advice you’ve either given or received?

Shayla Copas 47:39
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’re always gonna get what you’ve always got. So if something isn’t going right, change the pattern.

Nate Disarro 47:49
I absolutely think that’s fantastic. Alright, so what is a relatively newly formed habit?

Shayla Copas 47:54
Now that Scott is we both work out of the same office, we spend a lot more time together. And every morning we get up, we get up and we have he has his he has his coffee, his first cup of coffee because he’s habitual with the coffee. And I have tea decaffeinated tea, that’s before we go hit Burger King, and we hit Starbucks. And we talk in the morning.

Nate Disarro 48:21
The next question is typically, if you could write a book, what would you title it? But you’ve written books. So tell me a little bit about this is your chance for a plug, what what books have you written?

Shayla Copas 48:30
I’ve written four seasons of entertaining. And right now we’re working on four seasons of celebration. And we’re also working on some other books later on down the line that have been we’ve kind of started the brainstorming on those products. Yeah, and some journals and calendar journals and calendars.

Nate Disarro 48:54
always something going on. Yeah, always something

Unknown Speaker 48:57
we’re just not going to stop.

Nate Disarro 48:59
What is the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for $100 or less.

Shayla Copas 49:04
Now that I’m in the travel biz, it would be packing cubes, because I pack a lot of luggage. And this is the way that I’m able to get my stuff down to less luggage is with my packing cubes.

Nate Disarro 49:17
That makes complete sense. Alright, favorite destination you’ve ever been to South Africa. Okay, any specific place

Shayla Copas 49:25
there so much so that I’m going to Africa again this year. So the twice in one year, just you know, so on ways to travel to a favorite destination sua Lu and we will be taking people on a group trip there to swallow in 2024 or 23. Sorry, for so many group trips. I’m trying to get all of my dates right but in 2023 will be taking a group of people to swallow and then to another resort as well. Well, they call them camps lodges there. I’ve got to get that right terminology. Because I’m going to be certified in Africa by the end of this year. That’s awesome that they’re flying. There again, for my certification. I just went there to fill to do some filming and shooting for the first book. So we had a videographer and a photographer, Jason masters with us and we went to shoot,

Nate Disarro 50:26
I followed along on social media on that trip. And he did. It made me jealous.

Shayla Copas 50:32
It was crazy. Yeah, it’s the second book. I think I said first book, but second book. It’s it over the top crazy. You’ll have to go on a group trip.

Nate Disarro 50:39
Let’s go. I’m ready. bags are packed, my packing cubes are ready to go. Yeah. In fact, I just had a conversation last week about a potential documentary series that we might do that one of the episodes would be in South Africa, so I may have to go anyway. Well, I’ll have to blue check with you though on on how to make it

Shayla Copas 51:00
right has the most endangered animals there and the rarest? So the only place that you can find a meerkat is in the Kalahari desert that I’m aware of. And if I’m wrong, someone please social media. Me and let me know because I’ve been saying that forever. But the meerkat is only in the Kalahari desert, and you can be up close and personal. One even ran over my friend Jason’s head while we were there, because we’re down on the ground with them. And they pop out of a hole like Pop goes the weasel. So cute, and so special, and then a brown hyena. So I mean, I know they’re mean, there’s a ton of hyenas in the world, but the brown Hyena is there. And we got to see the brown hyena, too. And they are so rare that people don’t always see them when they go to swallow. But they came out for us.

Nate Disarro 51:48
That’s amazing. In this Docu series that we’re looking at doing would be a conservation group that wants to tell these stories. And so it’d be fascinating for sure. Quick shout out to Jason masters, one of the greatest photographers out there. Yeah. What was it like having him along on your safari adventures for the book?

Shayla Copas 52:12
Oh, wow. That was a pinch me moment. You know, he’s been shooting quite a few chapters of the book, but going all the way to South Africa with him. And then my best friends, Jeremy and Jason, were there as well. And Michelle Cheeseman, who’s one of the best videographers. Besides you, of course, were with me, but it was a pinch me moment to have Jason there the whole time grabbing these unbelievable images of this journey. And so I’ve actually gotten to see them. Yeah. And they’re amazing images. He’s so good. He’s so good. But he’s never let it go to his head.

Nate Disarro 52:51
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 52:53
The most simple human being I know.

Nate Disarro 52:56
All right. Couple more questions for you. What is a guilty pleasure that you have?

Shayla Copas 53:01
I have a ton of though. And, oh, boy. Travel is a guilty pleasure. I love it. And I’m obsessed with going new places and like going places for adventure like the Amazon or just someplace that might be scary to someone else. And having a Anaconda around my neck. Yeah, I did that.

Nate Disarro 53:27
Snakes are my number one most feared animal. I can’t stand him. I’ll go swimming with sharks, but

Shayla Copas 53:33
he won’t you won’t touch a snake. Well, I had an anaconda RAM. I know. I’m good. So yeah, and I love purses and shoes. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 53:46
Can can envision what the collection would look like, but I won’t ask to see a picture of it.

Shayla Copas 53:53
Yeah, well, I’ve quit buying purses and shoes because I have no more room for them in the closet. So unless I want to get rid of something. I’m not buying anything new.

Nate Disarro 54:03
That’s fair. I think that’s a good rule and everybody should abide by that rule.

Unknown Speaker 54:08
They were replaced by travel.

Nate Disarro 54:11
Okay, Music Are you a music fan? You have a favorite artists or musician?

Shayla Copas 54:16
I don’t have a favorite favorite artists. But I am a music fan. And I love rap music. Yeah, it always that always is a shock to some people. I love rap music, you know, hip hop, class, classical country. Especially like Metallica and the old the old rock. Yeah. So we’ll jam out in my office at full blast up there.

Nate Disarro 54:42
Are you in Scott go into Burger King and Starbucks in the morning with Metallica and Cardi B on I

Shayla Copas 54:47
totally wish we were but he likes talk radio. Yeah. So he does he cannot stay on my music. So

Nate Disarro 54:55
that’s one area you guys are definitely different.

Shayla Copas 54:57
We’re Yeah, very different. And I actually We like talk radio too, but I don’t listen to it day in and day out. I just like to get my mind off of the world’s issues. And I feel like music helps you. It motivates you and makes you happy.

Nate Disarro 55:13
Absolutely. I 100% agree with that. Shayla, what have we what have we skipped over? What have we missed? That’s part of your story and what you’ve got going on right now.

Shayla Copas 55:24
We’ve missed a lot. But you would have had to have had a long, long time, several days to get it all. So we’ll just have to do it in the next the next interview.

Nate Disarro 55:34
That’s right. We’ll definitely make an app. Awesome. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. I certainly appreciate you opening your home to us and, and having this conversation.

Shayla Copas 55:44
Thank you so much.

Nate Disarro 55:47
If you like this episode of titans of industry, head to content Titan dot CEO slash podcast for more episodes, or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening

Phil Brandon  0:00  

flavors generated from the place where you are. It’s what’s available. What what is interesting. I like to experiment. I like to try things like to make different things, but also listen to what the market wants, but it’s also what do I like and what do I think I could do well, so you know, we’re doing some pretty cool stuff beyond just buying some flavors and pouring them into it.

 

Nate Disarro  0:24  

Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I speak with Phil Brandon, the founder, CEO and head distiller of rock town distillery. When faced with a layoff during his corporate IT career, Phil took his passion for whiskey and transformed it into an iconic Arkansas operation, and is the first to ever distill bourbon in Arkansas. Using his background in engineering along with his MBA, Phyllis put his entrepreneurial talents to the test by creating the Rocktown brand, distribution process, manufacturing standards and a whole lot more. He has been creating handcrafted award winning spirits that you can find in restaurants, liquor stores, and he’s winning contests all around the world.

 

Now, let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and Video for marketing your business. Our team at content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in. It’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience. And video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit content titan.co to learn more.

 

Now, here’s the episode with Phil Brandon.

 

Phil Brandon, thanks so much for hopping on the podcast with us. I met you I think about a decade ago, and your company was only a couple of years old, I think at the time. And here we are in this beautiful tasting room. Give me the the short story. How did how did we get here? Oh, gosh, yeah, it’s it’s kind of crazy. But yeah, thanks for having me on your podcast. This is really cool. It’s great to see you again after all the years and you know,

 

Phil Brandon  2:33  

we were over in on East Sixth Street and a warehouse that we had turned into a distillery. But prior to that, you know 2009 I basically incorporated the company we got started in 2010. I had been laid off from my job at Verizon Wireless after they acquired Alltel and was

 

challenged was trying to figure out what to do with my life and decided that in order for me to stay in Arkansas, which was my home state and

 

my wife’s home state and our family was here to start my own thing and I wanted to be creative and do something that I thought was exciting and turned out it was starting a distillery

 

Nate Disarro  3:25  

so I know you were in it, is that right? Yeah, it roll. I had a risin

 

Phil Brandon  3:31  

Yeah, no, it wasn’t like I was plugging in computers or working on servers. But it was the interface between business and I T helping the to talk to each other. Alltel developed a whole lot of custom software. And so I got to help with some pretty cool projects there.

 

Nate Disarro  3:51  

So why a distillery? I mean, you know, when that time period in your life came well, I was it. Let’s let’s forget the technology. I mean, there’s a lot of technology here but yeah, let’s move into spilled liquid.

 

Phil Brandon  4:04  

Well, you know, it’s just kind of one of those things that happened. Wasn’t like I grew up as a kid and my my dad was a moonshine er and his dad and you know, it was in the in, in the back of my mind to always want to do it. It was really I enjoyed drinking whiskey. I kind of got into the geek factor where I’d go on the internet at work. Of course I’m at work right but you know, our projects were slowing down because Verizon had acquired Alltel and there was less things to do during the day and but you’re there in your office doing things anyway and so I buy a bottle over the weekend from Scotland or you know, Kentucky or wherever and you know, a Monday after consuming it, you know not to access Over the weekend, but you know, responsibly, I would research the distillery. And I learned about the science of distilling and that sort of thing. And I’ve got a engineering background electrical engineer by degree and a master’s in business. And it was like, wow, this is, you know, pretty cool. You know, I like distilling This is neat. whiskies. Delicious. But then I learned that there are craft distilleries starting up throughout the country. Now, this was 2009. It wasn’t that popular back then. But there were some out on the West Coast and some on the East Coast. And I was like, wow, you know, that would be pretty cool. I knew about craft brewing. But making beer wasn’t really didn’t capture my imagination, but making whiskey. Now, that could be pretty cool. And so I took the skills that I had learned at all till about putting a package together of, you know, this is the statement of work, this is what it’s gonna cost. These are the things we have to buy to be able to do it. And, you know, scoping a project basis, basically, well, I decided to turn my own idea into a project. And I scoped it. And so I went to, you know, the manufacturers that make the stills and got prices and got, you know, ideas for who to call as a consultant. You know, in it, we use consultants all the time, right? We’re installing a software package and IBM is the consultant and you hire them or somebody else, that’s a licensed consultant, and bring them in. So I was using that same sort of technique to start a distillery and ended up hiring a guy that was a former master distiller for Maker’s Mark named Dave pickerel. He was kind of the Johnny Appleseed of craft distilling. At the time, he helped hundreds of distilleries start up. And he was my consultant, and I, you know, put together a package. Business Plan, you know, went around the banks. only need one. Yes. And that’s all I got, was one, yes. Got an SBA loan through the stimulus package during the Great Recession, and raised a little bit of money from friends and family rolled my Alltel 401k, put all my chips on the middle of the table and roll the dice. And so that was how I got started.

 

Nate Disarro  7:58  

I love that story. And it’s interesting, because you essentially took a blueprint that you knew worked in the Alltel world in the Verizon world, and how to get sort of a product to market, move it over to a brand new industry that you hadn’t been a part of it all and sort of just said, well, we’ll change this change this, but ultimately, the blueprint is kind of the same, right? And I work with a lot of clients all the time. You know, we do videos and create content for people all over the place. And we’ll work in one industry tomorrow and another industry the next day. And we’ll take what we saw here and bring that idea to a different industry. Right. Like, oh my gosh, we’ve never thought of that before. It’s like, Yeah, but I mean, we’re not genius. We’re just saying, right? Yeah. And nine times out of 10. It works across platforms, people just don’t think like that all the time. Right. Yeah, no. And I think, you know, when we talk to people that start businesses, and they’re kind of trying to figure things out, like, I mean, the blueprints, they’re just kind of have to shift a few pieces around. Right?

 

Phil Brandon  8:55  

Yeah, you know, and it was very similar type of, you know, figuring out what it would take to build something, you know, from a software perspective, or from a real hardware perspective stills and pumps and tanks, and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And then process was a big part of it, you know, we process spirits and distill them, and that’s, you know, a process of making something and prior to all tell for 14 years, I worked as a sales engineer, calling on manufacturing plants, selling industrial process controls. So I had a lot of familiarity with how industrial processes work. So, that background coupled with the skills that I developed at Alltel with putting together a package enabled me to start Rocktown you were

 

Nate Disarro  9:57  

primed and ready to go and you had developed a tasting palette. No one was good, good spirits, but

 

Phil Brandon  10:02  

I practice really hard.

 

Nate Disarro  10:06  

It’s one hobby turned profession that I think a lot of people practice that just don’t ever make it to the professional level,

 

Phil Brandon  10:12  

right?

 

Nate Disarro  10:13  

So as you develop the brand, how did the brand come about? How did you determine what types of spirits you wanted to make? Where do you start with all that versus where you’re at now,

 

Phil Brandon  10:23  

you start a distillery and you need to name it something. And a lot of distilleries in Scotland are named Glenn FIDIC. Glen live it, you know, and they’re named around where they are, like, the, the, you know, river or the island sky or what you know, the hill that they are from. So I wanted to try to figure out a name that I didn’t want to call it little rock distillery, I didn’t want to call it Arkansas distillery, but something that was, you know, paid, I guess, homage for lack of a better word to where we’re from. And rock town, you know, popped up on Wikipedia, as you know, a potential nickname for Little Rock. I’d never heard it called that before. And I was like, oh, that sounds cool. You know, it kind of has an older sound to it. And it? You know, you could people always ask, well, what’s rock down? I was like, we’re from Little Rock. And they’re like, oh, make sense. You know, it’s not completely obvious. But once you get the connection, it makes sense. So that was the brand, I was going to call it Rock town. And then, you know, what are we going to make first? Well, you know, I want to make whiskey or you know, bourbon. Bourbon has to be aged. And so then you need something to sell, though. While that’s aging. So what can you make the doesn’t require aging, and yeah, that’s vodka and gin. So those are our first three products that we started making, of course, we only started selling vodka and gin, you know, initially, but bourbon came later. So that was kind of the impetus. And we got started with that. And then it’s just listening to the market. Around 2011, the moonshiners show on Discovery Channel got to be a big thing. And I was like, Well, I guess I need to make a moonshine. And I came out with, you know, regular corn whiskey and then the apple pie. And apple pie was super popular. And the moonshiners show, gave it credence and you know, it was off to the races with that. And now we probably have literally, I don’t know 50 different products, from flavored vodkas to the Coors, to gins to different styles and types of whiskey from Bourbon to write a single malt. I like to experiment I like to try things like to make different things, but also listen to what the market wants, but it’s also what do I like and what do I think I could do? Well, and yeah, so that’s how that came about.

 

Nate Disarro  13:20  

So as a well versed consumer, not necessarily a well versed, practitioner and how this stuff kind of comes about. So when you think about developing a new product, what all goes into that piece of the process.

 

Phil Brandon  13:37  

Sometimes it’s you know, what is readily available. So when I started making bourbon for, you know, the first bourbon ever made in the state of Arkansas, well, what are the typical ingredients and bourbon it’s has to be at least 51% corn, and then there’s wheat or rye, typically as a middle grain between the corn and the malted barley. And rye wasn’t really farmed in Arkansas. So wheat was so I could get wheat so I decided to first bourbon would be a weeded bourbon. And I used Arkansas corn, Arkansas, soft red winter wheat and malted barley and made bourbon. And then beyond that, it’s like well, what else can we do and I finally got a farmer in Arkansas to grow rice. So then we made our rye whiskey. And then I started experimenting with different mash bills for bourbon, where I take the weed out and put something like chocolate malt in the middle or golden promise malt from Scotland, or peated malt or unmalted barley. I’ve done one with rice now. So there’s, you know, lots of creative options to try different things. used to see, and you don’t always know, on the whiskey side how it’s going to turn out because it has to be aged. So, you know, my initial attempt was to just change the same 9% of the mash bill that I used, we would 9% of other grains to see if would the grain really make that much difference in the flavor? And by gosh, it sure does even just 9%. So I learned a lot through that process. And our newest bourbon is is called La harp low, right. And it’s a bourbon that has a low amount of rye in the mash bill just 12%. Right. And, you know, just see how that would do since we’ve got right and available now. And so just things like that. What’s available? What, what is interesting, what can we do easily enough? And that’s kind of what I do.

 

Nate Disarro  16:05  

I love it. You brought up a couple of interesting things. First of all, you know, you started your business in what is now east village before East Village was cool.

 

Phil Brandon  16:13  

We were the first thing there. Yeah, I’d like to

 

Nate Disarro  16:17  

think you contributed to the culture of you know, hey, let’s actually do something over here right and generated something that people came to and then all of a sudden now it’s it’s becoming a thriving little spy. There’s loss for the brewery, of course, and right, you know, you’ve got a coffee shop and a business in your old space and railyard barbecue joint next door, right. But now you’re literally on Main Street in Little Rock, Arkansas. So obviously, regionally, you are homegrown. But you use ingredients that are also homegrown, right? Was that a decision from day one? Oh, yeah. Why? Why stay local?

 

Phil Brandon  16:58  

Well, it’s a thing and whiskey where that’s similar to wine. And it’s this idea that flavors generated from the place where you are. And its terroir, you know, it’s a French word, I probably butchered it just then. But why would I buy corn from Indiana, you know, through a major manufacturer that would bag it and send it to me when I could, you know, find a local farmer, find a grain elevator, get it, you know, prepared and clean for me and I could use Arkansas corn to make a true Arkansas bourbon. It just made sense from a whiskey and, you know, wine world kind of thinking so, and then, you know, I source all my boxes locally, and, you know, use local suppliers as much as I possibly can, because those relationships are just so important. And be able to drive over there, you know, see the guy that you’re buying from out at dinner, you know, all those kinds of things where you develop those relationships with local suppliers, you know, is is invaluable. So, yeah, it’s always been really important to me to source locally.

 

Nate Disarro  18:22  

So been at this a while now, for like 12 years, probably have learned a few things along the way. What what keeps it fun, what keeps you going and motivated to kind of wake up every day and try something new come out with a new product?

 

Phil Brandon  18:38  

I don’t know. You know, I just love it. We’ve come out with probably two new products this year. And two last year, we started doing a lot of the Cougars. And you know, that’s been exciting. It’s exciting to you know, I’ve got some tremendously great people working with me. And you know, to work with them every day is exciting. I’ve got great distributors and relationships there that are fun to work with. And then you know, there I said it again, you know, traveled to Chicago to whiskey fast to you know, pour our whiskies for people from all over the country to travel to Maryland to work with those people and or travel to Seattle, get to, you know, go to Chicago for a conference or New Orleans for a conference. So it’s really just, it’s dynamic, it’s fun, it’s interesting. I you know, the any given day for me could be anything from there’s a problem with a boiler or the air compressor, so Oh, you know, with my electrical engineering background, I can troubleshoot the electronics to getting in Adobe Illustrator and modifying a logo or a poster to get a t shirt made for a bar to, you know, working on pricing schemes and market tactics for a distributor in a new state, to negotiating pricing for bottles and things from suppliers and working on supply chain management, to you know, repairing the dishwasher or we had a plug behind the one of the bar wells start smoking on Last Saturday, so I spent most of Saturday repairing a plug for the dishwasher. So it there’s so many different things I was up on the roof two days ago, looking at gas pipe sizing to see if we could get a new boiler and whether we had enough gas to supply that. There’s, it’s never the same thing every day, and it’s exciting and different. And you know, and and it’s a great responsibility. I have 25 employees now where you know, I have to come in and do payroll, I have to come in and make sure that the you know, bank statements balance and all that stuff, too. So it’s fun because there’s there’s a lot to do and and a lot of different things to do. So I’m not doing the same thing every day. Well, you

 

Nate Disarro  21:47  

check pretty much all the boxes of a stereotypical entrepreneur, doing all those things, including the brand itself, right? Didn’t you kind of develop the look and feel of the brand and early on you were doing your own photos and everything? Yeah,

 

Phil Brandon  22:01  

I was doing my own photos. No, you know, luckily, as time has progressed, I’ve got a person that takes a lot of photos and does social media for us. And she’s been doing a great job for the last four years or so. And, and I do have an artist that works with me on labels, but you know, I get into Illustrator and tweak them before I submit them, you know, for approval at the federal government and all those kinds of things. So I still keep my hands in those things. But you know, luckily, I’m able to, to let some experts help me now where Yeah, I mean, the first, you know, website I developed by myself, you know, in WordPress to, you know, today, we’ve got some developers that helped me, you know, so it’s nice to make progress, but not have to do everything yourself, but at least I have enough knowledge to be able to speak with him about it, you know,

 

Nate Disarro  23:10  

yeah. You mentioned earlier, you just developed a line of law course, right? You know, every time I turn around, go to the grocery store, there’s or the liquor store, there’s some new type of canned seltzer or like cooler flavored drinks, you know, the industry is getting more and more creative and releasing more and more products. It seems like so What trends are you seeing and how are you trying to kind of keep up and keep things going? So that, you know, people continue to see the brand and get curious about it.

 

Phil Brandon  23:41  

All right. Well, you know, there I go, you know, again,

 

Nate Disarro  23:47  

I tried to do a little ticker.

 

Phil Brandon  23:50  

It’s a drinking game every time Phil says, you know, you have to take a shot or have any Rocktown.

 

Nate Disarro  23:59  

Listen, you could sell a lot of product that way.

 

Phil Brandon  24:02  

Well, you know, the one thing I’ve decided I was going to avoid up to now is been the seltzer craze. I looked at it really hard a couple of years ago, and it was obvious this was going to be a big part of the market. And everybody else saw the same thing. And if you ask any liquor store owner or any distributor today, they probably get pitched 50 New seltzers any given week, you know seriously there are so many new ones out there. And it was a whole new thing. I don’t carbonate anything. So I would have to get a co2 tank that was enormous. Learn about carbonation and how to prepare those and how to buy a canning line and the whole thing and it was just gonna be enormous. So I just decided I just wasn’t going to do seltzers while it seemed like there was an opportunity and everybody in their brother have gotten into it and and there’s going to be some shakeout, obviously but while that was going on, I had a local restaurant group, yellow rocket concepts come to me and say, hey, you know, we use a lot of triple sec and our margaritas. And could you make a triple set because cuz we’re not real happy with the service that we’re getting. And they’re having a hard time getting it because of the pandemic and blah, blah, blah. And we really need a good triple sec, because we believe it’s really important in a good Margarita to have a great triple set. So I was like, Well, I don’t know, let me try you know, so I went back, I’ve got a room in the back that’s kind of my lab. It’s not really a lab but it’s just a room. It’s more

 

Nate Disarro  26:05  

fun to call it all right, it’s the laboy

 

Phil Brandon  26:07  

Tori and I went to work with different oranges in different you know, ingredients to come up with a triple sack and I finally landed on one and I thought it was pretty similar to what they were doing but a little bit better, a little bit less sugar. But uh, you know, delicious triple sack, I thought and they agreed. And now we have the triple sec in all their restaurants, which is awesome. But it also showed me that there was an opportunity in the market between the really high end quatro gram on yeas and they’re really low end to Cuypers and other triple sects that are out there for a handcrafted triple sec to be kind of in the middle there price wise and but you know, super high quality and so I decided to also do a ginger liqueur and then an elderflower liqueur. And then we just came out with our creme de cacao. And I’ve got a couple of more on the drawing board and so it’s just kind of like seeing where the opportunity is and you know there’s a little gap in the market there that I think we’re filling really nicely and they’re just playing delicious. So you know for the elderflower we went and harvested Arkansas elderflowers, we use a vacuum distillation technique to extract the flavor of the elderflower. So you know, we’re doing some pretty cool stuff beyond just, you know, buying some flavors and pouring them into a tank, you know,

 

Nate Disarro  28:00  

which essentially is the the definition of a craft distillery, right? I mean, you kind of get to have Yeah, your right lab and you go in and kind of play with things and you’re not just following a recipe day in and day out. You’re constantly figuring out what does the market need? What are the customers need? What is you know, what’s going to make a better product than what exists? Right?

 

Phil Brandon  28:20  

Yeah, absolutely.

 

Nate Disarro  28:22  

I love that. Well, for anybody that’s unaware of who yellow rocket is probably your favorite restaurant is on the list of restaurants they own heights taco Tamale and local lime specifically, right? Known for their margaritas, absolutely phenomenal margaritas. So go, go hit him up, get a margarita and, and then go by your local liquor store and grab a bottle Rocktown and make your own. So shifting gears a little bit, talking about sort of the business as a whole, you know, we’re storytellers at heart. That’s what my company does. And that’s what I’m passionate about. And to me, business is about how good is your story? That’s what people are buying, you know, you got to have a good product that’s a given. Yeah, but ultimately, they’re, they’re choosing your product over something else because of the story behind it. And maybe that story is it’s a maid with better ingredients that’s going to make my tastebuds feel better. But to you what, what part does storytelling play in your business? And how do you use that to kind of move your business forward?

 

Phil Brandon  29:28  

Wow, okay, that’s a tough one. You know, marketing is storytelling and having a great story and we tell the story at every tour that we give about how I was in corporate America got laid off, said screw corporate America, I’m gonna do my own thing and I wanted to start a distillery and you know, wanted it to be in my hometown and be all about Arkansas. And so that’s kind of our initial story, our origin story. And that’s kind of the story that we tell. Once you kind of get out of Arkansas, you kind of just tell the story about handcrafted dedication to quality, that our passion is our spirit. That’s our slogan. And tell the story about how we’ve been able to continue to grow and continue to win major international awards for our products that are handcrafted right here. And, you know, Little Rock, Arkansas. So

 

Nate Disarro  30:38  

I love it. And it’s a story that, you know, I got drawn to and connected to 10 years ago, and the story hasn’t changed. But the brand certainly has developed because of the story. I’m graphing in

 

Phil Brandon  30:48  

that Yeah, absolutely.

 

Nate Disarro  30:50  

I love that. You know, there I go. Add another shot to the counter. When you look at, at the industry, we talked about this a little bit before we started the interview, it’s something people are drawn to visually, it’s very intriguing. You know, every bar you go to has some different display of the bottles, and a lot of them, backlight them so that the colors really stand out, you know, the bottles are beautiful, the color of the the spirits is really attractive to look at. But it’s an industry that a lot of people don’t know the guts of. So what’s something that you feel like is unique to this industry that a lot of people don’t know what’s kind of one of those secrets of the industry that would surprise people?

 

Phil Brandon  31:37  

Well, I think people today are a lot more curious about where things are come from and how they’re made than they’ve ever been before. And we’re really big about telling you know, how we make everything, and telling the story of the products from the corn that we buy from Arkansas farmers. And that sort of thing. I don’t know that people really realize about spirits, how incredibly regulated, it really is. I mean, Bourbon is arguably the most regulated consumer product on the planet. And then we’ve got the federal government, you know, watching everything we do, every label we put on a bottle is submitted to the federal government, every formula for anything we make goes to the federal government, we send five reports a month, to the federal government for what we do. The fill tolerance on each bottle is within a tolerance that’s given to us by the federal government, the amount of alcohol or the proof is regulated. And we have highly sensitive, very expensive instruments to measure that so that we are within that tolerance. We pay federal excise tax on every drop that leaves the building. All those things that people, you know, really don’t realize it’s not making widgets and trying to get them in Walmart. Every state has different permits. So for me to sell in the other states that I sell in, I have to be permitted in that state. Some of the states require us to pay excise taxes directly to that state, if the product leaves Arkansas and goes to that state. It’s just a quagmire spiderweb, whatever you want to look at regulations throughout the state. Throughout the United States, it’s actually easier for me to sell my product in the United Kingdom than it is to sell it in Georgia. It’s it’s crazy and became very evident during the pandemic, when people were ordering online for things to come to their house and realized I can’t order a bottle of vodka to come to my house. Why not? And there’s a lot of regulations, why not? And more and more of that starting to open up in some states, but it’s, you know, regulations that were written in 1932 at the end of prohibition that are still being used today. And there’s some modernization that needs to happen, but I don’t think people really realize that so.

 

Nate Disarro  34:39  

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you still hear in Arkansas about counties that just became white counties and

 

Phil Brandon  34:45  

right, we’ve got, you know, almost 50% of our counties are still dry.

 

Nate Disarro  34:51  

It’s crazy. Yeah. Well, here we are. Speaking of, you know, nobody grows a business without running into challenges and and having to overcome failures. And what’s something that stands out to you going from day one when you had a bottle Jana bottle of vodka and aging barrel of bourbon that you couldn’t sell yet? To where you’re at today? What’s what’s one of the biggest challenges you’ve overcome?

 

Phil Brandon  35:17  

So many, so many challenges. Pick a good one, right? Um, you know, initially, our products when they came out weren’t any good. And that was a huge challenge that I had to overcome and took took several years. And there’s still people today that judges by the first batch we ever made. But we’ve won over more than we’ve not. And, you know, I’m very happy to say that today we make some of the best stuff there is. One of the challenges midway through was, we were in that building over on East Sixth Street. And we had outgrown it. And we needed to move, or we needed to stay and remodel that building. And it was a big decision point. Do we stay or do we find somewhere else? And initially, we were gonna stay and then this building ran now. I had a real estate friend, and he happened to send it to me, just he didn’t know I was in this decision point or anything, just an email, Hey, this is a building that’s come available, thought it might be good for something like what you do. Now initially, I said no thanks. You know, we’re gonna stay where we are. And then a week later, I was like, Well, wait a minute, let me let me go take a look at it. And yeah, four years ago, June, we’ve been in here for years. Now we move to Main Street here. And this building’s 26,000 square feet versus 15,000 square feet. So we had a lot more space, I had gotten the law passed, to allow us to sell drinks. So buy the drink, and have a bar. And so I created the bar and open the bar. And that’s been a big, you know, success for us. So that was a real kind of inflection point decision point. That we were very lucky to find this building and lucky enough to then buy the building and not rent. So yeah, those were two really important challenges that we’ve faced and overcome.

 

Nate Disarro  37:42  

Yeah, what always pays to have good friends that, that you never know, when something’s gonna pop up. And more people, you know, the more relationships you have, right, the more luck comes your way?

 

Phil Brandon  37:54  

Absolutely.

 

Nate Disarro  37:55  

I love that. I like to talk a lot, you know, podcasts, obviously called titans of industry, who are the titans in your life, who the people in your life that you kind of look up to or respect as leaders or industry innovators that you’re kind of constantly paying attention to?

 

Phil Brandon  38:12  

I look up to all the other fellow craft distillers other distilleries that are out there, I follow the industry very closely. One of the my mentors is a guy named Nick Pierce, who invested in the distillery and you know, kind of helped me shape shepherd the distillery from where we were, I guess, it’s been a year ago, maybe two years now. I bought all the investors out. So now we’re 100% family owned by the brand and family, which is basically me and my wife. So, but we still talk, Nick and I do on the phone quite a bit. And he owns a large liquor store. And so he’s able to, you know, have some visibility into what’s going on in the market. And so it’s, it’s been great to have him as a as a mentor.

 

Nate Disarro  39:23  

I love it. I like this question next, because every business has its own unique answers to this question. But in my mind, every business has to have ideas, culture, and execution to stay afloat. So how would you rank those in order of importance, ideas, culture execution, and everybody’s answers a little different? So there’s no right answer here. I’m just curious.

 

Phil Brandon  39:52  

Wow, yeah. Culture, I think is one of the most important and having a great culture. We’re People can work with you. And Excel. And I worked really hard to try to be a leader that people can follow and have a great culture. I mean, you can’t have execution without an idea to execute. But I think I execute really well. Our just in time manufacturing system that we work through supply chain management, all that execution stuff. But if we didn’t have an idea for a product that was selling, and we didn’t brand it, well, it wouldn’t sell. So those are, you know, tied for second and third, I think together. So that’d be how I would rank it. Yeah.

 

Nate Disarro  40:56  

Yeah, that’s, like I said, there’s no right answer.

 

Phil Brandon  41:00  

No, come on, what’s the right answer?

 

Nate Disarro  41:02  

But well, you know, I could give you my version, but nobody cares about that. I don’t know, from a personal level outside of business, even though as an entrepreneur, there really is no outside of business hours. But what do you do to keep yourself sane and kind of, you know, is there anything you do on the on the outside world that influences how you are as a business owner.

 

Phil Brandon  41:25  

So I’ve got some fairly unusual hobbies. Since I was in the sixth grade, I’ve been a flutist. And two and a half years ago, wasn’t a pandemic decision, I’d already decided it pre pandemic. But I decided my wife’s a church organist, and music director. And once a year, I would play the flute in church. And that Christmas of 2019, I played the flute in church and I decided I wanted to try to get good at the flute again, and I started taking online flute lessons. And then I went to a flute store in New York City, and bought a, a professional quality flute, which I had always wanted. And since then, I’ve been working very hard at classical flute. And I play every day and take a lesson every other week. And really enjoying that I used to be a really big tennis player and got really good at not really, I got pretty good at tennis. And there’s so many parallels between being a musician and being being a athlete, you get the same sort of, if you practice, you get better, you get the same sort of understanding of the levels of skill. As soon as you think, well, if I just get to be this good, and then you get to be that good. And you go, Wait a minute, there’s so much more to learn. And you get that good new like way oh, you know, so and that, you know, levels of ability between somebody that’s at the peak of the game like a Roger Federer versus somebody in Little Rock, Arkansas, playing four or five, tennis, you realize that gap between somebody that’s playing in the Berlin Philharmonic and, and you know, somebody that’s, like me, so it’s, it’s intriguing and interesting. And you’re always able to learn something different. You’re always improving. And so that’s exciting to me. So I, I play the flute.

 

Nate Disarro  43:50  

Well, unique hobbies but but very interesting. A million years ago, I worked in the snow sports industry in Colorado, and got to work with a lot of professional skiers and people in that realm. And totally understand what you’re saying about you know, when you, when you get good at something, and you think you’re good, and then you see somebody at that expert level, you realize, like, I mean, I may be able to ski fast downhill on a straight slope. But when I see a professional skier come in, and ski twice as fast and cut twice as hard and do it with a margin of error. Very small, right? It’s a whole different world, you know, and I think that about a lot of the Olympic sports because they’re not the quote unquote, normal big sports, you know, you see these guys go out and compete at Olympic level, and you’re just like, oh, my gosh, there’s

 

Phil Brandon  44:36  

a level of skill. And the dedication that it takes to get to that level of skill is just phenomenal. People don’t really realize it unless you’re in that specific skill to understand that somebody that’s at the elite level is elite, because they can do things that most of us can. Yeah, no.

 

Nate Disarro  44:58  

Well, you mentioned a minute ago out this whole thing that hopefully we’re pretty much through now the pandemic, you started your business in the great recession. And then we’re on the backside here of this global two year pandemic. What did that do for your business? Some people, it hurt incredibly, some people, it actually did really good thing. So obviously, I spent plenty of time at the liquor store. But I can only imagine what it did for your business.

 

Phil Brandon  45:27  

Well, it was incredible. I mean, we were well positioned in a lot of liquor stores, and we’re able to continue to sell through liquor stores. So our I didn’t take a day off from March 2020. Till, you know, December, we were working nonstop. Not only were we making our normal products and shipping those out the back door to our you know, distributors and stores and that sort of thing. But we also shifted the retail part of the business to hand sanitizer, and we sold hand sanitizer to the public, but we also donated a ton of it to hospitals and schools and homeless shelters and that sort of thing. So we were extremely busy and very fortunate that it was really a very busy time for us and all our all my employees were able to stay on and are still here today. And we were able to be stewards to the community as well as our customers. So it was for us. I won’t lie, it was a good thing.

 

Nate Disarro  46:55  

Well, I’d love to run into a few quick hit questions. This has been a really fun conversation. I could probably go all day but for the sake of everybody, we’ll start to wrap things up. You mentioned a lot of audio books. Do you have a best favorite book or what’s the latest book you’ve listened to?

 

Phil Brandon  47:13  

I’m listening to pappy land right now, which is about pappy Van Winkle and all of that. You know, Mark? benioff’s, Trailblazer, radical candor. You know, Jeff Bezos is biography. And this one was pretty cool. Every boy every good boy does fine. Which is a an acronym btw. Yeah. Yeah. For for the for the musicals. Yeah. And it’s a it’s a classical pianist talking about his development from a child to be in a classical pianist. And so it was interesting to listen to him tell his own story. He narrates the book about going to the conservatory for for music school and that sort of thing. So it’s pretty interesting.

 

Nate Disarro  48:13  

Very cool. Radical candor is great as well that yeah, that whole concept I think everybody should

 

Phil Brandon  48:19  

care personally, but challenged directly I use that a lot.

 

Nate Disarro  48:23  

Yeah, absolutely. What’s a part of your daily routine that you cannot skip?

 

Phil Brandon  48:31  

I don’t skip breakfast. I I grew up on cereal. So I eat cereal every morning.

 

Nate Disarro  48:40  

Are you more of a Netflix or news guy?

 

Phil Brandon  48:43  

today? I don’t watch as much news. Just because it’s all so bad. But yeah, I do watch a ton of Netflix and the other streaming services for sure. Love it.

 

Nate Disarro  48:57  

What about favorite podcasts? Is there one that your is your go to you don’t miss an episode.

 

Phil Brandon  49:03  

You know that? There’s whiskey cast, which is one about whiskey which was is the OG for for whiskey podcasts the the new one on the block, which isn’t so new anymore. Now it’s called bourbon pursuit. And then there’s a few marketing ones. Jay bears. There’s a couple of fully ones I listened to. But yeah, yeah, no, I always. I used to always listen to rock and roll in the car and more and more. It’s podcasts.

 

Nate Disarro  49:39  

Love it. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever given or received?

 

Phil Brandon  49:47  

I mean, when I was starting a company I got told by several people don’t do it. And that ignored it went ahead anyway. It was more like motivation. So it kind of was a reverse Staying. So that would probably be right.

 

Nate Disarro  50:05  

Do you have any newly formed habits a lot of people got into new habits, whether good or bad through the pandemic or you know, just shifting of, of culture, you know?

 

Phil Brandon  50:17  

Yeah, I guess I did get a peloton, and and do ride that several times a week. I like to rode bike on a real bike and but I don’t get to do it as much as I’d like to wear the peloton, I can, you know, this morning at 610. I got up and did 30 minutes. And you know, I feel a lot better during the day because I do that. So been working really hard on that.

 

Nate Disarro  50:51  

You ever kind of tag team that and the flute practice at the same time? No, absolutely not. No way. All right. So if you could write a book, what would the title be?

 

Phil Brandon  51:04  

Don’t do it.

 

Nate Disarro  51:07  

Hey, I mean, listen, I think so many businesses start the same way. You got this idea. You feel confident in it. And everybody out there says no. Right. And I think there was

 

Phil Brandon  51:17  

one person that said yes, and it was my wife. And and, you know, God bless her. She has stood by me all the way through, but she believed I could do it. When you know, people in the industry that not in distilling, but in Little Rock that were very successful that I talked to about it, were like, Man, I wouldn’t do it. And I want to have so there you go.

 

Nate Disarro  51:44  

Oh, I bet they’re drinking your your whiskey right now. So the peloton, obviously a great great purchase, but fairly pricey for all standards. What’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for under $100?

 

Phil Brandon  52:01  

I’d say it was a bottle of compost box spice tree. I like it. It’s a blended whiskey from Scotland from a craft blender. And it is delicious. So

 

Nate Disarro  52:21  

very cool. All right, as a musician, yourself, who’s your favorite artist or musician?

 

Phil Brandon  52:28  

Oh, that’s tough. That is very tough. He goes through so many different, you know, time periods in your life, who you like, you know, I, I’ve always kind of been. Like, if I’m learning a piece, I’m listening to that piece and listening to somebody play that. So I’m not always listening to the same thing over you know, same person. Sure. There’s great flute players, you know, that I admire. I’ve always, you know, I was a YouTube guy. I know, that’s kind of, you know, generic, in a sense, but I’ve been to more YouTube concerts than any other concert probably. I really liked the police in staying as a kid. So you know, I really, like, you know, that type of music, so. Oh,

 

Nate Disarro  53:30  

all right. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask, What’s your favorite cocktail?

 

Phil Brandon  53:35  

Favorite cocktail is a sazzle rack. So we make of a off menu version of it here called the Phils rack. And it’s it’s my little, my little riff on it. So that would be what I would order

 

Nate Disarro  53:52  

to we’re gonna get to know the secret.

 

Phil Brandon  53:55  

Well, the secret is, you know, for a SAS Iraqi would wash the glass with the herb St. So that means you pour it in, and then you pour it out and the residue in the glass provide some flavor and I leave the Arab saint in. So gives it a little bit more licorice flavor. And I really liked licorice. So that’s at Phil’s.

 

Nate Disarro  54:23  

I love it. I didn’t know that was your drink. And I was just in Kentucky with a client who ordered a Sazerac and told the bartender to leave it. Really? I think you’ll know who it is. I’ll tell you in a minute. But yeah, it was funny. So that’s, that’s funny. That’s good to know. Yeah. Well, Phil, thanks so much. This has been amazing. Love hearing your story and seeing the brand doing so well. If people want to check you out, where can they find the product? Where can they find you online?

 

Phil Brandon  54:56  

Just go to Rocktown distillery.com and Go to the word of bisection. And you can click on your state and or your zip code and figure out where to get it. So thank you very much, Nate. I was been great visiting with you. And thank you so much for having me.

 

Nate Disarro  55:12  

Phil Brandon 0:00
flavors generated from the place where you are. It’s what’s available. What what is interesting. I like to experiment. I like to try things like to make different things, but also listen to what the market wants, but it’s also what do I like and what do I think I could do well, so you know, we’re doing some pretty cool stuff beyond just buying some flavors and pouring them into it.

Nate Disarro 0:24
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I speak with Phil Brandon, the founder, CEO and head distiller of rock town distillery. When faced with a layoff during his corporate IT career, Phil took his passion for whiskey and transformed it into an iconic Arkansas operation, and is the first to ever distill bourbon in Arkansas. Using his background in engineering along with his MBA, Phyllis put his entrepreneurial talents to the test by creating the Rocktown brand, distribution process, manufacturing standards and a whole lot more. He has been creating handcrafted award winning spirits that you can find in restaurants, liquor stores, and he’s winning contests all around the world.

Now, let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and Video for marketing your business. Our team at content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in. It’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience. And video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit content titan.co to learn more.

Now, here’s the episode with Phil Brandon.

Phil Brandon, thanks so much for hopping on the podcast with us. I met you I think about a decade ago, and your company was only a couple of years old, I think at the time. And here we are in this beautiful tasting room. Give me the the short story. How did how did we get here? Oh, gosh, yeah, it’s it’s kind of crazy. But yeah, thanks for having me on your podcast. This is really cool. It’s great to see you again after all the years and you know,

Phil Brandon 2:33
we were over in on East Sixth Street and a warehouse that we had turned into a distillery. But prior to that, you know 2009 I basically incorporated the company we got started in 2010. I had been laid off from my job at Verizon Wireless after they acquired Alltel and was

challenged was trying to figure out what to do with my life and decided that in order for me to stay in Arkansas, which was my home state and

my wife’s home state and our family was here to start my own thing and I wanted to be creative and do something that I thought was exciting and turned out it was starting a distillery

Nate Disarro 3:25
so I know you were in it, is that right? Yeah, it roll. I had a risin

Phil Brandon 3:31
Yeah, no, it wasn’t like I was plugging in computers or working on servers. But it was the interface between business and I T helping the to talk to each other. Alltel developed a whole lot of custom software. And so I got to help with some pretty cool projects there.

Nate Disarro 3:51
So why a distillery? I mean, you know, when that time period in your life came well, I was it. Let’s let’s forget the technology. I mean, there’s a lot of technology here but yeah, let’s move into spilled liquid.

Phil Brandon 4:04
Well, you know, it’s just kind of one of those things that happened. Wasn’t like I grew up as a kid and my my dad was a moonshine er and his dad and you know, it was in the in, in the back of my mind to always want to do it. It was really I enjoyed drinking whiskey. I kind of got into the geek factor where I’d go on the internet at work. Of course I’m at work right but you know, our projects were slowing down because Verizon had acquired Alltel and there was less things to do during the day and but you’re there in your office doing things anyway and so I buy a bottle over the weekend from Scotland or you know, Kentucky or wherever and you know, a Monday after consuming it, you know not to access Over the weekend, but you know, responsibly, I would research the distillery. And I learned about the science of distilling and that sort of thing. And I’ve got a engineering background electrical engineer by degree and a master’s in business. And it was like, wow, this is, you know, pretty cool. You know, I like distilling This is neat. whiskies. Delicious. But then I learned that there are craft distilleries starting up throughout the country. Now, this was 2009. It wasn’t that popular back then. But there were some out on the West Coast and some on the East Coast. And I was like, wow, you know, that would be pretty cool. I knew about craft brewing. But making beer wasn’t really didn’t capture my imagination, but making whiskey. Now, that could be pretty cool. And so I took the skills that I had learned at all till about putting a package together of, you know, this is the statement of work, this is what it’s gonna cost. These are the things we have to buy to be able to do it. And, you know, scoping a project basis, basically, well, I decided to turn my own idea into a project. And I scoped it. And so I went to, you know, the manufacturers that make the stills and got prices and got, you know, ideas for who to call as a consultant. You know, in it, we use consultants all the time, right? We’re installing a software package and IBM is the consultant and you hire them or somebody else, that’s a licensed consultant, and bring them in. So I was using that same sort of technique to start a distillery and ended up hiring a guy that was a former master distiller for Maker’s Mark named Dave pickerel. He was kind of the Johnny Appleseed of craft distilling. At the time, he helped hundreds of distilleries start up. And he was my consultant, and I, you know, put together a package. Business Plan, you know, went around the banks. only need one. Yes. And that’s all I got, was one, yes. Got an SBA loan through the stimulus package during the Great Recession, and raised a little bit of money from friends and family rolled my Alltel 401k, put all my chips on the middle of the table and roll the dice. And so that was how I got started.

Nate Disarro 7:58
I love that story. And it’s interesting, because you essentially took a blueprint that you knew worked in the Alltel world in the Verizon world, and how to get sort of a product to market, move it over to a brand new industry that you hadn’t been a part of it all and sort of just said, well, we’ll change this change this, but ultimately, the blueprint is kind of the same, right? And I work with a lot of clients all the time. You know, we do videos and create content for people all over the place. And we’ll work in one industry tomorrow and another industry the next day. And we’ll take what we saw here and bring that idea to a different industry. Right. Like, oh my gosh, we’ve never thought of that before. It’s like, Yeah, but I mean, we’re not genius. We’re just saying, right? Yeah. And nine times out of 10. It works across platforms, people just don’t think like that all the time. Right. Yeah, no. And I think, you know, when we talk to people that start businesses, and they’re kind of trying to figure things out, like, I mean, the blueprints, they’re just kind of have to shift a few pieces around. Right?

Phil Brandon 8:55
Yeah, you know, and it was very similar type of, you know, figuring out what it would take to build something, you know, from a software perspective, or from a real hardware perspective stills and pumps and tanks, and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And then process was a big part of it, you know, we process spirits and distill them, and that’s, you know, a process of making something and prior to all tell for 14 years, I worked as a sales engineer, calling on manufacturing plants, selling industrial process controls. So I had a lot of familiarity with how industrial processes work. So, that background coupled with the skills that I developed at Alltel with putting together a package enabled me to start Rocktown you were

Nate Disarro 9:57
primed and ready to go and you had developed a tasting palette. No one was good, good spirits, but

Phil Brandon 10:02
I practice really hard.

Nate Disarro 10:06
It’s one hobby turned profession that I think a lot of people practice that just don’t ever make it to the professional level,

Phil Brandon 10:12
right?

Nate Disarro 10:13
So as you develop the brand, how did the brand come about? How did you determine what types of spirits you wanted to make? Where do you start with all that versus where you’re at now,

Phil Brandon 10:23
you start a distillery and you need to name it something. And a lot of distilleries in Scotland are named Glenn FIDIC. Glen live it, you know, and they’re named around where they are, like, the, the, you know, river or the island sky or what you know, the hill that they are from. So I wanted to try to figure out a name that I didn’t want to call it little rock distillery, I didn’t want to call it Arkansas distillery, but something that was, you know, paid, I guess, homage for lack of a better word to where we’re from. And rock town, you know, popped up on Wikipedia, as you know, a potential nickname for Little Rock. I’d never heard it called that before. And I was like, oh, that sounds cool. You know, it kind of has an older sound to it. And it? You know, you could people always ask, well, what’s rock down? I was like, we’re from Little Rock. And they’re like, oh, make sense. You know, it’s not completely obvious. But once you get the connection, it makes sense. So that was the brand, I was going to call it Rock town. And then, you know, what are we going to make first? Well, you know, I want to make whiskey or you know, bourbon. Bourbon has to be aged. And so then you need something to sell, though. While that’s aging. So what can you make the doesn’t require aging, and yeah, that’s vodka and gin. So those are our first three products that we started making, of course, we only started selling vodka and gin, you know, initially, but bourbon came later. So that was kind of the impetus. And we got started with that. And then it’s just listening to the market. Around 2011, the moonshiners show on Discovery Channel got to be a big thing. And I was like, Well, I guess I need to make a moonshine. And I came out with, you know, regular corn whiskey and then the apple pie. And apple pie was super popular. And the moonshiners show, gave it credence and you know, it was off to the races with that. And now we probably have literally, I don’t know 50 different products, from flavored vodkas to the Coors, to gins to different styles and types of whiskey from Bourbon to write a single malt. I like to experiment I like to try things like to make different things, but also listen to what the market wants, but it’s also what do I like and what do I think I could do? Well, and yeah, so that’s how that came about.

Nate Disarro 13:20
So as a well versed consumer, not necessarily a well versed, practitioner and how this stuff kind of comes about. So when you think about developing a new product, what all goes into that piece of the process.

Phil Brandon 13:37
Sometimes it’s you know, what is readily available. So when I started making bourbon for, you know, the first bourbon ever made in the state of Arkansas, well, what are the typical ingredients and bourbon it’s has to be at least 51% corn, and then there’s wheat or rye, typically as a middle grain between the corn and the malted barley. And rye wasn’t really farmed in Arkansas. So wheat was so I could get wheat so I decided to first bourbon would be a weeded bourbon. And I used Arkansas corn, Arkansas, soft red winter wheat and malted barley and made bourbon. And then beyond that, it’s like well, what else can we do and I finally got a farmer in Arkansas to grow rice. So then we made our rye whiskey. And then I started experimenting with different mash bills for bourbon, where I take the weed out and put something like chocolate malt in the middle or golden promise malt from Scotland, or peated malt or unmalted barley. I’ve done one with rice now. So there’s, you know, lots of creative options to try different things. used to see, and you don’t always know, on the whiskey side how it’s going to turn out because it has to be aged. So, you know, my initial attempt was to just change the same 9% of the mash bill that I used, we would 9% of other grains to see if would the grain really make that much difference in the flavor? And by gosh, it sure does even just 9%. So I learned a lot through that process. And our newest bourbon is is called La harp low, right. And it’s a bourbon that has a low amount of rye in the mash bill just 12%. Right. And, you know, just see how that would do since we’ve got right and available now. And so just things like that. What’s available? What, what is interesting, what can we do easily enough? And that’s kind of what I do.

Nate Disarro 16:05
I love it. You brought up a couple of interesting things. First of all, you know, you started your business in what is now east village before East Village was cool.

Phil Brandon 16:13
We were the first thing there. Yeah, I’d like to

Nate Disarro 16:17
think you contributed to the culture of you know, hey, let’s actually do something over here right and generated something that people came to and then all of a sudden now it’s it’s becoming a thriving little spy. There’s loss for the brewery, of course, and right, you know, you’ve got a coffee shop and a business in your old space and railyard barbecue joint next door, right. But now you’re literally on Main Street in Little Rock, Arkansas. So obviously, regionally, you are homegrown. But you use ingredients that are also homegrown, right? Was that a decision from day one? Oh, yeah. Why? Why stay local?

Phil Brandon 16:58
Well, it’s a thing and whiskey where that’s similar to wine. And it’s this idea that flavors generated from the place where you are. And its terroir, you know, it’s a French word, I probably butchered it just then. But why would I buy corn from Indiana, you know, through a major manufacturer that would bag it and send it to me when I could, you know, find a local farmer, find a grain elevator, get it, you know, prepared and clean for me and I could use Arkansas corn to make a true Arkansas bourbon. It just made sense from a whiskey and, you know, wine world kind of thinking so, and then, you know, I source all my boxes locally, and, you know, use local suppliers as much as I possibly can, because those relationships are just so important. And be able to drive over there, you know, see the guy that you’re buying from out at dinner, you know, all those kinds of things where you develop those relationships with local suppliers, you know, is is invaluable. So, yeah, it’s always been really important to me to source locally.

Nate Disarro 18:22
So been at this a while now, for like 12 years, probably have learned a few things along the way. What what keeps it fun, what keeps you going and motivated to kind of wake up every day and try something new come out with a new product?

Phil Brandon 18:38
I don’t know. You know, I just love it. We’ve come out with probably two new products this year. And two last year, we started doing a lot of the Cougars. And you know, that’s been exciting. It’s exciting to you know, I’ve got some tremendously great people working with me. And you know, to work with them every day is exciting. I’ve got great distributors and relationships there that are fun to work with. And then you know, there I said it again, you know, traveled to Chicago to whiskey fast to you know, pour our whiskies for people from all over the country to travel to Maryland to work with those people and or travel to Seattle, get to, you know, go to Chicago for a conference or New Orleans for a conference. So it’s really just, it’s dynamic, it’s fun, it’s interesting. I you know, the any given day for me could be anything from there’s a problem with a boiler or the air compressor, so Oh, you know, with my electrical engineering background, I can troubleshoot the electronics to getting in Adobe Illustrator and modifying a logo or a poster to get a t shirt made for a bar to, you know, working on pricing schemes and market tactics for a distributor in a new state, to negotiating pricing for bottles and things from suppliers and working on supply chain management, to you know, repairing the dishwasher or we had a plug behind the one of the bar wells start smoking on Last Saturday, so I spent most of Saturday repairing a plug for the dishwasher. So it there’s so many different things I was up on the roof two days ago, looking at gas pipe sizing to see if we could get a new boiler and whether we had enough gas to supply that. There’s, it’s never the same thing every day, and it’s exciting and different. And you know, and and it’s a great responsibility. I have 25 employees now where you know, I have to come in and do payroll, I have to come in and make sure that the you know, bank statements balance and all that stuff, too. So it’s fun because there’s there’s a lot to do and and a lot of different things to do. So I’m not doing the same thing every day. Well, you

Nate Disarro 21:47
check pretty much all the boxes of a stereotypical entrepreneur, doing all those things, including the brand itself, right? Didn’t you kind of develop the look and feel of the brand and early on you were doing your own photos and everything? Yeah,

Phil Brandon 22:01
I was doing my own photos. No, you know, luckily, as time has progressed, I’ve got a person that takes a lot of photos and does social media for us. And she’s been doing a great job for the last four years or so. And, and I do have an artist that works with me on labels, but you know, I get into Illustrator and tweak them before I submit them, you know, for approval at the federal government and all those kinds of things. So I still keep my hands in those things. But you know, luckily, I’m able to, to let some experts help me now where Yeah, I mean, the first, you know, website I developed by myself, you know, in WordPress to, you know, today, we’ve got some developers that helped me, you know, so it’s nice to make progress, but not have to do everything yourself, but at least I have enough knowledge to be able to speak with him about it, you know,

Nate Disarro 23:10
yeah. You mentioned earlier, you just developed a line of law course, right? You know, every time I turn around, go to the grocery store, there’s or the liquor store, there’s some new type of canned seltzer or like cooler flavored drinks, you know, the industry is getting more and more creative and releasing more and more products. It seems like so What trends are you seeing and how are you trying to kind of keep up and keep things going? So that, you know, people continue to see the brand and get curious about it.

Phil Brandon 23:41
All right. Well, you know, there I go, you know, again,

Nate Disarro 23:47
I tried to do a little ticker.

Phil Brandon 23:50
It’s a drinking game every time Phil says, you know, you have to take a shot or have any Rocktown.

Nate Disarro 23:59
Listen, you could sell a lot of product that way.

Phil Brandon 24:02
Well, you know, the one thing I’ve decided I was going to avoid up to now is been the seltzer craze. I looked at it really hard a couple of years ago, and it was obvious this was going to be a big part of the market. And everybody else saw the same thing. And if you ask any liquor store owner or any distributor today, they probably get pitched 50 New seltzers any given week, you know seriously there are so many new ones out there. And it was a whole new thing. I don’t carbonate anything. So I would have to get a co2 tank that was enormous. Learn about carbonation and how to prepare those and how to buy a canning line and the whole thing and it was just gonna be enormous. So I just decided I just wasn’t going to do seltzers while it seemed like there was an opportunity and everybody in their brother have gotten into it and and there’s going to be some shakeout, obviously but while that was going on, I had a local restaurant group, yellow rocket concepts come to me and say, hey, you know, we use a lot of triple sec and our margaritas. And could you make a triple set because cuz we’re not real happy with the service that we’re getting. And they’re having a hard time getting it because of the pandemic and blah, blah, blah. And we really need a good triple sec, because we believe it’s really important in a good Margarita to have a great triple set. So I was like, Well, I don’t know, let me try you know, so I went back, I’ve got a room in the back that’s kind of my lab. It’s not really a lab but it’s just a room. It’s more

Nate Disarro 26:05
fun to call it all right, it’s the laboy

Phil Brandon 26:07
Tori and I went to work with different oranges in different you know, ingredients to come up with a triple sack and I finally landed on one and I thought it was pretty similar to what they were doing but a little bit better, a little bit less sugar. But uh, you know, delicious triple sack, I thought and they agreed. And now we have the triple sec in all their restaurants, which is awesome. But it also showed me that there was an opportunity in the market between the really high end quatro gram on yeas and they’re really low end to Cuypers and other triple sects that are out there for a handcrafted triple sec to be kind of in the middle there price wise and but you know, super high quality and so I decided to also do a ginger liqueur and then an elderflower liqueur. And then we just came out with our creme de cacao. And I’ve got a couple of more on the drawing board and so it’s just kind of like seeing where the opportunity is and you know there’s a little gap in the market there that I think we’re filling really nicely and they’re just playing delicious. So you know for the elderflower we went and harvested Arkansas elderflowers, we use a vacuum distillation technique to extract the flavor of the elderflower. So you know, we’re doing some pretty cool stuff beyond just, you know, buying some flavors and pouring them into a tank, you know,

Nate Disarro 28:00
which essentially is the the definition of a craft distillery, right? I mean, you kind of get to have Yeah, your right lab and you go in and kind of play with things and you’re not just following a recipe day in and day out. You’re constantly figuring out what does the market need? What are the customers need? What is you know, what’s going to make a better product than what exists? Right?

Phil Brandon 28:20
Yeah, absolutely.

Nate Disarro 28:22
I love that. Well, for anybody that’s unaware of who yellow rocket is probably your favorite restaurant is on the list of restaurants they own heights taco Tamale and local lime specifically, right? Known for their margaritas, absolutely phenomenal margaritas. So go, go hit him up, get a margarita and, and then go by your local liquor store and grab a bottle Rocktown and make your own. So shifting gears a little bit, talking about sort of the business as a whole, you know, we’re storytellers at heart. That’s what my company does. And that’s what I’m passionate about. And to me, business is about how good is your story? That’s what people are buying, you know, you got to have a good product that’s a given. Yeah, but ultimately, they’re, they’re choosing your product over something else because of the story behind it. And maybe that story is it’s a maid with better ingredients that’s going to make my tastebuds feel better. But to you what, what part does storytelling play in your business? And how do you use that to kind of move your business forward?

Phil Brandon 29:28
Wow, okay, that’s a tough one. You know, marketing is storytelling and having a great story and we tell the story at every tour that we give about how I was in corporate America got laid off, said screw corporate America, I’m gonna do my own thing and I wanted to start a distillery and you know, wanted it to be in my hometown and be all about Arkansas. And so that’s kind of our initial story, our origin story. And that’s kind of the story that we tell. Once you kind of get out of Arkansas, you kind of just tell the story about handcrafted dedication to quality, that our passion is our spirit. That’s our slogan. And tell the story about how we’ve been able to continue to grow and continue to win major international awards for our products that are handcrafted right here. And, you know, Little Rock, Arkansas. So

Nate Disarro 30:38
I love it. And it’s a story that, you know, I got drawn to and connected to 10 years ago, and the story hasn’t changed. But the brand certainly has developed because of the story. I’m graphing in

Phil Brandon 30:48
that Yeah, absolutely.

Nate Disarro 30:50
I love that. You know, there I go. Add another shot to the counter. When you look at, at the industry, we talked about this a little bit before we started the interview, it’s something people are drawn to visually, it’s very intriguing. You know, every bar you go to has some different display of the bottles, and a lot of them, backlight them so that the colors really stand out, you know, the bottles are beautiful, the color of the the spirits is really attractive to look at. But it’s an industry that a lot of people don’t know the guts of. So what’s something that you feel like is unique to this industry that a lot of people don’t know what’s kind of one of those secrets of the industry that would surprise people?

Phil Brandon 31:37
Well, I think people today are a lot more curious about where things are come from and how they’re made than they’ve ever been before. And we’re really big about telling you know, how we make everything, and telling the story of the products from the corn that we buy from Arkansas farmers. And that sort of thing. I don’t know that people really realize about spirits, how incredibly regulated, it really is. I mean, Bourbon is arguably the most regulated consumer product on the planet. And then we’ve got the federal government, you know, watching everything we do, every label we put on a bottle is submitted to the federal government, every formula for anything we make goes to the federal government, we send five reports a month, to the federal government for what we do. The fill tolerance on each bottle is within a tolerance that’s given to us by the federal government, the amount of alcohol or the proof is regulated. And we have highly sensitive, very expensive instruments to measure that so that we are within that tolerance. We pay federal excise tax on every drop that leaves the building. All those things that people, you know, really don’t realize it’s not making widgets and trying to get them in Walmart. Every state has different permits. So for me to sell in the other states that I sell in, I have to be permitted in that state. Some of the states require us to pay excise taxes directly to that state, if the product leaves Arkansas and goes to that state. It’s just a quagmire spiderweb, whatever you want to look at regulations throughout the state. Throughout the United States, it’s actually easier for me to sell my product in the United Kingdom than it is to sell it in Georgia. It’s it’s crazy and became very evident during the pandemic, when people were ordering online for things to come to their house and realized I can’t order a bottle of vodka to come to my house. Why not? And there’s a lot of regulations, why not? And more and more of that starting to open up in some states, but it’s, you know, regulations that were written in 1932 at the end of prohibition that are still being used today. And there’s some modernization that needs to happen, but I don’t think people really realize that so.

Nate Disarro 34:39
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, you still hear in Arkansas about counties that just became white counties and

Phil Brandon 34:45
right, we’ve got, you know, almost 50% of our counties are still dry.

Nate Disarro 34:51
It’s crazy. Yeah. Well, here we are. Speaking of, you know, nobody grows a business without running into challenges and and having to overcome failures. And what’s something that stands out to you going from day one when you had a bottle Jana bottle of vodka and aging barrel of bourbon that you couldn’t sell yet? To where you’re at today? What’s what’s one of the biggest challenges you’ve overcome?

Phil Brandon 35:17
So many, so many challenges. Pick a good one, right? Um, you know, initially, our products when they came out weren’t any good. And that was a huge challenge that I had to overcome and took took several years. And there’s still people today that judges by the first batch we ever made. But we’ve won over more than we’ve not. And, you know, I’m very happy to say that today we make some of the best stuff there is. One of the challenges midway through was, we were in that building over on East Sixth Street. And we had outgrown it. And we needed to move, or we needed to stay and remodel that building. And it was a big decision point. Do we stay or do we find somewhere else? And initially, we were gonna stay and then this building ran now. I had a real estate friend, and he happened to send it to me, just he didn’t know I was in this decision point or anything, just an email, Hey, this is a building that’s come available, thought it might be good for something like what you do. Now initially, I said no thanks. You know, we’re gonna stay where we are. And then a week later, I was like, Well, wait a minute, let me let me go take a look at it. And yeah, four years ago, June, we’ve been in here for years. Now we move to Main Street here. And this building’s 26,000 square feet versus 15,000 square feet. So we had a lot more space, I had gotten the law passed, to allow us to sell drinks. So buy the drink, and have a bar. And so I created the bar and open the bar. And that’s been a big, you know, success for us. So that was a real kind of inflection point decision point. That we were very lucky to find this building and lucky enough to then buy the building and not rent. So yeah, those were two really important challenges that we’ve faced and overcome.

Nate Disarro 37:42
Yeah, what always pays to have good friends that, that you never know, when something’s gonna pop up. And more people, you know, the more relationships you have, right, the more luck comes your way?

Phil Brandon 37:54
Absolutely.

Nate Disarro 37:55
I love that. I like to talk a lot, you know, podcasts, obviously called titans of industry, who are the titans in your life, who the people in your life that you kind of look up to or respect as leaders or industry innovators that you’re kind of constantly paying attention to?

Phil Brandon 38:12
I look up to all the other fellow craft distillers other distilleries that are out there, I follow the industry very closely. One of the my mentors is a guy named Nick Pierce, who invested in the distillery and you know, kind of helped me shape shepherd the distillery from where we were, I guess, it’s been a year ago, maybe two years now. I bought all the investors out. So now we’re 100% family owned by the brand and family, which is basically me and my wife. So, but we still talk, Nick and I do on the phone quite a bit. And he owns a large liquor store. And so he’s able to, you know, have some visibility into what’s going on in the market. And so it’s, it’s been great to have him as a as a mentor.

Nate Disarro 39:23
I love it. I like this question next, because every business has its own unique answers to this question. But in my mind, every business has to have ideas, culture, and execution to stay afloat. So how would you rank those in order of importance, ideas, culture execution, and everybody’s answers a little different? So there’s no right answer here. I’m just curious.

Phil Brandon 39:52
Wow, yeah. Culture, I think is one of the most important and having a great culture. We’re People can work with you. And Excel. And I worked really hard to try to be a leader that people can follow and have a great culture. I mean, you can’t have execution without an idea to execute. But I think I execute really well. Our just in time manufacturing system that we work through supply chain management, all that execution stuff. But if we didn’t have an idea for a product that was selling, and we didn’t brand it, well, it wouldn’t sell. So those are, you know, tied for second and third, I think together. So that’d be how I would rank it. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 40:56
Yeah, that’s, like I said, there’s no right answer.

Phil Brandon 41:00
No, come on, what’s the right answer?

Nate Disarro 41:02
But well, you know, I could give you my version, but nobody cares about that. I don’t know, from a personal level outside of business, even though as an entrepreneur, there really is no outside of business hours. But what do you do to keep yourself sane and kind of, you know, is there anything you do on the on the outside world that influences how you are as a business owner.

Phil Brandon 41:25
So I’ve got some fairly unusual hobbies. Since I was in the sixth grade, I’ve been a flutist. And two and a half years ago, wasn’t a pandemic decision, I’d already decided it pre pandemic. But I decided my wife’s a church organist, and music director. And once a year, I would play the flute in church. And that Christmas of 2019, I played the flute in church and I decided I wanted to try to get good at the flute again, and I started taking online flute lessons. And then I went to a flute store in New York City, and bought a, a professional quality flute, which I had always wanted. And since then, I’ve been working very hard at classical flute. And I play every day and take a lesson every other week. And really enjoying that I used to be a really big tennis player and got really good at not really, I got pretty good at tennis. And there’s so many parallels between being a musician and being being a athlete, you get the same sort of, if you practice, you get better, you get the same sort of understanding of the levels of skill. As soon as you think, well, if I just get to be this good, and then you get to be that good. And you go, Wait a minute, there’s so much more to learn. And you get that good new like way oh, you know, so and that, you know, levels of ability between somebody that’s at the peak of the game like a Roger Federer versus somebody in Little Rock, Arkansas, playing four or five, tennis, you realize that gap between somebody that’s playing in the Berlin Philharmonic and, and you know, somebody that’s, like me, so it’s, it’s intriguing and interesting. And you’re always able to learn something different. You’re always improving. And so that’s exciting to me. So I, I play the flute.

Nate Disarro 43:50
Well, unique hobbies but but very interesting. A million years ago, I worked in the snow sports industry in Colorado, and got to work with a lot of professional skiers and people in that realm. And totally understand what you’re saying about you know, when you, when you get good at something, and you think you’re good, and then you see somebody at that expert level, you realize, like, I mean, I may be able to ski fast downhill on a straight slope. But when I see a professional skier come in, and ski twice as fast and cut twice as hard and do it with a margin of error. Very small, right? It’s a whole different world, you know, and I think that about a lot of the Olympic sports because they’re not the quote unquote, normal big sports, you know, you see these guys go out and compete at Olympic level, and you’re just like, oh, my gosh, there’s

Phil Brandon 44:36
a level of skill. And the dedication that it takes to get to that level of skill is just phenomenal. People don’t really realize it unless you’re in that specific skill to understand that somebody that’s at the elite level is elite, because they can do things that most of us can. Yeah, no.

Nate Disarro 44:58
Well, you mentioned a minute ago out this whole thing that hopefully we’re pretty much through now the pandemic, you started your business in the great recession. And then we’re on the backside here of this global two year pandemic. What did that do for your business? Some people, it hurt incredibly, some people, it actually did really good thing. So obviously, I spent plenty of time at the liquor store. But I can only imagine what it did for your business.

Phil Brandon 45:27
Well, it was incredible. I mean, we were well positioned in a lot of liquor stores, and we’re able to continue to sell through liquor stores. So our I didn’t take a day off from March 2020. Till, you know, December, we were working nonstop. Not only were we making our normal products and shipping those out the back door to our you know, distributors and stores and that sort of thing. But we also shifted the retail part of the business to hand sanitizer, and we sold hand sanitizer to the public, but we also donated a ton of it to hospitals and schools and homeless shelters and that sort of thing. So we were extremely busy and very fortunate that it was really a very busy time for us and all our all my employees were able to stay on and are still here today. And we were able to be stewards to the community as well as our customers. So it was for us. I won’t lie, it was a good thing.

Nate Disarro 46:55
Well, I’d love to run into a few quick hit questions. This has been a really fun conversation. I could probably go all day but for the sake of everybody, we’ll start to wrap things up. You mentioned a lot of audio books. Do you have a best favorite book or what’s the latest book you’ve listened to?

Phil Brandon 47:13
I’m listening to pappy land right now, which is about pappy Van Winkle and all of that. You know, Mark? benioff’s, Trailblazer, radical candor. You know, Jeff Bezos is biography. And this one was pretty cool. Every boy every good boy does fine. Which is a an acronym btw. Yeah. Yeah. For for the for the musicals. Yeah. And it’s a it’s a classical pianist talking about his development from a child to be in a classical pianist. And so it was interesting to listen to him tell his own story. He narrates the book about going to the conservatory for for music school and that sort of thing. So it’s pretty interesting.

Nate Disarro 48:13
Very cool. Radical candor is great as well that yeah, that whole concept I think everybody should

Phil Brandon 48:19
care personally, but challenged directly I use that a lot.

Nate Disarro 48:23
Yeah, absolutely. What’s a part of your daily routine that you cannot skip?

Phil Brandon 48:31
I don’t skip breakfast. I I grew up on cereal. So I eat cereal every morning.

Nate Disarro 48:40
Are you more of a Netflix or news guy?

Phil Brandon 48:43
today? I don’t watch as much news. Just because it’s all so bad. But yeah, I do watch a ton of Netflix and the other streaming services for sure. Love it.

Nate Disarro 48:57
What about favorite podcasts? Is there one that your is your go to you don’t miss an episode.

Phil Brandon 49:03
You know that? There’s whiskey cast, which is one about whiskey which was is the OG for for whiskey podcasts the the new one on the block, which isn’t so new anymore. Now it’s called bourbon pursuit. And then there’s a few marketing ones. Jay bears. There’s a couple of fully ones I listened to. But yeah, yeah, no, I always. I used to always listen to rock and roll in the car and more and more. It’s podcasts.

Nate Disarro 49:39
Love it. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever given or received?

Phil Brandon 49:47
I mean, when I was starting a company I got told by several people don’t do it. And that ignored it went ahead anyway. It was more like motivation. So it kind of was a reverse Staying. So that would probably be right.

Nate Disarro 50:05
Do you have any newly formed habits a lot of people got into new habits, whether good or bad through the pandemic or you know, just shifting of, of culture, you know?

Phil Brandon 50:17
Yeah, I guess I did get a peloton, and and do ride that several times a week. I like to rode bike on a real bike and but I don’t get to do it as much as I’d like to wear the peloton, I can, you know, this morning at 610. I got up and did 30 minutes. And you know, I feel a lot better during the day because I do that. So been working really hard on that.

Nate Disarro 50:51
You ever kind of tag team that and the flute practice at the same time? No, absolutely not. No way. All right. So if you could write a book, what would the title be?

Phil Brandon 51:04
Don’t do it.

Nate Disarro 51:07
Hey, I mean, listen, I think so many businesses start the same way. You got this idea. You feel confident in it. And everybody out there says no. Right. And I think there was

Phil Brandon 51:17
one person that said yes, and it was my wife. And and, you know, God bless her. She has stood by me all the way through, but she believed I could do it. When you know, people in the industry that not in distilling, but in Little Rock that were very successful that I talked to about it, were like, Man, I wouldn’t do it. And I want to have so there you go.

Nate Disarro 51:44
Oh, I bet they’re drinking your your whiskey right now. So the peloton, obviously a great great purchase, but fairly pricey for all standards. What’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for under $100?

Phil Brandon 52:01
I’d say it was a bottle of compost box spice tree. I like it. It’s a blended whiskey from Scotland from a craft blender. And it is delicious. So

Nate Disarro 52:21
very cool. All right, as a musician, yourself, who’s your favorite artist or musician?

Phil Brandon 52:28
Oh, that’s tough. That is very tough. He goes through so many different, you know, time periods in your life, who you like, you know, I, I’ve always kind of been. Like, if I’m learning a piece, I’m listening to that piece and listening to somebody play that. So I’m not always listening to the same thing over you know, same person. Sure. There’s great flute players, you know, that I admire. I’ve always, you know, I was a YouTube guy. I know, that’s kind of, you know, generic, in a sense, but I’ve been to more YouTube concerts than any other concert probably. I really liked the police in staying as a kid. So you know, I really, like, you know, that type of music, so. Oh,

Nate Disarro 53:30
all right. I would be remiss if I didn’t ask, What’s your favorite cocktail?

Phil Brandon 53:35
Favorite cocktail is a sazzle rack. So we make of a off menu version of it here called the Phils rack. And it’s it’s my little, my little riff on it. So that would be what I would order

Nate Disarro 53:52
to we’re gonna get to know the secret.

Phil Brandon 53:55
Well, the secret is, you know, for a SAS Iraqi would wash the glass with the herb St. So that means you pour it in, and then you pour it out and the residue in the glass provide some flavor and I leave the Arab saint in. So gives it a little bit more licorice flavor. And I really liked licorice. So that’s at Phil’s.

Nate Disarro 54:23
I love it. I didn’t know that was your drink. And I was just in Kentucky with a client who ordered a Sazerac and told the bartender to leave it. Really? I think you’ll know who it is. I’ll tell you in a minute. But yeah, it was funny. So that’s, that’s funny. That’s good to know. Yeah. Well, Phil, thanks so much. This has been amazing. Love hearing your story and seeing the brand doing so well. If people want to check you out, where can they find the product? Where can they find you online?

Phil Brandon 54:56
Just go to Rocktown distillery.com and Go to the word of bisection. And you can click on your state and or your zip code and figure out where to get it. So thank you very much, Nate. I was been great visiting with you. And thank you so much for having me.

Nate Disarro 55:12
Absolutely. If you like this episode of titans of industry, head to content titan.co/podcast For more episodes, or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, and if you know of an industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening

Absolutely. If you like this episode of titans of industry, head to content titan.co/podcast For more episodes, or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, and if you know of an industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening

Tres Garner 0:00
There’s a digital artist named Beeple. He has this quote where he talks about like, you don’t have a lack of ideas, you have a lack of deadlines. That’s my current favorite quote right now. So I think the idea of like giving myself deadlines and a time of managing my own time has been very helpful.

Nate Disarro 0:20
Hey, it’s Nate Disarro, and welcome to Titans of Industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I have a long distance interview with Tres Garner, a young but well established creative and visionary in Houston, Texas, trace his co founder and co director at Good Measure an ad agency helping advocate for nonprofit organizations and causes. Tracy is also the Creative Director at The Bible Project, a nonprofit crowdfunded organization that explains lessons from the Bible in a way that unifies people. He talks through his journey from an artsy kid to an agency professional and freelance creative, all while finding an organization and a workflow that helps him progress in today’s competitive digital space. Now, let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and video for marketing your business. Our team at Content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in, it’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience. And video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit contenttitan.co to learn more. Now, here’s the episode with Tres Garner. All right, Tres, thanks so much for jumping in. I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation with us. So I just want to kind of get started with just a little background little intro on where you’re from and what you do to make a living these days.

Tres Garner 2:11
Totally, very cool. Well, thanks for having me on. This is great. It’s gonna be really fun. I, so yeah, my name is Tres Garner. I am I go by Tres, because I’m the third dress and the third, Jerry and my family. So I go by Tres. And I grew up in a pretty artsy family. So I went to school for art, quickly found graphic design and was like, Oh, this, this is probably going to be a little bit more lucrative. And I also enjoy it. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna start taking design classes. And I absolutely did love it. And I kind of had a keen eye for it. I was like willing to be experimental, I think that was like the painterly artists side of things. But I also was interested in like solving the problem, which was a little bit of my, my dad’s a developer, you write software. So there was probably a little bit of that. And that was all that schooling took place all in Houston. And then college was Sam Houston. And, and I met my wife in college, we got married shortly after. And since graduating, I feel like I was the lucky one I got I mean, I got a degree in graphic design. And then my first job out of college was as I was at an agency, and the agency when I started was just a small team of six. And by the time I had left, there was about 33 employees. So we grew really quickly over the two and a half years that I was there. And, and I can get more into that, but going into where I’m at now. Now currently, I’m in this freelance world, right, so I’ve heard the hype and the excitement in the freelance world. And so I’ve been doing that for about a year and a half. And I will be completely honest with you. I think I like it. That’s the answer that I feel safest kind of mentioning is i think i like it i i really do love working with a team COVID took us out of the office, and all into a little room. And that was an adjustment. But I think I have I imagined myself finding a full time position with a full team. And just like collaborating that way. Right now I think this has been really great experience and I’ve got to work on like a wide range of projects. But however, I think I’m going to find myself back into back into an agency or an in house somewhere. I want that experience anyway, so current freelance art director, Creative Director, designer, past art kid, that’s where I’m at.

Nate Disarro 4:51
I love it. Well that’s a great, great intro. There’s a lot to explore there. So we’ll

Tres Garner 4:55
yes I know you pick and choose. You pick and choose you tell me what do you want to do it

Nate Disarro 5:00
I choose my own adventure. Okay, yeah. Well, let’s let’s kind of start with this idea of being an artsy kid. Right? Because I think there’s a lot of people out there who, you know, as you, as you’re growing up, you’re learning what the world is all about. And, you know, for some people, you gravitate towards creativity towards art towards being able to just do things that you’ve seen in your head and put those out into the world. Yeah, a lot of parents start to get scared, because they’re like, What is this artsy kid going to do for a living? And I think nowadays, we have a lot more opportunities than probably what our parents were thinking when they were kids. Right? Especially, I mean, I’m, you know, starting to really love the NFT space, and the idea that artists can get paid in new ways. And we may go down that rabbit hole here in a bit, but as an artsy kid growing up, what what made you decide at some point that this was what you wanted to pursue, instead of, you know, getting a history degree?

Tres Garner 5:58
Totally, yeah. Okay. So this is where this is where I have, I have a major cheat code, I have a major major cheat code. I have, I have a wonderful parents. So there’s, there’s kind of the kind of the base that not a lot of, not a lot of people might not have. But my parents got pregnant when they were 18. And so my parents were kids, whenever they were when they had me. And so my dad worked at a record shop and my mom worked at Foley’s and, and that was, so I had really young parents who watched Speed Racer, and Beavis and Butthead, and still played with action figures, and like collectible collected, like Star Wars action figures, like that was still, that was still my parents. So I that that element was always there. My grandparents owned a flower, like a florist. And so there was a little bit of creativity there. So I think I just was able to have a family of people who were interested in making things and, and being creative, that usually when I felt like pushback from my parents, it was never like, for a form of like, monetary gain, which I think worked in my benefit, I think because of that I have like a different perspective of, of, of money, but, and I’m making a living, I guess you could say, often it was because I think the artists side of me was like, just really dramatic that like, my my moves. And what I’m talking about when I was a kid, like my moves, to make art or to like, the ideas I had were, like, huge and had to be executed exactly the way I imagined them the first time around. And so usually, the pushback wasn’t like this is that it wasn’t possible, but was like What’s okay, hold on, what’s the first step though, you know, which I think is a, which is something that I, I’ve kind of had to fish out. By the way, all of this and I’m saying is like me processing this through therapy and friends, and like a decade of work life experience. I’m pulling this out. Now, of course, this isn’t something that like, my parents perfectly communicated to me, but like, through looking back, I’ve kind of asked myself that same question. And I think it’s just the element of like, the element of like, the edit is being able to edit yourself, being able to identify what that first step is to your big idea. And if the goal isn’t to do exactly what you have in your mind, but it’s just kind of the process is part of the goal, then you’re gonna you’re gonna hit the mark most of the time, and find joy in what you’re working on. The so that was the long winded answer. The other answer is that I just played with a lot of Legos and painted and stuff. So that was, I played a lot, played a lot of pretend, you know, so there’s that. See, I, I didn’t even know like, whenever I started doing graphic design in college, like, people always ask me how to start and I’m like, Dude, I didn’t download illustrator until I was like, 20. So like, you don’t have to start with you know, you don’t have to start super super, you can gotta just go for it. But I, when I first heard about Illustrator and Photoshop, I thought that the, I thought I would just be like designing band posters, or something like that is what I saw. And that’s, that just shows my Introduction to Digital Design was like really rudimentary, which is fun. I mean, yeah, yeah.

Nate Disarro 9:31
Well, and I think that’s the case for a lot of people. You know, there’s a very small percentage of people who, they figure it out when they are 14 years old or whatever, and start working towards their career at that point. I think a lot of people, you’ve got a knack for a lot of things, but you don’t know how to refine that because you don’t know how big the world is. You don’t know how I ended up using it. And I think for a lot of us in college, we get exposed to new things and then you realize like, Okay, here’s a tool I can learn how to use Yeah, and make it Living with it. And it connects with how my mind works. And that’s that’s the best case scenario that we all hope we fall into.

Tres Garner 10:06
Yeah. Yeah, totally.

Nate Disarro 10:09
So, so you obviously at some point found illustrator found Photoshop download and start playing with it messing with it. But some people do that and it just doesn’t make sense it doesn’t click did it click for you pretty much right off the bat how the software works and how you can take a shape and, you know, mask it and form it to what you see in your head.

Tres Garner 10:29
Man, I think about that, I try to remember that because I think about this is like me describing something before, before I actually answered the question. But I think about this whenever I bought, like, whenever we bought my grandparents, like an iPad, for the first time, I was like, I bought my grandma an iPad for Christmas. And I was like, man, there’s so many steps that you’ve missed to fully understand this. Like, you know, like, if you start from iPad one, and then you’ve gotten an iPad every two years, since you are like three years, whatever you kind of can get, like, it’s not that big of a jump. It’s funny because like, we’ve been in Illustrator now for a decade, and plus, and you think, oh, there’s a lot that you have to kind of catch up on. And I always sort of put myself back into that mind space, like, where did I see? Like, what when did it click, I think and the first thing that came in my head whenever you ask that question was a specific project. And for me, maybe it wasn’t the software, but it was like, it was just a project, it was the overall like concept, I realized I wanted to make something and these tools were going to help me make it it was like level one, there’s two, there’s like two identity like brand identity classes I took in college, the very first one was just like a logo, it was the project was just to make a singular logo. And I had this idea to like create an ad to you the boxes were either make a tea brand, or a coffee brand, whichever one you want, and just the logo. But I I came up with this whole identity system for called grounds where it was about like a sustainable Coffee Company. So you got like a bag of coffee. And it also came with instructions on like, how to dispose of your grounds and like came with seeds if you wanted to use them in your garden. And it came in like a wood cedar box. And the bag was like biodegradable, and I created like an identity I create, I had an idea. And I was able to like build out a full identity system using Illustrator and using the tools that we had used in the previous two classes, like intro. And I was like, Oh, like this works. And in part of the brand was also like me drawing some elements. And so I think like, Incorporated something like that, that I enjoyed. But that is the first project I remember, I remember doing and being like, Oh, I’m going to use this like this is totally going to be able to make things that I think are cool. And in that kind of guided a lot of I think a lot of why I followed it was because I was like, Oh, I can make things that are cool. And I like things that are cool. So that’s gonna work out like we’re just gonna want to keep following that, that kind of spark. I love it. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 13:18
Well, I want to I want to move into your your time with agency, because I think, you know, a lot of our biggest clients are agencies. And yeah, so I totally understand the agency world. From a from a vendor perspective, and then having worked in partnership with a lot of agencies, I kind of understand the inside the inner workings of how it all happens. So at some point, you’ve got to take your skill set, you got to take your expertise, and you’ve got to mesh that with how it works inside of a business. And right. You know, we can’t all just go out and be street artists all day creating the art we want and not getting paid for it. At some point. It’s got to make sense for somebody else to spend money on it. So yeah, when you first enter that agency world, did that make sense to you to the whole idea of there’s there’s a revenue model behind your skills? Is that registered? Did you have to learn that along the way?

Tres Garner 14:14
I think it will, it totally blew my mind because I learned more than my first two weeks in working at an agency than I did my four years in college. And so and I I’m that’s not like a dramatic statement. I called myself dramatic a few minutes ago, that’s not a dream. That one is not a dramatic statement. That’s very real. And it really taught me good or bad really showed me the like, value of my time the value of of what it was meaning like okay, to make this work has to get done. And I can either look at this as being like an attempt to be overworked or I could look at this as like, Oh, these skills have to require require something and if it’s time or it’s money or it’s quality. It Right now what I can what I can crunch is time. And so that’s where the skill that’s where the I think that’s really where like a lot of the illustrator skill, Photoshop skill, creative skills really got just in the pressure cooker was yeah, the first few weeks you kind of realized like, Okay, I have to make before in college, like I said, like to make a brochure was like a four week five week project, and I’m laying out a brochure and they need it by like 3pm. That is like totally different. And that I think that that that’s when I realized that. Yeah, that was a first step of like, okay, I have to get quicker at doing this. Yeah, that’s a quick answer. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 15:40
Well, and it’s a good answer. Because I mean, you know, my staffs pretty young, and they’re all kind of working through all that stuff. And we deal with a lot of clients to that, that, you know, time is money, but there’s a reasonable expectation to create what they want to be Yeah. So, thinking back, I mean, what would you go back and tell your younger self? You know, those first Yeah, totally wish you knew that. Now, you don’t even think about,

Tres Garner 16:07
I was just rushing every part of the project, instead of instead of like, identifying what I enjoyed doing, and this is what I talk with, with young teammates, or like new creatives in the space, is I always talked about, like, there’s usually something that you do love about the project, whether it’s like, Do you really love putting your headphones on? No one talking to you and just like grinding it out? Or do you really love that like mood boarding process where we kind of print out things are working with or in figma together? Or like, the more collaborative elements or framer out, right, so like, what are the more collaborative elements that we’d like to work in? Like, what part of the process do you like, and just think of the whole, you know, using my bad example of a brochure from 9am to 3pm, in your window, break that and now break that up into like percentages, and make the part that you like, the most. And you think that’s going to balance that with what’s going to actually get the, get the design and creative work done. And, like manage it that way, I often work with like, when I work with like, in house teams, the project seems like, it’s always funny, it’s never You’re never in a moment where you feel like you have the perfect amount of time, you always feel like you have way too much time, or you have no time at all. Now, I don’t think I’ve ever received a project even like, that is the exact amount of time it takes. It’s always like, oh, man, okay, I’m gonna need to, like skip and make sure I schedule things between now and the deadlines that I have other work coming in or so I can manage this other thing. Or it’s like, Oh, dude, next Tuesday’s, so quick, okay, I gotta figure this out. So whenever I work with an in house team, or an agency style, I always look at the get, look at the timeline and decide like, Okay, we’re gonna need to do like, three updates a week, we’re gonna meet on Monday, on Wednesday, and on Friday, and on Wednesday, when we meet, this is all kind of, I’m making this up, but I’m making up this timeline. But on Wednesday, when we meet, we need to see like a 30% advancement in, in this brand. Or in this, you know, this video. And that doesn’t mean like 30% of the videos edited or like 30% of the footage is selected. It could be I just mean 30% of the whole project as advanced and what other whatever steps so like, for a brand for a brand, I would be like, it looks like we’re getting there with type. And looks like we’re getting there with like, some some of these elements and like inspiration, but like, logo wise, we’re not there at all, but that’s okay, because like we’re still progressing percentage wise towards this. And so, kind of instead of saying like, okay, there’s a very linear way to complete this, I really tried to, like help create a baseline of like, what part of the project are we moving forward, and as long as we’re moving forward a specific amount, we’re going to be alright. And usually, then you can kind of start to appreciate a specific project more, because it’s not maybe the funnest, or more most creative, but you’re kind of picking and choosing your, your favorite parts of that project, you’re able to kind of like hone in on those a little bit. Does that make sense?

Nate Disarro 19:16
Absolutely. Makes makes 100% sense. Because, you know, we’re in that same world too. And yeah, at times, you know, we can spend weeks on an edit. But is that edit actually getting towards completion? Or are we just trying so many different things that we’re not actually getting anywhere?

Tres Garner 19:31
And I always like I was trying to remind myself, I mean, I remind myself of this all the time, but I’ve tried to remind my team of this all the time is like nothing is wasted. I don’t I don’t believe that I stopped giving I gave up on that. Nothing. It’s not like you’re wasting time by doing a part of the process. Like all of the steps have to happen. So like, let’s just let’s just rock with them and then get to the part that’s fun.

Nate Disarro 19:53
Yeah, I love it. One of the phrases I’ve been kind of thrown around a lot lately that I really I adopt it into my work. But some people disagree with it. But it’s essentially that excellence, strive for excellence, not perfection. And the idea there is that we can be excellent at what we do. And we can put out excellent products. But if we’re trying to make the perfect creative product, it’s we’re going to be working on it forever. And from a business standpoint, and from a getting it done standpoint, it’s just never going to achieve perfection. What’s your take on that idea?

Tres Garner 20:31
I love it. I have a story. Are you ready? I’m ready. There was a time in high school. I was I was a part of like the theatre drama. But I didn’t do the acting part. I didn’t I didn’t do like the stage work. I was all like crew. So I like put builds build sets put together sets pulled like wire pulling like ropes and stuff like that for the actual play. Our high school did a the production grease. And I was I was a junior or senior that point. And so I was actually tasked with like building the car building Greased Lightning that’s in the in the show. And I decided to build I built the frame like with just like plywood, some plywood and two by fours was super loose, it was pretty much just like a box. And then I, what I did is I like covered the whole car and that pink, kind of insulated foam from Home Depot, they come in like four foot by eight foot sheets. And I just like glue them together. So it was even more blocky of a car. And the idea was like, Okay, I’m gonna cut through this and like, create the curves of these 1960s kind of vehicles, catalogs and stuff. So that that was my plan. And we are so to catch you up in the story. We are a few few weeks away from from production. And I am sitting there in the in the workshop with a very blocky pink foam car. And I had looked at it for probably two days, and pulled up my inspiration and pin stuff on a board and bought new blades for the for the jigsaw. And I’ve done I’ve done everything I possibly could. And I remember my theater teacher his name was his name was last name was unreal. And he walked up and he was looking stood next to me looking at this pink thing. And I started to start to describe like what I’m doing and like what my plan is. And he took the little jigsaw out of my hand and he went over and just cut right into it the shape of like this super big like swooping fender for the front right wheel and kind of carved it again and started give it more shape. And it was still, you know, a polygon, but it had started to have a little bit of shape. And then he came over and handed me the solid. He’s like, sometimes you just gotta cut into it, and then walked away. And I was like, dang, that’s gonna be a life lesson, isn’t it? And, of course, I didn’t think that then. But I think about all the time now is like the prep. And the excellence part really is just often you just got to cut it, you just got to get into it. And I was trying to make something perfect. I was saying 24 inches away for something that was perfect to people sitting 35 feet away and in a theater seat. And so there was there’s there’s some translation there for brand and for creative, obviously, not, it’s not a complete, you know, one to one, but I really, I really try to I remind myself of that often when I’m staring at something a little too long. I’m like, Okay, what do I need to cut into? Or am I actually done? Like, you know, what am I really, what am I trying to make here? What’s the goal? That’s what I think that’s

Nate Disarro 23:39
brilliant. And it’s a great parallel, because I mean, that story is exactly kind of the mentality, especially for just getting something started, you know, but we can’t start something expecting five minutes later to have a finished product. And, you know, a lot of it’s like molding with clay, you know, you start with a brick of clay. And eventually you’ve got something that’s really ugly, but it’s starting to take shape and form of what you’re working towards. And then at some point, you got to call it a day, you got to be done with it. You can keep working that clay until there’s nothing left. But you know, and I’ve really seen and tried to dig into that a lot and kind of push that with my team that you know, we can’t expect perfection. We just have to jump in, move forward. And yeah, if we’re good at our craft, then we’re going to create something that’s excellent. There’s no question.

Tres Garner 24:28
One of the things that I y’all probably do this so if you do or tell me maybe how y’all, your team is like, approach this, but it wasn’t until like three years ago that I did I start taking retros seriously. So like going back and once you’ve completed a project with your team, like reviewing the project as a team and doing a little retro on asking, Hey, what seemed like it worked here what was like, What can we do better? Or like how might we and then what what was like exciting and worked really Well, and maybe too well for the project, and like having that open dialogue, and that that’s creating the space to, like, have that conversation and try to that. That was like, huge for me because usually it was like, what I found was really difficult. Whenever I had whenever I was working with design directors are creative directors, and I was just a art director, lead designer, I would often be like, okay, we can we sure I don’t have to do my best work now. But like, how will I know where my best work? What direction I need to go to make my best work. And I maybe didn’t articulate it that way back then. But I really I think that those those moments of like, being able to look back and retro over a project is like really helpful for for a team to get better to look back and kind of see what worked and what didn’t.

Nate Disarro 25:51
Yeah, no question. I mean, I’m a self admitted. Like military jet nerd. Like, it’s one of my favorite things in the world. The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds, you know, any military jet, I just love to watch it fly in the sky. And anybody pays attention to those performance teams, a Blue Angels specifically, they’re known for being more harsh in their debrief of a flight than they are their prep for the flight. And because they know that if there’s a tiny little mistake, while they’re flying 36 inches from each other 400 miles an hour, it’s there’s no option. It’s catastrophic, over so yeah, the stakes are certainly high there. And that’s an extreme example. But I think in our own worlds of creating, you know, content and putting things out for the world to see and interact with, it’s that same thing, what did we learn along the way that next time is just a non negotiable? But if we don’t go back and look at that, then we may just look right over it. Because it’s it’s hindsight, it’s in the past? And if we’re not evaluating it, then who cares? You know? Yeah. So I think that’s the best way to learn, and certainly a worthwhile endeavor for anybody in a creative world to kind of look back at the work you did. It’s amazing how quickly you can deconstruct what went right, what went wrong. Yeah, instead of trying to figure out how to do something right on the next project.

Tres Garner 27:21
Yep. Exactly. Totally agree. Yep. game changer for me.

Nate Disarro 27:26
All right, so let’s move into kind of what you’re doing now your current role, I’d love to hear more about the project you’re working on. Yeah. And sort of the role you’ve taken now that you’ve kind of gone this freelance route. So give me a little insight there,

Tres Garner 27:41
I, I don’t feel this way. I know for sure, I have had a very unique entrance into agency world. And so I have had to navigate a certain type of difficulty of like, of, of, of making work of leading teams in editing and being in positions that I feel like I’ll be most helpful, because of my unique experience going through agency. The short story to that is the art director of the agency that I first started working at left, like 910 months into working there. And I started to cover that role. And so way earlier than I should have, I was kind of given more responsibility than I knew what to do with. So I made a lot of mistakes. And then I was kind of performing art director style. duties and project leads really early, honestly. So that that has like built this interest in leading a creative team at this stage of my career. And being a part of a creative team at this stage of my career, which I’ve quite honestly and like trying to navigate the best way to do it, and to be both taken seriously, but also like, but still in a place to like, grow and learn. So currently, what I’m doing is I am acting as a freelance art director and creative director for agencies and for ordered or nonprofits or for, for in house teams or for really for for individual personal projects, like solo projects. In the current gigs that I have now our I have a head of creativity gig with an agency called Draw history. They’re located in Australia. And they met they they reached out to me through a good through good measure, which is a nonprofit that I work on with a friend named Alex, which we can talk more about later too. And so draw history is a really great they’re really great friends, partners, clients that I work with regularly. And then I pick up a few branding projects through like pre previous clients that I’ve worked with a lot of them are in the Houston area. So there’s some like boutiques and clothing companies like little boutiques, and Houston that I do reoccurring work with. And then, and then the most recent, being an in house creative director job at at the Bible project, which is a nonprofit, content creation animation studio that develops YouTube videos, and explainer videos, but also has recently launched an app has been doing a podcast for several years. That’s like a long form podcast. And so that was my, that’s, that’s been my most current experience with a brand in house, which is new for me, because I actually before that had done mostly agency work. So those are the three things that I’m kind of, those are the three things that I’m kind of doing at this at this time. And there’s they’re similar in terms of like, but they’re just at different frequencies. So like, the head of creativity, withdrawal history, has been a ton of like more mentoring work and less creative work. Lots of like standing meetings and open kind of conversation rooms with that brand team and creative team. And then some like one on one feedback loops for the creative projects that are actually going on in the agency, and then draw, and then the Bible project being like the more in depth, highly involved, developing mark, working with marketing, working with App teams, and helping push and build creative direction for their annual goals. So that’s that, that’s kind of that what do you got? What questions

Nate Disarro 31:43
keep you busy for a minute? Yeah, that’s, well, let’s start. Let’s start here. So coming from the agency world, and now sort of having your hand in, I guess you could consider three separate ways that you have to shift your mind every day, you’ve got, yeah, you know, local boutique clients, and then you’ve got an international client, it sounds like so you got to yet think and work in an international format. And then you’ve got a nonprofit client that, you know, has apps and animations. And so agencies, that’s what you do, right? Like, when you’re in an agency, you’re constantly shifting your thinking from, you know, today, I’m working on a flower shop tomorrow, I’m working on a bank, you know, or whatever. Yeah. So that piece of it seems like it’s not necessarily a new concept, but dealing with three different sort of entities or types of clients. Yeah, as a freelancer dealing with both the creative side and sort of you’ve got to manage the client expectations and you know, your own little internal business side, how do you handle that on a day to day basis,

Tres Garner 32:54
okay, another cheat code, as soon as you can afford it, hire somebody. That is, that is I cannot, I cannot, I cannot advise that enough. A huge turning point for me was the end of 2020. When I hired a part time project manager, I like essentially like an admin, someone to help me go over projects that I have, for the next four weeks, make sure that they’re following up for deadlines, and they are sending invoices. And following up with those things, that was a huge first step with me. And I might have, I might have done it. Actually, I don’t think I even did it that early. I went, I just started making an extra like $2,500 a month, like I was not immediately it was like growing. And as soon as I got to like $2,500 a month more than I was used than I was used to having it like, at my agency, I was like, immediately started spending $1,500 a month on a project manager and a setting aside part of that budget like 500 to $300 a month for like random freelance, like other designers and freelancers to help me out if I needed to, like export all the logo functions and it was gonna take like two hours, I would rather just pay a designer 50 bucks an hour to do that, then do that then didn’t me sit down and do it. So as soon as I found that margin, I immediately started hiring people to help to help buy my time back and then buy my like, my like, yeah, my my brain really thinks that anything, buy my brain back a little bit. So that was a huge step for me where that can start I’ll tell you like the only reason I felt brave enough doing that was because like 234 years before that I had, I finally started spending money on fonts. I was like, I realized like, Oh, this is my profession. I can stop downloading these free janky fonts I need to pay for this and invest into like, what this is, for me as a career, I take this seriously. And so buying fonts, buying elements, buying tracks, like buying music, like all of those things, I just became progressively more interesting and, like, important to me. And so it started there. So it started at like a $30 font every once in a while. And over the then it turned into like actually hiring out project managers or like freelance designers to help with the work. Now, that is just a general number overall, like, what how do you kind of manage all that a general number one is like, don’t be afraid to ask and pay for help if you can afford it. And you’d be really surprised. Truly, you can be really surprised. If you have a really great designer friend, ask how much Hey, how much what would you like, Can I pay you to do this, you’d be surprised to how approachable it is. So don’t think necessarily that it’s like, and you can just, you know, for some small stuff, it can just be your friend, you can just Venmo him, you don’t even have to know don’t go crazy, you don’t even have to, you know, if it’s just little projects kind of start somewhere. That was that was a big one for me. And the other one is I happen to be I happen to have a really, a really tight, like Google Calendar, I have a seriously, I have a pretty hardcore regimen in terms of like, how I block my time, what my day looks like, and how it’s blocked. How my everything like how my Google Chrome tabs are set up and saved where my bookmarks lives. The checklist I review in the morning that I make from notion, like I have the like the pretty set standard of how I want to work through the work. And so that’s helped. And then the other thing, I guess the to address the the Australian client, I work with them in at night. So essentially, I have a daughter, I put her down for bed, we put her down for bed around like seven, and about 730 between some of their eight, I’ll get online and work with them till about nine. And that’s only three days a week, really, I have those type of set hours. So that’s pretty manageable. And that for them is like 930 The next morning. And so that’s like the beginning of their day. And I can catch one on ones before they actually start. They’re kind of like before they started their work. But the time difference obviously is like a huge factor is like I still have I still have like the ability to have a day and have time with my family and stuff like that. And I’ll tell you if it did catch it, like cut into that it wouldn’t happen. And I would just find and I would just try to find a different way to a different way to work with them.

Nate Disarro 37:51
Yeah, well, I tell you what this is this is an interesting conversation point right here. Because, you know, the world has gotten a little bit smaller, especially through COVID, where there’s sort of been opportunities to connect with people in different time zones, different parts of the world do more remote work, it’s become more of a normal thing. And I just got back from Europe. And it was really interesting. Because same same factor there. I was seven hours ahead. And I had to essentially do something at the end of my day, to get over to the US so that they could post it by the start of theirs. And yeah, it’s it was, I don’t know, it’s just sort of an interesting concept where I almost want to start looking for people in other parts of the world that can do work while I’m sleeping. Oh, wake up the next day. It’s the clients like how did you get that done so fast, you know, and here’s an element that I want to make happen to accomplish that,

Tres Garner 38:52
I guess it just I have that habit of working a little bit in the evening, and I work a little bit in the morning, preparing the day, preparing the team for the day is like, essential. It’s like, even though right now my team for sometimes it’s just me, if it whether it be for, you know whether it was Bible project, or it’s draw history now or if it’s or if it’s the freelance work I’m working on as a freelancer who is helping finish out a brand project. Like, because I’m already at my computer for like an hour or so in the evening, I will totally schedule emails and set up, I’ll schedule all that stuff in the evening to go out that next morning really early and or at you know, 6am or so I’ll be on the computer and I’ll say I’ll set the exact same thing. I’ll set those emails to those emails to schedule the slack messages to schedule and reminders or reminders to go off and re make sure my calendar makes sense. Write up agendas for meetings if they’re out already placed in the Google meeting. So all of that time is something and again, this is something that I just really love doing. So this is not necessarily like a Step. Yeah. So I don’t, I don’t want to make this, like, make this conversation about like, you know, work life balance, I truly feel really happy and at good balance with it. And I just really love making sure people feel prepared. The worst thing ever is like being the butt end of a joke. And usually when you’re not ready for something near the end of the joke, so I don’t want anyone I don’t want me or anyone around me to feel like they didn’t know something going into it. And so I tried to like over prepare for that scenario.

Nate Disarro 40:29
Nice. Yeah. All right, I want to talk about the current bigger projects you’re working on. So let’s start with the Bible project. And what’s your essential role there? And then how do you kind of bring the creativity to it that is demanded by ultimately the audience, right, the people that are consuming the product?

Tres Garner 40:49
Yeah. So. So the Bible project is, like I mentioned was my first experience in house, which was extremely, I liked it way more than I thought I would. And so in the beginning, in the, in the beginning of the conversation, when I mentioned, like, at some point, I see myself finding another in house role, maybe at an agency or actually added a singular brand, the Bible project, that’s the Bible projects fault. They like the organ, the organization itself, and just the team, the structure, the team has been, like, incredibly exciting. And so what that looks like is because there are, I’m guessing you’re asking kind of practically. So I’ll kind of go quickly through that. And then you can ask maybe some questions what you think. But there, there is a there’s a video team that creates not only like high production, but also like internal videos, whether it’s like explaining how something works, or like specific events that are coming, or external, larger production videos like, entire like series, there’s a product called classroom, which is like, where the CEOs, Tim and John walk through a specific section of the Bible. And these are our long, these are hours long classes. So these are high production multicam, with six guests that are learning this content, there’s on screen graphics, there’s so much that goes behind these shoots. So there’s a video team that go that’s that does all of that. And there’s actually two individuals in that video team that are under that kind of, you would split between like brand and classrooms. So there’s higher higher. There’s like higher production videos are kind of even split away from the brand. There’s a whole art, there’s an art director and brand team who’s creating everything from like social media content to the annual which is like the annual report that gets released every year. So all internal brand, all of those things. Because of the illustration work that happens at the Bible project. There’s also dozens and dozens of like posters and print projects that are developed and mailed out and bought and all of those kinds of things. And then there is a audio team. And the audio team is mostly the podcast. However, because of the higher level production of the animated videos, and of classroom, audio is underneath brand. But at some point, I imagine there being kind of like a, like a head of audio for all things produced out of the Bible project that give them a full Sonic identity. So similar to like you see a logo. And you know that oh, that’s that’s Nike, that when you hear the NBC bells, you know what it is.

And when you hear those kinds of, you know, the Dome Dome from Netflix, you know exactly what that is. So really just the overarching, overarching kind of audio identity for the Bible project. That’s the audio team. And so those were the creative teams underneath the creative director that’s under the creative director role. And then my laterals, our producers who are scheduling, the video teams and the shoots, whether it be we need to work with, we need to work with contractors or not. My laterals are the marketing team who have a whole team of their own to help with the website. And market the content that’s being built within the within the brand team. We have the producer for classroom, we have the app, the head of development for the app that we’re meeting with, and those are all laterals that I meet with weekly to make sure that all of the requests that are needed are getting complete. Because this is an in house project. You can kind of try to predict you can predict pretty closely more than agency what you’re about to get done this year. And So how we structure and I became a huge fan of Sprint’s like creative sprints from agency world and because of good measure. And so the Bible project is happens to also be broken up, their workflow is broken up into sprints, where, for two weeks, we have a set amount of work. And then you the second week of those two weeks, you plan for the next two weeks, while you’re complete finishing out the work. Fridays, we made half days and you’re just presenting and making sure that you’re able to hit benchmarks. And Mondays or for Director levels are having meetings to make sure we’re kicking off sprints, and like a healthy way. And so on Mondays, I’m meeting with all my laterals. On Tuesdays, I’m meeting with all my my direct reports. And on Wednesday, through Fridays, I meet with the individual designers if they needed to, and work on the creative direction for marketing videos or material for future spreads so that by the time we get there, there’s actually like a creative direct direction written out. That was a mouthful. But there’s, there’s a general

Nate Disarro 46:06
take, right? I mean, these level the the amount of work the amount of people at different levels, getting the job done, it’s what it takes, and everybody’s role is valuable. Yeah, I’m curious. Talk me through the amount of hands on work you do as a creative director in that role, versus how much do you just have to translate the vision that you have or that the rest of ya has to get a project done?

Tres Garner 46:34
Great. Yeah. So this is actually this is. That’s what I have kind of tried. That’s what I’m, here’s a sneak peek. That’s what I’m kind of building my career around is the ability to communicate the creative work. I found early in my career that I was just really excited about making sure everyone understood what they were saying for the very first time. You know, in Houston, there’s and then the agency world, there’s often some like tech or oil and gas or maybe not necessarily creative people that you got you had to or nucular work right. So like creative, not necessarily creative people that were that you got to explain what it is you’re doing and why it’s so important. And I never like never saw that as something that was like a chore I was wildly interested in excited to explain to like explain a logo and a type a typographic palette and like a color palette, and what these colors means like logically, it was always entertaining and fun. So for me, whenever I work with these, whether it be contract with draw history or Bible project, I make sure that’s like really well known as like what I’m bringing as a part of like my process and how I work with a team. It’s very much like I using tools like loom, and otherwise to like, record my voice, walking through a specific project or specific feedback that can be replayed, rewatch at your own time. And that could be a voice recording through slack or that could be a loom. But a majority of my time is giving feedback and, and making sure that we’re like bringing in an overall tone for the brand. Here’s an example. The audio team of our project is incredible. The guy who runs it was at NPR, he is like way more talented than I am. I am not interested in telling him like a lot about how to do his job if I’m being honest, because he’s excellent at it. However, sometimes some things I will catch, not necessarily in the middle of the podcast, but those will be some things that I catch about the tone and like overall direction that the Bible project is heading for the year and audibly I think it would be interesting to continue to give the listeners cues about that as we release products, how can we do that? Now that’s on him, but I think it was on me to like communicate that level of like, of like this is what’s happening throughout the organization for the rest of the year. Here’s an idea I had and I think we can do that we can start to communicate that through audio as well. And now with him alongside him, we can build that out. The other Another example would be like through visual like the creative that kind of stuff which comes a little bit easier like giving feedback on Hey, this is what I think is working well. And this is maybe what I feel like should this this is like not landing there’s actually a specific example I can give is creating an internal video we set up a really we needed to do it relatively quickly. We set up a really beautiful there’s like a really beautiful like set had some crazy lights going on. So it looked like they were standing in this white gradient color void. It’s beautiful but It that look had kind of been done like 60% been done by us before, but for a dip talking about a different subject. And I just brought up the idea, I brought up the fact that like, Listen, I don’t necessarily think we can tear down the set and reshoot this, or like, but I think that moving forward, visually, when we’re create, if this is like a, this is a set, let’s make a standard for this set. What do we talk about when this is happening? This type of set gives me a very ethereal kind of like, open ended peaceful feel. So like maybe the videos that landed that need to be talking about, like what themes fall into that. And so overall, just trying to like, trying to articulate the kind of feeling and direction in place, the actual products into that, so that there’s like a more cohesive brand, visuals, visuals, and obviously audio through through the graphics, the videos, or the podcast. There was a moment where there was a art director got sick. And he was mainly he was the one mainly working on the annual project. So I actually straight up opened up InDesign and had to lay out some type for three days.

But that only happened that only happened once. So so that was so a long way to answer, it’s usually the skills that I’m trying to bring to an organization are the are the like creative structure, a creative process, sprint system, and like helping organize projects that way.

Nate Disarro 51:38
Which is such a valuable skill set to possess for you. But it’s also I think, being able to communicate in that way for people to understand I often tell people, I essentially have to be a translator in a sense, because I’m dealing with the CEO or somebody on a business side over here, that’s the client. Yeah. And then over here, I’ve got people that are incredibly talented at their their skills to create the products, but they don’t care about the business and the business doesn’t care about the creative. And somehow I’ve got to make both sides understand what’s happening, what’s valuable. And sort of translate for both sides to get the project done and make everybody happy along the way.

Tres Garner 52:21
And when it’s very much your role as well. It is yeah, and when that’s happening really quickly, like in in, in environments like good measure, that is super, super difficult. And I think that good measure 15 second setup, real quick, is essentially a nonprofit, mobile agency we sit we identify an agency in a city that we want to work with, identify a nonprofit in that city that needs creative work, and then we get their sign off to rebrand, produce them a brand video website strategy. And then we bring a we bring in top tier creatives around that city to volunteer their time, and 72 hours, we create a brand new identity for them. That has been started that we started that in 2017. And we’ve done seven events, to digital events and be able to partner with someone like my favorite agencies in the world. And whenever you are working with high capacity, talented designers, from brands like Squarespace and and all of these super high up agencies like basic or ya know, in New York or like basics in San Diego, but are fun size and Austin, wherever you are like these incredible agencies, you have to really you have to get really good at communicating and translating, like you said, because this stuff is moving very, very quickly. And you really get to have the opportunity to say, Isn’t it funny whenever you’re hearing the client and you’re like, okay, they’re making a lot of sense, but now I have to make this make sense to my team. Okay. And then you walk over there that that situation has happened so many times, that eventually you just stop getting embarrassed and you just realize like, Okay, this is a skill that needs to happen and I need to get better at

Nate Disarro 54:22
tell me how the idea of good measure came about.

Tres Garner 54:28
There was okay, here’s, here’s the secret. I’m not going to talk too quietly because I know my mic needs to be loud. The secret is, is that my buddy Alex Anderson and I were not super fulfilled with some of the work that we were doing towards the end of our agency life. He worked in an agency called black sheep in Houston. I worked at an agency called New Group. I recruited him to new group because I was like, Yo, you do great work. We need to do better strategy where your strategist come work here. He did. And then after about two years, he brought the idea to me, he helped describe a little bit with like, there’s some things called like hackathons, which are similar, like weekend long, little sprints, Chris rents. But he described the idea of like, describe the need, really, that there are hundreds of 1000s of nonprofits that operate in the United States with less than $50,000 a year, which is a barely livable, you know, wage for one person. And so we saw the need to like, Okay, if we could we know the value of a brand and of marketing and have a strategy. So like, if we can organize talented creatives and help them do the best work of their life, and only one weekend, we’re not going to take up your whole week, or, or send you emails two weeks later asking you to text us those logo files, just 72 hours, in and out and do it for a project that matters, that would be really, really helpful and really inspiring. And so that was the goal. And the very first one we did, we did invite only, so that we can make sure that we had like, you know, I think this is something we try to be careful with. But it’s like, we want the work to be really great. And we want everybody to feel like they’re growing and learning but also that the work is being done and they can count on each other. And so like the beginning, in the very beginning, we were like, it’s not gonna work. Honestly, if we get a bunch of like junior senior college students to volunteer, we need like top tier creative talent to like really help us nail this first one. So the first one was invite only the agencies in Houston reached out to the, like best designers, creatives I knew. And we knocked it out. And also shout out to new group who was the agency that I was working at who hosted the first event, and they were incredible. And, and yeah, so good measure now kind of lives on as this like 300 Plus community of super talented creatives and a Slack channel. And everyone post jobs are kind of like post ideas. And we we had our last event in February of 2020 or January of 2020. Imagining that in 2020, we would do five events across the United States. And we did that one, and then the old Pandy showed up. And and so we’ve done, we’ve done three digital events, which have gone off really well over the past few years. But it’s really about that in person experience. And so we are currently planning an event for sometime in the fall of this year. We’re just trying to find the right the right partner. Yeah. So you can find it at find good measure.com Like outlines our previous projects and kind of what our goals are. And it’s a really great site built by basic in San Diego. So it’s fun. So if you’d like cool websites, check it out.

Nate Disarro 57:57
That’s that’s a really cool idea. I mean, just the mindset behind it school. The way it affects nonprofits is cool. And ultimately, I mean, to your point, like, there’s so many great nonprofits doing so many good things. And, you know, they often need help in so many different ways. And they live on donations. And so when you look at at work like this, it just sort of falls into the category of donation. But it’s such a monumental donation that people don’t even realize, like, yeah, how valuable that is.

Tres Garner 58:29
It’s been huge. No, it’s been really exciting to see the work come out of it. We got to work with organizations that help individuals in prison, and we got to work with individuals that are in the political space, or we got to work with organizations who who furnish homes for for people that are getting out of being incarcerated. There’s like a massive statistic that shows that like, once someone leaves prison, and they get their first apartment, if their apartment feels like home and is furnished with things that they love, that they’re like 85% less likely to go out and do and they’ll be more likely to stay at home. And so like this organization, got furniture, and furnished and painted and like decorated, those individuals coming out of incarceration or homelessness, their apartments to get them to statistically stay out of that type of environment. And it was really beautiful to watch all of anyway. It’s really beautiful to watch all of these things kind of come to fruition and help out these teams. Sudo Yeah, it’s my favorite project. Yeah.

Nate Disarro 59:34
It sounds like it. Yeah, well, what I want to do now is I want to jump in and just kind of quick hit questions a little bit about you and sort of give give us a flavor of some of your personal preferences. But is there anything else that stands out to you about kind of the work you’re doing and what it’s like to be a creative director that you feel like is worth communicating that we haven’t touched on yet?

Tres Garner 59:56
I feel like right now my favorite, my favorite quote Oh, is that there’s that digital artist named people. He has this quote where he talks about like, you don’t have a lack of ideas, you have a lack of deadlines. That’s my current favorite quote right now. So I think the idea of like giving myself deadlines and a time of managing my own time has been very helpful.

Nate Disarro 1:00:19
So true, most creative people I know, can work really fast when they’re under pressure to get something done? Exactly. Yeah. And all you need is that that deadline creeping up on him, because most of us procrastinate anyway. And we get the work done in exactly the time when we’re like crap that’s due tomorrow. Exactly. I love that. That’s a great quote. All right. So what is your favorite book? Are you a reader? Or do you listen to audiobooks? What’s your favorite book?

Tres Garner 1:00:45
Yes, that’s a great question. So right now, right now I am a audiobook guy. I used to buy books like back in college, I bought a quite a few, quite a few books. But I, I run and I realized, like, oh, I can just replace music with raw with with audiobooks. And for an hour run, you can just knock out a book a week. So that’s been really great. And I had never done the whole, like, I missed the whole era of like, design leadership books. So I’ve been going back and reading a bunch of staples from like Seth Godin, and, and like Rich Dad, Poor Dad and and eaters eat last and stuff like that. So that’s kind of the ones that I’ve been in right now. There’s a book called, let me see if I can get the title that the author, there’s a book called The Making of a manager by Julie’s owl. And she was one of like, the first 30 employees of Facebook and stayed there until they had like, 400 employees. My I like it so much. One was because I just finished it in, like, two months ago. And the other one is because it is written from a woman’s perspective. And my wife is in the workforce. Still, she’s she still works. And she, we recently had a baby. And her career has just been really, really great and interesting and fascinating to me. And so like this book, helped, I gave it to my wife, and it’s been such a help to her. So I just love it so much. It’s really dope.

Nate Disarro 1:02:16
All right, moving right along. best piece of advice you’ve either given or received.

Tres Garner 1:02:24
I mean, I think I told my story, sometimes you just gotta cut into it. That’s good. So just get a cut in scatter, go for it. All right, what’s

Nate Disarro 1:02:33
a relatively new habit that you formed,

Tres Garner 1:02:37
both so both of these are not necessarily new, they’re like, within a year and a half. But I think sleeping and running are the two things that have like just become so essential to the, to the, to the process, sleeping, meaning like getting to bed on time and getting up early. My daughter wakes up, bless her heart at like 645 Seven. So I wake up at 545 to make sure I have like, some time in the morning. And then the running is just like such a great time. Like I said, listen to audiobooks or or just kind of think so both of those. I love

Nate Disarro 1:03:10
it. One thing I found is that when I’m listening to audiobooks or podcasts while exercising, time goes by so much faster than music.

Tres Garner 1:03:20
It really does. And if you go up to like 1.5 1.5 or 1.25 speed, the book goes, it’s just great. Yeah, you can you can knock it out.

Nate Disarro 1:03:29
That’s a necessity. And this will be a reminder for everybody listening to this podcast, I actually encourage you listen to it at 1.5. Yeah, mainly so that you can not listen to me talk and spend more time listening. You guys talk but okay, if you were to write a book, what would the title

Tres Garner 1:03:48
I have an idea for for this? It’s already it’s in the it’s happening. I’ve never said it. I don’t know if it’s a working title or not. But the idea is the will the current working title is the middle.

Nate Disarro 1:04:01
Interesting. Okay. Yeah.

Tres Garner 1:04:03
I’m intrigued. Yeah, okay, cool.

Nate Disarro 1:04:05
I can’t wait for it to come out.

Tres Garner 1:04:07
Next year, most of your time is spent in the middle. So you just have to, you have to like, usually you’ve started it. And it’s so you’re just been waiting for that. So usually, you’re in the middle. So it’s a lot of experience and like, thoughts around how to mentally and spiritually, like outlast the middle time that you spend most of your time in.

Nate Disarro 1:04:28
I like that I like the concept. I I’m a big believer in the 8020 rule. And I believe that you know, with regards to the middle, you’ve got 10% of the extreme on either side, or in your case, the beginning and end of anything. And then 80% of it is the middle. So I think it’s yeah, it’s an interesting parallel there. Yeah. What’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for $100 or less,

Tres Garner 1:04:53
just as organized as my like Dropbox is my garage and have a bunch of tools and stuff and so I got to labeler For $18, and I’ve labeled my entire toolbox and it is just magnificent.

Nate Disarro 1:05:07
So that’s it. That might be the most unique one. I like it though. That’s that’s cool. The previous podcast interview, it was a juicer. So I’m getting Oh, nice. Like, Christmas list knocked out,

Tres Garner 1:05:22
you gotta get the one that stamped the embosses the letters, I’m not talking about one of the ones that prints like you type it in and like a little keyboard and then it prints out like a little strip. The Sticky Strip. No, no, this is like a little thick 10 plastic polymer mix strip that it embosses the letters into and it just feels like very World War Two. And when you label it, you’re like, I’m labeling this forever. I’m not just like labeling my pantry. That is the difference and it’s important.

Nate Disarro 1:05:53
Yeah, yeah,

Tres Garner 1:05:54
this is the items name forever.

Nate Disarro 1:05:56
That’s good. Yeah, my dad had one of those. It was white and I think the letters were red and boss and yeah, yeah, have to turn each letter and then hold the trigger and it would Yep. You know,

Tres Garner 1:06:05
that’s it. $18 on Amazon. Do it.

Nate Disarro 1:06:09
Alright, favorite artist or musician?

Tres Garner 1:06:12
Ooh, okay. Um my favorite artists is easy. I’m a painter members like that’s what I went to school for started going to school for so sites wobbly. He also happens to have one of the largest like solo open galleries in Houston. So you can go see his work all the time. He is the artists that every time when you will see his work. You say like, Oh, I get my toddler could do that. That’s the point. His work is just scribbles and a disaster. Some of it is kind of like provocative maybe if you look too close, but the idea, the work itself, I think is like super strong, and I love it. So that would be my favorite painter. And favorite musician, right now. To have again, I have a two year old so I’m, I’m all up in that mo Juana and Coco. And listening to like, the most ridiculous, ridiculous things right now. Um, I don’t know I’ve been on I’ve been back on an r&b kick. So I’ve been listening to CES I saw that her album came out like her. Her last album came out like five years ago. So I’ve just been in RVing kick the past like two weeks. That’s where I’m at.

Nate Disarro 1:07:25
Nice. Yeah. Nice. I like it. All right. And then next restaurant you go to what’s your favorite food? Where are you gonna go? You throw down a burger kind of guy. Are you a salmon salad fan?

Tres Garner 1:07:40
Yeah, I am. Uh huh. Yeah, so it’s it’s sushi. It’s definitely like ramen or sushi. For right right now. There’s a fast food kind of like, Vietnamese fusion place called roo stars. That’s like more like I said more quick. But agents fire. That’s really great. If I’m feeling super fancy, and I want to treat myself to a cute little date. There’s a place called Gucci. And it’s a spot in Houston. It’s super good. It’s pretty expensive. It’s you know, it can get expensive, but sushi is impeccable. So that’s where I’ve been. I’ve been going go into a few times. It’s delicious. Yeah,

Nate Disarro 1:08:17
love it. Next time I’m in Houston. I’ll check it out for sure. I love it. Awesome. Tres. This has been fun, man. I appreciate it. Where can people check you out? See your work? Find out what yeah,

Tres Garner 1:08:30
like a good designer. My website is always in flux. But you can totally go there. It’s tresgarner.com. And you can also follow me on all socials which are at trace Garner and trace is spelt like dress like number three TR e s Garner gr ner. So that’s Tres Garner anything and then tracegarner.com. And yeah, follow me or don’t or just reach out. I want to talk to you. Alright, that’s it.

Nate Disarro 1:08:59
I love it. Thanks so much, man. Really appreciate it.

Tres Garner 1:09:02
I appreciate it, Nate. Thanks so much.

Nate Disarro 1:09:05
If you liked this episode of Titans of Industry, head to contenttitan.co/podcast for more episodes or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an Industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening!

Kevin Shalin 0:00
I love making dumplings. I love eating dumplings. I love all Chinese food. But if if I’ve got a great recipe I make it home I’ve made for last 20 years. I’m a dumpling… I tell ya, I’m a dumpling whore.

Nate Disarro 0:10
hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields, uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In this episode, I speak with Kevin Shalin, food reviewer and blogger for The Mighty Rib. He’s a beloved icon in the Little Rock restaurant scene and prides himself on an authentic unbiased chronicles of local cuisine. His work has been featured in publications like Only in Arkansas, Arkansas Times and AY magazine. The Mighty Rib Facebook page has an estimated monthly reach of about half a million viewers. Kevin talks to us about how he transformed his hobby into a career. He built trust amongst a digital audience and why he chooses to spotlight restaurants and their staff in his writing, rather than himself. Now let’s get to the episode. But before we do, let’s talk about content, strategy and Video for marketing your business. Our team at Content Titan is committed to great storytelling, no matter what industry you’re in. It’s crucial to engage, entertain, inform and captivate your audience. And video is the best way to do it. Having worked with people and organizations of all shapes and sizes, our team has the experience to deliver the right content at the right price. We are easy to do business with and we know how to get you results. Visit content titan.co to learn more. Now, here’s the episode with Kevin shaylen. Kevin, thanks, man, I appreciate you jumping in and hanging out with us on the podcast for the day. You’ve got a wildly popular food blog social media accounts. I kind of just want to start with with how the heck did you get into that world?

Kevin Shalin 2:02
I was living in Houston is about 12 years ago now. And I was a high school teacher. Married to children looking for kind of a hobby I used to be a writer and college sports writer in Texas, and I wanted to kind of scratch that writing itch again. And figured you know, I think I can I can write about food every day. I knew nothing about food other than I love to eat. And that was enough at the beginning. And I started my blog, the mighty rib. In about six months after that I got a freelance gig with the Houston press. And that’s when really things took off for me where I started doing anything and everything that they any assignment that they had. And, you know, restaurant openings, advance wine tastings, anything that the editor had on on her desk, and she had a team of writers there. And I jumped on just about everything, and really loved it and enjoyed it. And the blog started for it ran for about a year in Houston. And then my family, we moved to Boston for another year, my wife finished her training, she’s a physician. So we spent one year in Boston, I did the same thing, I really dove into the Boston scene because I didn’t know if I was going to be there for a year or the rest of my life. So I was like, if I’m gonna be here, I’m gonna I’m gonna really get to know the town. And I did. And then she, my wife got an interview at UAMS. And we came down here and we’ve been here 10 years.

Nate Disarro 3:32
Very cool. I’ve been here 10 years as well. So I guess

Kevin Shalin 3:35
2012 2012 We got here, right around this time, you know, it was hot out and July and June, July, right into the June end of June is when we got here. And I knew nothing about Little Rock. Absolutely nothing new. No one had no friends here. And to think that I’d be sitting here right now, as you know, entrenched into this community as I am, well, I never thought it would happen.

Nate Disarro 4:02
Well, it’s interesting because you know, the power of words and especially the power of our stomach. So, you know, when I think about what life is all about, in some regards, it’s you know, we work so that we can go do things like eat at Fun restaurants and enjoy wine tastings and things like that. And you kind of get to do that as a both a passion and sort of a job in a sense. Yeah. So it’s kind of the perfect job in my mind. Do you see it that way?

Kevin Shalin 4:28
I it is, you know I started is it was a hobby and it’s kind of developed into and morphed into this really cool job. I don’t monetize anything with the mighty rib, my personal blog, but I am a freelance food writer. And over the years I’ve written for just about every publication in this area, some for lengthy periods of time, like only an arkansas.com, who I still write for been writing for them for about seven years. I was a food editor for a while magazine for a cup Well, yours so and you know, in just wrote an article for Arkansas times that came out yesterday. So, you know, you kind of you work your way around and just keep getting the word out there.

Nate Disarro 5:11
Which is a really interesting concept because, you know, being in the creative world and the content world, obviously, we get commissioned to do a lot of different projects that people hire us to do. But the really fun ones are the ones that nobody hires us to do. It’s just we go out, we do it, because it’s something we want to do. It’s our passion and and you’ve built quite the loyal following people that take what you say to heart. And do you feel the pressure of that within the hobby side of it? Or do you just still see it as something fun? And it’s just whatever you want to do? You do?

Kevin Shalin 5:46
It’s a balance. Without a doubt, yes, it is fun to me. But I take what I do very seriously it and I try to be as professional as I can. Because the bottom line is that words matter. I’ve always said that. And when you put words on a public forum, any public forum, people see them, and they can have a positive impact or a tremendously negative impact. And I want the reader to know that I’m genuine, and then I care. And but they can also trust my opinion, no matter what, restaurants don’t don’t pay me to show up. They don’t I don’t get any freebies. You know, like I said, the blog isn’t monetized, there’s no advertising. So it is very important to me that the reader trust me, it’s it is of the utmost importance to me, that they trust what I’m saying. And I also try to be as respectful as I can to the restaurant, to the people in the industry, to give my honest opinion, but also to do it in a manner that I’m not offending anyone, and just being respectful.

Nate Disarro 6:52
I love it. Yeah. Let’s talk about the nature of blogging, social media, how it all kind of works these days, because I’m sure over the last 10 years, it’s changed and more of how you connect to your audience. You know, I’ll say back in the day blogging was, you have some sort of website, and you write a post, you maybe put a couple pictures, and you kind of find ways to get that out to people. And now, the blog is almost secondary, I would think, to the social media content. So how do you define blogging right now versus what it was?

Kevin Shalin 7:27
But that’s an excellent question. I think that’s what I think about all the time, because when I started 12 years ago, you’re right, first thing I did was jump on online and find a blogger site that was free that I could start my website. And I wrote every single day, I had an entry every single day. And if you go on my actual site, now the mighty rev.com, I haven’t posted something in months and months, you know, it has changed significantly, it is all about short snippets, it’s about videos, it you know, the reader does not have a very long attention span anymore. podcasts have taken over. So as someone who was, quote, you know, quote, unquote, a blogger, I think the main thing is you have to if you want to stay relevant, you have to keep adapting, and know what your audience wants. One of the things that I realized early on, and this has just gotten more and more the case is that I keep my writing short and concise. I don’t, you know, I think the reader wants to know, they want to trust me, and if they trust me, they don’t need 1000 words to prove that they can trust me. You know, they just need to know, do I need to go to that restaurant, and I’ll tell them, this is a place you need to go to the rest is up to you. I don’t want to get in the way, it’s up to you to figure out what exactly you like about that place. And you form your own opinions. But I think the reader can trust me when I when I say something, and they’re not going to get bogged down with a bunch of words and information. So I think it’s just hast as you probably know, it just has to get more and more concise. And now videos have taken over. So I’m trying to like adjust and adapt and get in that world. You know, reels on Instagram are huge. And I still haven’t made the Tiktok plunge, but, you know, I’m about to be 45 these things, and I don’t want to these things are a little more difficult for someone not a young guy anymore. Well,

Nate Disarro 9:22
that’s a great point. And it’s really interesting, though, because I talk to our clients all the time, you know, ultimately, the goal isn’t just make a piece of content, it’s really find your audience and communicate to them where they’re at. And just like, you know, when we were growing up, we’d watch cable television, and we’d watch Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or whatever and then it moved into ESPN and we’re changing the channel based on our interests. And I think a lot of people are still trying to grasp the idea that platforms are now kind of like channels and accounts are shows within those channels. Right. So it’s it’s intuitive, but It’s also kind of effort, it takes effort to make that change and be willing to move from posting a blog every day to now building that same following or that same audience and moving them to a different channel. Did you see that challenge happen? Or did it just naturally occur?

Kevin Shalin 10:18
Oh, I saw it happen. Yeah, without a doubt, it wasn’t something that was so natural. But when you make some excellent points there, and one of the things that that really stands out for me that I see that I feel like bloggers make a mistake with and or influencers, whatever you want to call them, is, I feel like they make themselves the focal point. And you know, what, what I do, the focal point is the restaurant is the employees. It’s the art community. I’m part of that. But I never want to make my face the focal point. And what I find is, well, that’s for good reasons on a variety of levels. But from what I find is, when I’m following people, I see them just putting their face in front of the camera constantly, as the reader that might hold up for a while, but you’re gonna get tired of it, because the thoughts go into our head, like, why is this all about them. I mean, I put my face in front of my blog, but I do it sporadically. Because I know that the reader will get tired of that. And they need to know that it isn’t about me, it’s about my voice and my opinions. And I interject it with our interaction with the readers. But I am not the centerpiece of the blog. And I feel like that is just a tremendous mistake that that people make nowadays. Because, you know, in actuality, they just want to see themselves in front of a camera. And I think that is a mistake, in large part.

Nate Disarro 11:44
I couldn’t agree with you more. One of the things that we practice around here, and I talk to people about all the time, there’s an author by the name of Donald Miller, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, but he’s been around for quite a while. And several years ago, he wrote a book called Story brand. And it’s really kind of this systematic approach to creating narrative storytelling, for brands, from a marketing perspective, but really, it works for everybody. And the principal point that he talks about from a marketing perspective is the brand is not the hero of the story, the brand should be the guide, it should be the one that helps your consumer, your viewer, your customer, get from the ordinary, average everyday person to become the hero that they want to be in their own life. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about. You aren’t the hero, you’re the guy that gets that viewer from wondering where to eat tomorrow, to having the answer and telling their friends, hey, let’s go here. And then ultimately being the hero of that story, because they followed your advice.

Kevin Shalin 12:54
Yeah, and there’s so many layers to it, when you look at food. And that was the thing that was so fascinating to me from day one is all these different things that I can do that yeah, food is is right there in the Senate, front and center. But, you know, there are so many other avenues. I’ve changed, you know, quite a bit through the years where I was so excited about the food. Now, I’m so excited about telling people about the food, that’s what gets me excited. I’m I really love featuring people in the industry, that that gives me a lot of joy. And I think that you know, when you think of it on a larger scale, I just love playing this part, my part in in building helped build our food community here in Little Rock, Central Arkansas, wherever you want to call it. Even Arkansas in general, because I’ve been getting out and about and throughout the state. So there’s just so many layers to this. And that’s what has has been so appealing to me all these years. And in changing it up. I think you’ve got to be able to adapt not only in like, what type of mediums Am I using, but also your message, you know, I don’t want to get too sticky. I don’t want to be this guy that’s always trying to crack a joke. But I think humor is a big part of what I do. You know, some some days it calls for me being serious. If a restaurant closes, I’m not going to have some little funny joke about it. So I think the reader when you’re constantly adapting and then changing your message, it keeps the interest the reader interested.

Nate Disarro 14:35
One of the things I talked about a lot as well as is the idea of human to human connection. And anything any of us do when we put a piece of content out into the world. It’s not to interact with a dog or a horse or a rock or a house or a car. It’s to interact with another human. Do you see any challenges trying to do that when you’re talking about food and showing food and restaurants? So I mean, like you mentioned, the goal, I think for you is to show the people behind it, but But ultimately, when I look at your Instagram account, it’s photos of food. So how do you use that to connect on a human level?

Kevin Shalin 15:14
Well, from day one, I, sometimes I look back and my first post on the blog interaction was, was what I wanted to focus on, I really enjoy that interaction. It is one of the reasons why for you know, for better or worse, Facebook is where I really excel. I liked that platform, it allows folks to comment, it allows me to comment back to have that conversation. And but also to let people know that even when we’re having our little conversation in this bigger, you know, bigger thread that be responsible, going back to what we talked about being responsible about what you’re posting, because especially now that I’ve been here a while I have a following restaurant tours, watch everything, they want to know what’s going on, they follow the blog, and when they see someone comment that you know it, it hits home with them. And I I think what I’m one of the things I’m most proud about is I feel like that interaction has gotten a lot more professional, more that you’re always going to have your trolls, you’re always going to have people that are that just want to be negative for the sake of being negative. But I really feel like that has declined through the years. And I think people realize like, this is a platform where they can air their opinions, voice their opinions, but do so in a manner that’s going to be beneficial. I’m all for constructive criticism. I’m all for people showing up and speaking their mind. But you can choose your words wisely and still get your point across. And I think that’s one of the things I do when I’m critiquing restaurants, I can let that reader know, like this place, you know, stay away from that dish, or it was an off night, and I don’t have to bash the restaurant. So going back to the interaction, I just feel like it’s important that, you know, we’re not I’m not friends with many of the readers, but I feel like they know me. And I know a lot of them. You know, I know most of the people that comment is because I’m I’m fully invested in it, and I enjoy it.

Nate Disarro 17:22
Which brings up a whole other piece of the conversation that you know, you’re talking about changing platforms and everything else. Now we’ve got the metaverse, right, where people kind of interact on a digital level and they never interact in human capacities. Yeah. Do you see that becoming a way to have the blog kind of connect to more people,

Kevin Shalin 17:43
you know, I hope not. If I write something, eventually I’m gonna have to face the music. If I write something about a restaurant, or an owner, eventually I’m gonna run into that person in Kroger, you know, and I’ve got to be able to stand by stand behind my words and not not worry about their their reaction when they think because I’m, I’m comfortable with what, what I think and I think that connection, that human connection is very important, especially in a town, the size of Little Rock, which is something that has always been appealing to me, I love the size of this town. I call it a town because you know, when you grew up in Houston, Texas, most of your life, you know, they have suburbs that are 10 times the size of Little Rock. I love, love, love and in Little Rock, I love living in Little Rock because I can see when I post something, I can see it helping change the community that in Houston. And when I was in Boston, it’s hard to see that. So I want to be able to connect with the audience, I don’t want to just hide behind a computer screen, I want them to know that I’m a real human being that cares. You know, I that personal connection is very important to me.

Nate Disarro 19:00
Alright, let’s talk a little bit about being kind of the other side of it, the professional food writer that gets paid to write? Do you have to switch one side of your brain off and switch the other one on to kind of remember that you’re doing now a commissioned gig as opposed to the side hobby? Is there a difference in the way you communicate? Or is it the same person the same message, you just draw a line down the channel that it’s being distributed on?

Kevin Shalin 19:26
It really, I think it varies from publication to publication. I feel like when I write something about a paid gig, I’ll probably write it. I’ll probably review it three or four or five times at least edit it. Make sure it’s you know, the grammar is is on point. And when I’m doing something for the mighty rib, it’s just kind of it’s more conversational, you know, and I like both of them. I like both ways, and I’m glad I can um Fortunate enough to do both things. But it really depends. And you get a feel for what the editor wants, I’ll go back to the only an arkansas.com. Like I’ve been writing for them, or six, seven years now. And I feel like my writing has adapted to being more conversational, a little less, a little more informal, which has always made me more comfortable. But, you know, I’ve done a couple pieces this year for the local palette, which is big regional magazine, and the Southeast here. And, you know, it’s just a different style, I want to be as professional and structured as I can. And, you know, if I ended up doing more pieces for them, maybe it’ll it’ll will allow me to be a little more of who I am, if that makes sense.

Nate Disarro 20:50
Yeah, of course. Alright, so you’ve got this weight of people listening to what you say and taking it with you. But then that also provides another interesting dynamic to your influence. And that’s your ability to do things with nonprofits and other organizations that help people who don’t have the luxury of going out to eat. So talk to me a little bit about some of the other things that you’re involved in. And kind of how you got connected.

Kevin Shalin 21:17
One of the things I’ve been working striving for last few years is to get my platform to a level where I know I’m reaching a lot of people and to use that now, to do some good beyond just getting people to go into a restaurant or to buy this coffee, or what have you or support a cottage Baker, I really want to start shifting it to getting involved in some nonprofits. Last few couple of years, I’ve been working with the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, who they have their big event tonight, by the way, serving up solutions give a little plug for that. And I just in the last couple of months have gotten involved with the rollin mcdonald house local chapter. And, and, yeah, I want to focus on either kids are fighting hunger or combination of both. And it’s just really nice now to have the platform that when I post something, I can get some people on board or I can get a company to donate something. Whereas I’m not like, begging them to do it. And I’m not like, Oh, this is who I am, you know, this is what I do. You know, I don’t have to explain myself as much anymore, that makes such a big difference. And I don’t get caught up in the numbers. And like, you know, like, how many people I have how many Facebook followers or Instagram. But it is, it is important to me now that I’ve reached a stage and I am part of this community. And I can make an impact in areas I you know, if I’m want to get passionate about nonprofit work, I can do that now. And I can feel comfortable about it. And, and that is so enjoyable for me and so rewarding,

Nate Disarro 23:00
a little bit. What’s the ultimate, sort of when you lay down at night? What runs through your mind and what a successful day looks like?

Kevin Shalin 23:12
I always think like, did I do at least one thing that I help somebody in some manner can be tiny. Someone reached out to me last week, and she was looking for a bartender job. And part of me just wanted to gloss over it and say just there’s just one person that is looking for a bartender job. I’m not going to put a post out that that says anybody hiring for a bartender job, I’ve done things like that, but didn’t want to do it. And, and then a day or two went by and I said you know, I need to like make an effort here. Because this could really help somebody. And I saw just a random person who I follow in the industry. She posted a job a bartending job. I knew it was a good bartending job. So I screenshotted it, I actually reached out to the person. And I said, I think this is a good position, I think you should go for it. And she’s like, thank you. I didn’t hear back from her for a week. Well, she replied yesterday and said, I got the job. I just want to thank you. I mean, something like that is just like as good as it gets for me. And if I can do like one thing like that a day, where I can feel it’s like kind of rewarding and I can feel good about things. That really is my goal. I mean, I don’t I don’t look at it. Anything beyond that. If if I can post about some donuts, and someone tells me the week after, man there was there was 30 people waiting in line. I mean what how does it get any better than that? I mean, that’s why I do what I do. And I enjoy that it’s very rewarding for me. And that’s really all I go about, you know, just trying to figure out How can I do some good? And how can I keep changing it up? And how can I do a variety of things, I do these big dinners, I did my first one until over two years, because of COVID, I stopped doing them, where I host, usually anywhere from 50 to 75 people. And we rotate every about every six weeks, I choose a restaurant. And I say I all I tell the restaurant is I want you to create a four or five course menu, it’s got to be creative, it’s got to be something different, and have fun with it. And I’ll make sure 50 to 75 people are there, I’ll collect all the money you don’t have to worry about all you have to worry about is hosting us is cooking that food. And chefs get usually get pretty excited about that, because they’re tired of cooking the same thing. And it’s just it’s just a wonderful event. And those are the things that I enjoyed doing, if I can, if I can string together, six or seven of those things at once, where I’m, I’m thinking about him and doing a podcast like this, those are the things that really excite me. And, you know, if I was just sitting down and doing the same thing over and over again, I’d get I get tired of it. I really like mixing it up. And it’s just it’s so enjoyable.

Nate Disarro 26:11
I love that. And that that’s truly the power of a social networking and B influence. And thankfully you use it for for good, you know, because I think there’s a lot of people out there that take advantage of that influence and don’t necessarily do evil things with it. But they don’t do anything good with it. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about these, these kind of group dinners, especially, like you said, for two years, we were kind of locked down on doing fun things like that, but also community changing things. Because I’ve always been a big believer that, you know, community and life happens over food. And there’s plenty of other experiences that we do. But nothing really gives us the opportunity to build relationships create communal bonds, like having a meal together. So when you have these dinners, is it the same 5075 People coming every time? Or are you creating new pockets of people that now have something in common together?

Kevin Shalin 27:09
Well, for this the most recent one, I have a private group of about 150 people that they a lot of these folks come to my dinners, but I always post it on my blog, anyone can show up. But through the years, you know, I would say at least 75% of the people attending they’re regulars. One of the reasons is it sells out these dinners sell out in about 10 minutes. And so they know like if I want to take it I gotta jump on it. But I really love when someone new shows up because that can get kind of get them immersed in what what I’m doing and what we’re trying to create. And food is the great unifier I know that sounds kind of cliche and sappy but it’s true. It’s it’s it’s always appealed to me. And I’ll give you an example like so the first dinner we did coming back from COVID. Last Sunday is at Bruton barley, one of my favorite new restaurants, I think it’s one of the better restaurants in this area period, not just new. And we had 52 people there. It could have been bigger, but I just don’t want it to be bigger it gets you lose that intimacy. And it was great. You know, they went above and beyond we had beer parents, we had, you know, we had the whole restaurant it was it was on a Sunday when the restaurants closed. So we had it was a you know, private affair. And the food was great. And that’s, that’s wonderful. But the highlight for me of that evening is the chef is talking about each course. And at the end of the night, I get up and I thank the chef, and I thank everyone for being there. And this chef, Chef, Brian McFadden, he brought out his entire crew that worked that night. And he didn’t just get up there and say, Hey, guys, great job. Everyone give him around. He told stories. And it allowed the diners to really connect with the restaurant in a way that you just can’t, when you when you walk into a place on a typical night. And to see that these are these are humans. And they care and it is a very difficult thing to pull off a four or five course dinner. It’s not just the food just shows up and think that’s it. Planning hours and hours of planning execution, getting the right ingredients hoping the ingredients get delivered properly, especially nowadays. So I think it was very important for the diners to see that and in to make that impact and intim to just have a better understanding of, of what it’s like when they go out to eat and when they see the humans behind it when they hear the stories. Maybe there’ll be a little less likely to complain on social media or and do it in a man complaint in a manner that’s unprofessional. So that is, that is a really good part of these dinners is yes, bringing people together, but also letting them see the other side kind of behind the curtain.

Nate Disarro 30:12
That wraps up basically my entire life, passion, all in one thing, which is great storytelling, human human connection and good food. And I’m getting more and more jealous of the fact you get to do this all the time. So we may have to just change directions completely, Scott. But I think that’s amazing. And I think, first of all, I need to get in this group. So I can

Kevin Shalin 30:39
do that right after the interview.

Nate Disarro 30:42
But, but I think there’s so much to that, because there’s, there’s a fine line between sort of complaining and critiquing, right, and we complain about something because we don’t have a connection to the person or the entity, we just think they should have done better. We critique when they we know the story, and we know they can do better, and maybe they missed the mark. Yep. And I think it’s really interesting that essentially, that that helps change a culture because, I mean, in my own world, when people complain about the work we do, as opposed to critique it with, with construction, you know, constructive criticism. It sort of deflates you a little bit and makes you not want to do it as much. But when people know the story, and they know the heart behind you, and they give you almost more encouragement that you can do better, or you can maybe add more salt, not as much. So whatever, that that inflates my balloon and makes me feel more empowered, that you know what, they’re right, I can do better, I should do better, they deserve better. And they meant that in the best way possible. In that regard. Do you feel like when you post something, or when you put a story out, it motivates people to do better? Do you feel like sometimes it sort of takes the wind out of their sails?

Kevin Shalin 31:58
I really hope it does. I hope it motivates people to do better. And you know, we spent a lot of this conversation talking, focusing on the reader. But you know, the the respect, I’m trying to earn the respect of the restaurant tours to, I want them to respect what I’m doing. Because that means if if I write something, they’ll read and go, You know what, I kind of respect this guy, maybe he’s right, rather than than them, then then thinking, Oh, this is some guy that’s looking to get clicks. And this is why He said this negative thing. And I don’t know, that takes years. That takes years. And I’m sure there’s still chefs and restaurant tours out there that see my name pop up and go look this guy. And that’s just part of it. You know, I get that. But I think for the most part, I want them to respect me, that doesn’t mean they have to agree with me, that doesn’t have to mean they have to like what I’m saying. But the restaurant tours, to me that really get it are the ones that can accept the the constructive criticism and go you know what, all right, I get it. Thank you for pointing that out. I know you’re not looking to bash me. Because I’m not. I hate writing negative things. Nothing makes me more exciting, excited than when I go out and I eat a piece of pizza. That is amazing. And I can’t wait to get in my car, drive home, click my thoughts and post about it. That makes me that gets me very excited. If I eat a terrible meal, the audience deserves to know about it in some form, but I’m not like relishing in it. And I just I just think it’s important that there we have this mutual respect, not just from me in the reader, but me in the restaurant tour and our whole community. All three of us, me the reader the restaurant tour, we have to be going back and forth. And I really hope that’s something. I think that’s something people say, I really hope it is. And it is top priority. For me. It is very important.

Nate Disarro 33:54
That’s awesome. What’s the biggest challenge you face every day? What’s the thing that you’re like, man? I wish I didn’t have to deal with this piece of it?

Kevin Shalin 34:03
Well, that’s a good question. You know, I don’t like dealing with some of the trolls. It’s very easy to respond quickly and negatively to them. And sometimes I’ll have something written up. And before I push, send, I’ll erase it. Always take the high road always be professional. That’s taken me years to fine tune. I’ve had some moments that looking back. I wish I could have changed and I could have done better. But you can’t you can’t take back the past. You know only can do only can try to do as as good as you can in the moment. And I keep going back to that word professional. It’s just it’s it’s a constant work in progress to to do your best you can to be a leader. I feel like I can be a leader in In this food community and to be a leader, you’ve got to, you know, conduct yourself in a manner that people can respect and, and if you, you know, fly off the handle, it’s easy to do that, no one’s gonna win, I’m going to end up looking bad in the long term. And the restaurant looked bad, and no one wins in that in that. So the things that I don’t like about it, that’s, that is, it’s interesting, because if I don’t like something, I just stopped doing it. That’s the beauty when there’s no money involved, I’m only working on things I want to do, I’m sitting in front of you right now, because I’m excited to do this, you know, like, I’m going to do exactly what I want to do. And if I don’t feel comfortable with it, I’ll move on to something else.

Nate Disarro 35:45
That’s great perspective. And, you know, I think, you know, in some regard, you’re lucky to be in that position, but in others, you’ve put yourself there on purpose. And I think that’s really awesome that you’ve, you’ve been able to kind of get to the point, at least, you know, and it’s like that for all of us. It’s a kind of constant state of growing and maturing in different areas. But especially I think, with social media, because people can hide behind it. You know, even though their name may be attached to a comment, and you want to fire back at him because they were troll or they were saying something rude or wrong. taking the high road is always the safe, and better thing to do.

Kevin Shalin 36:21
Yeah, when you get involved with with people online, in the moment, it might feel great. But I always tell myself, when I wake up tomorrow Am I got to be proud of that, that interaction. So any and again, seven, eight years ago, I wasn’t like this, I’ve really changed through the years. It’s just not worth it. And in the end, you just want to, you want to try to be as positive as you can, because you’re trying to lift people up. But, you know, going back to the social media angle, and I, I think people, they just want instant success. Everything we’re talking about today has taken years and years to develop. It’s grown organically. And so many bloggers influencers phase out, because they think they’re going to start something, and that every like 1000s and 1000s of people are going to follow them and every now and then that happens. But for the most part, it takes years of just grinding and grinding. And seven, no one knew who I was, for the first five or six years I lived in the five years, no one knew who I was, you certainly didn’t, no one knew I wouldn’t be doing podcast, it takes work and work to be able to just have the opportunity to be sitting and have a conversation with you. I never take that for granted. And anytime someone reaches out to me with help. I always remember when I was at that stage, and Houston, and I would reach out to these big food writers that I was nervous about contacting and you know what, they never, never responded, they never helped. And I never forgot that. And I try my very best if anyone has a question anything that I respond in a timely manner and that that’s important to me.

Nate Disarro 38:08
Well, that’s a perfect segue into my next question, which is essentially, you know, I love to be able to provide tips and tricks for people who may be interested in starting their own platform or their own sort of side channel. If, if you were having to start today from square one, what would be your best advice,

Kevin Shalin 38:26
pick something, pick a channel that you really connect with and that you feel comfortable with? And see where it blossoms from there. And don’t let people make fun of you. Yeah, I’m sure people still make fun of me like man, Facebook is for dinosaurs? Well, we’re reaching a lot of people. And I’m proud of that. And that’s where I feel comfortable with. Do I wish I at times felt more comfortable on Instagram? Yeah, I mean, I, I’m on Instagram, and I just don’t connect with it. So my advice would be finding an avenue and medium that you really are comfortable with getting your voice across to the audience. And develop that and see where it goes. And and from that point. Also, just immerse yourself, do as many different things as you can. And some of them you’re going to hate something, you’re going to love something, you’re going to look back and go I cannot believe I did that half the things I did 10 years ago, I look back. Why did I waste my time doing that, but you’re just building you’re building. And that’s what I would encourage folks to do. Do something you really love. Do it. For the enjoyment. Don’t do it for the appeal of reaching a lot of people. Again, the first year I did my blog, I reached like literally four people. Seriously. I didn’t care because I was I was writing. I was I was going to these events, and that’s all that mattered to me. And everything else came eventually because I stuck with it and so many people don’t stick with it. They do it for about four or five months. Oh I don’t have a fight. 1000 followers what? I thought this was the internet. I thought I could snap my fingers. No, you gotta grind. And. And that grind also has to be kind of fun, too. That helps. So I love

Nate Disarro 40:11
the mentality that an overnight success started five years ago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, people.

Kevin Shalin 40:19
I mean, you got all these followers yet that if I could show I’ll show you the stats of how long it took. It took me to build that basically like 10 people a day. That’s if you’re fortunate. And, again, that just takes a tremendous commitment. It’s, it’s the interactions going back and forth. It’s answering people taking that time. It’s not work to me, I really enjoy it. And then so many things come from that, writing gigs, freelance gigs, interviews, you know, dinner events, just just just so many layers to it. And it’s constantly changing. And that’s what just kind of keeps you motivated.

Nate Disarro 40:59
So we’ll talk a little bit about the Arkansas food scene. You know, I’m fortunate I get to travel quite a bit. Sure you’ve been around, you know, Houston, great foodie town. Now Boston’s got great places to eat. I was just in Charleston, amazing food in Charleston, Italy. I mean, you know, like, I’m very fortunate that I don’t go too long without being around great restaurants. And like we said earlier, we both been here for about 10 years, and actually the food scene change here quite a bit in those 10 years. Time talk to me a little about the comparison of the Central Arkansas food scene to you know, Boston, Houston, other places like what do you see from a quality perspective or unique atmosphere perspective?

Kevin Shalin 41:44
Yeah. So again, you gotta go back to the size. So we’re, we’re a small town 200,000 in the area, you know, six 700,000. I think if you make a decision to live someplace, you need to embrace it and see, and see all the wonderful things you because you chose to live there for a reason. That’s the way I kind of went into with Little Rock. But for our size, I think we’re doing pretty darn well. Honestly, there is a lot to be proud of, in our food scene here. The thing that really stands out from to me is you’ve got these group of restaurants let’s maybe 10 or 15 of them that have been around for 30 plus years, the trio’s the brave News of the World, The Black Angus, which I just popped in for lunch yesterday, faded rose dozy place, these places are still as popular as ever. And when I write about them on the blog, people still go crazy for these places. And I love that. I think it’s just an important to go crazy over a place that has been open for two years as it is new kid on the block that gets all the pub everyone’s you know, this is this, and this is that. And that’s great. I love reporting on it all. But I’ve always really been impressed with our food community with how they’ve embraced these restaurants that have been here for a long time. And these restaurants, the reason they are still in existence is is one word, it’s consistency. trios is not reinventing the wheel, they’re not going to be confused with upscale fine dining. But I’ve never had a bad meal there. I’ve never had a bad meal at the pantry. I’ve eaten at the pantry. I don’t know, probably 100 times in my 10 years, never had a bad meal there. I had bad meals everywhere. And their consistency that they show is why they are so embraced by our community. I love that. But I love our new restaurants. I wish we had more chef driven places. If I had to be completely honest, I feel like there is this shift now. And I’m sure COVID has not helped with this, where we’re going to fast casual, more now more than ever. But I would love to see a couple more chef driven restaurants pop up. I think we’re going to have one next year in George’s in the heights on Kavanaugh. But once it does get built, I’m cautiously optimistic that that might be one of those chef driven restaurants to get excited about.

Nate Disarro 44:31
Alright, well, I have to ask because everybody wants to know if you had to pick up a very and here’s the thing I kind of categorize experiences with restaurants into three different categories. One is atmosphere. Two is of course the cuisine, the food, the preparation, the dish, the taste, and then three is the chef or the staff or the people that make the restaurant what it is. So I’ll give you three answers. Okay. I got, but what how would you answer based on those three categories?

Kevin Shalin 45:05
Well, I always kind of think of it in terms of almost like price point and and like, you know, upscale or just more of a neighborhood type joint. So if I’m going like where you can just show up in T shirts and short shorts, I love and it’s not even really technically a restaurant. But I love going into K Hall produce and grocery store. And they have a little area where you can counter area you can walk up and you can order hamburgers and, and fried catfish and fried pork chops. And I love that you can just stroll up there in, you know, Order anything you want. And then you can do a little grocery shopping. And you’ve got like such an essence of that neighborhood there and that place has been there. I don’t know for 50 years at least. So going back, it’s another historical place. I love K Hall. I love feeling the vibe in there and being around folks and just that that energy. So K Hall definitely stands out. For me. I love the hidden gem and there’s not a more hidden gem. I’m going to give you two hidden gems in giving you for playing the rules. The ultimate hidden gem from me, I love Mexican food. I’m from Houston is El ProLink. A, I’ve been writing about them for years. They’re tucked in off Ronnie Param. And that is the ultimate hidden gem. I think it’s the best Mexican food restaurant in the area.

Nate Disarro 46:39
Now is it more authentic Mexican or Tex Mex style?

Kevin Shalin 46:42
I would say it leans more kind of more towards Tex Mex. Best enchiladas great burritos. And they’ve expanded. I think they used to get angry at me when I’d write about them because they’re this tiny restaurant. But now they’ve kind of doubled in size. So that’s that’s good. One place I love recommending to people is Milford Track. I could give you the give you the address and you still wouldn’t be able to find it that’s how much of a hidden gem it is. But they used to they still do they make their own pasta to order that what What place does that they make pasta to order like from scratch. That’s a great story to me that that’s exciting. Those are the those little things that I really love reporting on. And finally, I have really been impressed with Allsop and Chapel in, in downtown here. And one of the reasons that I’ve been so impressed is when I first went there, I’m going to say almost probably four years ago now three, four years ago, I didn’t have a good experience and had a bad piece of fish just wasn’t great. And I didn’t go for about a year. And that’s a thing about the blog that I really like is that I kept listening to people, they kept posting like I’m having a great meal. I’m having a great meal. Well, after you’re here, you know 50 People who you trust and respect, speak glowingly about a place I’m ready to get back on board and see what maybe it was a bad night. Maybe they’ve had it maybe they have a different chef now. And it’s turned into one of my favorite restaurants had that same experience happened at Shell Bochy, where I didn’t have a good experience at first. I think it’s, you know, both those places I would put my top five right now. I can’t imagine having a better steak and little rock than also their filet is is fantastic. It’s a great experience. It’s it’s an upscale vibe, but it’s still a little rock so it’s not to hoity toity but those are the places that I love that you know maybe I didn’t have a great experience the first time around I listened to the audience. They they told me to give it another shot and I did and it’s been great ever since so I think I ended up giving you four I can go on

Nate Disarro 48:59
I’ll take I’ll take the long list. Yeah, I’m still I love to obviously eat out and try different foods you know half the time I feel like I keep going back to the normal places that you just kind of know and trust it’s funny my probably favorite just go to dish in Central Arkansas is and it’s at both cheers and Samantha’s you know where I’m going?

Kevin Shalin 49:24
Yeah, I know you’re going

Nate Disarro 49:29
but it’s I don’t know. It’s just it’s so good. It’s always fresh. And it’s always just on point and consistent. Like you said, I mean the consistency is always there. So it’s yeah, it’s it’s got to be one of my top probably three dishes in Central Arkansas, which is ironic, but

Kevin Shalin 49:46
it’s such a well executed dish. It’s beautiful and it tastes great. And yeah, the thing about restaurants like cheers you get in such a zone with what you like and the last time I was there with my youngest daughter I forced myself to order something other than the salmon salad. I like force myself to do it just so I could be a little more well rounded writer about restaurants. But yeah, it’s hard sometimes that’s hard for me when, you know, I’m like a regular diner, I just wanted some things you like you like what you like. And I’m constantly trying to educate the audience and write about different dishes. And I’m, I don’t order what I love sometimes. And that’s kind of tough, it’s a little bit of a challenge, but to your point. And it’s one thing that I’ve really tried working on is that one of the things I’ve figured out early on, is that we are so set in our ways as diners in in. And part of that is we don’t like to go more than 10 minutes from our house to eat out. I want to encourage people to get out of their comfort zone, go to neighborhoods that they don’t necessarily go to a lot. It’s okay to cross the river. That goes for people in North Little Rock to not just little rockers who say I’m not crossing the river, Cross River, Argent is 10 minutes away. So let’s throw the excuses to a site to the side like like, there’s no excuse that this place is too far. I want to part of the goal of building a community is to get people to go to places to be aware of restaurants that they didn’t know existed, and to go to them. And if I can be a leader in an exam and send an example like, oh, man, I didn’t. I’ve been living here all my life. I didn’t know about K Hall. Well, if this guy’s eaten there, and it looks like a really good man, I like that. Look, that’s a good look, converter, let me go see if I can try it Well, in my mind, all you have to do is go to K Hall once and you’ll be hooked. So if I can be that person to motivate others, that that is that’s as good as it gets.

Nate Disarro 51:53
I love that. And I’ll jump on that bandwagon. I just got back from Italy, which was an amazing trip. But, you know, in Florence, Italy, for example, you walked everywhere. I mean, driving is not really an option and to walk 15 minutes, you know, three quarters of a mile across the town, you don’t think twice about it. Yeah. And you explore along the way. But, you know, we’re such a convenience driven society here, in Little Rock in Central Arkansas, in most of America. You know, it’s not until you really get into the big urban communities that, you know, you can choose to walk or take an Uber drive or whatever. And it forces you to explore more. But I think you’re exactly right, you know, we get so convenience driven, we don’t want to leave our neighborhood, that extra 510 minute drive, it’s just, if I

Kevin Shalin 52:45
hear someone telling me they will not go west to the missus of Mississippi, you know, to go out to eat, or vice versa, that or I’m not gonna go south to 630 those types of comments, you want to know things that piss me off? It’s those types of comments were unlike it’s right there, y’all. And can you imagine if you get you and five of your friends to go, you can change a business’s livelihood. That’s important, we need to do that. And I want to shed light on these places and make people aware that we have them here. There are so many places that people have no idea exist, they’ve been living here their whole life, they have no idea exists. Well, I’ve spent the last 10 years finding these places, I’m going to continue to do that. Because I love it. And I want to let people know about them that that is again, I go back to the word rewarding. A when I go into off baseline and find a taqueria and and and write about it. And then I get people that are not used to traveling to that neighborhood. That’s where it’s at. for me. I really love that.

Nate Disarro 53:56
Well, I think your blog is doing it your your content you’re putting out you’re getting awareness out, I think it’s all a great thing if I could encourage any restaurant owners that are listening here, beyond these apps that people can download. And even if you don’t need a reservation necessarily, it gives people that mentality of what’s out there. Because you know how many times we said what, what should we eat tonight or you know, whatever. And you just need that motivation. And so I’m sure a lot of people end up seeing your posts and that makes a decision for them. But we need something to help instigate that decision making process. So I’d love to see more places in Central Arkansas just be on the apps, you know, be make it easier for people to find you.

Kevin Shalin 54:38
Yeah, it’s a big deal and restaurants need to step up there. Most restaurants are terrible on social media. And they need to realize that it is of the utmost importance if they want to connect with your resume to the audience. I see it all the time restaurants think they can open and they’ve got great food and that’s enough. It’s not enough you need to value reaching out potential customers more than just about anything. If I always tell chefs, you can make the great the best dish in the world, and if no one knows about it, what’s the point? And social media is, is front and center. And there’s just so many places that don’t value it yet. I don’t know what it’s going to take for them to do that. But I guess that will change over time. Hopefully it will.

Nate Disarro 55:22
Alright, well, all this talk about food, I’m getting hungry. It’s getting close to lunchtime. Before I go into kind of our final little quick hit questions. Yeah. Is there anything else that you want to talk through that that you know, is important to you and kind of your journey through food writing and the content you put out, I just,

Kevin Shalin 55:40
I would like to encourage people to be supportive in not just of what I’m doing. But other there are great bloggers in this town that are doing it, that were starting out like me, many years ago, support them, encourage them, follow them. Write comments, and, you know, write comments to restaurants and encourage them to, to do to do more things to do better things. They need that motivation as well.

Nate Disarro 56:07
Awesome. All right, few quick questions, and we’ll go find a tasty lunch spot. What’s the best or latest book you’ve read or received?

Kevin Shalin 56:17
Oh, the best book I’ve, I’m a sports guy. And I forget the name of it. Now I just read it. But it’s the history of pitches in baseball. And you learn about every pitch that’s ever been thrown all the intricacies. And I just kind of been fascinated by that. And that’s that’s the baseball nerd in me. So I can’t remember the name of the book. But if you ever want to know about every pitch, it’s ever been thrown knuckle balls and splitters and sinkers. There’s a book out

Nate Disarro 56:48
there for you. Interesting. Yeah, very cool. What is part of your daily routine that you have to do?

Kevin Shalin 56:55
daily routine, a big part of it is I usually spend an hour hour and a half, maybe two hours at a local coffee shop and doing my writing that is especially developed because of when COVID I was kind of locked in the house. And now I just want to get out I love that energy. I love being in and it’s just easier for me to work and write being in a coffee shop. So you’ll if you see me out and about it’s usually at a coffee shop. I rotate just because I like to spread the love gizmos Nexus Fidel and company those mugs. Those are the places I like to work. Love it.

Nate Disarro 57:32
What is the best piece of advice you’ve either given or received?

Kevin Shalin 57:37
excuses or for the week I remember when I was just out of college and I had this office space type job. One of the sales guys I was trying to get out of doing something he’s like shaylen Excuses are for the weak. And I think about that quote all the time. Like you just gotta power through. You don’t need to hear the excuses. And just do what you need to do. And and, and don’t make any excuses.

Nate Disarro 58:03
Love it. Do you have any newly formed habits especially coming out of the COVID era?

Kevin Shalin 58:11
Oh, man, ah, besides Wordle I do my dirt I do the daily Wordle I really look forward to that. Gosh, I wouldn’t say I have any new habits. I’m so immersed in this food stuff. I it’s hard to take on other things.

Nate Disarro 58:31
Totally get that already. If you wrote a book or if you could have a big billboard on 630 with a message on it. What would the title of the book be? Or what would the billboard say?

Kevin Shalin 58:40
But if it was on the side of 630 out, you know, I want something that says like eat little rock. You know, I want people to know that embracing our food culture has a far bigger impact than just food. We’re building a community here. And food can shed a light on a city and affect other areas profoundly. I’m a believer in that. But you know, I want people to really embrace our dining scene here and whatever that is, it’s not just restaurants. It’s our local bakers. It’s the bakeries, the cottage bakers, the coffee shop owners, the farmers my gosh the farmers farmers markets. There are so many levels to this that go beyond restaurants and I just want people to to embrace them all in some capacity.

Nate Disarro 59:27
Love your passion for it. All right, what’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for less than $100?

Kevin Shalin 59:33
A juice squeezer and at eggshells. It’s I saw it and I said yeah, how do I not have that gadget? And now I love it. It’s it’s it’s pretty substantially and you can juice a line and it just it’s good. I just thought that

Nate Disarro 59:51
I know you like sports but what about music? Do you have any favorite artists or musicians?

Kevin Shalin 59:55
Absolutely Pearl Jam. I’ve seen them in concert many times. arms have seen them in Wrigley Field I travel to see Pearl Jam. I saw my first Pearl Jam concert in college in Austin in a field that remains open for them. And I still adore them on a more local level. There’s a guy named Parker Millsap. He’s, he’s performed in Little Rock several times just saw him a couple weeks ago at Whitewater. And somehow I lucked into, he’s doing a house concert in a couple of months here in Little Rock. And I’m really looking forward to that I signed up on got on the list for that. So those two are two musicians that I that I just adore.

Nate Disarro 1:00:38
Well, I saved the best for last. We already talked about restaurants but what is your favorite food or dish?

Kevin Shalin 1:00:45
Boy… I love Chinese food. That’s nostalgic for me. We didn’t have we didn’t eat out a lot when I was a kid. But we did. It was Chinese food. So I love a good dumpling. That’s probably my favorite thing. And I just broke the news this morning that three folders. Their second location is about to open in a couple of weeks. And they’re all about the dumplings. I love making dumplings. I love eating dumplings. I love all Chinese food. But if if I’ve got a great recipe I make it home I’ve made for last 20 years. I’m a dumpling I tell if I’m a dumpling whore. I mean like it you know that that goes beyond that every country has a good dumpling, right? You know, you go to Italy they got the ravioli, you go to Poland with pierogi. So I am just I embrace the dumpling format. But potstickers wherever you want to call it. That’s what I love.

Nate Disarro 1:01:39
I love it. Yeah. And I saw that about Three Fold. I think now Westwood rock doesn’t have to come downtown. So they’re happy. Very happy about that. Very happy. Yep. Awesome. Well, Kevin, this has been fantastic. I’m extremely hungry and can’t wait to try some new stuff. But thank you so much for for jumping in here.

Kevin Shalin 1:01:54
Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Nate Disarro 1:01:58
If you like this episode of Titans of Industry, head to contenttitan.co/podcast for more episodes or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an Industry Titan that’s doing amazing things, let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening!

0:03
We are back. And so excited to bring you new episodes of titans of industry. I hope you’re all healthy and thriving, as my team and I are so thankful for the encouragement and support we’ve received surrounding the podcast. And we can’t wait for you guys to hear these upcoming episodes. So to everyone that’s reached out to be a guest, and to those of you that have answered our calls to be on the show, thank you. And to our awesome listeners that hit that play button, you guys are awesome. We’ve put together a new best of episode to give you a taste of some of our favorite moments from past conversations. Some of these conversations have taken place literally all over the world, from the beaches of Malibu, California, to the other side of the world. In Singapore, we are hard at work getting more great stuff ready for you guys. And we have some big things in the works. We’ve got some fun conversations, and we’ve got some extra special content. So make sure to stay tuned on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. And if you aren’t already, my entire team behind the scenes would really like your support by subscribing to the podcast. And it would be really helpful if you can take 10 seconds and leave a quick review. That’s one of the best ways for our podcast and grow. And it means so much to us. So thank you all for your support. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

1:19
Now from Episode 22, Jeff Amrhein, and Jeff Standridge, titans of startup, economic development tends to be about moving jobs and in the traditional sense and economic empowerment is about creating $1 where one didn’t exist before, right or creating a job where one didn’t exist. And we certainly don’t want to forget, and I know, you know, we want to do it in conjunction with with the large businesses because quite frankly, it’s it’s beneficial to them as well. Many of the folks who start out in the entrepreneurial community, or participate in the entrepreneurial community develop skills that are coveted by some of the larger companies. Everyone wants to hire talent that is innovative, entrepreneurial, and what have you. And so we want to do it arm and arm with with the larger businesses as well. It’s intended to be as much inspiration as education. Because one of the key themes there is not just what we’ve experienced over the last 13 years in Arkansas and creating a pretty vibrant startup and venture scene in a place where it was pretty much absent. I mean, there had been great companies built here, but there wasn’t really a vibrant

2:25
Newstart scene. So that part of the message is we could do it, other flyover locations can do it as well. So that’s kind of a big part of it. And then the second part of it. And then there were some key themes in there about the pillars, you have to look at talent, capital, entrepreneurial culture, community and enterprise engagement. Those are kind of the four things we talk about. But I’m going to hand it off to Jeff standards. To talk a little bit about the toolkit, we always talk about start where you are, you know, what we’ve seen across a number of unexpected places is when they’re trying to replicate something that someone else has done, they fall into the trap of thinking they have to have a building. And so they literally start with a building, and they either buy one, they leased one, or in some other fashion, acquire a building. And then they have to spend 80% of their time raising funds to keep the lights on and only 20% of their time fulfilling the programmatic needs of the community. When we started the conductor in Conway in partnership with startup junkie consulting in the University of Central Arkansas, we started with an assessment to assess where exactly are we and so we say start where you are, well, you need to know where you are. So we’ve created the venture ecosystem building canvas that

3:42
provides community builders and ecosystem builders with a tool to actually assess the state of where they are, across those four pillars, talent, culture, community engagement, access to capital, but then also to begin formulating those into what are our top assets? What are our top supporting strengths? Where do we think we can get quick wins, and where are some of the lasting impact things we need to work on down the road. And so that’s our venture ecosystem building canvas. And it really provides the opportunity just like startup junkie did when they came to Conway in partnership with UCI, he was they started with an assessment of our community. And so we took that model and built it into the canvas and a tool kit that can actually be downloaded. It’s a copy of it’s in the book, but can also be downloaded as well start where you are, but where are you trying to go? What are the things you have to accomplish over that next? Let’s call it a five years. And then what must you accomplish in the next 12 months to get 20% of the way there because if you’re not 20% of the way there in 12 months of a five year plan, you’re off track. And then what are those key performance indicators that you that you need to be looking at on an interim basis to determine the outputs the outcomes and what have you that that keep you on track to keep it between the ditches so to speak. So those are two very specific tools that we provide. You know that that we have used ours

5:00
cells that we have helped other people use. And we get, we get quite a lot of good feedback about that. So we didn’t start with a building we started with, with an assessment, that assessment turned into a movement, that movement turned into some people, those people grew. And a benefactor emerged and says, We love what you’re doing. We want to provide you a place. The only thing required for innovation to occur is constraints. I mean, if we don’t have constraints, we don’t innovate. We don’t need to innovate. If there’s no constraint, we’re just fat and happy doing what we’ve always done the way we’ve always done it. And so, you know, what I what I like to suggest is that companies impose some degree if they don’t have constraints immediately, and everyone does. But if they don’t immediately recognize constraints start, start thinking about what if scenarios start doing some risk planning in that regard and thinking about what if, what if the, the another variation of the Coronavirus comes out in it and it shuts us down for an extended period? What are we going to do? Constantly viewing the outside environment and your business through the lens of a risk manager looking to mitigate those things that could cause you to fail, is a really healthy exercise to go through average small business around the country had 27 days of cash on hand, and 27 nights.

6:18
And and, you know, we talk about in our personal expenses and our personal finances, we should have four to six months. Why should we be any different in our in our business? And, you know, so understanding what your breakeven point is and understanding how many days of cash does it take to operate your business? If you didn’t sell anything? If you stopped selling today? How long could you maintain your business before you had to shut the doors and if you want to be successful in a business, you got to realize that your talent and your team is your number one asset. So don’t overlook that build a winning culture, have people on board that are better and smarter than you the a plus talent, you’re going to have to pay them you’re going to have to reward them. But your job as an entrepreneur or small business leader is to build that team that’s going to do amazing things. And then you got to take the greatest gratification from watching them do those amazing things. From episode 23 Heather Vasser titan of music marketing, the first part of 2020 was interesting, just trying to wrap our heads around. Okay, how long is this going to last? We just continued to releasing music, but we can we did not stop. We didn’t stop our release plans, we continued and we thought man, as Empire we are have continued to operate as digital for digital focused majority of I think the industry pivoted to doing whatever they could and so then trying to figure out okay, what then sets us apart? And that I think we’re able to be on the upswing where we can kind of look back at 2020 and go okay, what what did that do for us in a way? How do we excel in that, then also, where did we kind of misstep in some places, but I think what 2020 did for a lot of my artists that are either developing or, you know, kind of breaking, essentially, is that it leveled the playing field a little bit because it took the Ailis artists off the road, it took all of the developing acts at major labels. And as an indie label, you know, that it took them off the road and said, Okay, now the music speaks, now the content speaks. And so we let that kind of outshine and continue to push. And that helped, you know, it’s funny, every artist is completely different. I mean, they’re just creative beings, you know, so they’re as different as you and I, as, as anybody else that would walk into a room. And so you have to take every artist and every team completely different. So we did we had some artists that were struggling off the road, they had never been off the road. And so figuring out, okay, what can we fill in this space? With? What can we fill in the gap with, I don’t think you can really cookie cutter it, you know, especially with how diverse our roster is much less all of empires that I think it would be a disservice to cookie cutter it for an artist you really have to take and go, Okay, what are where are easy wins during this time, because nobody knows how to survive a pandemic, and how to get through that. And so what are what are easy wins that we can easily grab and then what are we okay to kind of allow them to be humans through this, you know? Yeah, I mean, it’s funny when I first got in the music business, like video streams didn’t count towards the chart, right? And so that it wasn’t as much of a factor now video has always been a great component and a great asset to have. But then, as I’ve been in the industry, now they do so then they matter. So then create compelling content is even more important. And then as the digital space has just grown, more platforms, you know, tick tock wasn’t around when I first started that was, you know, it was musically and trying to figure that out and then moving, moving to other platforms. So it’s trying to balance the artists narrative, the artists brand, the music narrative that we have, and then marrying that with what that content looks like, across all different types.

10:00
For him, so it really is there. There’s not one specific that moves the needle, I think you have to be very cognizant of what works on that platform. Because what works on one platform doesn’t work on another. There’s no magic formula. I mean, I wish there was, I wish I’ve discovered the magic formula, as I’m sure you do, as well. It’s only when that great idea hits on the authenticity of the artist, that that is probably more of where the magic is, rather than any type of rollout strategy or plan, they, they’re the ones that have to sell it in whatever capacity that is, whether it’s a live show, whether it’s, you know, any type of content, any type of branding, and so that has to feel and resonate with them. Because when it works, it really works. You can’t build on something that isn’t real artists trying to find their voice. And what is that, and it’s so important, and I spent so much time just on the branding side of that just on that side of it, because they have to know and start to understand who they are. Because then that will help them solidify their career, helping establish those pillars outside of the artists with their music is just as important as their music is. So I’m all about adapting.

11:15
Because I feel like when at my time at Universal, we didn’t. I didn’t get to adapt. You know, I didn’t know if what we did worked.

11:23
Because we had such big artists. And I was like, Well, of course it works. But does it work as best as it could. And so here it’s very polarizing, with developing artists, and then you know, even breaking artists of it’s like, okay, you know, when something works and when it doesn’t, but I have the ability and the agility to pivot on a dime, and go okay, well, that didn’t work. So let’s do something else.

11:46
From episode 24, Sarah Catherine Gutierrez, Titan of financial planning, the main piece of my story that landed me into the world of finance, that I think is such a teachable moment, is the people in my life who inspired me and encouraged me to pursue finance, I think so many women don’t see a seat at the table, and they’re not encouraged to take one, we are not actively dealing with our money anyway. So it’s not like, Oh, I was making long term financial decisions in a clear, productive, analytical way. And then now I’m married, and I’m turning that over. I think we go into inertia autopilot, we make passive financial decisions. So they’re still financial decisions, but we don’t make them with thought. And so it could be credit cards, using credit cards and going into credit card debt or, you know, saving a very small amount in our retirement plan or not joining it all. So we’re just not making these proactive decisions. And then, you know, and then we just assume someone, we assumed someone else can do it better than us. Let’s let’s re wire that thinking, oh, yeah, you’re right, I can do that. This is our problem. We cannot we can only talk about money in unhealthy ways. We cannot talk about money in healthy ways. We have made it absolutely acceptable to talk about the new house we bought. I mean, look at it, like look at the humble brags on Facebook.

13:16
We can humble brag about expensive vacations, European vacations about standing in front of our new house that we just bought, you know,

13:25
you know, I’m so thankful I was able to get this new car, right? Like that is all acceptable that we have made it taboo to say I save 10% into retirement and so glad, like I mean, I can imagine like the humble brag. Wouldn’t it be so great if we could humble brag about our retirement and saving, because then you would have peer pressure, then you would have all these people feeling angst. And that is a good thing. We need the opportunity, we deserve the opportunity to feel peer pressure. To save money, we are so willing to auto draft a car payment. We are so happy for the federal government to just take our money out of our paychecks like, is it going to be 1000? Is it going to be 2000? I don’t know. But like just go ahead and take it or health insurance premiums. We will allow so much of our lives to be payment ID. Why can’t we payment ourselves first? Pay yourself first. So we have physicians that come to us living paycheck to paycheck on $800,000 a year, two years after a residency were they making 60,000 a year and we don’t blink an eye because of course they do it without a plan without a structure like we’re no matter how much money we’re gonna we make. We’re going to spend it and so if anybody listening to this hasn’t gotten on to the savings train yet and thinks I’ll save when I make more money. I call BS our brains are working without us consciously knowing these things. And that is why if you set your if you set your budget your system up

15:00
In a way that works best with your brain, then you can save and spend in ways that you don’t feel are depriving. Isn’t that amazing?

15:10
From episode 25, Dwayne Logan titan of film directing, I’ve never met a person that is going to work hard and give you 110%, when they feel like they have no value, you ideally want for crew members to be there, because they have a reason to be there, I want to be here, I want to run down that hill with those keys to help get the shot.

15:32
And so now I just I’m so passionate about that. And I feel like as an ad, I’ve tried really, really hard to make that the reputation that hey, like, if I see Dwayne’s name on a call sheet, I know this guy’s going to bat for me one way or another, and that I’m in good company, and this is going to be a crew oriented, shooting that together, we’re all going to be able to come and knock this thing out. The very fascinating side of that is sometimes you you become such an advocate that especially as an ad, you started to hear all sorts of things that just, hey, Dwayne, we’re running out of, we’re running out of Gatorade over is like, that is so not a big responsibility. But I’m glad that you could come to me with whatever whatever’s on your heart at the moment. And that’s doing that’s doing good business that’s doing the kind of business that I want to be a part of, and I want people to be excited when they see the phone ring, and then it’s got anything to do with my name on it.

16:29
It’s really hard to,

16:33
to work backwards from having the opposite of that reputation. Because he’s, I mean, it’s possible. But man, good luck, you know, once you are known for that person that’s going to beat the crew into the ground, it’s going to take more than you give. And, you know, just as well as I do, there are names that that go along with that, that are synonymous with that.

16:56
And I don’t, I don’t ever want it to be the thing that’s like all you’re about to pull a logon, it’s like, you’ve seen 1001 times, you know, some crazy person with a bullhorn jumps out on set, and it’s like, I need this and I need it now it’s like, but if you know what you’re asking for, you know, it’s not coming anytime soon, because it’s gonna take them some time to do that. And it’s, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to learn, okay, when someone’s had an a fit, and they’re saying I need our department to, it seems so trivial, I just need them to put together that little shelf. And get that in here. Because we did like this when we want to swap it out. And our department says, Okay, it’s in a box, and you say you didn’t want it, but now you want to, we’re gonna tell her to turn around and bring it back, we’re gonna build it, you know, like having been there, they’re gonna go as fast as they can, it’s gonna be a second in or, you know, like, when they say, Hey, we just need I love the word just gonna get thrown around until it’s just a shiny board, we just need a shiny board over there, just get a shiny board over there. And you know, that thing weights and you know, what it feels like when it’s on your shoulder, you know, when that combo stand is connected to it, what it’s like to care that thing, and then you look at the graphs that that guy is going to track through it and get it down to that. It’s like, knowing and understanding what the crew members are actually feeling and having some experience in those departments. And I mean, you can never know it all. But at least having enough to empathize with each of those departments, I think is what what should be mandatory for any leader of any company have know what you’re asking for. And then when you ask for an A, your appreciation for for when you get it is going to be so much more.

18:35
But be like the the ability to have informed conversations and better expectations when you’re asking for things. And just it all gets ironed out so much better. And it really just shouldn’t be this mandatory thing for any leader, to have to have some level of understanding of who he’s eating and what he’s asking them to do. I love how Dr. King said it’s it’s cruel to tell a man to pull himself up by his boots when he doesn’t have any.

19:02
And there are some people that don’t, and really do just need someone to believe in them. And to see that they are willing to do the work, but they just need some assistance. I firmly believe that that really is how it all works, that at the end of the day, it takes a community one way or another. There’s someone that’s that’s got to pause what they’re doing, and look outside of their bubble and see someone else and say, Hey, I’m gonna get involved in that. Even if sometimes it’s for

19:33
less than pious reasons, but there’s there’s just this handshake that happens from human to human, it really gets to go.

19:43
From episode 26, Gina scarpulla Titan of production, not only did we launch a brand new streaming service, we did it in the middle of a global pandemic, while working from home and

19:58
the team I mean it

20:00
It comes down to it starts with a team, right? Like you have the best team you have everyone is rowing in the same direction everybody is pushing toward the same goal. There were challenges as there is with anything. None of us had done this before. This was new. This was something that we were all figuring out as we went along. And we had all the right people in the right places to make decisions and problem solve and just keep moving forward. And I think that was the big thing for all of us was it was one foot in front of the next, and just keep moving forward, no matter what kind of came our way. We just kept going toward that goal of getting getting it launched and getting it out into the world. And I think everybody’s also really proud of the product. And when you’re proud of what you’re working on. And when you are invested in what you’re working on that comes through. Everybody was personally invested and wanted this to succeed and want people to be excited. I mean, it’s

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it’s still it’s crazy that people come up and they’ll say when they find out I work on Discovery, plus, Oh, I love that I this this show is amazing. And I use your product. Same thing with Cirque we. And it still boggles my mind that that we get to touch that many people and do something like that that is part of people’s day to day life, we get to come into their homes every day. And people take the time to watch the stories that we tell and watch what we put out. And that means a lot to all of us. It’s not does not go unnoticed. We’re only six months into this, the launch of discovery plus,

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every time we do things, we learn a better way to do it from the time before we learn how to create efficiencies, and we learn how to make make something even better than it was even six months ago. And I look back at some of the processes that we put in place because we had to build all new processes for this. All new ways of naming things, organizing things, communicating things, you’re talking about the amount of assets for a global launch, like this is massive, and the amount of people that need to access them. So we had to build a system. We liken it to you know, building, building the plane, while you know you’re flying down a cliff, you have to build it as it’s happening. There’s no time to preemptively build something and then test it out and see if it works. And I looked back at even some of the early systems we had six months ago. And we’ve come so far now from that. And that’s all from learning and evaluating. There’s a lot of research that goes on. A lot of our decisions are made based on research, we listen to our customers, we talk about things, we evolve things and want to make them better. In the end, I really see the benefit of being organized, but also figuring out rooms for things to happen as they will. I was someone when I started early on that like to see all steps of the process happen before I did them. And so I would over schedule things. And I would look at things and want to get every single part of the process done from draft script all the way through post production, I wanted to be able to see it. And then I realized that part of the beauty of what we do have both storytelling and production and marketing in this sense, whether it’s traditional marketing, branded entertainment, or even just sharing a story on a documentary piece, you need to

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schedule an organized enough so that their structure but also leave room for the for the other things to happen. Because that’s when the special stuff happens. That’s when the magic happens is when you’re not expecting it. I’ve gone out on Shark boats before where we’ve had all days scheduled from morning until night, and had to throw out the schedule on day one. And the stuff that happened was things that we never would have expected to happen. I did get chased by a Mako on a inflatable boat during that trip, but that I was not expecting but it was fine. But it’s leaving that room for for life to happen. And for those stories to happen. A lot of the stuff we do is unscripted. And that’s where I find the most fun is letting go enough that I let things happen as they will and it really gives some wonderful results.

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From episode 27 Jonathan gory titan of pain management. A lot of times other physicians will question the research in our field, not realizing that, that the 10% of patients that you couldn’t fix are 100% of our patients. So that leaves us in a little bit of a lurch because

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we are trying therapies on folks who have who are the exception to the rule for every other medical therapy.

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And we don’t always we don’t always do great we don’t always make the change we desire. And some of my most challenging conversations is to sit down with someone and say

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I don’t think that we can make a real dramatic change.

25:00
So in the source of your discomfort,

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but I’m going to be here with you, I’m not going to toss you away or send you somewhere else or keep having you jump from position to position. Let’s figure out what little small changes we can make to get you there.

25:19
I think one specific disease process example is diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

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We are one of the leading states in diabetes in the nation. And we have a lot of patients who have severe foot pain, because diabetes damages the nerves in your feet.

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And a lot of those patients ended up in my practice when I got here. And we didn’t really have an answer for it. You know, we tried a lot of things, I tried things that had not been tried before in the literature at all.

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And some of it didn’t work.

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But there was a new product on the market that was doing a multinational research trial. And they were choosing 15 centers around the world to try that treatment for this disease. And for me,

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one of my passions is to make sure that those treatments aren’t just in San Francisco, LA in New York. And so I was and with my partner, Eric Peterson, we’re really persistent about making sure that little rock was a part of that trial. And that trial has been pretty successful. We just published one year data and we’re working on further data. But that is going to change the way that we treat diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Probably going forward. And we have been fortunate to have a few wins like that. And the other is with a disease called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which is considered the most painful disease known to man. And so

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it’s it’s really been exciting and but it’s really kind of getting together with either my partners locally, or my partners nationally or internationally. And coming up to solutions to really complex problems that we’re all seeing in our individual practices. What I realized about two years into my career is you know, I can go to work, and I can be in a clinic. And I can see 15 to 20 patients in a day and have an amazing impact. And those 15 to 20 Patients are gracious, they’re thankful. They’re appreciative of what I did for them getting people back to work getting, you know, grandparents back playing with their grandkids is great. But there is there are ways that physicians can have much larger impacts. And when I look at our state, which is number two or and has been for the past four or five years number two and opioid prescribing.

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And when I look at a rural state that doesn’t have access to cutting edge, high quality pain care, compared to the places I trained, Manhattan, Atlanta, where you could throw a rock and hit someone who’s a well trained, fellowship trained pain physician.

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I quickly realized that I can if I focus on education, and policy, and recruitment and program building here in Arkansas, if I bring multinational research trials to Little Rock, if I bring in physician partners from four corners of the United States, if I open education programs for doctors in rural Arkansas, that I’m not just having an impact on 20 patients a day, I’m having an impact on 1000s of patients, because the entire of culture around quality of life care is going to change. And once I realized that it was a no brainer. And so I still see patients. I still, you know, I’m wearing scrubs right now and no one can see me but, you know, this afternoon, I’m going to do some procedures on patients to help with chronic pain. But I only see patients about 50% of the time and the rest of my time is devoted to really educating our state educating the physicians of tomorrow, educating the physicians of today and working on policy for UAMS and for for the state and bringing in Hi

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quality research and partnering with other physicians around the world to advance pain care, and make sure that we have access to that right here

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from Episode 28, Monica Millington, Titan of fashion branding. When I was starting a business, you know, I knew I always wanted to do something, but I really wanted it to succeed. I didn’t want it to just be a passion project, I needed it to be, you know, financially viable. And so I was always I didn’t want to rush the process. So I was always looking out for gaps in the market and interesting things that could potentially be innovated upon. And my husband, who’s, you know, he was wearing basically a suit every day. And he in Asia, we have a lot of custom tailors that do a lot of custom work here. And we were joking, you know, what if the tailor made your stuff out of Nike Dri Fit material? And so we talked to the tailor, like, can you do that? And he was like, No,

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the fabric doesn’t work the same way, it would be a disaster. Absolutely not. And I was just like, I’m sure it’s possible. So I started doing my research. And I saw that there’s a few brands in the states that are doing similar type of things like performance dress shirts. And so I was like, it’s already working, why is nobody doing it out here, this is the hottest place in the world. And I started talking to people and got my idea verified, and backed by a lot of people. And I decided to go into product development to see if it was actually possible for me to do it. I started looking into all the people that inspired me that were doing incredible things. And I looked at their path. And you know, they started from nothing as well, like they didn’t they weren’t born with this business or with this idea, or this know how they had to learn it and figure it out. And I so I started looking around and having tons of friends in these corporate jobs that they hated and jobs that they were miserable in, it really hit me that the reason not everyone’s doing it is because people don’t want to do it, they don’t have enough drive or energy to keep on going and figure it out for themselves. And I thought I if I’m not the smartest person in the room, I’m I can be the most driven person in the room. Whenever you hit your limit, you only actually hit 40% of your capacity, you still have 60% left. And I can tell you like that’s 100% True. I think when you really put your head to the metal and you have the willpower, you can actually do some incredible things. I’ve read countless psychology books, which I actually think helped massively with marketing and understanding. It doesn’t have to be a marketing book, per se. If you can understand what makes people tick and how to relate to people and communicate with with people and negotiate with people. I think you can understand marketing and branding for that matter. And so I started thinking when I was building the brand, okay, first of all, where do I position myself, you know, do a competitive analysis, start seeing the comparable brands pop up, and then dive into those brands? And see, how do I respond to this brand? How does it make me feel? Why do I like it? Or why do I not like it? People really trust consistency. It doesn’t even have to be good. But people like consistency, it’s just a sight. It’s a psychological fact about human beings. You know, if you had a friend that was always really, really sweet to you, and then for no reason she’s screaming and shouting and punching the wall, you’d be like, Whoa, I can’t trust you. I don’t understand you. Why are you acting this way and you put up your guard. It’s the exact same thing with brands, people need to know that every time they interact with you or communicate with you, they’re gonna get the same thing every time. I just like to always stay on top of it and always be thinking about this and figuring out ways to apply it to my brand because the people that are going to get left behind are the people who are not treating Marketing and Communications like it’s their full time job.

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So once again, thank you for listening and if you know a titan that is doing amazing things feel free to send an email to Hello at content Titan dot CEO or reach out to us at content Titan on social media, and make sure to subscribe for many more episodes of titans of industry.

0:03
We are back. And so excited to bring you new episodes of titans of industry. I hope you’re all healthy and thriving, as my team and I are so thankful for the encouragement and support we’ve received surrounding the podcast. And we can’t wait for you guys to hear these upcoming episodes. So to everyone that’s reached out to be a guest, and to those of you that have answered our calls to be on the show, thank you. And to our awesome listeners that hit that play button, you guys are awesome. We’ve put together a new best of episode to give you a taste of some of our favorite moments from past conversations. Some of these conversations have taken place literally all over the world, from the beaches of Malibu, California, to the other side of the world. In Singapore, we are hard at work getting more great stuff ready for you guys. And we have some big things in the works. We’ve got some fun conversations, and we’ve got some extra special content. So make sure to stay tuned on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. And if you aren’t already, my entire team behind the scenes would really like your support by subscribing to the podcast. And it would be really helpful if you can take 10 seconds and leave a quick review. That’s one of the best ways for our podcast and grow. And it means so much to us. So thank you all for your support. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

1:19
Now from Episode 22, Jeff Amrhein, and Jeff Standridge, titans of startup, economic development tends to be about moving jobs and in the traditional sense and economic empowerment is about creating $1 where one didn’t exist before, right or creating a job where one didn’t exist. And we certainly don’t want to forget, and I know, you know, we want to do it in conjunction with with the large businesses because quite frankly, it’s it’s beneficial to them as well. Many of the folks who start out in the entrepreneurial community, or participate in the entrepreneurial community develop skills that are coveted by some of the larger companies. Everyone wants to hire talent that is innovative, entrepreneurial, and what have you. And so we want to do it arm and arm with with the larger businesses as well. It’s intended to be as much inspiration as education. Because one of the key themes there is not just what we’ve experienced over the last 13 years in Arkansas and creating a pretty vibrant startup and venture scene in a place where it was pretty much absent. I mean, there had been great companies built here, but there wasn’t really a vibrant

2:25
Newstart scene. So that part of the message is we could do it, other flyover locations can do it as well. So that’s kind of a big part of it. And then the second part of it. And then there were some key themes in there about the pillars, you have to look at talent, capital, entrepreneurial culture, community and enterprise engagement. Those are kind of the four things we talk about. But I’m going to hand it off to Jeff standards. To talk a little bit about the toolkit, we always talk about start where you are, you know, what we’ve seen across a number of unexpected places is when they’re trying to replicate something that someone else has done, they fall into the trap of thinking they have to have a building. And so they literally start with a building, and they either buy one, they leased one, or in some other fashion, acquire a building. And then they have to spend 80% of their time raising funds to keep the lights on and only 20% of their time fulfilling the programmatic needs of the community. When we started the conductor in Conway in partnership with startup junkie consulting in the University of Central Arkansas, we started with an assessment to assess where exactly are we and so we say start where you are, well, you need to know where you are. So we’ve created the venture ecosystem building canvas that

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provides community builders and ecosystem builders with a tool to actually assess the state of where they are, across those four pillars, talent, culture, community engagement, access to capital, but then also to begin formulating those into what are our top assets? What are our top supporting strengths? Where do we think we can get quick wins, and where are some of the lasting impact things we need to work on down the road. And so that’s our venture ecosystem building canvas. And it really provides the opportunity just like startup junkie did when they came to Conway in partnership with UCI, he was they started with an assessment of our community. And so we took that model and built it into the canvas and a tool kit that can actually be downloaded. It’s a copy of it’s in the book, but can also be downloaded as well start where you are, but where are you trying to go? What are the things you have to accomplish over that next? Let’s call it a five years. And then what must you accomplish in the next 12 months to get 20% of the way there because if you’re not 20% of the way there in 12 months of a five year plan, you’re off track. And then what are those key performance indicators that you that you need to be looking at on an interim basis to determine the outputs the outcomes and what have you that that keep you on track to keep it between the ditches so to speak. So those are two very specific tools that we provide. You know that that we have used ours

5:00
cells that we have helped other people use. And we get, we get quite a lot of good feedback about that. So we didn’t start with a building we started with, with an assessment, that assessment turned into a movement, that movement turned into some people, those people grew. And a benefactor emerged and says, We love what you’re doing. We want to provide you a place. The only thing required for innovation to occur is constraints. I mean, if we don’t have constraints, we don’t innovate. We don’t need to innovate. If there’s no constraint, we’re just fat and happy doing what we’ve always done the way we’ve always done it. And so, you know, what I what I like to suggest is that companies impose some degree if they don’t have constraints immediately, and everyone does. But if they don’t immediately recognize constraints start, start thinking about what if scenarios start doing some risk planning in that regard and thinking about what if, what if the, the another variation of the Coronavirus comes out in it and it shuts us down for an extended period? What are we going to do? Constantly viewing the outside environment and your business through the lens of a risk manager looking to mitigate those things that could cause you to fail, is a really healthy exercise to go through average small business around the country had 27 days of cash on hand, and 27 nights.

6:18
And and, you know, we talk about in our personal expenses and our personal finances, we should have four to six months. Why should we be any different in our in our business? And, you know, so understanding what your breakeven point is and understanding how many days of cash does it take to operate your business? If you didn’t sell anything? If you stopped selling today? How long could you maintain your business before you had to shut the doors and if you want to be successful in a business, you got to realize that your talent and your team is your number one asset. So don’t overlook that build a winning culture, have people on board that are better and smarter than you the a plus talent, you’re going to have to pay them you’re going to have to reward them. But your job as an entrepreneur or small business leader is to build that team that’s going to do amazing things. And then you got to take the greatest gratification from watching them do those amazing things. From episode 23 Heather Vasser titan of music marketing, the first part of 2020 was interesting, just trying to wrap our heads around. Okay, how long is this going to last? We just continued to releasing music, but we can we did not stop. We didn’t stop our release plans, we continued and we thought man, as Empire we are have continued to operate as digital for digital focused majority of I think the industry pivoted to doing whatever they could and so then trying to figure out okay, what then sets us apart? And that I think we’re able to be on the upswing where we can kind of look back at 2020 and go okay, what what did that do for us in a way? How do we excel in that, then also, where did we kind of misstep in some places, but I think what 2020 did for a lot of my artists that are either developing or, you know, kind of breaking, essentially, is that it leveled the playing field a little bit because it took the Ailis artists off the road, it took all of the developing acts at major labels. And as an indie label, you know, that it took them off the road and said, Okay, now the music speaks, now the content speaks. And so we let that kind of outshine and continue to push. And that helped, you know, it’s funny, every artist is completely different. I mean, they’re just creative beings, you know, so they’re as different as you and I, as, as anybody else that would walk into a room. And so you have to take every artist and every team completely different. So we did we had some artists that were struggling off the road, they had never been off the road. And so figuring out, okay, what can we fill in this space? With? What can we fill in the gap with, I don’t think you can really cookie cutter it, you know, especially with how diverse our roster is much less all of empires that I think it would be a disservice to cookie cutter it for an artist you really have to take and go, Okay, what are where are easy wins during this time, because nobody knows how to survive a pandemic, and how to get through that. And so what are what are easy wins that we can easily grab and then what are we okay to kind of allow them to be humans through this, you know? Yeah, I mean, it’s funny when I first got in the music business, like video streams didn’t count towards the chart, right? And so that it wasn’t as much of a factor now video has always been a great component and a great asset to have. But then, as I’ve been in the industry, now they do so then they matter. So then create compelling content is even more important. And then as the digital space has just grown, more platforms, you know, tick tock wasn’t around when I first started that was, you know, it was musically and trying to figure that out and then moving, moving to other platforms. So it’s trying to balance the artists narrative, the artists brand, the music narrative that we have, and then marrying that with what that content looks like, across all different types.

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For him, so it really is there. There’s not one specific that moves the needle, I think you have to be very cognizant of what works on that platform. Because what works on one platform doesn’t work on another. There’s no magic formula. I mean, I wish there was, I wish I’ve discovered the magic formula, as I’m sure you do, as well. It’s only when that great idea hits on the authenticity of the artist, that that is probably more of where the magic is, rather than any type of rollout strategy or plan, they, they’re the ones that have to sell it in whatever capacity that is, whether it’s a live show, whether it’s, you know, any type of content, any type of branding, and so that has to feel and resonate with them. Because when it works, it really works. You can’t build on something that isn’t real artists trying to find their voice. And what is that, and it’s so important, and I spent so much time just on the branding side of that just on that side of it, because they have to know and start to understand who they are. Because then that will help them solidify their career, helping establish those pillars outside of the artists with their music is just as important as their music is. So I’m all about adapting.

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Because I feel like when at my time at Universal, we didn’t. I didn’t get to adapt. You know, I didn’t know if what we did worked.

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Because we had such big artists. And I was like, Well, of course it works. But does it work as best as it could. And so here it’s very polarizing, with developing artists, and then you know, even breaking artists of it’s like, okay, you know, when something works and when it doesn’t, but I have the ability and the agility to pivot on a dime, and go okay, well, that didn’t work. So let’s do something else.

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From episode 24, Sarah Catherine Gutierrez, Titan of financial planning, the main piece of my story that landed me into the world of finance, that I think is such a teachable moment, is the people in my life who inspired me and encouraged me to pursue finance, I think so many women don’t see a seat at the table, and they’re not encouraged to take one, we are not actively dealing with our money anyway. So it’s not like, Oh, I was making long term financial decisions in a clear, productive, analytical way. And then now I’m married, and I’m turning that over. I think we go into inertia autopilot, we make passive financial decisions. So they’re still financial decisions, but we don’t make them with thought. And so it could be credit cards, using credit cards and going into credit card debt or, you know, saving a very small amount in our retirement plan or not joining it all. So we’re just not making these proactive decisions. And then, you know, and then we just assume someone, we assumed someone else can do it better than us. Let’s let’s re wire that thinking, oh, yeah, you’re right, I can do that. This is our problem. We cannot we can only talk about money in unhealthy ways. We cannot talk about money in healthy ways. We have made it absolutely acceptable to talk about the new house we bought. I mean, look at it, like look at the humble brags on Facebook.

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We can humble brag about expensive vacations, European vacations about standing in front of our new house that we just bought, you know,

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you know, I’m so thankful I was able to get this new car, right? Like that is all acceptable that we have made it taboo to say I save 10% into retirement and so glad, like I mean, I can imagine like the humble brag. Wouldn’t it be so great if we could humble brag about our retirement and saving, because then you would have peer pressure, then you would have all these people feeling angst. And that is a good thing. We need the opportunity, we deserve the opportunity to feel peer pressure. To save money, we are so willing to auto draft a car payment. We are so happy for the federal government to just take our money out of our paychecks like, is it going to be 1000? Is it going to be 2000? I don’t know. But like just go ahead and take it or health insurance premiums. We will allow so much of our lives to be payment ID. Why can’t we payment ourselves first? Pay yourself first. So we have physicians that come to us living paycheck to paycheck on $800,000 a year, two years after a residency were they making 60,000 a year and we don’t blink an eye because of course they do it without a plan without a structure like we’re no matter how much money we’re gonna we make. We’re going to spend it and so if anybody listening to this hasn’t gotten on to the savings train yet and thinks I’ll save when I make more money. I call BS our brains are working without us consciously knowing these things. And that is why if you set your if you set your budget your system up

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In a way that works best with your brain, then you can save and spend in ways that you don’t feel are depriving. Isn’t that amazing?

15:10
From episode 25, Dwayne Logan titan of film directing, I’ve never met a person that is going to work hard and give you 110%, when they feel like they have no value, you ideally want for crew members to be there, because they have a reason to be there, I want to be here, I want to run down that hill with those keys to help get the shot.

15:32
And so now I just I’m so passionate about that. And I feel like as an ad, I’ve tried really, really hard to make that the reputation that hey, like, if I see Dwayne’s name on a call sheet, I know this guy’s going to bat for me one way or another, and that I’m in good company, and this is going to be a crew oriented, shooting that together, we’re all going to be able to come and knock this thing out. The very fascinating side of that is sometimes you you become such an advocate that especially as an ad, you started to hear all sorts of things that just, hey, Dwayne, we’re running out of, we’re running out of Gatorade over is like, that is so not a big responsibility. But I’m glad that you could come to me with whatever whatever’s on your heart at the moment. And that’s doing that’s doing good business that’s doing the kind of business that I want to be a part of, and I want people to be excited when they see the phone ring, and then it’s got anything to do with my name on it.

16:29
It’s really hard to,

16:33
to work backwards from having the opposite of that reputation. Because he’s, I mean, it’s possible. But man, good luck, you know, once you are known for that person that’s going to beat the crew into the ground, it’s going to take more than you give. And, you know, just as well as I do, there are names that that go along with that, that are synonymous with that.

16:56
And I don’t, I don’t ever want it to be the thing that’s like all you’re about to pull a logon, it’s like, you’ve seen 1001 times, you know, some crazy person with a bullhorn jumps out on set, and it’s like, I need this and I need it now it’s like, but if you know what you’re asking for, you know, it’s not coming anytime soon, because it’s gonna take them some time to do that. And it’s, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to learn, okay, when someone’s had an a fit, and they’re saying I need our department to, it seems so trivial, I just need them to put together that little shelf. And get that in here. Because we did like this when we want to swap it out. And our department says, Okay, it’s in a box, and you say you didn’t want it, but now you want to, we’re gonna tell her to turn around and bring it back, we’re gonna build it, you know, like having been there, they’re gonna go as fast as they can, it’s gonna be a second in or, you know, like, when they say, Hey, we just need I love the word just gonna get thrown around until it’s just a shiny board, we just need a shiny board over there, just get a shiny board over there. And you know, that thing weights and you know, what it feels like when it’s on your shoulder, you know, when that combo stand is connected to it, what it’s like to care that thing, and then you look at the graphs that that guy is going to track through it and get it down to that. It’s like, knowing and understanding what the crew members are actually feeling and having some experience in those departments. And I mean, you can never know it all. But at least having enough to empathize with each of those departments, I think is what what should be mandatory for any leader of any company have know what you’re asking for. And then when you ask for an A, your appreciation for for when you get it is going to be so much more.

18:35
But be like the the ability to have informed conversations and better expectations when you’re asking for things. And just it all gets ironed out so much better. And it really just shouldn’t be this mandatory thing for any leader, to have to have some level of understanding of who he’s eating and what he’s asking them to do. I love how Dr. King said it’s it’s cruel to tell a man to pull himself up by his boots when he doesn’t have any.

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And there are some people that don’t, and really do just need someone to believe in them. And to see that they are willing to do the work, but they just need some assistance. I firmly believe that that really is how it all works, that at the end of the day, it takes a community one way or another. There’s someone that’s that’s got to pause what they’re doing, and look outside of their bubble and see someone else and say, Hey, I’m gonna get involved in that. Even if sometimes it’s for

19:33
less than pious reasons, but there’s there’s just this handshake that happens from human to human, it really gets to go.

19:43
From episode 26, Gina scarpulla Titan of production, not only did we launch a brand new streaming service, we did it in the middle of a global pandemic, while working from home and

19:58
the team I mean it

20:00
It comes down to it starts with a team, right? Like you have the best team you have everyone is rowing in the same direction everybody is pushing toward the same goal. There were challenges as there is with anything. None of us had done this before. This was new. This was something that we were all figuring out as we went along. And we had all the right people in the right places to make decisions and problem solve and just keep moving forward. And I think that was the big thing for all of us was it was one foot in front of the next, and just keep moving forward, no matter what kind of came our way. We just kept going toward that goal of getting getting it launched and getting it out into the world. And I think everybody’s also really proud of the product. And when you’re proud of what you’re working on. And when you are invested in what you’re working on that comes through. Everybody was personally invested and wanted this to succeed and want people to be excited. I mean, it’s

20:57
it’s still it’s crazy that people come up and they’ll say when they find out I work on Discovery, plus, Oh, I love that I this this show is amazing. And I use your product. Same thing with Cirque we. And it still boggles my mind that that we get to touch that many people and do something like that that is part of people’s day to day life, we get to come into their homes every day. And people take the time to watch the stories that we tell and watch what we put out. And that means a lot to all of us. It’s not does not go unnoticed. We’re only six months into this, the launch of discovery plus,

21:33
every time we do things, we learn a better way to do it from the time before we learn how to create efficiencies, and we learn how to make make something even better than it was even six months ago. And I look back at some of the processes that we put in place because we had to build all new processes for this. All new ways of naming things, organizing things, communicating things, you’re talking about the amount of assets for a global launch, like this is massive, and the amount of people that need to access them. So we had to build a system. We liken it to you know, building, building the plane, while you know you’re flying down a cliff, you have to build it as it’s happening. There’s no time to preemptively build something and then test it out and see if it works. And I looked back at even some of the early systems we had six months ago. And we’ve come so far now from that. And that’s all from learning and evaluating. There’s a lot of research that goes on. A lot of our decisions are made based on research, we listen to our customers, we talk about things, we evolve things and want to make them better. In the end, I really see the benefit of being organized, but also figuring out rooms for things to happen as they will. I was someone when I started early on that like to see all steps of the process happen before I did them. And so I would over schedule things. And I would look at things and want to get every single part of the process done from draft script all the way through post production, I wanted to be able to see it. And then I realized that part of the beauty of what we do have both storytelling and production and marketing in this sense, whether it’s traditional marketing, branded entertainment, or even just sharing a story on a documentary piece, you need to

23:20
schedule an organized enough so that their structure but also leave room for the for the other things to happen. Because that’s when the special stuff happens. That’s when the magic happens is when you’re not expecting it. I’ve gone out on Shark boats before where we’ve had all days scheduled from morning until night, and had to throw out the schedule on day one. And the stuff that happened was things that we never would have expected to happen. I did get chased by a Mako on a inflatable boat during that trip, but that I was not expecting but it was fine. But it’s leaving that room for for life to happen. And for those stories to happen. A lot of the stuff we do is unscripted. And that’s where I find the most fun is letting go enough that I let things happen as they will and it really gives some wonderful results.

24:07
From episode 27 Jonathan gory titan of pain management. A lot of times other physicians will question the research in our field, not realizing that, that the 10% of patients that you couldn’t fix are 100% of our patients. So that leaves us in a little bit of a lurch because

24:30
we are trying therapies on folks who have who are the exception to the rule for every other medical therapy.

24:41
And we don’t always we don’t always do great we don’t always make the change we desire. And some of my most challenging conversations is to sit down with someone and say

24:56
I don’t think that we can make a real dramatic change.

25:00
So in the source of your discomfort,

25:04
but I’m going to be here with you, I’m not going to toss you away or send you somewhere else or keep having you jump from position to position. Let’s figure out what little small changes we can make to get you there.

25:19
I think one specific disease process example is diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

25:26
We are one of the leading states in diabetes in the nation. And we have a lot of patients who have severe foot pain, because diabetes damages the nerves in your feet.

25:40
And a lot of those patients ended up in my practice when I got here. And we didn’t really have an answer for it. You know, we tried a lot of things, I tried things that had not been tried before in the literature at all.

25:54
And some of it didn’t work.

25:57
But there was a new product on the market that was doing a multinational research trial. And they were choosing 15 centers around the world to try that treatment for this disease. And for me,

26:18
one of my passions is to make sure that those treatments aren’t just in San Francisco, LA in New York. And so I was and with my partner, Eric Peterson, we’re really persistent about making sure that little rock was a part of that trial. And that trial has been pretty successful. We just published one year data and we’re working on further data. But that is going to change the way that we treat diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Probably going forward. And we have been fortunate to have a few wins like that. And the other is with a disease called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which is considered the most painful disease known to man. And so

27:04
it’s it’s really been exciting and but it’s really kind of getting together with either my partners locally, or my partners nationally or internationally. And coming up to solutions to really complex problems that we’re all seeing in our individual practices. What I realized about two years into my career is you know, I can go to work, and I can be in a clinic. And I can see 15 to 20 patients in a day and have an amazing impact. And those 15 to 20 Patients are gracious, they’re thankful. They’re appreciative of what I did for them getting people back to work getting, you know, grandparents back playing with their grandkids is great. But there is there are ways that physicians can have much larger impacts. And when I look at our state, which is number two or and has been for the past four or five years number two and opioid prescribing.

28:15
And when I look at a rural state that doesn’t have access to cutting edge, high quality pain care, compared to the places I trained, Manhattan, Atlanta, where you could throw a rock and hit someone who’s a well trained, fellowship trained pain physician.

28:38
I quickly realized that I can if I focus on education, and policy, and recruitment and program building here in Arkansas, if I bring multinational research trials to Little Rock, if I bring in physician partners from four corners of the United States, if I open education programs for doctors in rural Arkansas, that I’m not just having an impact on 20 patients a day, I’m having an impact on 1000s of patients, because the entire of culture around quality of life care is going to change. And once I realized that it was a no brainer. And so I still see patients. I still, you know, I’m wearing scrubs right now and no one can see me but, you know, this afternoon, I’m going to do some procedures on patients to help with chronic pain. But I only see patients about 50% of the time and the rest of my time is devoted to really educating our state educating the physicians of tomorrow, educating the physicians of today and working on policy for UAMS and for for the state and bringing in Hi

30:00
quality research and partnering with other physicians around the world to advance pain care, and make sure that we have access to that right here

30:09
from Episode 28, Monica Millington, Titan of fashion branding. When I was starting a business, you know, I knew I always wanted to do something, but I really wanted it to succeed. I didn’t want it to just be a passion project, I needed it to be, you know, financially viable. And so I was always I didn’t want to rush the process. So I was always looking out for gaps in the market and interesting things that could potentially be innovated upon. And my husband, who’s, you know, he was wearing basically a suit every day. And he in Asia, we have a lot of custom tailors that do a lot of custom work here. And we were joking, you know, what if the tailor made your stuff out of Nike Dri Fit material? And so we talked to the tailor, like, can you do that? And he was like, No,

30:54
the fabric doesn’t work the same way, it would be a disaster. Absolutely not. And I was just like, I’m sure it’s possible. So I started doing my research. And I saw that there’s a few brands in the states that are doing similar type of things like performance dress shirts. And so I was like, it’s already working, why is nobody doing it out here, this is the hottest place in the world. And I started talking to people and got my idea verified, and backed by a lot of people. And I decided to go into product development to see if it was actually possible for me to do it. I started looking into all the people that inspired me that were doing incredible things. And I looked at their path. And you know, they started from nothing as well, like they didn’t they weren’t born with this business or with this idea, or this know how they had to learn it and figure it out. And I so I started looking around and having tons of friends in these corporate jobs that they hated and jobs that they were miserable in, it really hit me that the reason not everyone’s doing it is because people don’t want to do it, they don’t have enough drive or energy to keep on going and figure it out for themselves. And I thought I if I’m not the smartest person in the room, I’m I can be the most driven person in the room. Whenever you hit your limit, you only actually hit 40% of your capacity, you still have 60% left. And I can tell you like that’s 100% True. I think when you really put your head to the metal and you have the willpower, you can actually do some incredible things. I’ve read countless psychology books, which I actually think helped massively with marketing and understanding. It doesn’t have to be a marketing book, per se. If you can understand what makes people tick and how to relate to people and communicate with with people and negotiate with people. I think you can understand marketing and branding for that matter. And so I started thinking when I was building the brand, okay, first of all, where do I position myself, you know, do a competitive analysis, start seeing the comparable brands pop up, and then dive into those brands? And see, how do I respond to this brand? How does it make me feel? Why do I like it? Or why do I not like it? People really trust consistency. It doesn’t even have to be good. But people like consistency, it’s just a sight. It’s a psychological fact about human beings. You know, if you had a friend that was always really, really sweet to you, and then for no reason she’s screaming and shouting and punching the wall, you’d be like, Whoa, I can’t trust you. I don’t understand you. Why are you acting this way and you put up your guard. It’s the exact same thing with brands, people need to know that every time they interact with you or communicate with you, they’re gonna get the same thing every time. I just like to always stay on top of it and always be thinking about this and figuring out ways to apply it to my brand because the people that are going to get left behind are the people who are not treating Marketing and Communications like it’s their full time job.

33:44
So once again, thank you for listening and if you know a titan that is doing amazing things feel free to send an email to Hello at content Titan dot CEO or reach out to us at content Titan on social media, and make sure to subscribe for many more episodes of titans of industry.

00:00

I’ve read countless psychology books, which I actually think helped massively with marketing and understanding. It doesn’t have to be a marketing book per se. If you can understand what makes people tick and how to relate to people and communicate with people and negotiate with people, I think you can understand marketing and branding for that matter.

00:18

Hey, it’s Nate Disarro, and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In today’s episode, I sit down with Monica Millington, founder and creative director of traffic a menswear brand that is disrupting the game with wardrobe staples built for life in the tropics. She’s been featured in Esquire, variety and Singapore brides and was a top four competitor on the apprentice. Monica tells us how a girl from Texas ended up starting a business in Singapore. How participating in an incubator program and utilizing mentors were crucial to the success of her apparel brand, and why she believes that sustainable fashion should be more than a trend. We also talk about the importance of a strong brand and how psychology and storytelling go hand in hand.

01:10

Now let’s get to the episode. But before we do, our team at content Titan wants you to know that we understand the challenges business leaders and marketers are facing right now, with moving to a more virtual world. We are experts in taking human connections and turning them digital. From virtual Events and Video presentations to promotional content and advertising. We’re here to help guide you through the process of staying in front of your audience and making your life a little bit easier. People tell us all the time that they are lost and don’t know what to say or do and we exist to help your business continue to move forward, virtually. So if you’re ready to take your business and content strategy, virtual, we’re ready to help. Let’s get your business back to business.

01:57

Now, here’s my conversation with Monica Millington.

02:02

Monica, it’s such a pleasure to have this opportunity to talk to you all the way in Singapore. So I’m interested to dive into the story here. But first and foremost, just give me a kind of rough intro. Tell me who you are and what you do for a living and how we got here. Absolutely, you will thank you so much for having me, Nate. I’m thrilled to be on the podcast. And my name is Monica Millington. I’m 30 years old from Dallas, Texas born and raised. And I you know grew up there a huge texting family went to Baylor University. And by the turn of fate starcrossed, lovers, whatever you want to call it, I ended up falling in love and moving to Singapore, kind of on a whim, which I’m happy to get into a little bit later because I think it’s kind of a big part of my story. And I moved out to Singapore in 2017. And, you know, I feel like I’ve always been a bit of an entrepreneur at heart raised by a very entrepreneurial family. I ended up deciding to start up my own business about two years ago, just pre pandemic era. And I have since launched my business tropic which is a performance menswear line built for the tropical climate of Southeast Asia. And so I’ve been doing that since and basically it quit my day job. And I’ve been doing it full time and hustling and grinding, and getting to know Southeast Asia for the past four years. That’s so cool. I’ve had some connections with people in Singapore and heard nothing but amazing things about it. One of these days, I’ll have to come check it out, maybe come out for a visit and see what you guys are doing out there. But

03:43

so four years ago, you on a whim move out to Singapore. And you mentioned you’ll kind of give us a little backstory on that. So I’m curious how did this all happen?

03:53

Alright, it’s a bit of a crazy story. Bring it on here. A little bit nuts. But I do have to rewind till probably University era when I was at Baylor. And you know, I don’t know if you know much about you know, the South the Bible Belt, but again, raised by a really traditional huge Texan family. And I you know, everyone kind of was doing the same thing, right? It was University job, husband, babies house, that kind of thing. And, you know, I always thought that that’s what my future was gonna look like and I wanted to just do tick all the boxes and do everything that I was supposed to do. And so I was in a long term relationship in college and we do the the ring by spring kind of thing and end up getting married right out of university. And, and, you know, that was one of those really great lessons that I’ll always take with me but, um, long story short, you know, I think getting married very young. You are not really who you want to be yet you don’t know what you’re going to be when you grow up and you haven’t really had time to

05:00

Figure out that that life path and who you are, I didn’t know who Monica was at that point. And, and so sadly, that marriage failed. You know, it was amicable, but sad at the end of the day. And I’m kind of having this whole, like, rethink about my life, like, what am I doing? Like, I’m in, you know, I’m 25 years old, I don’t have a career path that I’m really passionate about. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not financially stable. And now I’m alone and single,

05:30

completely all by myself, like, how do I kind of take life back into my own hands, and start doing all the things that I want to do? You know, and I always had a very ambitious mindset, but I feel like I kind of got lost in like, a fuzzy space where I didn’t really know who I was or what I was doing. And so out of a lot of, you know, prayer and introspection and reading and kind of sitting and thinking about what I was going to do, um, I kind of decided to just follow my heart and I plan a backpacking trip to kind of tick off all of my bucket list items. I’m not to be cliche, but I had just read, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and was super inspired by it, you know, she was an entrepreneurial writer, she got divorced and took her life into her own hands and had this amazing adventure that ended up giving her this incredible life that she had always wanted. Um, and as a fun twist of fate, while I’m on this trip, and you know, exploring everything and figuring out who I am and what I want. And my childhood sweetheart reaches out to me, it slides into the Facebook DNS. And you know, I actually had met this guy, when I was 14 years old on a family holiday. And I mean, our families were there, it was like, it was super innocent. It was just a little like week long holiday romance, but we really, we never lost touch. And we were really never able to shake each other off. And we’ve always kept up over the years and done these big catch ups about you know, deep life chats, what do you want out of life? What are you doing? And he miraculously was living and working in Singapore. So he was like, Hey, what are you doing? Like, what’s up. And so we ended up facetiming. And that spurs on this, you know, crazy romance that ends up just kind of exploding into firecrackers. And he convinces me to actually move to Singapore. So from there, I make the leap. And I moved to Singapore, kind of not really knowing what’s going to happen. And you know, I think, as you make mistakes in life, and you go through trials and errors, you learn so much more about yourself every time. So I think 26 year old Monica making these decisions, versus 22 year old Monica making these decisions were two very different people, and had a very different idea of what they wanted out of life. And so after that, you know, I think just having a life partner who lifts you up and allows you to blossom and be who you want to be. That’s actually what gave me the confidence to start my own business, which had always been a long term dream of mine, since I was a little girl since I knew what the word entrepreneur meant. And I think Finally, having that confidence in someone who was empowering you and lifting you up, gave me the confidence and the power to be who I wanted to be and do what I knew I was capable of doing. So once in Singapore, I worked a corporate job for a bit. I didn’t understand the culture, it was the complete opposite side of the world from where I’d been born and raised and brought up I mean, I, you know, I didn’t understand anything about the culture. I don’t think I could have even picked out Singapore on a map before I moved out here.

08:37

Don’t tell you most, probably that way. It’s it’s a very small country. Yes, yeah. So I learned that it’s its own tiny little island in the middle of Southeast Asia. And I worked corporate for a year to get you know, the lay of the land and to really understand what I was working with. And on my year anniversary at work, I put in my notice, and I left to start up my own company, which at the end of the day, ended up being tropic and I’ve been doing development for the brand and going live with the brand for the past two years. That’s awesome. So much to unpack there. I’m sorry. I know I like to warn people before I tell the story, because it’s a lot in a short amount of time, but I love it. I mean, that’s that’s who you are. And that’s what’s brought you to where you are today. And I think there’s there’s a lot of lessons to be learned there. One of those being you, you mentioned you, you’d kind of always want to start your own business you didn’t feel empowered to do so you didn’t know that that was something you actually could do. So I’m kind of curious, I want to jump into this idea of launching a business.

09:39

First of all, where did the idea for tropic come from? And then second, how did you decide? I’m just gonna do this, I’m going to start this I’m going to make it happen. And we’re going to get this thing out into the world. Well, first off when I was starting a business, you know, I knew I always wanted to do something, but I really wanted it to succeed. I didn’t want it to just be a passion project. I needed it to be you know, financially viable.

10:00

And so I was always, I didn’t want to rush the process. So I was always looking out for gaps in the market and interesting things that could potentially be innovated upon. And so it was just a normal commute. I mean, I don’t know if you know anything about the climate in Singapore, but it is hot. It is, you know, about 100 degrees or so every single day with 90% humidity.

10:24

Right on the equator, right? Yes, like right on the equator. So it’s about as hot and humid as you can get. And with that, it’s a super, super corporate cities, state, city, slash country, whatever you want to call it, it’s both. And so you’re wearing these stuffy jackets and dresses and you know, carrying these huge heavy work bags every single day. And by the you know, you spend all this time getting ready. And by the time you show up to the office, you are a melting puddle, and you have to go and fix yourself back up again, spray little deodorant back on. And but I kept saying like, Oh, my gosh, I wish I was wearing Lululemon right now. And my husband, who’s, you know, he was wearing basically a suit every day. And he in Asia, we have a lot of custom tailors that do a lot of custom work here. And we were joking, you know, what if the tailor made your stuff out of nike dri fit material? And so we talked to the tailor, like, Can you do that? And he was like, No,

11:27

the fabric doesn’t work the same way it would be a disaster. Absolutely not. And I was just like, I’m sure it’s possible. So I started doing my research. And I saw that there’s a few brands in the states that are doing similar type of things like performance dress shirts, and and so I was like, it’s already working, why is nobody doing it out here, this is the hottest place in the world. And I started talking to people and got my idea verified and backed by a lot of people. And I decided to go into product development to see if it was actually you know, possible for me to do it. So that’s really how tropics bond. And, and getting started is another story right mentally, personally. And I think, you know, I was raised by parents with a very open mindset when it came to this. I’m very fortunate and that I was never told what to do, what university to go to, or even if I had to what job to get, you know what career path to take, or this is how you make money. I was always asked, What are you interested in? What do you like doing? What do you want to do? And whenever I had that conversation with my parents, you know, they would enable me to do any of those things. If I liked painting one summer, they put me in a painting class. If I wanted to open a I remember one summer I made skincare scrubs out of like salt and oil and stuff. And they took me to the shop to go buy all this stuff so I could sell them to my friends and neighbors. I wanted to learn how to sew. So I learned how to make clothes and shirts and handbags that would sell them to my schoolmates. And so I was always really lifted up in that area. No, I think becoming an adult, and maybe not being in the happiest relationship, I didn’t personally have a lot of confidence. I mean, growing up, I never felt like the cool kid. I never felt like the most fashionable or confident or pretty or anything like that. So it’s not like I was just the super confident I can do whatever I want kind of thing. And I really didn’t have that. And so I kind of just thought, Oh, you know, that’s not for me, you know, my little business ventures and freelancing adventures, never really panned out too much. So I kind of just thought I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough. Um, and you know, I think, you know, being divorced, young, that was actually the big thing that really spurred me on and made me question all of those preconceived notions about myself, when I got out of that and started realizing, I am smart, I can do this, I don’t need to else to tell me if I’m capable of doing something or not. Or if I’m qualified to do something or not. I started looking into all the people that inspired me that were doing incredible things. And I looked at their path. And you know, they started from nothing as well, like they didn’t they weren’t born with this business or with this idea, or this know how they had to learn it and figure it out. And as I started looking around and having tons of friends in these corporate jobs that they hated and jobs that they were miserable in, it really hit me that the reason not everyone’s doing it is because people don’t want to do it. They don’t have enough drive or energy to keep on going and figure it out for themselves. And I thought I if I’m not the smartest person in the room, I’m I can be the most driven person in the room. And I can sure as hell like keep moving through the crap and the stuff weighing you down and the difficult times. So I knew that about myself from that. So you know, my mantra in life is why not me? Why couldn’t it be me? Why can’t I be the person doing that? Why can’t I start up this business? Why can’t I find investors? Why can’t I make the best shirt in the world and I’ve done

15:00

really driven all of my decisions going forward, even when it gets hard and I face you know, rejections and I face roadblocks. I just think that other successful people have gone through this and worse, so I can absolutely do it. I love it. You probably can’t see through the camera, but you gave me chills, you got me excited.

15:21

I love everything you just said, there’s so much good stuff in there. And you’re exactly right. Why not me? Why can I not be the person to do this to solve this problem? And, you know, when we jump back to the business conversation, why you started tropic, you saw a problem that wasn’t being solved. And you saw something where there’s an opportunity, and that opportunity took hard work, grit, innovation, thinking of doing something that other people can’t do. So starting a business of any kind, even if you know exactly what to do is difficult. There’s a lot of things to kind of figure out especially in a foreign country that maybe you don’t know all the local laws and the access and the language barrier, the dialect and accent barrier. Oh, yeah. So there’s so many things that go into that. And and I’m curious, how did you figure out? or How did you kind of go down the road of not really knowing what to do? And now all of a sudden, you’ve got a business that’s growing and doing great things?

16:21

Well, I think, you know, the ultimate test was being plopped in a country on the literal opposite side of the world from everyone you know, and love, and being told to, you know, make something happen out of nothing. And that was just like, Okay, if I can do this, I can really do anything. And for me, I’m, again, I may not be the the genius that can see all these numbers and analytics and can prove to an investor that this financial model makes sense. But I can work a room. I mean, I’m from a very chatty family, like I said, I can talk to people, I can make them feel good about themselves. And I can hold my own in a conversation. So for me, my secret weapon was networking and meeting everyone I could, I was talking to my husband at dinner outside on a patio. And this girl started playing with my puppy. It was like a dog friendly restaurant. And so we started chatting. And she ended up having a husband who is the founder of a startup here, who’s connected me to tons of people out here. And it was literally just because I decided to talk up every single person within my vicinity at all times, the fashion world can be very political and closed off and hierarchal. It’s a cool person’s club, right? Like, you never feel like the coolest person in the room in this world. If I want to speak to somebody or meet an influencer, or see if they want to be my brand ambassador, I’ve literally just slid into their DMS, you know, not heard from them, comment on their pictures, hey, we’d love to chat, check your DMS, like, you just have to really not be scared to be embarrassed, like all the time. And you know, I think people love and respect that. And I’ve made some really incredible connections just off of doing that. And so I just think you have to look at the world as an opportunity of connections. And the more people you meet, the more opportunities that are going to come your way. I was walking through this neighborhood in Singapore. And I looked up and there’s a guy wearing my clothes. And I didn’t know him. And I didn’t know who he was. And I just walked up like, Oh my gosh, how do you Where did you get these clothes? How did you find out about it. And it just, it was just a recommendation from a random friend, because I’m not spending money on online advertising right now. And I rely on word of mouth. And just seeing how that crazy world of connections ends up working out. It just really shows that you need to put your best foot forward in every single relationship that you can possibly have.

18:46

That’s absolutely true. I mean, you know, cliche phrase is your net worth is your network, and 100% or something. But lately, you know, it’s all about who you know, because that leads you from this conversation, this conversation. And ultimately, that’s all you’re trying to do anyways. But the other thing you said that I think is really important, is not being afraid to look like an idiot or to you know, send a message to somebody and never, never hear back because it’s it essentially that’s like little failures along the way are ultimately what lead to successes. And you know, not being afraid to fail not being afraid to try something is success stories that I’ve read about. They all have a mountain of failures and rejections underneath their belt. And I read somewhere it said something really interesting is that stories of success are not actually stories of success. They’re just people that are really good at moving through failures and like that’s it I had a huge rejection last week that cut me to my core and I thought the world was over. And you know, two days later I’m back on my feet. Something else great happens and then that’s something in my rearview mirror like it happens and it happens on a near daily basis and if you can keep moving past

20:00

And you’re better than nearly everybody else in the world. I’ve never met a business owner or somebody that’s done something significant. Who hasn’t failed a significant number of times? Yeah. So what really, what would you say is, as you kind of have gone through this process to this point with your business, what is one of those big challenges that you had to overcome, and ultimately, you know, now you’re better for it, or your business is better for it. and building a brand, I was just like, I want to start small and organic, and I’m going to make a great product, sell it, and then I’ll build the brand from that, you know, organically through my customer base, my people are liking, you know, which is what I’m doing. And I think it’s, it’s working for me right now. And I’ve just come out with a new line that is launching in two days. So no pressure, but I’ve got new stuff coming out. And it’s adding to this brand and adding to this product offering. Now, I entered in this, this pitch competition

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a couple weeks ago, and it was this Vogue innovation thing, and I was really, really excited about it. And I was like, I’m perfect for this. I my brand fits the profile, I’ve hit all the judging criteria. And I ended up not winning it. And you know, I was, I was told I actually got some direct feedback from them. And they’re like, Listen, the look of what you’re doing is great, your products are great, you are great. But your brand lacks depth, which for me, that was like a blow to the heart. I love branding, branding. And marketing is like my bread and butter. So that was like that cut deep. And I actually like I had a bit of a cry about it. I moved around for a day and felt really sorry for myself. And my husband was just like, what are you doing? Who cares? Now you have some very, very valuable information, I’ll do something with it. And it was kind of like that reminder of like, okay, feedback is good feedback from these very important people is even better going into some very important meetings that I have coming up, I’m actually more prepared for those meetings, because I had that feedback. And I had that failure. So now I’m looking at, you know, my old pitch versus my new pitch and my new kind of brand offering. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, this is so much better. I wouldn’t at this point be embarrassed to present to them what I had before. And this meeting is even more important than the last one. So it was actually a gift that I had a little bit of a, you know, a wake up call, and I got to do some really incredible things because of that negative experience. Absolutely. I think you are explaining textbook, how businesses successful businesses kind of go through the process, you know, so you should be encouraged by these things. Because I think you’re doing it exactly right. And that’s the key. You know, sometimes you do have to, quote unquote, grieve a loss, right? Something that doesn’t go your way you need to take a day and beat yourself up, or however you cope with that and agree with that. But let’s go crush it the next day. As you continue to move forward with this brand. You’ve already gotten to do some really cool things. And I want to get into this whole apprentice experience because talk about getting feedback, I would assume that’s kind of the king of getting feedback. So how did you end up on a national television show, especially being based in Singapore? And what was that experience like? Long story short, it was crazy. It was the craziest experience and the craziest thing I’ve ever done at my own corporate job. I had met this founder of a charity here in Singapore. She’s the founder of a charity called love Mills. And it’s a program that supports children with cancer in hospitals in Singapore. And I had just left my corporate job and had not yet started up tropic. So I started volunteering for her as the marketing director part time, and that I met so many incredible people, and, you know, fundraising directors and, you know, donors and agent eyes, and just very interesting people that I never would have met otherwise. And through that experience, and one of our volunteers, her husband was working on the show, and they were still casting for the apprentice. And she came up to me, she’s like, would you be interested in going on a reality show? And I was like, um, listen, I watched the bachelor, I know how to change somebody’s image for the worst. And so I was like, tell me more, but what show was it? And she was like, it’s the apprentice. And I was like, boom, it’s a business show. I had just launched tropic. And I was like, actually, this could be perfect. I mean, I’ll take the call. And about a week later, I’m getting my casting contract and I start filming in three weeks. And it all happened very quickly. It’s known as the toughest apprentice ever. And so for those of you who have watched the previous apprentice or know anything about it, you know, it’s a business competition show. You start with about, I think 16 candidates and you get down to one and one The winner is going to be the apprentice of the big CEO. And historically

25:00

It’s been Trump and Alan sugar.

25:03

This one was chatri sityodtong, who’s the CEO and founder of one championship, which is basically like the UFC of Asia. And so I was kind of like, this is row like I’m going on it mixed martial arts business show. Like, that’s not really me, but why not? And I think doing things that make you uncomfortable are good because you grow from it. And it was the toughest apprentice ever. They actually modernized all of the challenges. So previous seasons, they’d be like, selling popsicles on the street or trying to sell some ridiculous item wholesale. I mean, just silly challenges. And this was like, Great, now create a marketing launch strategy for this Twilio technology that connects users to the customer service reps and figure out how to simplify a business. And I’m like, Okay, first of all, I don’t know what that technology is. So let me quickly learn about what I’m supposed to do. And then you’ve got to, you know, compete and come up with the best pitch which you actually have to pitch every single competition. And on top of that, they have physical challenges. So try not to be intimidated. But I did get in a cage match for jujitsu and I one, I hope there’s pictures or video of that, because I think we’ll need to absolutely I can share that with you.

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I’m not the most intimidating looking, but I was, you know, I was alright, I hung in there. What a fun experience, though. So so what what was your biggest takeaway from this whole experience on the apprentice? I mean, obviously, you’re getting to do some things that most people don’t get to do, and you’re challenging yourself along the way. So what what stands out is a big takeaway. So I think one thing that people may not necessarily see from the show is because the challenges were so big, and in depth and complex, we’re going on this challenge schedule, but we’re also on a production schedule. So we’re filming and we’ve got to do interviews and reshoots, and seeing retakes and everything. So they told us, we’d be working about 16 hours a day. And the truth is, we probably worked 22 to 23, sometimes 24 hours a day. And then there’s no break in between challenges. So one week, filming was actually done in three days. So it looks like we have all this time when we’re doing it in half the time with no hours of sleep. So it sounds like I’m lying. But I’m really, really not. I’m most nights I had about two hours of sleep if it was a good night. So the whole time you’re fitting in naps during the shuttle rides. And when the cameras turn off for five minutes, you close your eyes and lay on the floor. So that being said, we’re doing these crazy challenges. We’re trying to put on a brave face for television, and we’re not sleeping, and you have to keep going because it’s a competition. And if you stop, you’re out. I mean, I think at the end, it became a stamina game, not a brains game. And so the craziest thing is I just saw what I was capable of under intense pressure and restrictions. And I really, really amaze myself, like, I look back at my journals and stuff. And I cannot believe that I did some of the things that I did rewatching the show I see some of these challenges. I’m like, What did I think that in 24 hours? how did how did I do that? And so that’s kind of the running joke now is whenever I encounter something tough, or I’m tired or don’t want to go on, I just think, Okay, get apprentice mode, you know, you can do it. And that’s what keeps me going. And I know that I don’t have an excuse, like I know what I’m capable of, which is, you know, I think kind of a once in a lifetime experience. I mean, when else are you going to put yourself on purpose through that much trauma, without any sort of risk bite arrest? And I think my there’s a book about it written by some Marine, and it’s called, I think the 40% principle. Have you ever heard of that? I don’t think I’ve heard of that one. But I’m interested. Tell me more. Yeah. So you know how Marines go through crazy training, and they’re pushed to their limits. And they’re basically made to drown once a day, and just crazy stuff. And the marine that wrote the book says, whenever you hit your limit, you’ve only actually hit 40% of your capacity, you still have 60% left. And I can tell you like, that’s 100% true. I think when you really put your head to the metal and you have the willpower, you can actually do some incredible things. We’re born that way. Like we have it in US natively. Most of us just never put ourselves in a position to where we have to understand what we’re actually capable of. And I think going through an opportunity or an experience, like you did with the apprentice, and even starting a business because when you’re talking about 22 hours a day, I’m like, well gosh, that sounds a lot like starting a business you know? Yeah, it’s not that different. Yeah. So it’s it’s awesome that you’re able to kind of go through that and and come out on the other side and be like, I mean, I’m still here. It didn’t kill me. So what else can we tackle? What else can we do? Oh, exactly that I mean, I may look dead in the final episode, but I just

30:00

They’re I showed up, I put on a dress and heels and I was at the boardroom. I love it. I love it. I want to talk a little more, you mentioned your passion for marketing and branding. You know, there, there are certainly businesses out there that can’t exist without a strong brand, that don’t have to market necessarily. But most of us if we’re not, if we don’t have some sort of brand, if we don’t have a market to to gain the attention of, then we can’t survive. So when you think about tropic and how you put this out into the world, what was your mindset of this is the brand I want to put together. And for me, the thing I’m passionate about, this is the story I want to tell, right? me my business, what we do here, we’re storytellers. And we take stories of organizations and put them out into the world in a way that connect with people in hopes that the consumer will interact with that brand or that organization. So what was it for you that said, This is the story I want to tell?

31:01

Um, well, I think it kind of goes back to maybe just how I think I’ve always been really, really curious person. I mean, I was the kind of person when my mom was running errands in the afternoon driving me around. It was Mom, how was glass made? Mom? How do they build billboards? That looks really hard? I’m like, looking at a book, Mom, how did they design this? I don’t understand how this was done. So I’ve been asking questions like that my entire life. And then as I grew up and got into, you know, media and starting a business, I really started thinking about how do people consume brands, what makes you like one thing over and over another. And that got me really into the psychology of human beings. So I’ve read countless psychology books, which I actually think helped massively with marketing and understanding, it doesn’t have to be a marketing book, per se. If you can understand what makes people tick, and how to relate to people and communicate with people and negotiate with people, I think you can understand marketing and branding, for that matter. And so I started thinking when I was building the brand, Okay, first of all, where do I position myself, you know, do a competitive analysis, start seeing the comparable brands pop up? And then dive into those brands? And see, how do I respond to this brand? How does it make me feel? Why do I like it? or Why do I not like it, and really starting to, like break it down to a science and pulling down the tangible things and I even get into color psychology, when I choose the coloring. When I first started tropic I hated the color orange, and it ended up being my brand’s color. So I think there’s so much into it. But again, what makes people tick? And what decisions do people make subconsciously when they communicate when they experience something aside from the look and feel that was its whole process, right naming and logo and colors and look and aesthetic, I drew a lot of inspiration from things that I think my target market relate to and things that they like, and men love this my target market love this, how can I draw from that and start creating products and a look and a brand that you know epitomize that. So even down to just having that core inspiration to kind of root yourself on. And then when it comes to communications, I mean, having a very strong voice is something that I’m building with the brand. And you know, within my email, communications and social media, and even my PR and marketing and you know, the publications that I get covered for me, I have a very set

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way that I describe the brand and the way that I describe my products and my voice that I use when I communicate, and voice I mean, my attitude, my persona, when I communicate with them with the brand’s persona is, I make sure it’s very, very consistent. And, and one thing about marketing and psychology and stuff in communications is that people really trust consistency. It doesn’t even have to be good. But people like consistency, it’s just a sight. It’s a psychological fact about human beings. You know, if you had a friend that was always really, really sweet to you, and then for no reason she’s screaming and shouting and punching the wall, you’d be like, Whoa, I can’t trust you, I don’t understand you, why are you acting this way and you put up your guard, it’s the exact same thing with brands, people need to know that every time they interact with you or communicate with you, they’re going to get the same thing every time. So that was one of those things. You know, I said earlier, I think that I’m a classic overthinker and I like to, I like to plan and I like to think so much and be really, really tactical about how I do everything. And, and this is one of them. And this is one of the things that I think after you know some of my failures that I really want to develop even further. I want to deepen that brand and deepen that customer relationship in that. I think the community of tropic is something that I really want to develop over the next year. As I you know widen my product offering and I want people to feel like they have a friend to go to I want tropic to

35:00

They’re, they’re cool friend that they can always rely on for something fabulous to add to their wardrobe. It’s, you know, something that’s going to be comfortable and look good and fit good every single time with brand, you almost have to create a person because people are going to be communicating with it and interacting with it. Whenever I consume something, I like to think, why did that resonate with me? Why did that work for me, and I think about how I can apply that to my own practices. So I think, you know, in this digital social world, it we’re never going to have it all figured out, it’s always going to be evolving. And, you know, even Gosh, last week, Instagram changed their algorithm. And you know, Google and Facebook limited their amount of the amount of cookies that you can get. So you know, your whole advertising strategy and your whole social media marketing strategy has to adapt now. So the people who had it all figured out, have to pivot and start doing things differently. So I just like to always stay on top of it. And always be thinking about this and figuring out ways to apply it to my brand. Because the people that are going to get left behind are the people who are not treating Marketing and Communications like it’s their full time job.

36:13

We’re going to take everything he just said and play it on repeat for all of our customers all market because I love all of it. It’s so true.

36:22

Gosh, where to start? So I mean, you know,

36:26

when I think about marketing, branding, storytelling, messaging, communications, I’m right there with you. the psychology behind it is so important. And I’ve said it multiple times on the podcast that, you know, a couple of years ago, I really started diving into personality types, understanding different types of people, what makes them tick? Why does one person communicate one way and somebody else you communicate the same way with them, and they don’t take it the same way at all? And, you know, I think, personality tests By the way, he’s speaking my love language, right? So okay, well, let’s dive into that. So so what what are your tests? What do you like? What’s your favorite stuff to kind of dig into? Okay, do you know what you are for Myers Briggs? So that’s the one that I haven’t retested in a while I need to, I kind of really started to dig into the enneagram, a couple years ago, I am an ENFP. I think I’m the most fun one. But you know, it’s up for debate. I’m not biased or anything, but I think it does something like it’s like thinking, feeling judging, perceiving extraversion, introversion, intuition, and something else. So it basically takes these four core traits, and it gives you one end of the spectrum versus another. And then it shows you where you are on those four spectrums. So there’s 16 personality types in all, and so mine is a it’s called a campaigner. So it’s very, like very extroverted, very, like axon feelings. Very, very motivated and driven, very more creative than analytical, like, can’t be fussed with numbers and details, likes to focus more on big picture stuff and big projects. So when I read it, I’m like, who wrote this about me?

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That’s what I love about personality tests is when you find your thing, you start to realize like, that’s somebody studied my life and put it down in this test, but then you start to realize, well, how many other people does this connect to? And we all you know, there’s only so many versions of humankind, it seems like yeah, and even though we’re all unique and different in our own ways, we there’s sort of this finite amount of ways we communicate and connect to each other. And, and understanding that makes it Okay, that some people you’re not as compatible with and other people you feel like you’ve known forever, and you just said hello to them for the first time. You’ve inspired me to go back and take the Myers Briggs again, because I’m really interested now to know

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kind of where I fit into that scale. But bringing that back to the business side, the marketing side, the branding side, does your audience kind of fit one persona? Or do you have to market and create messaging for different types of people?

39:11

Yeah, so this is one of the projects I’m working on right now. Because I’ve initially tailored it towards one of my personalities, and which is a large part of my market. It’s, I haven’t done like an enneagram test for that’s actually a great idea to apply that to my customer personas. But my my guy is fashionable, but Fast, Free, and prefers simplicity because he’s so busy. And so that’s that’s one type of personality, but I’m also realizing I’ve got a different kind that’s younger and more fashionable, and has time to think about fashion. And I also have I’ve been realizing since I’ve launched I have a huge female gifting market who are super motivated by shopping for the man of the house. So I’m working on formulating these, you know these different communication styles.

40:00

towards each of them. So I want to ask you this, because I feel like you probably have a lot of answers. But if there’s something that stands out to you, what’s something you wish you knew when you started your business that you have subsequently found out? that’s helped you along the way?

40:17

I think that’s a really great question. Um, I think this sounds so simple, but it’s, you don’t have to do it yourself. Yes, I may run a business on my own. And I may have this idea and be, you know, a solo founder. But what I realized, especially through like, the mentors that I’ve been able to gain over the past year, is, you know, help is there as much as you ask for it. And I, I tend to get into, you know, my planning headspace and I can get locked, especially in a COVID world where you’re not in an office, and you’re not out events, and you know, work meetings and stuff like that, being behind a computer and home office all day, it’s very easy to just think I have to figure this out myself, I’ve just realized that, you know, the more that I do it, the more that I get out of it, and then it kind of starts motivating me of Oh, that was so helpful. When I spoke to that person, I’m gonna ask this person for help. And as you get into the startup business world, and the entrepreneurial life, people are so willing to help other people, you know, for free, you know, within parameters, of course, but I mean, my mentors are all my mentors, literally out of the goodwill of their hearts. And it’s just, it’s a mutual relationship, like, I don’t have to sit there for 30 minutes on FaceTime, once a month being like, thank you for your time, I’ll be really quick, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. It’s the type of people that I can shoot a message to, and they send me a message back and says, email me that I’ll email it to my friends, we’ll give you your feedback. And so in when people do the same to me, I don’t think twice about helping them like I’m happy to help, you know, provide my expertise where I can and make someone else’s journey a little bit easier, because I remember how important it was when, you know, I was just starting out, and how important it is to me today. And so, you know, almost on the karma spectrum, like, you get what you give. And, you know, I think also with the maybe the insecurity of starting a business and not knowing what you’re doing every step of the way, you kind of think I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to figure this out on my own. When really, there, there’s a whole wide network of people that are willing to help you if you’re willing to put in the time into building those relationships. So true. So true. So you mentioned multiple times mentors, in your answer there in our world, we call those people Titans. So who are your Titans? Who are the people that kind of they’re just outside of your world, but you look at them and you say that’s a person I want to be like, they’ve done these things, I can do those things. Like I said, when I was you know, building the brand, I had a few brands that I would look at and obsess over and pour over everything that they were doing and break it down like tactic by tactic. I do the same thing with entrepreneurs and aspirational people. And I’d say maybe the first two stories that I heard about, you know, founders and entrepreneurs that really made me think, Hey, I could do this too. And was Sara Blakely and Eileen Fisher. And you know, Eileen Fisher was kind of a she was single and didn’t really have anything that she was doing. She just really wanted to make clothes. She liked making clothes for herself. And someone said, you should try selling this at markets. And she literally would like sit on her sewing machine at home. No business no how No, pre like this huge startup techie world that we live in. And she just made clothes that she liked, sold them at the market, got more demand and then ended up being this like fashion Empire and she still owns 100% of her business and she grew 100% organically. And that’s amazing to me.

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Sara Blakely, you know, she was basically just poor had no money and just basically had kind of an idea of Hey, my might be nice to use these tights, something to get rid of my panty lines. And now she’s you know, on the Forbes list, and were the most successful female entrepreneurs in the world. And she’s done an insane amount in such a short amount of time. And for me, what’s so inspiring about Sara Blakely is that I think she’s one of those founders that just really knows how to keep moving forward. And she’s very willing to put herself out there and take the next step, even like after failures and roadblocks and not understanding or knowing how to do something, or maybe being scared of expanding or, you know, working with investors or whatever. She’s, she’s an incredible person, but it’s not like she was this incredible prodigy. She just did all this by you know, having the drive and determination to do it. And so I think that there they were my first few, I think, inspiration stories for sure. And then locally here in Singapore. One person has been really incredible.

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To me, I entered in this startup incubator program during lockdown last year, and I got in withdrawal back. And it was basically a program that helps set your business up for success in fashion in Singapore, you learned everything from sustainable manufacturing to supply our resources, and, you know, understanding how to pitch to investors and basic accounting for solo business owners, I mean, everything under the sun, we learned how to do and we It was a three to four to four month program. And we got paired with a different mentor every time and you know, the cohort had asked these people to come on and mentor for short sessions for each of these groups. And there was a couple people that really stuck out to me who were very relevant for what I was doing, Sonia proco bag, she is an LVMH, certified luxury fashion professor from, you know, taught in France and everything like that, and now lives here in Singapore. And she is one of those people that really just had a heart, I think, for young brands that are wanting to do big things. And so we connected and we met through this program with this structure where I only had, I think, 330 minute sessions with her and a few email sessions with her. So they were like, do not take advantage of your mentors time. Be very, very careful about this. And so I you know, use her for everything that I could and afterwards, I just really liked her and she was so helpful. And I was like I’m staying on her radar. So I’d email her afterwards and tell her to follow me on Instagram, asked her what she thought of my latest brand pose, catch her on email, share with her my new product line or my new pitch deck and just say like, Hey, what do you think? And it meant, you know, finding a mentor can be a bit like dating, so you don’t want to overstep it. You don’t want to move too quickly in the beginning, but I really wanted to stay on her radar. And she was, you know, she gave me stuff back. And so I bit every time she came back to me and made sure to keep that relationship rolling. And now she’s someone that has been hugely helpful, looks over all of my pitches for me, gives me feedback on all of my products. And she’s now a customer and she buys stuff for her husband from me, not out of pity. She said

47:16

it was very important. You want that good, honest customer that. Yeah, because it’s there.

47:23

I think incubators are so great. We’ve had a guest on the podcast, his name’s Wayne Miller. He’s one of those guys that’s done a little bit of everything. And he’s failed at some things. He’s been incredibly successful at some things. And he runs this incubator for people in the financial tech world. So if you have an app that that handles banking, and you know, all those kinds of things, this incubators specifically designed for those types of people. And I think it’s so important that you find somebody that’s been there, find somebody that’s, that’s failed a lot more than you have. And they can at least keep you from making big catastrophic failures, even though there’s some things you still have to figure it out on your own. So I think that’s really great. Thanks for sharing that story. Always surround yourself with people smarter than you. That’s the best advice that I could give never be the smartest person in the room. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you know, they say you’re the average of the five people you’re around the most. And I definitely don’t want to be the the, quote unquote smartest person in the room ever. So another thing we talked about a lot. And and I’m curious, because you talk about the sustainability of your business. And I want to get into that a little bit. But one of the things we’ve talked about is how do we do business better, right? So as we think about, you know, we’ve we’ve gone through this horrific pandemic, and it’s caused us to change and challenge the way we’ve done business in the past. So for you, what does that mean? Do do business better? What does that mean to you? And then how do you feel like you are trying to do business better?

48:52

I think the pandemic was great for the world, and that people became more aware of their consuming, right, whether it’s sustainability or just quality products, or whatever, you’re stuck at home all day long. Now, all these huge brands are being upturned for unethical business practices. And you’re sitting in the same clothes every day. So you very quickly realize like how negative fast fashion actually is on the world. And you kind of feel like it’s a sometimes it’s a little bit of a highway robbery. And then a very fast paced world where you’re always shopping and always moving through your wardrobe. It’s one thing but when you’re stuck at home with it, and you spend, let’s just say $150 on a dress and it comes in and it’s not no different from something you would get it forever 21 you’re like, hold up, this is not cool. And you you’re completely turned off by those brands and you won’t purchase from them again. So at least people are more aware now. And as I was, you know, starting up tropic in this timeframe, and in this era, I would say like Actually, I didn’t really have a big understanding of sustainability before I moved out to Singapore that really wasn’t on my radar as it probably wasn’t for

50:00

A lot of people, and then coming out here and getting to you travel the world, Singapore, such a great travel hub, and visit these, the most beautiful places in the world and gorgeous beaches and scuba diving and the most beautiful reefs. And you start seeing how poorly we’re actually taking care of the world and these gorgeous destinations littered in plastic and garbage. And you’re kind of like, why are we consuming like this, this is disgusting. And you can actually see the tangible results of what we’re doing. So getting into fashion and started realizing how much fashion is contributing to pollution and the amount of waste that we are all putting in by contributing to fast fashion, it was really shocking. And I was like, I cannot consciously build up a business that has my thumbprint on it that contributes to any of this or does business this way. So you know, it takes extra effort, there’s a reason that people are not doing it, there’s a reason big brands are not doing it, because it’s expensive, and it’s time consuming. So even designing my products, I have to design them better my first shirt took a year to make, because I kept sending it back to the manufacturer saying, This isn’t good quality, like I can’t charge this amount for this shirt. If you’re not, you know, making it this way. And this, you know, if you don’t catch it in the beginning, when you know it’s sampling and back and forth and time and money, then it’s never going to get that way. And so I wanted to start off really strong with a quality product that would last that would have a longer lifespan than all the other garments in your closet, as well as being sourced from factories who are practicing responsible manufacturing, who are paying their workers, you know, a living wage and safe working conditions. And back in the day, I would have traveled to my factories to see them. But now you know, I have been able to FaceTime them and see them and meet them and see the space and understand where my clothes are being made. So that I can be proud to share that part of it with the world and have that type of transparency with tropic and, and then I think you know, even down to the packaging, I mean all of us during lockdown, you’re ordering everything to your door and you’re getting packages every single day and you start seeing the boxes pile up. And you’re just like this is this is too much. And I think pre COVID we, we there’s a huge unboxing culture. And you know, it’s super exciting to get a big fancy box with all this gorgeous packaging and tissue paper and unbox within another box. And now it’s kind of like oh, like brands are being called out for wasting that much on something that’s disposable. And I mean, I love that. And so when I started even designing the packaging, everything had to be thought out, I didn’t want to have poly bags in my packaging. So I have reusable laundry bags that also help prolong the life of the garment. I ship instead of pretty cardboard boxes, I actually ship in biodegradable mailers. So when people get their stuff, I mean even down to the the tags, and the way that the hang tags are fastened down and the way that the the buttons are made, everything has to be, you know, responsible because it starts at the core. And as I grow and scale, if I don’t have that foundation, the brand won’t be that way. I love it. That’s so cool. And so much thought goes into that and you’re right, it takes so much more work to be that way. And and you hope the consumer just gets the product and loves it and they don’t think about all the work all the effort, all the things that you’ve done, to get there. But but it makes such a difference. And it’s inspiring, you know, we hope other brands see that and follow suit. You know, in our business, we have a mantra that we say be easy to do business with. And that sounds so simple. And it sounds so basic. But when you think about it, how many business interactions do you have that it’s just complicated. There’s so many steps to order, there’s so many contracts you have to go through, there’s so many different things you have to do. And it makes a business transaction difficult. And I think most businesses are difficult to work with. I think that the top level people are the ones that have figured out that exactly that that it needs to be easy to do business with. Yeah. And so that’s that’s all we do. What what that really means though, is that it’s harder for us, you know, it’s more work effort. And but we want our clients to have the easiest interaction with us they possibly can because, you know, the second that we make it difficult on him, they start to consider that relationship, well is somebody else going to be easier if somebody else is gonna make my life a little bit simpler. And so that’s kind of our whole mantra going into every customer interaction that we have, where are you going? What’s next? Where’s the the next big thing for you? I’m sure you’ve got lots of plans and ideas. And so my big exciting thing is I have a new loungewear line coming out

54:36

on what’s today on the 16th of July. So that will be live shortly here. And I’m really excited about that. That was a COVID revelation, and that is people spending more time at home and needing something nicer to lay around in so we create a sophisticated loungewear line so it’s matching sets for men. I think it’s really, really fun. The people that have already gotten

55:00

The pre sale items are loving it. So I’m really excited about that. But um, I don’t want to speak too soon. But I think some exciting upgrades to the brand are going to be happening soon. And I have a really exciting vision for what the next product line is going to look like as we fill out and make it more robust. And so I think big things on the horizon for tropic and and Yeah, I definitely give it a follow if you’re not already I’m sure you’re not because you’re in Little Rock. But uh, definitely keep an eye on it. Because eventually I do want to come to the states and set up a market there because I think there’s a lot of use for our products out there. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, being in the southern states, and it’s summertime, I think can I was going to ask Where can I get this cuz I’m ready for it. But no, I think I think it’s such a great product line. I think that everything you’re doing is amazing. So I want to jump into just what we call some quick hit questions get a little bit more behind the person who is Monica. So what are you a reader? What’s the best book or the latest book you’ve read? Oh, best book in the world. Everyone in the world should read it. And is never split the difference by Chris Voss. It is a negotiation tactic book from a FBI hostage negotiator. And I have tried it in business, I’ve tried it my relationship and it works every time.

56:21

And Chris Voss for people that don’t know who he is, or haven’t heard of him.

56:27

The guy’s brilliant. I mean, the things he talks about the way he talks about negotiation, breaks it down, makes it simple, and any. I love how he talks about the fact that every time you enter into a conversation with somebody, it’s a negotiation. And you know, he’s fantastic. And I just love listening to him talk. He’s got that, you know?

56:49

Yeah, the tone matches the voice 100%.

56:55

Okay, what is the daily routine that you kind of have to do every day?

57:00

Okay, for me, I have to have my morning to myself from my mind to relax. Like I said earlier, I’m a huge night owl, my creative brain works so much better in the evening, when it’s awake and alert for the day. So my mornings are my sanctuary. So I know a lot of entrepreneurs will say get out of bed, get your day started. For me, I’m like, no lay in bed, let your mind wander, be serene, have the peace, have your time with the coffee on the patio journal for a little bit, read a book for five minutes, anything to just wake you up and get you excited for the day. You know, for me, I’m not an early riser. And I don’t get excited when my alarm goes off early. And I start the day miserable. Because as an entrepreneur, I have to stay self motivated 100% of the time. And if I start the day on the wrong foot, then that’s it. I don’t have an office of people, you know, you know, getting me into gear. So my morning is sacred. And then I go through my admin in the morning, once I’ve woken up and had my coffee when I’m like more in a robotic mode. And I can hammer through the emails and hammer through the admin jobs and just get stuff off my to do list. And then I leave the afternoon for the real creative space in the creative strategic thinking. And honestly, like if I if I start hitting that lol, I always allow myself to take 30 minutes or even an hour and go for a walk, go for a run, go down to the pool, play with the puppy for a little bit, read a book, turn on the TV, whatever helps me unwind for a short period of time so that I can have that refresh to tackle the second half of my afternoon. And as an entrepreneur, we have some very, very long days. And like right now it’s 11:15pm. And I still probably have another two hours of work. And so it is what it is. And you have to do what you got to do whatever works for you to keep you going and keep you motivated and happy with what you’re doing. So true. And thank you for taking this time to chat with me so cool. This stuff, what is the best piece of advice you’ve either given or received? Um, just keep moving. And just do it. I mean, I’m originally by Nike. I know I did not coined that term. Um, but literally, whenever I have people come up to me, or I’m speaking to friends from home, and they’re like, Wow, that’s so amazing. How did you start this company? It’s so inspiring. Like, it’s not, I just did my idea. That is all I’m doing every day is I’m doing my idea. I’m not. I’m not a prodigy. I’m not a genius. I’m not the smartest person in the room. I literally just get up and I do it and I move forward and it’s hard. Not every day is a treat. You have those days where you feel really, really, really low, or nothing’s happening or a deal falls through and you don’t get what you thought you’re going to get. But all you have to do is take the first step because if you haven’t stepped anywhere, you’re not going anywhere. That’s right, absolutely. Have you heard of Simon Sinek? Are you familiar with him? Yes, yeah. He has a book called start with y. And as you were talking earlier, you mentioned the whole y aspect of it.

1:00:00

And when you were a kid, you were asking your mom all these questions. But I think that’s kind of the genesis of so many businesses and ideas and you start with why, but then to your point right now, then you just don’t stop. You know, you keep going, you keep moving forward one day at a time. And that’s how you build a successful business. I love that. Exactly. So obviously, COVID and the pandemic is caused a lot of changes in people’s daily routines and habits. So do you have any newly formed habits that have been created? Because you’ve been stuck inside or can’t travel like you used to?

1:00:36

Yes, so this is gonna sound annoying, but you know, we used to be so busy traveling, and especially going home to see our families in the UK in the US. We didn’t really have a lot of time for routine here in Singapore, we were always on the move, and always in a plane. I think something that’s been really, really valuable to me, and my husband and my friends, is setting aside leisure time. And I mean, it’s very easy to sit here and work till midnight every single day. But I think making sure that Guess what, Tuesday night is Girls Night, that is when you get out of the house, and you go see your friends, and you talk about the Bachelor. And you know, making sure that you know, on Friday nights, I’m out with my husband, and he gets out of his desk as well. And we get out of the house, we don’t eat at home, we’ll go have dinner at a restaurant and leave our phones at home. And so I think really, I mean, you only get one life at the end of the day. And yes, my work is super important to me. And it’s you know, my life’s passion, but at the same time, the relationships are always the most important and who you surround yourself with. And for me, you know, you heard a little bit about my love story, the beginning and I always want to make sure that I’m prioritizing the things and the people that mean the most to me. And you know, that’s my husband and my family. So, you know, as a rule, especially not going home, either. I always pick up a FaceTime from my mom, dad or sister or brothers. I’m always picking up the phone to my family no matter what, because I think life’s just too short. And the distance is just too far. Wow, I love that.

1:02:08

All right, what’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for under $100?

1:02:13

Oh, that’s a good one. Um,

1:02:18

this is gonna sound really stupid. But my chair

1:02:22

working from home for like, 13 hours a day, my whole body. I mean, I’m now 30 My whole body started giving up on me. It was like, hey, you’re not in your 20s anymore. You’re getting older, by some back support. Sit properly. So I got my whole desk set up with like, all my modular things so that my screens are all at the right height. And my chair now has back support, and I don’t feel like I’m dying every single day. Listen, and I got it for 60 bucks. You’re young enough. You’ve got a ways to go before you really have much to worry about in that regard. But that’s, that’s a very good fine, so congratulations on a great chair. Yeah. All right. Music. Do you have any favorite music or artists? Oh, yes. It’s embarrassing.

1:03:09

Okay, my guilty pleasure. You may not get this from looking at me. But you know, I was in high school in the 2000s. So my jam is to 1000s punk rock music that just brings me joy. I love it. Yeah, I mean, you can’t not be in a positive mood when that stuff comes on. Yeah, exactly. That’s so funny. Right your works these days? Yeah.

1:03:33

Favorite food? Do you have a favorite restaurant? Do you have a favorite type of food? Do you like to cook I love to cook so always cook a really nice meal from scratch unless we’re eating out. Um, maybe maybe the Texans will get this I don’t really know where this restaurant is. But I have a guilty pleasure. That is like my go to it is my biggest craving I ever ever have in being in Singapore. We don’t have it here. So I my first stop on the airport on the way home to Dallas. is we stopped at schlocky is do you have schlocky there

1:04:05

is a sandwich and the whole world. My dad cracks me up because anytime we would go somewhere, he he’d be like, well, let’s just grab lunch and I’d be like, Alright, fine. Where do you want to go? He’d be like, Well, how about schlocky? And it was every time it was like this matter of factly like, Well, what about this as though he wouldn’t say it every time? You know? Yeah, yes, I’ve had plenty of schlocky turkey sandwiches, and

1:04:32

I had a really bad craving recently. So I went so far as to look up a copycat recipe, make the sourdough bun from scratch and do it with some like disgruntled schlocky employee that posted the full recipe online. And I copied everything and it is like it’s a pretty close fit it actually it satisfied my craving enough to hold me over until I get back home.

1:04:56

Love it. I love it. Oh my gosh, I’m so right now.

1:05:00

tropic is not available in the US correct? It is available. And if you spend I know it’s all based in Singapore dollars on the website, but you can convert it. Okay. And

1:05:12

if you spend $200 or more you get free shipping to the US so you can buy in the US. We’re just not based there. Okay, well, I am going to get online here in about five minutes. And please, at least $200 worth of product but yeah, exactly.

1:05:31

So yeah, cuz I want everybody to be able to experience the brand, the product, the quality, the sustainability, everything that you’ve talked about. It just sounds like such an amazing brand. So I’m just so thankful that you took the time to have this conversation and talk through your journey to get to this point and wish you all the success in the world next time you’re in the States. Give me a call. I actually am from Dallas to I grew up in Plano.

1:05:58

So not not too far away, but practically neighbors. And I’ll absolutely look you up. Well, we’ll talk more. And But seriously, thank you so much for having me today. It was such a pleasure to talk to you. And I hope that you know the people listening can find some sort of inspiration or advice from all of this from my journey. And if you’re listening, you’re more than welcome to reach out to me on Instagram at Monica Millington. And I’m happy to engage with you and chat with you and talk all things startups. Awesome. Thanks so much, Monica. Thank you, Nate.

1:06:35

If you like this episode of titans of industry, head to content Titan dot CEO slash podcast for more episodes or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening

00:00

And then I woke up, and all of the pain medicine that was keeping my pain down after the surgery was gone out of my system. And I for the first time in my life experienced 10 out of 10 mind numbing, all consuming pain. And in that moment, I probably would have done anything sold anything given anything for that to end, because I couldn’t even consider anything else going on in the world.

00:28

Hey, it’s Nate Disarro and welcome to titans of industry, the podcast where I talk to industry leaders and innovators who are at the top of their game and leading the pack in their fields uncovering some of the best stories in today’s business landscape. In today’s episode, I sit down with Dr. Jonathan Gauri, the director of interventional pain management at ua Ms. Dr. Gorrie has a passion for bettering the quality of life for as many people as possible when not seeing patients. Jonathan also teaches at the Medical School equipping the next generation of doctors to find solutions to life’s most painful problems. In our conversation, Jonathan tells the story of how early personal experiences with sports and mouth surgery led him to pursue anesthesiology and pain management. He describes how the lessons he learned on the football field still permeate his leadership style today, and how he’s a champion for diversity and inclusion. These are the key elements of his mission to bring health care to people that have been historically underserved. Jonathan is also an accomplished speaker traveling nationally to speak about innovative breakthroughs in pain management.

01:34

Now let’s get to the episode.

01:37

But before we do, our team at content Titan wants you to know that we understand the challenges business leaders and marketers are facing right now, with moving to a more virtual world. We are experts in taking human connections and turning them digital. From virtual Events and Video presentations to promotional content and advertising. We’re here to help guide you through the process of staying in front of your audience and making your life a little bit easier. People tell us all the time that they are lost and don’t know what to say or do and we exist to help your business continue to move forward, virtually. So if you’re ready to take your business and content strategy virtual, we’re ready to help. Let’s get your business back to business.

02:22

Now, here’s my conversation with Dr. Jonathan, Gauri.

02:26

Jonathan, we’ve known each other for a little while. And I appreciate you taking the time to jump on the show here and tell us all things pain management. I don’t know what the statistic is, maybe you do. But how many people are affected with pain, chronic pain every year. First of all, thanks for having me. I’m a fan of the podcast. And I’m glad to join the group of people who have graced the show. So thank you, chronic pain is is challenging. And it’s you know, the best way to start is that pain is really a part of life. And it’s a necessary part of life. It’s our messenger system from our body to our brain, that something’s wrong. You know, if we sit uncomfortably, we start to experience pain to tell us to move. And so we get back to statistics at start with that everyone experiences pain, probably at some point in every single day.

03:24

Chronic Pain is really when that pain becomes dysfunctional.

03:30

And our body sends pain signals past the amount of time that it takes for us to either fix the problem or heal. And the statistics vary, but I think you can safely say that a third of people are in the country are experiencing some sort of chronic pain every single day. And I would even include myself in that as I’m starting to get older. You know, I have a little bit of back pain here and there that comes in. I call I call my back pain Charlie and Charlie comes to visit me you know, probably, you know a couple times a week well I can completely empathize with that I’m the same way I think when I hit probably around the age of 3031 I started to notice these little things that just I had never noticed before pain was just discomfort and then I didn’t do anything about it gradually kind of get a little more uncomfortable and then you start not sleeping as well and then you know I would assume like said a third of the population experiences something like that. At what point did you decide this is the field I want to go into this is what I’m going to do is help people manage their pain. How did you get to where you’re at? Yeah, there’s there’s a long and a short I’m going to go with the long end Feel free to cut me off if I get a little long winded as they used to say

04:49

you know I I played a lot of sports growing up and I played football in high school and wanted to play college football but unfortunately you

05:00

Know, the maker decided I wasn’t going to be tall enough to be an NFL defensive then, even though I’m pretty sure I had the talent, I’m just gonna throw that out there.

05:09

But I decided I wanted to be around sports and and I was a smart kid I was a nerd. And so how can I be around an NFL team without being an NFL athlete, I watched the movies and any given Sunday, there was a doc around the team given he was a villain, so I didn’t want to be like him. But I was like, I can be a doctor. And so that made me decide that I wanted to go to medical school. So you know, I, I wish I could say that, you know, from the age of 10. I had a physician mentor that I followed, but honestly, it was my ego and wanting to be around sports.

05:46

When I got to medical school, I tried all the different types of medicine. And I realized I didn’t love surgery, most of the docs around sports orthopedic surgeons, but I enjoyed what I miss most about sports was that game time feeling of it being fourth in one, and you having to make a play to win the game. And I experience that most with anesthesia. So ended up being an anesthesiologist because anesthesiologist are professionals at saving lives in kind of very dire situations. I’m

06:27

trained as an anesthesiologist. And what I realized, and I had a specific moment when my path changed, and it was honestly, I had a surgery.

06:38

I had my wisdom teeth cut out because they were impacted. And the surgery went well. And I was in the recovery room. And I was having severe pain. And the nurse came over and gave me some fentanyl, which been those kind of in the news as a drug of abuse, but it’s commonly used during surgery. And after about 30 seconds after getting that medicine, I don’t remember anything. So I went what we call APNIC. So I basically overdosed, stop breathing was completely out, they called a code, as we say in medicine. And I was given Naloxone or Narcan, which is kind of known in the news as the reversal agent for pain medicine.

07:27

And then I woke up, and all of the pain medicine that was keeping my pain down after the surgery was gone out of my system. And I for the first time in my life experienced 10, out of 10, mind numbing, all consuming pain.

07:43

And in that moment, I probably would have done anything sold anything given anything for that to end. Because I couldn’t even consider anything else going on in the world. All I could think about was the pain going on in my mouth. And I was fortunate enough that, you know, 30 minutes later that were off, and they were able to give me medicine and my pain was treated. As I continued my career, I realized two things. And that’s one that there are people all over this country that experienced that level of level of pain every moment of their life. And that to me was terrifying. And I wanted to help them. So that was the first thing. The second thing I realized, and this probably really is the reason for my two major interests is that there are a lot of people who look like me,

08:39

due to access reasons, implicit bias social reasons, who don’t have access to high quality health care to get their pain treated.

08:50

And I wanted to help them. And so after finishing my anesthesia, anesthesiology residency, I did an extra year of training at Emory in Atlanta to really focus in on those two things. How can I help people who have severe complex chronic pain? And also how can I help underrepresented minority groups who don’t have the same level of representation in medicine? And then I was recruited here to back home to Little Rock at you Ms to start my practice. Love it. Well, thanks for sharing that whole the whole journey because it does give a lot of context. I think it’s really fascinating to know that that you’ve sort of been on the patient side so you get it, you know, what a 10 out of 10 feels like you understand what you’re helping and, you know, with with the era of COVID Now, we know that that that’s caused a lot of changes and challenges for people and especially like you mentioned the minority segment of the population. There’s been a lot of conversation about the the lack of care and the lack of resources to

10:00

really support those that are at times in the most need. So how is that affected? what you guys are doing now in pain management? Has there been any new discoveries that the virus has has added to your plate? Or is that not really anything that you have to worry about? Yeah, that’s, that’s an outstanding question, as you alluded to COVID, has really changed how all of us have have done business. Over the past year and a half, I would say it’s affected me and my field really in two ways. Or I would say three ways. The first is that medicine is a very hands on field.

10:44

You know, traditionally, touch is a big part of medicine. And I made sure that, you know, I examined every patient, I’m a pretty old school doc. And then we have all these new imaging modalities and MRIs and x rays and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, there’s no substitute for someone who has back pain, touching their back, while they’re in certain positions to understand what’s going on. During COVID. I couldn’t do that, especially at the beginning of the pandemic. And so medicine really transitioned to a telemedicine format. And so for probably two or three months, I saw 100% of my patients on a video screen.

11:27

And that was a huge change. For me, it’s it’s, it also challenged my creation of the patient physician relationship,

11:39

not looking someone in the eye, not shaking their hand, and being able to gain trust and buy in because I’m creating plans for people to really try to transform their quality of life, and not having them present to really smile at the right time, or help kind of build that relationship.

12:02

It’s challenging. Also, a lot of the things that I do, kind of offering opioid sparing modalities of pain, involve injections, implants, things like that, that were more challenging to do. So we had to kind of quickly adapt our hospital protocols to be able to allow patients to come and safely

12:28

you know, having patients sit in their car until we’re ready for their appointment, spacing out our recovery room, making sure that we have strong COVID protocols. And so that was a big part of it. The second thing is this long haul or phenomenon, that COVID while it is a viral disease that’s very dangerous in the short term in the first month of contracting it, people are having long term effects. And

12:59

a lot of our field of pain management is really about improving quality of life, for people who have been discarded by the medical system.

13:10

When medicine says, you have this problem, you know, patients come to the doctor because they’re in pain, they don’t come to the doctor because they have a disease. They don’t know what their diseases. If doctors say, Well, I can’t fix the reason you came, you go see a pain management doctor. And so a lot of these patients are starting to come into our practice, because medicine doesn’t know what to do with them. And that’s kind of I enjoyed that challenge. But it has really caused me to have to think outside the box, because I don’t have a manual for how to treat these patients. No one does. But I’m the last stop, you know, the buck stops here. I can’t, there’s no one for me to send them to. And then I would say the third thing is, I’m really engaged in a lot of clinical research, and a lot of kind of conference networking around the country to move our field forward. And that really hit a halt during COVID. And so figuring out how to educate our physicians of tomorrow, and still collaborate to make sure that our advances in technology don’t halt for a year. And you know, using mediums such as this using using zoom and using teleconferences has been a big help with that. So we’ve talked a little bit about your, your travels, your your speaking around the country, your involvement, and like you just mentioned.

14:42

And of course you talk as though someone who’s been doing this for 30 years, for somebody who’s been in the field for a long time because you’re educating other physicians, you’re, you’re leading the field, but you’re under 40 years old and you’re doing things that

15:00

Most people probably aren’t doing a lot of people enter the workforce, and they find their niche. And they coast. They just kind of go through the day to day and make a living. And that’s nothing wrong with that. But you have a passion, you have a desire to push the industry forward to educate people to do things in a way that aren’t being done.

15:19

What what’s your motivation and drive? Why are you maybe different than the next pain management? Doctor?

15:27

I think that’s a, that’s a great question.

15:30

And requires a lot of introspection. You know, I think that I went into medicine or my love of medicine is, and I’ve used this buzzword a few times is really about changing quality of life for patients. And what I realized about two years into my career is, you know, I can go to work, and I can be in a clinic. And I can see 15 to 20 patients in a day, and have an amazing impact. And those 15 to 20. Patients are gracious, they’re thankful. They’re appreciative of what I did, for them, getting people back to work getting, you know, grandparents back playing with their grandkids is great. But there is there are ways that physicians can have much larger impacts. And when I look at our state, which is number two, or n has been for the past four or five years number two and opioid prescribing.

16:42

And when I look at a rural state that doesn’t have access to cutting edge, high quality pain care, in Magee Arkansas, Alma, Arkansas in the four corners of our state, or even honestly, in Little Rock, before we started building our clinic, compared to the places I trained, Manhattan, Atlanta, where you could throw a rock and hit someone who’s a well trained, fellowship trained pain physician,

17:14

I quickly realized that I can if I focus on education, and policy, and recruitment and program building here in Arkansas, if I bring multi national research trials to Little Rock, if I bring in physician partners from four corners of the United States, if I open education programs for doctors in rural Arkansas, that I’m not just having an impact on 20 patients a day, I’m having an impact on 1000s of patients, because the entire of culture around quality of life care is going to change. And once I realized that it was a no brainer. And so I still see patients, I still, you know, I’m wearing scrubs right now, and then no one can see me. But you know, this afternoon, I’m going to do some procedures on patients to help with chronic pain. But I only see patients about 50% of the time. And the rest of my time is devoted to really educating our state, educating the physicians of tomorrow, educating the physicians of today and working on policy for you IMS and for for the state and bringing in high quality research and partnering with other physicians around the world to advance pain care, and make sure that we have access to that right here at home.

18:45

It’s incredible.

18:47

You mentioned that a lot of what you do, it’s sort of the the the buck stops here, there is no other option for your patients.

18:56

And that at times, you’ve got to figure it out. There is no manual, there’s no solution. I would assume at some points, there’s there’s times in your career in your practice that those exercises those those results and in not being what you want them to be. I think anybody who’s successful has always experienced some level of failure. Are there any specifics that come to mind when it comes to like something you tried that didn’t work, but that ultimately led to better outcomes down the road? Like what have you failed at that ultimately helped helped you succeed? Yeah, I can I can talk more generally, and then I’ll get into a specific, specific example. It’s so so most of the patients that we see, as I’ve said medicines already failed them. A lot of times other physicians will question the research in our field, not realizing that, that the 10% of patients that you couldn’t fix are 100% of our patients. So that leaves us in a little bit of a lurch because

20:00

We are trying therapies on folks who have who are the exception to the rule for every other medical therapy.

20:11

And we don’t always, we don’t always do great, we don’t always make the change we desire. And some of my most challenging conversations is to sit down with someone and say,

20:25

I don’t think that we can make a real dramatic change in the source of your discomfort.

20:33

But I’m going to be here with you, I’m not going to toss you away, or send you somewhere else or keep having you jump from position to position. Let’s figure out what little small changes we can make to get you there.

20:48

I think one specific disease process example is diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

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We are one of the leading states in diabetes in the nation. And we have a lot of patients who have severe foot pain, because diabetes damages the nerves in your feet.

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And a lot of those patients ended up in my practice when I got here. And we didn’t really have an answer for it. You know, we tried a lot of things, I tried things that had not been tried before in the literature at all.

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And some of it didn’t work.

21:27

But there was a new product on the market that was doing a multinational research trial. And they were choosing 15 centers around the world to try that treatment for this disease. And for me,

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one of my passions is to make sure that those treatments aren’t just in San Francisco, la in New York. And so I was and with my partner, Eric Peterson, were really persistent about making sure that little rock was a part of that trial. And that trial has been pretty successful. We just published one year data and we’re working on further data. But that is going to change the way that we treat diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Probably going forward. And we have been fortunate to have a few wins like that. And the other is with a disease called complex regional pain syndrome, which is considered the most painful disease known to man. And so

22:34

it’s it’s really been exciting and but it’s really kind of getting together with either my partners locally, or my partner’s nationally or internationally, and coming up to solutions to really complex problems that we’re all seeing in our individual practices. I love that. Obviously, you’re you’re a leader within your practice within the organization, but also within your field on a national level, if not International. And leadership comes in a lot of different forms and functions. And everybody has their way of leading the charge in what they do. What would you say are some of the principles or practices that you apply on a day to day basis to maintain that level of, of motivation with those around you, obviously, you’re very collaborative and your approach to pain management working with other people, what what stands out to you as far as how you lead and what you do?

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You know, for me, it all goes back to sports, pretty simple guy, if I i one time post on Facebook that I learned more on the football field that I learned in the classroom, and I had a few teachers who were pretty upset about that. So I don’t know if I would necessarily say that anymore. But I think that my leadership style definitely came from those moments of being a team captain on a football field. And I see myself, I really see the leader of an organization as a really good quarterback.

24:06

And there are a few analogies there. But the first one is, when a play comes in, and you’re calling a play, you’re in the huddle and all eyes are on you.

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And you have to get 10 other people to buy in to whatever that play is because if one of them doesn’t really believe that the player is going to work and they have to do their job, then the whole plane is going to fall apart. And so that’s the first thing is looking at your team and really making sure that they believe in the mission. And they believe that their piece of that mission is important. You know, sometimes on a football field, your mission is to basically sacrifice your body for the greater glory of some

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What else.

25:02

But helping that person understand how that is so important to the advancement of the mission and the advancement of the team is, is going to be a big part of that.

25:16

The second thing is you get up to the line and you you see what those around you are doing that aren’t a part of your team, and you’re responsible to Audible. And so you have to have the trust of your team and be able to communicate to all of your team members that sometimes we have to change path. And even though we had a plan coming into the situation, COVID is a great example. We need the audible, and I have to be able to quickly communicate that we need to change our focus, but have again have their buy in that even though that they may not be able to see the entire landscape, that they’re going to trust me,

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then I think the last thing is, it’s then my job to make sure that they’re set up for success. So, you know, Tom Brady rarely scores a touchdown.

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The others around him score touchdowns. And so I need to make sure that I call the right audibles to get my team members in the right position. So that they can be successful and use their talents and their abilities, which are all going to be different. So some are going to be running back, some are going to be wide receivers, some are going to be tight ends, they’re going to score touchdowns in very different ways. And make sure that I understand what their natural talents are, and set them up for success. And even though I’m not scoring the touchdown, our greater team is going to rise. And everyone gets credit from the success of this one person who is being celebrated. And so I take those lessons into the workplace. And so I’m constantly thinking about how can I make sure my team has buy in. And that’s by making sure that my team is really educated about the end goal. Even my nurses, my, any of my front desk staff understands the importance of every little thing that we do,

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then making sure that our communication is right so that we can audible at any point. And then really understanding their talents and studying their talents. So that can set them up to be successful.

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I love it to continue with the sports theme. I’m sure Tom Brady, his rookie year.

27:44

He’s learned some things now that he wish he knew back then, of course, him as an example, when a Super Bowl What? Oh, 304 was his first one. So pretty early in his career, he was able to figure some things out go win Super Bowls, and he’s been dominant ever since.

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One, what are some things that you’ve learned over your career that you wish you knew day one, when you first met with your very first patient? And had that opportunity to consult with them and handle their their pain management? Yeah, that’s a that’s a great question. I think that I more and more understand the importance of patient, the patient, physician relationship, and patient physician buy in. So if you, if you break down what I do every day, I have a patient who comes in and delivers really intimate information that they probably haven’t told anyone outside of their family a lot of times, and they expect me to use my talent, expertise and education to really improve their quality of life.

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If any of those things break down, then we’re not going to be successful. So I have to build a relationship in order for them to share all the things that I need to know for me to help them. Then on the other side of the coin, I’ve heard pretty much every quarterback talk about the amount of work that they have to put in, in the NFL the amount of study that they have to do to be prepared for a Sunday.

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I’ve done a lot of education. You know, I did that 13 years of post high school education before I earned my first paycheck as a physician. But that’s not enough. And I have to continue to read the literature. I need to have really young, hungry, talented people around me to ask those difficult questions so that I’ll continue to stay curious

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and I need to make sure that I am continuing to communicate with those who

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are more knowledgeable about specific disease processes than I am. So that I can make sure that I’m delivering the best product. So who are some of those people that, you know in our world we call them Titans? Who are some of the Titans in your life, the mentors, the role models, the celebrities that you look up to and say, you know what they’re doing it pretty cool. I want to apply those principles in my life. Yeah, I was very fortunate that I trained at at Cornell in New York City, which has been one of the kind of stalwarts of chronic pain, one of the original chronic pain programs in the country, if not the world. And so there are a lot of mentors that have come from that program. One being Sudhir Diwan who, who started that program, back 20 years ago, who actually texted with yesterday. And I’m going to go to New York and have dinner with him. And a couple months.

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There’s another person who was a couple years ahead of me, in that same program, named Dr. Woods, high Ed, who is at University of Kansas in my same role. And as I started this program in Arkansas, he was doing the same thing in Kansas, but was kind of two years ahead of me. So having someone who had literally just gone through the every single challenge that I had gone through,

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was extremely helpful. I’d also say that, while you know you, you learn a lot of things from people in your field, I think you also learn so much from those outside of your field. And so really studying kind of the Titans in, in business and the Titans in sports and the Titans and other industries, is also extremely, extremely helpful.

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I 100% agree with that.

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One of the things we’ve been talking about lately is how do we do business better, I really have started to adopt that phrase, because COVID forced us to, in some cases, just do business differently. But really, we hope that that means do business better. Sometimes people don’t look at the medical profession as a business, it’s more quality of life improvement. But of course, there’s financial transactions involved and everything else. So it has to operate like a business just like anything else. How can can your industry or your world do business better? or How are you helping to conduct better business? Yeah, a couple of things, I think that we, as a medical profession, are behind most business organizations, and our ability to track data

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on the patient experience. And that’s something that we’re rapidly catching up on.

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You know, I now use Power BI, for those who are who are out there, you know, I now track I track kind of the quality of our chronic pain interactions throughout our entire hospital system.

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And I think that physicians have been a little resistant to that, because medicine we think of is such a niche and nuanced interaction. And that, you know, the one thing that I’ve heard many old physicians say the, the one difference that separates medicine from other fields is that the customer is not always right.

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But kind of the new school of thought of medicine is, even though the customer may not necessarily understand what’s best for their long term health outcomes.

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It’s my job to educate them on what’s best. But ultimately, I should allow them to make the decisions about their health care. And I may not be the best physician for them, because we may have a disagreement and they you know, we may have to change relationships, which is true of any business.

34:20

But then we should figure out how to best provide that service to the patient, and make sure that the patient is satisfied with the quality of their care. And so really diving into what is good quality care, and tracking those metrics is kind of something that we do now at ua IMS and I do as a part of our clinic. And and I think is really becoming kind of the new wave wave of medicine.

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I love it.

34:55

Part of that whole thing, as you mentioned is customer experience or patient experience.

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every business, every organization, if there’s $1 exchanged for a service or product, there’s an experience to be had. And I think, when it comes to medicine, like you said, it’s it’s one of the few, if not the only industry out there that the patient’s not always right. You know, when you think of the power company, it’s almost, you know, providing electricity into a home or office is, in some regards equally as important, but it’s not 100% necessary tap power, quality of life is a whole lot better with it, just like medicine. And at some point, you have to realize, it is up to the customer or the patient to have an experience that is worth going back to are worth telling somebody else about. And in my mind, and in my business, it’s all about the story, right? So how do we create a better story that allows that person to have a better experience? Or tell somebody else, either the positive or negative experience and ultimately bring more patients more customers more, you know, sales? How do you look at stories, and the outcomes of your patient experiences as the way you’re doing your job? You know, because ultimately, you want to hear these stories, right? I mean, to us, stories matter, stories are important. How do stories fit into your world? Yeah, I want to, I want to touch on a couple things that you said there.

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Starting with the stories piece.

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One of the benefits of being in medicine is oftentimes I get follow up. And so when you put if you know, if you’re a roofer, and you put a new roof on a house, it’s not like you say, Hey, I’m going to come back in three months. And let’s talk about how good the roof is. I see most of my patients after whatever I’m doing, and get to hear what worked and what didn’t work, and begin to really grow that story of that patient experience. And log those stories both physically in an electronic medical system, but also in my brain, so that when I see patterns of new stories, I can then apply those previous stories. The other thing that we’ve changed in our practice is we use a database called promise. And promise asks a series of questions via an iPad. And we do this while patients are waiting for their appointment, that help us understand the story of what’s really the deficit in that patient’s quality of life.

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Patients come to us because they’re in pain. But sometimes the deficit may be that they’re depressed, or they’re not getting enough sleep. And so using those kind of tools, really help us really understand the full story that we may not even get from a patient interaction, because there’s only so much you can gain from a 1520 minute conversation.

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The other thing I wanted to touch on what the patient experience is something that I think that we’ve done in our clinic that’s really different than a lot of other other hospital experiences. His pain is trying to think of a good word, but I’m going to use the word crappy, you know, it’s, it’s not fun to be in pain. And so I’ve really tried to make our experience our total experience as fun as possible. And so I try to encourage our nurses to laugh and joke and there’s normally laughter, there’s noise, there’s music, there’s pretty loud music, in our in our in our recovery room, there is always normally some pretty loud music in our procedure room, when patients are getting procedures. I ask patients what they want to hear, we try to make it as upbeat as possible. So for that little bit of time, while they have to really think about the worst aspect of their life, we try to make it as fun as possible. And hospitals tend to be so sterile and kind of dry. I think that’s been something that I’ve seen that’s really improved our our patient experiences is kind of zigging in that regard when everyone else is asking, I love it when it adds to the story, right? Because the second a customer stops talking about what you did for them. The story’s over, right? And if they’re going to go out and tell people how their lives better or improved because not only did the medicine work, but the experience worked, and they keep telling that story. I think that’s super important.

39:50

So if I’m a patient or a potential patient who experiences some level of pain, what do I do? Where do I turn? What what’s the patient

40:00

To alleviate this pain,

40:03

yeah, so

40:06

patients are normally referred to us from other physicians,

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primary care doctors surgeons, so if you would like to see us then, you know, pain at you a pain that your MSA Edu just throwing out there.

40:21

But your physician can send us a referral. And patients then are seen by me or one of my four colleagues in our clinic space. And it’s really a conversation about what you’ve gone through. And how we can. And my question that I always like to ask is, what is your goal? What are you able, what do you want to do that you’re not able to do, and then we create a plan to help you get there.

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Sometimes that plan includes medications, and hopefully non opioid medications, but sometimes, you know, with a lack of options that can become opioids.

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Most time, that becomes some sort of procedural intervention. And so I spend 60% of my time in a procedure room. And that’s kind of the other half of our clinic, where patients come in, and we, you know, it may be that your knee after a knee replacement, doesn’t work in the same way that you hoped it would, and you have really severe pain, when you walk, well, maybe I can burn off the nerve that goes to the knee replacement, so that you don’t feel that hinze going back and forth, so that you can walk a little better without pain, maybe it’s that you’ve had seven spine surgeries, and you have a lot of nerves that are encased in scar and they are not sending functional signals to your brain. So maybe I can put a little electrical lead similar to a pacemaker on your spinal cord above the area where you had all those surgeries to intercept and use the correct frequency to intercept those dysfunctional nerve signaling so that your brain doesn’t catch them sounds almost like the noise canceling feature in my air pods. Right. So it’s, it’s still there, we’re just masking it is that exactly, that’s exactly exactly what we’re doing. Allowing you to still function still do all the things you need to, but getting rid of that kind of that noise that’s bothering you.

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And so it can be any number of things. And then that’s kind of when we bring you into. And of course, patients are nervous. Patients haven’t heard of these kinds of treatments before, they seem scary, you know, having something, I’m going to burn a nerve in your knee, or I’m going to put an electrical lead in your spine, or all those things. So that’s where that bind comes in. And that’s where that you know, what we call in anesthesiology. ainsdale. ISIS comes in and trying to remove or help kind of mitigate someone’s anxiety. So helping make sure that the experience is good. So that patients when they leave, they say, you know, I really expected that to be terrible, but it was actually kind of a lot of fun. And the people were smiling.

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And I could tell that everyone cared for me. And that’s what we’re shooting for. I love it. And I can only imagine the outcome and the result.

43:32

And the satisfaction with life that a lot of your patients are able to experience because they were able to come and take that leap. get educated. I’m assuming education is such a huge part of what you do too. Because, yeah, I would think every patient it goes in you say you’re gonna burn something off my knee will tell me about like, educated make me feel okay with this process, because that sounds more painful than the pain I’m already in.

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But yeah, I think that’s, that’s incredible. And I tell people all the time, you know, in our world, in our storytelling world, we aren’t saving lives, right. But what we are doing is helping other people be impacted by the stories we’re telling. Because just like this story that you’ve told us today,

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without the story of what you guys are doing, how many people are out there living in pain every day because they don’t know there’s an option. And so I commend you on everything you do. I want to jump into some quick hit questions. Get a little personality behind the the doctor here. What’s the best or latest book that you’ve read? So my my favorite book is lies my teacher told me

44:42

because not really fully because of the content. But what’s the contents amazing, but it’s a book that really goes through moments in history that we’re told incorrectly

44:57

but it really reminds

45:00

To me that

45:03

our education can’t stop in the classroom? And that we have to continue to question what we’ve been told, you know, a classic example of that I’m really passionate about making sure that

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minority minorities get the same level of health care that others get. And one of the lies that has been told historically in medicine is that black people don’t feel pain the same way that everyone else does.

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And kind of if you take what you learn in the classroom at face value, then you can propagate incorrect information, and actually harm lives. So sorry, I turned that quick hit into a long hit. I think that’s incredibly important to think about, and I could definitely dive into that for a long time. I mean, I’ve said all the time, because sometimes people say, Well, what did you What was your biggest takeaway from college? or What did you learn in college? And I say, really, I don’t remember the classroom. Honestly, what I learned is how to learn, because you should never stop learning, you should never stop questioning, you should never stop exploring and getting better, and understanding the world better. And I agree with you 100%. I think, you know, do teachers do incredibly valuable things? Absolutely. And I have a lot of teachers that I can credit, a lot of, you know, how to learn references from you know, but I can’t remember what I took away in that classroom. But I can know that I’m smarter today than I was last year, because I continue to learn. So I appreciate that. What’s a daily routine that you have to do, I would say exercise. And I had an ankle injury, pretty severe ankle injury in in January. And just like everyone who has the means to do so on the planet did during the pandemic, I bought a peloton.

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But moving my body and clearing my mind, having time when I have to focus on getting through a workout is essential for me to get through my day. And when that was taken for me. From about two months, one I gained a little bit of weight, but two,

47:13

I noticed a change in my mental health. And so I now know that that’s something I have to do to stay healthy. Absolutely. Yeah, I think

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a lot of people, myself included, because I mean, it was probably about four or five years ago that I really started to get back into exercising consistently fell off a lot during the pandemic, of course, because I’m a gym guy, I have to go somewhere to exercise.

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And the mental health aspect of it is huge. That I think a lot of people that just aren’t used to it or don’t exercise don’t realize the impact to the mental side of the physical gain that you get from it.

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What is the best piece of advice that you even either given or received? It’s it’s something that my father told me, and it’s really corny. And I actually said it yesterday, I gave a talk to a bunch of college athletes who are looking to go into medicine is that your network is your net worth.

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You know, in the in the black community, we use a lot of alliteration, but I think that it the people around you is what matters. And a lot of my success has been because I’ve been fortunate to have really talented people around me to keep me focused, and to make sure that I am doing all the things that I need to be successful and I’m reading the right things I’m continuing to work out. And those those people you know more than anyone I mean, it includes my wife, Maya, who I’ve known since I was 18 years old, but a number of other people, my family, my friends, etc. Love it. If you could write a book or have a billboard with a short message on it, what would the title of that book be? Or what would that billboard say? To steal a phrase from Kevin Garnett? I think it would be that anything is possible.

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Love it.

49:15

What’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last year for under $100

49:20

so I’m going to nerd out for a second as you can tell, I’m not for folks listening. I’m not good at quick hit so sorry. Love it. Really two things. I have really my wife is vegan and right now for the past three months I’ve actually been become vegan.

49:37

And so we have because of the pandemic really cooked a lot at home. And so we have every single cook Cooking gadget known to man right now. So the first one is a coal chimney. Because I have I grill and now smoke and I make the best brisket even though I can’t eat it anymore.

50:00

But switching from lighter fluid to lighting my own colds has been a huge change. So that’s one. The second is a serrated bread knife, actual bread knife.

50:12

I, my wife has made me realize that you need more than one knife in your house. And so now we have, like, all the super nice, you know, all the super nice knives. And I was like, oh, when you cut bread, it’s actually a clean slice, if you use the right knife. Got it. So that’s something I learned during the pandemic. Obviously, this is something that probably everyone else listening already knew. And I’m a Neanderthal and I did not know. But when you cut bread with a steak knife, it doesn’t come out as a clean slice. So that’s probably number one. I have a really

50:54

talking about nerding out. I won’t share it here. But a really interesting story of random pieces of information I learned years ago about knives and blades and why serrated works better in some cases than a flat but you know, all the So what? We’ll talk about that over coffee sometime, anytime. All right, favorite artist or musician? I would say, Wow, that is that’s a very challenging question. Because I another way to put it is what’s the next concert you want to go see.

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That made it even harder.

51:31

You know, I lived in New York City for eight years. And I actually only saw maybe one movie my entire time in New York City because I went to a concert a week. And so I saw a lot of really amazing artists.

51:49

You know, the best concert I ever saw. And this probably is my favorite artists is Robert glasper. He is a jazz pianist who did all the music for the Miles Davis, Miles Davis movie that came out a couple years ago. And he has a jazz trio and then a group called the experience where there’s a key tourist and an electric basis. And

52:19

absolutely amazing kind of really niche like as, as my father would say confusion fusion jazz. And so that’s kind of where I go, but I listen to I mean, if you told me there was a concert next door, and it was I’d never heard of the person I’d probably go But yeah, I love like live music and the Kitab is an underrated instrument that I think needs to make a resurgence. Completely underrated. You’ve already alluded to this, but maybe you have a different answer but favorite food or restaurant. You said you make a really good brisket. So I make a really good brisket. But I am I’m vegan right now. So right now my favorite food is probably beyond burgers. That sounds crazy. But I’m really kind of nerding out on how the vegan meat alternative world has really exploded. And it’s just it’s just been mind blowing. I would say favorite restaurant is is probably ucci in Austin. Absolutely love that restaurant. High quality sushi, high quality food. Nice. Love it. Yeah, I think I’m due for a trip to Austin, so I’ll have to check it out soon.

53:35

Dr. Gorrie, what else have we have? We skipped over that that’s an important part of your message.

53:41

You know, I think the one thing that I haven’t really touched on a lot in this conversation is the importance. And I put this out there because I think it’s important for the titans of any industry. I think that diversity is important. And I think paramount to improving outcomes and making sure and a lot of times we talk about diversity, we always focus on race, but having differences of opinions and differences of life experiences in a room where decisions have made or made, making sure that there are women, people who grew up in impoverished backgrounds, people of different sexual orientations

54:29

who understand where the customer or the patient may be coming from, that may not be seen by kind of the majority. It is something that I think that we as a community and a nation really need to work on cultivating talent at a very young age so that we have pipelines of people from different backgrounds and experiences. And I think that making that change, really improve the quality of

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product of patient experience of business interactions across our country. I love that. Well, Dr. Jonathan glory. Thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate you sitting down and having this conversation with me. Thanks, native. I’ve known you for a long time. And so I appreciate and congrats on everything that you’re doing. And this was a fun conversation. A great, thanks, man.

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If you like this episode of titans of industry, head to content Titan dot CEO slash podcast for more episodes or subscribe on your favorite podcasting app. And if you know of an industry Titan that’s doing amazing things. Let us know on social media or through our website so we can tell their story. Thanks for listening