Podcast appearances and mentions of ariel rubin

Today Tash and Shannon chatted with Dr. Ariel Rubin. She's a child psychiatrist who has a personal connection to autism through her brother. Dr. Rubin shares her journey into psychiatry and explores the dynamics of growing up with a sibling with autism. Today we focus on autism and ADHD, how these conditions intersect with mental health, the importance of late diagnoses, and the emotional challenges faced by children and their families. We also talk about the need for self-awareness and understanding within families, as well as the significance of seeking professional help when necessary.

In today's episode, I chat with Ariel Rubin, formerly a design lead for iconic brands such as IDEO and Apple. In total, Ariel spent 15 years as a creative professional working as a musician and photographer in addition to leading design. Today she lives with her family on Vancouver Island and is the owner/operator of Rockrose Farm, a demonstration garden, flower farm & artist centre.In over 150 episodes of this podcast, Ariel is the first guest we've had that I went to high school with. We talked about our individual and collective experiences during that formative time and, later on, Ariel's journey through a number of professional chapters.From Victoria, to Cambridge to Silicon Valley - experience design is a common thread - and so I asked Ariel to define it for us, and share how she still embeds it today in nearly every aspect of her life. It was a wonderful discussion; part journey down memory lane and part reflective session for two professionals at inflection points. An honest conversation that I hope you enjoy as much as I did recording it.Ariel RubinAriel Rubin spent 15 years as a creative professional working as a musician, photographer and design lead for companies like IDEO and Apple. She now lives with her family on Vancouver Island, and is the owner/operator of Rockrose Farm; a demonstration garden, flower farm & artist centre.Website Instagram LinkedIn High School Program Thinking Inside the BoxConstraints drive innovation. We tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture. And if you enjoy the work we're doing here, consider giving us a 5-star rating, leaving a comment & subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content & really helps amplify our message.LinkedInWebsiteApple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSpotifyStitcherPocket CastMatt BurnsMatt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.LinkedInTwitter

Juliana Moreno & Ariel Rubin (aka The Wild Optimists) invite Tay and Dani into an escape room to talk about how to create a successful Kickstarter, the story behind how they met while they were both pregnant, and explain what it means consulting for Universal immersive experiences.  -- Our Amazing Guests: Juliana Moreno & Ariel Rubin Website: www.wildoptimists.com Insta: @thewildoptimists Twitter: @escaperoominbox Facebook: www.facebook.com/wildoptimists -- Don't be shy come say hi to us on accidentalexperts.com or email us accidentalexperts@human-content.com Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1i2AWPF8KKCwytQ7-WBhmg Listen Anywhere You Podcast: Apple, Spotify, Google, etc. — A Human Content & Digital Brand Architects Production Album Art Features ‘Swansea Font' by Roger White  

Your host, Jennifer Helene, talks with Ariel Rubin & Juliana Moreno Patel of Wild Optimists. Wild Optimists is an award-winning interactive entertainment company devoted to designing new ways to play. In the past three years alone they have created over 40 memorable interactive experiences for tabletop games, virtual games, theme parks, music festivals, historical sites, marketing activations, and more. To learn more about Juliana and Ariel's work, visit https://www.wildoptimists.com/ (https://www.wildoptimists.com/) If you'd like to be a guest on Vitality: Women Leading Audaciously, click https://podcast.jennifer-helene.com/podcast-guest (HERE)

This week I am joined by the powerhouse that is The Wild Optimists! Ariel Rubin and Juliana Moreno Patel discuss their experience designing Time Drifters, a take home escape that can be played in separate households! Also discussed is their murder mystery series, Crimes & Capers, as well as tangents on the murder mystery genre, beta testing during COVID, and many…many 90's references.

Wild Optimists began when Juliana Moreno Patel and Ariel Rubin combined their theatre degrees and writing backgrounds in Hollywood with their life-long love for gaming to create the Kickstarter sensation, Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment. As the first at home game to ever recreate the “escape room” experience in a tabletop setting for all ages, Escape Room in A Box was a genre-defining success that was licensed by Mattel and soon distributed worldwide. Game of the Year winner at the Mattel Inventor Awards, the Escape Room in a Box brand has now evolved into an ongoing game series with Mattel. Meet the women behind the brand on The Mompreneur Model November 18th 1pmET/10amPT and then in podcast. Visit  WildOptimists.com and on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and buy Time Drifters, Werewolf Experiment, Flashback, Crimes & Capers and Hello Neighbor. Thanks to our sponsors at StadiumBags.com. We continue to shine the light on No Such Thing as a Bully and thank Smith Sisters and the Sunday Drivers for our theme song, She is You. Connect with Word of Mom on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Word of Mom Radio - sharing the wisdom of women, in business and in life.  

Ariel Rubin and Juliana Moreno, designers of the Escape Room in a Box series, discuss what it takes to put a new twist on a familiar genre.Over the last few years, they’ve designed and published several games that brought new angles and fresh ideas to various different genres, so we dive into lots of great... The post How to Put a New Twist on a Familiar Genre with Ariel Rubin and Juliana Moreno appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.

Welcome to episode 25 of the Finding Games podcast, where we talk to people who work in and around the tabletop games industry and find out how they got there. In this episode, we talk with Juliana, a tabletop game designer and founding member of the Wild Optimists who specialises in puzzle games. We talk about her experiences self publishing and her insights into the tabletop games industry plus she provides some amazing advice for people wanting to follow in her footsteps. Here's some more information about the Wild Optimists in their own words: The Wild Optimists began when Juliana Moreno Patel & Ariel Rubin, combined their theatre degrees and writing backgrounds with their lifelong love of gaming to create the Kickstarter sensation Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment, the first game in the tabletop Escape Room genre and winner of Game of the Year at the Mattel Inventor Awards. Since then The Wild Optimists have created immersive gaming experiences for a wide variety of clients including Sony, Fox, Universal, the CW, AEG, and http://vampire.pizza. Their goal is to design new ways to play, creating memorable interactive experiences for tabletop games, virtual games, family entertainment centres, theme parks, music festivals, historical sites, marketing activations, and more. You can follow the links below to see more from The Wild Optimists: Twitter: @EscapeRoomInBox Website: https://www.wildoptimists.com

Episode 3 is an interview with game and puzzle designers Juliana Moreno Patel and Ariel Rubin, the Wild Optimists. This brilliant duo designed the world’s first Escape Room in a Box which is released worldwide by Mattel. Juliana and Ariel met, founded their company, and created their first product all while pregnant, which should give you a good idea of their intense passion. They are known for their thoughtful designs in immersive gaming and continue to push the envelope when it comes to creating new types of game design.   Show Notes   Music: "The Legend of LoFi" by Dj Cutman & James Landino, provided by GameChops.

Welcome back to another episode of Puzzling Company! On this episode, we will be trying to stop the Evil Doc Gnaw in Escape Room In A Box: Flashback. This game involves you opening up the starting box and completing three different pathways to gather all the things you need to defeat Doc Gnaw! This game was simply a blast to play and we are so excited to talk with the amazing women Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin from Wild Optimists about it. We hope you guys truly enjoy the episode!You can find their games on Amazon today!Link to buy Flashback:https://www.target.com/p/escape-room-in-a-box-flashback-game/-/A-52706258#lnk=sametabLink to artist who worked on Flashback:https://www.mjblackwood.com/Links to Wild Optimists Social Media:www.wildoptimists.comhttps://www.instagram.com/thewildoptimists/https://twitter.com/escaperoominboxhttps://www.facebook.com/wildoptimists/If you would to support us:1) Leave us a 5-Star review!2) Follow us on social media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

BGBS 052: Tanner Krause | Kum & Go | We Must Be the Force of Change Tanner Krause is the President of Kum & Go, a fourth-generation family-owned business headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa with 400 stores spanning 11 states. And boy, does he have a story for you. You'll learn that Kum & Go is more than just a convenience store. On top of being a fun place with a die-hard fandom, the service mentality that the company embodies is exemplary, and you'll be sure to feel Tanner's passion through the mic as he expresses his mission to improve greater equality and kindness for humanity. In this episode, we deep dive into Kum & Go's history and learn how it all started out with a love story. Tanner also touches on crucial decisions that were made during each generation, including his own, that all impacted Kum & Go for the better. Overall, Tanner feels his greatest purpose is to ensure that his family and others are proud of Kum & Go for generations to come. To him, that means using his privilege and opportunity to be a force of change for the many forms of inequality America endures. That being said, how can you become a force of change, even in your own small way? In this episode, you'll learn... The name for Kum & Go came from the last names Krause and Gentle, named after Tanner's grandfather and great-grandfather Tanner speaks fondly of his grandfather Bill Krause, a charismatic person with a gift of making people feel special and paying attention to detail, no matter how influential he became. Although the number of Kum & Go stores are smaller than they were in 2004, Tanner's father Kyle ensures that the chain of stores left were rebuilt, ensuring a continuity of quality and improving the financial health of the company At Kum & Go, the 5 core values they stand by are passion, integrity, teamwork, caring, and excellence Kum & Go has generations of service-based leadership. In an industry where products are not generally differentiated, Kum & go wins with its people, which is why they've maintained such success for 61 years Tanner stresses that in today's day and age, you cannot require a consumer to come shop and meet your needs at the store. They need the freedom to shop in person at their own convenience. Therefore, developing the technology for that freedom was essential to Kum & Go. Almost every decision you make, you think is right based on the information you have at the time. It is important to remember this when hindsight overturns your original decision Tanner encourages families with privilege to make transcended progress in driving change on matters of equality. Kum & Go associates get six weeks of fully paid maternity leave, which is rare for retail in Iowa. Thus far, this has impacted about 3,000-4,000 people. The family age of first employment at Kum & Go is 9 years old. Tanner was so excited to work, he unsuccessfully negotiated to start at 8. Resources Tanner Krause LinkedIn: Tanner Krause Twitter: @TannerKrause Kum & Go Website: kumandgo.com Twitter: @kumandgo Instagram: @kumandgo TikTok: @realkumandgo LinkedIn: Kum & Go Quotes [19:48] We have core values at Kum & Go. We have five. Passion, integrity, teamwork, caring, and excellence... A Kum & Go person is somebody who embodies those core values. Somebody who gets out of bed in the morning and thinks about making days better for others, "how do we come in and serve?" And it's been this service mentality that has led us to be successful. [31:44] Success in the convenience store business is getting some getting somebody to inconvenience themselves to go to a convenience store [46:47] The fact that somebody's going beyond just, you know, buying drinks and buying gas from us, but to say, "You know what? This company, this brand, this store, this experience is so cool, I want it too, and I want it to be a part of my personal story and my personal brand," I get really proud. I'm really happy I see it, and it brings a smile to my face. [48:53] Inequality exists in a variety of forms in America. And in order to make acceptable progress, it cannot be the oppressed that drive change. The privileged have to drive change. For us to really make transcended progress and success in matters of all sorts of equality, it has to be people like myself, people who look like me, people who have wealth and opportunity like I have, people that have education like I have, that recognize this and say..."Why don't we be the force of change?" Podcast Transcript Tanner Krause 0:02 Kum & Go's purpose is to make this better if we're successful in our purpose, and if we can give you just a glimpse of incremental joy or happiness, when you think about the impact that we can have in the country by being a small source of joy, that's exciting to me, about, you know, how we can leverage what we do to drive the change, we want to see. That's what we're trying to do. And we invest in our associates and we design our associate value proposition, not in a way in which, you know, what does the market demand? Or does the market bear for things or for people, but, you know, what do our people deserve? And listen objectively, like with a global perspective, do our people deserve a living wage to deserve maternity leave? Do they deserve health insurance, you know what that list look like? And you know, before we start to add bells and whistles over here, and let's stay focused on people in our employ, and make sure that they're respected and dignified, except that they shouldn't be. And that's what we've tried to do. Marc Gutman 1:02 Podcasting from Boulder, Colorado, this is the baby got backstory Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like big Back stories, and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and today's episode of Baby Got Back story. How a young boy from Iowa grew into his destiny to run one of the largest networks of privately owned convenience stores in the Midwest. I am so excited about today's episode, because I'm personally obsessed with relevance. How do we stay relevant? How do we reinvent ourselves? How do we move forward with the world as it moves forward around us? And how do we stay relevant while effecting change. And today's guest is all about relevance. Last week, we had Ariel Rubin from Kum & Go on the show. And today we are talking with Tanner Kraus president of Kum & Go. And before we get to Tanner, I want to remind you to rate and review this show. If you're listening, I'm assuming you like it. And if that's the case, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over at Apple podcasts or Spotify, Apple podcasts and Spotify use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines the ratings on their charts. ratings are good for us so we can continue to produce this show. Better yet, please recommend this show to at least one friend you think well like it. That's just being a good friend. Tanner Krauss is the president of Kum & Go headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. He is the fourth generation to lead the family owned business. And as President Tanner oversees the marketing operations, human resources, information technology, finance and storage development functions. Together, these teams provide support to 5000 Associates and 400 stores across 11 states. I mentioned that Tanner is 32 years old. But you wouldn't know it by listening to him. And as you're hearing today's interview, he was raised for this job. And he knew ever since he knew something that this was his calling. And the combination of the two makes it no surprise that he is President today. What may surprise you is Tanner's perspective on the convenience store. But the impact they're making on their employees, their communities, and the world. Tanner is not simply along for the ride. He sees Kum & Go as a platform to do good while continuing to build the business. As I mentioned last week, as a customer, I am so enamored by Kum & Go. I seek out their stores when I'm on the road. And I'm so honored to have Tanner Kraus on the show. And this is his story. So I am here with Tanner Krause, the president of Kum & Go. Tanner, welcome. And if you could start off by telling us, what is Kum & Go? Tanner Krause 4:26 Well, Marc, thanks for having me. And shout out to all your listeners out there. I love talking about Kum & Go. So Kum & Go is a convenience store company based in Des Moines, Iowa. We've been around for 61 years. We're in 11 states across most of the Midwest, and we've got about 400 locations Marc Gutman 4:47 and kind of a funny name. Where does the name Kum & Go come from? Tanner Krause 4:54 Sure. Kum & Go is a name based actually on my family. So we're a family business on the fourth generation of my family to lead the business. And, you know, Kum & Go and grew out of one store in Hampton, Iowa in 1959. And I like to say that Kum & Go was a love story. You had my grandpa who was working for a kind of oil, who's about to get relocated to Wyoming. And his soon to be father in law said, there's no way in hell you're taking my daughter from I went to Wyoming in the 50s. Why don't I buy that service station that's for sale on the corner, and you can run it and we'll go into business together? So what's keeping Nancy Gentle in Hampton, Iowa was the impetus for the first store in this business. And it was Hampton oil company. Well, we grew pretty rapidly that a good little model. And finally, we needed a name, and didn't want to call it Hampton oil as we went into these other small towns in Northern Iowa. So we needed a name. And they wanted to name my grandpa, my great grandpa that brought in the K from my last name Krause. And then the G from my great grandpa's last name, gentle. So we have the name Kum & Go. And this is early 60s. So my grandfather's go into the sign company in Northern Iowa. And they say we need you know, we have whatever nine stores, we need three signs for a store. And here's our name, sign guy goes, Okay, it's 50 bucks a letter, and does the record tick, as all right, it'll cost you this much money to buy signage for your stores. And being a scrappy entrepreneurs that we were, they look up the name and said 50 bucks a letter, that's too expensive. What if we do this, no longer will be a nd we'll use the ampersand, save two characters. And we can spell come instead of spelling kome. We can spell it Kum save a third character. And then they got a new quote, they probably saved I don't know, 4000 bucks or something and early 60s, and Kum & Go, as you know, today was named Marc Gutman 7:18 Ah, that's awesome and it's become an iconic name ever since. And then. So from that moment, where we're kind of in this moment where the name gets more or less branded, or I guess maybe the the typography of it comes about in this organic way. And the name comes about what happens there with the business, how does it continue to grow and expand? Tanner Krause 7:43 Well, I think the thing that we've gotten better at recently is talking about the elephant in the room. And there was a long stretch of time where we didn't know how to address the reality that it is our name, and the innuendo and the euphemism and the underlying sexual tone in our name. So we avoided it. And looking back, that was probably the wrong strategy, because we allowed others to control the narrative of our brand assets. Instead, we now embrace the fact that our name is our name. And we're controlling the narrative, and we're doing so in a way that doesn't cheapen who we are, it doesn't invite further sexualization of our brand. It addresses the awkwardness in a mostly mature manner and we even stamped out rude or de sexualizing comments on our social media accounts, so that we, we don't have that type of negative activity or surrounding us. And so now it's becoming more of the conversation and more normalized, and we're seeing a really positive reaction to that. Marc Gutman 9:03 Yeah, that's awesome. It's really this idea, you know, that I've talked about before, which is brand or be branded, like, either you're out there talking about it, or other people are, but people are talking about it. And so better, like, as you mentioned, to, to try to, it's not even, like control the narrative, it's just like, inform the narrative, it's more like shape it because, you know, narratives are kind of our two ways. You know, a lot of times are most of the time with our customers. And so, I love that and so, kind of getting back though to when you have these scrappy entrepreneurs, they're they're building the business, how did the business grow from what I was trying to maybe ask and, and I loved your answer because I but I did a poor job. I think of the asking the question was, how did the business grow from that point on how did it begin to become this bigger thing that started to spread out across multiple states and and over the generations have all these all these locations? Tanner Krause 9:55 Yeah, happy to tell that story too. So, you know, we had a bit of magic That first service station back in Hampton, Iowa. And she had a couple things going for you that my grandpa and my great grandpa. And so my grandpa, Bill Krause was as charismatic a person as I ever met. He was incredible with people, you remember everybody's name, he remembered more than just your name about you. And he made you feel important. He made you feel special. And he never lost that. And no matter how influential or wealthy he became, he was always had a gift with people. And he worked his ass off. He, you know, my grandma still tell stories how when we had that first store, you would close overnight? Well, he would pin the home phone number to the gas pump. And if there was a trucker driving through Hampton at night, they needed to go to his store, call him he would put his boots on, got to bed, drive down to get the sale, and then go back home and sleep the rest of the night. And so he was that kind of guy. Then you had my great grandfather, who was, you know, the consummate merchant, he was this business man, he, he owned a pharmacy in Northern Iowa, before he got into the gas and oil and service business, his family, his parents ran a fruit stand and kind of predict that depression era Iowa. And so he was good at merchandising, he was good at, you know, buying for $1 and selling for two. And so they really pioneered and what's the modern day convenience store, at least in our part of the country in which you had this model that was very automobile focused. And it was oil changes and tire changes and fluid changes and gas. And it was kind of basics. And they were one of the first you know, it's the story is told the first to really start to merchandise, staples with your automobile products. So they were selling bread, milk, a eggs, nice to have, they were really bringing convenience to the customer. And that combination of merchandising and marketing, slash sales and people skills was a really successful one. So the store started to work, show them a lot of money, relatively speaking. And then they were able to kind of go town to town across Iowa. And you know, no business plan, No formalities, a walk into the local banker and say, Hey, this is my model, do you believe in me with a small loan, I can get one of these going in your town. And that worked. And it kept working. And I kept repeating itself. And then that became Kum & Go, and then we're growing through the 60s or going through the 70s, or growing through the 80s, pretty organically kind of one at a time slow, slow, slow, as you get to the 80s. And into the 90s, especially our business grew to where we were able to start kicking off a decent amount of cash. And we were able to do some acquisitions. So we really grew from a store count perspective and a geographical reach in the 90s especially. And so we had this operational magic, and to some extent, a strong brand. But really the magic was in our ability to execute in stores, we could take a bankrupt chain of convenience stores in any town in the Midwest, buy it and run it and be able to make a good money and have really quick returns through that process. And so we did that, that got us into Omaha that got us into Colorado got us into Tulsa gotta finish Springfield, Missouri, got us into a lot of the markets where we are today. So my grandfather really led this scaling of our enterprise largest your acquisition. The next chapter is you have my dad coming up to the business. And so my dad graduated from USC of Iowa in the mid 80s, and went straight in to Kum & Go. So he's grown up during all this time. And he becomes CEO in 2004. And he shifts our growth strategy as a company. So we were an acquisition based company, we shift to grow into an organic built company again, where we now start to build our own stores. And what he saw was while the acquisition led growth had really positive short term returns, right, you're buying really depreciated assets you're putting Kum & Go on the storefront you're putting Kum & Go people in the store and more importantly, and you're getting quick paybacks, so that was spinning well for us. But you wake up one day, we have 450 stores, all different types of associating customer experiences. We've got some stores of 711 built we've got some stores that getting go bill, we've got some stores that mom and pop in Oklahoma built and they're all over the place in terms of asset quality product offering product mix, plan, the grand the whole nine yards was really scattered. And so our brand suffered ultimately, as a result of all that even though financially we're quite strong. So Dan kicks off this massive initiative to start to build new and rebuild the key real estate that we own and divest non strategic assets in real estate. And we are just about on the tail end of this project, but he kicked off. And I think it was 2010 or 2011, we're really got ambitious about turning over the chain of stores that we own and operate. And so we now have, you know, in his CEO, experience or leadership, our store count has gone down, as we've divested, but we've built new stores, high performing stores, our volume for outlets are growing rapidly, and our overall company financial health, and ultimately, the profitability has grown substantially since he took over even though our total number of stores is actually smaller than it was in 2004. Marc Gutman 15:57 Yeah, and then you come in and you become president. And we'll get there in a second. But I kind of want to take a step back because you so clearly articulated, and thank you for sharing that story in that that journey of Kum & Go and your family. And so do you have brothers or other siblings? Tanner Krause 16:15 I do. Yeah, I'm one of four boys. Marc Gutman 16:18 Okay. And so it can you just give me a rundown of what that looks like in terms of ages and things like that. Tanner Krause 16:25 Yeah, so my older brother Ryan is in law school. He's doing social justice law at the Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan. On the second oldest, my younger brother Elliot, also lives in New York City. He is a director of a creative writing program at a Jesuit High School in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. And my youngest brother, Oliver, is the director of analytics for Parma Calcio. Marc Gutman 16:52 Oh, awesome. And so thank you for that. And so this might answer my question. So when you think back and you know, Tanner, you know, you're 856, something like that growing up in Des Moines? Did you always think that you would someday? Be in the family business? Did you dream of having a leadership role Kum & Go? Or was there something else for you? Tanner Krause 17:15 Absolutely, this is my dream. And I'm blessed to say that, you know, I woke up, I woke up, I grew up, and I looked up to my dad, I looked up to my grandfather, even my great grandfather, you know, he passed away when I was 18 years old, so a lot of exposure to him as well. So, you know, I looked at, you know, my family as, as role models as as aspirational to me. And I've always known I would do this. And I've always known that I would be a part of Kum & Go. And most of my life experiences were designed around preparing me to have the job I have today. Marc Gutman 17:57 Yeah. And so it's interesting, like, I like when I go into a Kum & Go, I feel that it's different. And I don't know why. And I think that that's always the hallmark of a great brand is you can't always identify why you're feeling something or why you recognize it. But there's these little things, you know, and and perhaps I can, I can trace it back to the stories you shared about your grandfather, your great grandfather and how they approached business. But like, you know, you do feel welcome, if there is a and I want to ask you, you know, what you mentioned, you know, we have Kum & Go people, which is a Kum & Go person, because like when I go into a common ghost store, I mean, you talk about things about being a family business, there's values that are printed in different, you know, areas of the store, I mean, it just feels different. Has it always been that way? Or is this something that that's a little bit new with the brand and the way that you're communicating your brand story through the store? Tanner Krause 18:51 But I think we're communicating our brand story in a new way. But I think that thread of consistency has been coming to people. And we've as a brand, if you look back over the last 60 years, you know, if you heard a lot about what I was saying, relative to our assets, we were not winning on asset or store experience or store quality for most of our company's history. Have you walked into Kum & Gos today, thanks to the hard work of my father and our real estate team, we're finally winning on store stores, right? Our stores by and large, are bigger, brighter, newer, younger and better condition better materials than the competition. I'll put our fleet up against just about anybody in the business. However, that was not always the case. Like I said, when we're buying bankrupt seven elevens in downtown Omaha, you don't have great assets. So we had to win with people. And we have core values that Kum & Go we have five passion, integrity, teamwork, caring, an excellence. And so what is it coming to a person a kind of a person is somebody who embodies those core values. Somebody who gets out of bed in the morning and thinks about making days better for others, how do we come in and serve. And it's been this service mentality that has led us to be successful. And you saw that by now my grandfather was not above doing anything in a kum & go store, even when he was in his 60s and 70s. If the garbage was unsatisfactory, he would take the garbage out. If the pumps were dirty, he'd walk in and say, you know, where are your cleaning materials, he walked out and he cleaned the pump, and I saw him good, I'm going to Kum & Go to stores, where here's this, you know, semi retired founder, cleaning palms, taking out the trash getting the mop out of the bathroom, that's who he was. And so we have generation, decades of service based leadership of customer service based associate training and culture built into our DNA. And ultimately, we haven't been able to win on assets for a long time products in our industry are not very differentiated, you'd walk into our store, it's a similar line of products. And when you walk into our competition, that's a tough place for us to win. So you got it went on people. That's why we've been successful for 61 years. Marc Gutman 21:19 I love that. And you know, you mentioned that you were always destined to do this, that this was your dream job. I mean, do you remember that first day when you became president? Like, I know, you were in the company prior to that, so it wasn't like you just like, walked in, you know, one day and became president, but like, we scared like, Did you think like, Am I gonna be the fourth generation that screws this thing up? Like, did you have any apprehension? Tanner Krause 21:45 Absolutely. You know, I knew how to say one thing, my dad still CEO in the business, now he empowers me more and more every day. And at some point, there'll be an additional transition, where he'll step out of Kum & Go a little bit more than he is today. He'll Kum & Go zone by the crowds, group. Kraus group owns and operates 10 different businesses soon to be 11. And so we've got a lot going on in our portfolio. And he's trusted in the power of me, and I'm appreciative of that. But absolutely, I've I've been scared, I've been worried, I've been nervous. That motivates me, that gets me out of bed, you know what you said, I think about a lot, right? I feel the pressure to perpetuate what we do as a business as my main responsibility in this life. And I'm not going to fail, we are not going to fail. And we are faced with some of the greatest challenges that Kum & Gos ever faced, in my lifetime, we will see my prediction, almost the complete eradication of the internal combustible engine, gas will go away, it'll become a novelty, right, the shift to electric or hydrogen fuel cells or some alternative energy source is a matter of when and not if, even though we still have a lot of time to figure that out. And then you look at what technology is doing to brick and mortar. Sure, our industry has been relatively protected from e-commerce, because it's harder to get a hot cup of coffee delivered to your door from Amazon than it is to get a book. And so we're a little bit inflated, but that's coming and you're seeing that happen now. And so I view it as a personal responsibility as a failure responsibility to step up and say, we're not going to take the easy way out and sell. And we're not going to get our lunch eaten by somebody who hasn't been doing this as long as we've been doing this. So whether it was the first day became president, which was June 1 2018, I was 30 or today, or in 10 years, we're going to get up every day and say how does Kum & Go continuing to live its purpose How does Kum & Go continue to sustain itself generation after generation so that not only my family has something to be proud of. But every family of the 5000 people that we employ has something they can be proud of for another generation. Marc Gutman 24:14 And that's you know, quite a mantle to carry and you know, I can I can feel like how much it means to you. And so when you think about it, what is the future of convenience if we are moving towards this new world? You know, what does that look like? What are you thinking about? Tanner Krause 24:30 As I became a president, I've tried to shift the mentality of Kum & Go for a long time. We've classified ourselves as a convenience store. We're no longer a convenience store. We are in the immediate consumption business. That is our value to the customer is coming those stands for a place where it is easy and quick and convenient to get something to eat drink that I want now. The convenience store has merely been the model of delivery for us to meet that consumer need. And because of technology and shifts in consumer behavior, there are now other ways to meet that same need. So we have to focus on being the immediate consumption retailer of choice for our target customer. So that when you are in Colorado, one snack, once in a drink, want something to smoke, you think of Kum & Go. And we remain the most convenient option to get it to you quickly and conveniently for your immediate needs. And that means evolving beyond traditional brick and mortar retail, that means leveraging our existing brick and mortar stores and locations to our advantage, because that remains our major competitive advantage over disruptors and people from outside our industry. And so we'll leverage that. And it means developing technology to allow for the consumer to shop us at their choice. And to not require that consumer to come get in their car travel to our store and shop on hard turf on our terms in order to meet their needs. Because in this century, it's all about customer and convenience. And those customers will pay a premium for. And so if we're not there, and if we're not on the attack, and we're waiting for customers to come to us, we're going to be out of business. Marc Gutman 26:30 Yeah, and what I can say about like, even in this time, in this present day, you know, like I every every summer, I drive my family from Colorado, to Michigan for the summer, and I you know, good, right? Right through come and go territory, right, right through come and go country. And literally, I mean, my family is like, we are only stopping at a common goal. And especially if you're new, they called Fresh Market, or what's the new the newer concepts, the marketplace, the marketplace where they have healthy options where they have good food, you know, it's interesting. My kids are like, I won't eat at McDonald's, I won't eat it fast, you know, like, and so it really does feel like you understand the customer and who you're trying to serve and the present day and modern customer, you know, like you walk in any of your competitors. And it's like, basically, there are no healthy options. And it's like pizza that's been sitting there for, you know, probably half the day and things like that. So that really is felt, you know, and one of the things that so impresses me about coming, go. And so when you think about convenience, and maybe you, you know, mentioned this a little bit, but what's hard about it, like What don't we get, like What don't we see and what's hard about your role and the way that you are trying to bring convenience to your customer or instant consumption. Tanner Krause 27:46 The hardest thing is consistent and quality execution. And Ours is a model, like most retailers, where you've got your typically lowest paid associates, handling your customer delivering your customer service, and executing what needs to get done to make your business run. And so because we acknowledge that we try to culture is set up, Kum & Go. And again, a spirit of service to where we call our corporate headquarters, the store Support Center, and we look at our store associates as they come first in the value chain. And how do we support what happens in our stores? How do we make their days better so they can make our customers days better? How do we take complexity and non value added work away from our stores and into our store support center so they can focus on what really matters? And that's taking care of the customers? Marc Gutman 28:57 This episode brought to you by Wildstory. Wait, isn't that your company? It is. And without the generous support of Wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn't a logo or a tagline or even your product or a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service or company. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out at www dot wildstory.com and we'd be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show. You know kind of Want to shift a little bit and talk about how, you know you and I became introduced via social media roundabout way and right before this episode airs, we have Ariel on and so a lot of our listeners, listeners will hear about a bit about that approach and things like that. But like what I'm really interested in hearing, you know, you're younger, you know, you just kind of, you know, laid out your age or you're 32 if I'm doing the math, and so you definitely have that perspective of, of social media. But, you know, my family comes from the oil business, and my extended family. And so I've been around a lot. And I think of it as a real, like, old fashion, not willing to move not very progressive. I mean, certainly not your family, but you know, your, your competitors, of course, and to think that you came in and said, Look, we're going to do things differently, we're going to meet our customers where they are, which is on social. I mean, like, how did that all come about? Was your dad like, Tanner? Like? I don't know, or was he just like, do it like, was he like, yes, like, I believe in this? Tanner Krause 31:03 Well, my dad has been a huge supporter of mine. I mean, he's he's given me opportunities that I didn't fully expect, or maybe didn't have full confidence in my abilities, which, if you don't know me, is kind of rare. And he believed in me, and he supported me and encouraged me through the way. And growing up the business and seeing us up close, then from afar and up close, I've kind of coming out of the company a few times on my track, I understood that we needed to stand for something greater, and that Kum & Go a little bit had had lost a little bit of a differentiation. And I say this a lot success in the convenience store business is getting some getting somebody to inconvenience themselves to go to a convenience store. How do you drive for that irrational behavior in which it might be a little slower, or a lot more out of my way, or potentially slightly more expensive, but there's just something there that I like, and it just draws me to it. And we're doing what we can to differentiate on the product side, and you call out some of our healthier options, we're going to go further in that direction. But a bulk of our revenue is still in ubiquitous product, right? You're talking alcohol, you're talking tobacco, you're talking packaged goods, either under cooler or on the shelf. And there's that last X percent, that we're doing proprietary stuff that is different. However, this social, you know, what I can take credit for is a lot longer than I can't take credit for, I can take credit for attracting creative talent and getting out of their way. And the good thing about social is that the numbers speak for themselves. And it's a subset or it's an industry and of itself by now, where you've got instantaneous feedback from the customer. you post something, what was your engagement? What were your life over your views when your shares and you can get that feedback, and you can see if it's working or not. And you can see progress over time. It's more challenging. If you hire somebody as an accountant and say, you know, do accounting, right, you're not getting instantaneous feedback from the customer. And so, Arielle and I are friends who've been a family friend of ours for probably close to 20 years, he was our roommate with my older brother in New York City back early 2000s. And when we had this opening, I knew he could bring something different. And I don't fully understand what he does. I don't get social like he does. That's okay. You know, Arielle has no approvals necessary to post. You know, he's this, you know, Director of Communications at our company, and he's got full authority and he fires away. And he's smart enough, and we see the progress we've seen in access. And he has created that same type of empowerment culture on his team. You know, he recognizes Instagram is a powerful medium, and recognizes that he's okay at instant. But that's not really his microgeneration and it's not really his sweet spot. So he hired somebody who was personally excellent an Instagram to come help us on that medium, tick tock becoming more important. Now, Arielle, and I probably know nothing about Tick tock, but we know enough to know that it's important. And so are you recruiting hired a person who was individually extremely successful at Tick tock, and we empowered them to come in to Kum & Go, and they've done an incredible job with that platform and our brands. And so our success and social, I don't deserve much credit at all. But what I can say is that I've tried to hire credit talent and get out of their way. Marc Gutman 34:55 Yeah. And as you were speaking, I think that you think that is like normal? Or that that is the way that most people do it. But I can reflect back to you that it's not. And that you know that that leadership style of trusting in your people. Like, where do you think that comes from? And I have to imagine, again, having experience in family business that's like, that's got to be hard, right? Like, it's got to be hard. I mean, Kum & Go, might as well, it might as well say, Krause across your chest, you know, I mean, that is the same thing. I mean, Kum & Go is your family. It is your family moniker, it's you, you laid it out very clearly, like this is your purpose of life to you to make this make this thing keep going? And like, Where do you think that leadership style comes from, where you have that ability to care so much in in that caring, you're able to let go and let people have their voice and do their job? Because I it's not, it's not something we typically see. Tanner Krause 35:55 I think it starts with my dad, and my dad trusted and empowered me and gave me the chance to succeed. And he gave me a chance to fail. And he knew that if I screwed up, there'd be limited consequences, at least with the amount of slack is give me at the time, right? And when you own your business, you don't have to explain yourself to anybody. You don't have external accountability. It's an incredibly powerful advantage that we have. And we have complete job security. So if a tweet fails, or a post fails, in which we've had a poster to fail, arguably, Marc Gutman 36:41 Ariel shared a couple on his episode. Tanner Krause 36:43 Sure. So it's there. Right. Okay. What happened? You could argue that that posts end up being a success, because we're talking about today. And it was a semi innocuous tweet about a sporting event at Iowa State game, which, you know, Arielle, the sports novice and Iowa newbie, underestimated people's passion for, you know, the Seahawk rivalry. And you know, we got one wrong. Okay, we deleted a tweet, we wrote a Mia culpa. And we moved on. And guess what send us back failure of epic proportions where people, you know, like putting out there and rewards loyalty cards. We probably doubled our Twitter following in since then, right. I mean, failing on social media post has minor consequences. And so we've just said, you know, what we do? I've Kum & Go, you know, it's not brain surgery, right? I mean, we're selling snacks. We're selling vices, we're selling things that people enjoy the simple need. Let's not take ourselves too seriously. Marc Gutman 37:48 And, yeah, I mean, when you is that also your leadership style, though? Like, I mean, you're kind of like pinpointing social, but are you very much a, get the right people in the right place and let them do their job. Tanner Krause 38:01 Indeed, you know, I listen, I'm less experienced than probably anybody that has a job like mine in a company like mine, I recognize that. And so in order to compensate for one of my perceived weaknesses, I hire people that have that experience. And I don't try to tell them what to do. They've done this before. I've got ideas, I've got passion, you know, I've grown up in the business, I know, Kum & Go really well, I know what might work here, but don't always know how to get things from idea mode to execution mode. And so I find that in people and I hire them, and I'm big on measurement tools, you know, to me, we've got to focus on the right measurables or metrics for our business. And we've got to have the leadership group set goals for ourselves over some period of time, and say, Okay, we're going to move this number from A to B over the next five years. And I'm going to empower small number of people to be ultimately responsible for making progress. And so long as they stay within some, you know, brand code operate within our core values, you know, do these things in a good and sustainable way and go for it. And if you screw up, that's okay. Because, again, we're trying to be outdone. And if we miss earnings for a quarter or a year, it doesn't matter. Because we've you come and go as a generational business, we make investments over a 10 to 20 year horizon. And so if we have some hiccups along the way, the setbacks are minor. So yes, I try to hire smart people, hire talented people, make sure that we align on a direction, make sure they understand how they'll be measured. In terms of success, and then give them the tools they need to be successful. Marc Gutman 40:04 Well, and you mentioned that you had, you know, the latitude to fail, and you have some security within there, outside of social are there is there a failure or an instance you've had, since you've been at the helm of the company where you were dislike, that you can recall or, you know, were, it was it was one where maybe you'd like to have back, Tanner Krause 40:26 almost every decision that you make you think is right, based on the information that you have at the time of the decision. And there are very few decisions that I've made in my leadership experience here, where I've looked back and said, what I knew, then I did or said the wrong thing. And with the benefit of hindsight, you look back and say, Boy, if I had could have that one over again, I would. But if you're talking about you know, mistakes, or you know, asking for a mulligan, hiring is challenging. And when you hire externally, if you can do better than 50%, you're a good selector of talent. And, you know, time will tell I made a lot of hires in my few years in the business. And I've not gotten every one of those right. And that's had, you know, at times, so significant consequence, in terms of, you know, setting us back months, or maybe a year on a significant body of work. And so yeah, you know, if I could look back at some of the hires that didn't last or didn't work, and do those over again, I'd love that opportunity. Marc Gutman 41:35 Who wouldn't? Right? Who wouldn't? And, you know, one thing I really love about common go is that it's, it's a brand, you've branded it. And now there's these things, and we talk about sometimes on the show about, you know, whole brands, not the logo and the name, and it comes down to things like core values, and the underlying essence and the why and the purpose of what you're trying to do. But you've also created some really cool, like visual brand, artifacts, some hats, some gear, some fanny packs, like, where does this focus? Because some, someone's got to say, Hey, we're gonna do this kind of stuff. Where does this focus on elevating and building the coming go brand come from? Because again, like, you don't see that from a whole lot of other people in your category, right? You don't see shell, you know, doing a really great job with that. And some of these other, you know, smaller, smaller convenience stores and things like that. So where does where does that come from? Tanner Krause 42:33 Well, there's this incredible pride and loyalty and sometimes a rivalry amongst regional convenience for change in America. And none of the industry has this kind of, oftentimes rooted in the style, like loyalty and passion around some of these brands. And this is kind of, oh, you're that brand, or where did you come from, or you got to pick aside or whatever else. But there's this really strong, just organically develop passion for our brand that existed, you know, in and of itself for decades, that we've been able to tap into recently. And, and it's about, from my perspective, at least, it's a, it's about taking pride in what we do. And it's about wanting to lead and own a company that does cool stuff. And that doesn't just look at what we do, as, you know, X's and O's. But what we do is, how do we build a company where we can have fun, where our associates can be proud of what we're doing, where our customers are proud of what we're doing. And so, you know, oftentimes, it's like, not as complicated and, and being relatively small, and certainly, you know, privately held helps, but if we want a fanny pack, and when I say we, I mean, my brothers me, Arielle, you know, then let's make fanny packs. And I bet we could find some fans on social that would also love fanny packs. And your audience can see the shirt I'm wearing, but you know, Kum & Go one in a ward for an LGBT organization in Iowa, and I filmed an acceptance speech that said, you know, what, I want to come up with a T shirt with pride colors. And so we made a combination of product colors. And it's just a function of taking pride in what we do, and wanting to have fun along the way. And, you know, oftentimes, these are little, you know, swags that we just develop and build and, you know, creates buzz around the brand and creates advocates out there, it gets us a lot of awareness and, you know, we're on the right people's hips are on the right people's chest, and next thing, you know, like, Kum & Go becomes the brand of preference for the next generation of rising consumers. And so, you know, I'm confident that in 20 years, and these kind Uh, you know, regional c store brand wars, there'll be a lot more people out there saying, Oh, yeah, coming goes my company because, you know, but back when I was in college, you know, the fanny pack was the coolest thing on campus, or they stepped up for, you know, my school's LGBTQ organization in a way that other people didn't. And so, you know, we're having fun, and we're breeding loyalty. Marc Gutman 45:24 And I want you to think back in two recent memory, and I want you to think back to the last time you saw someone wearing some Kum & Go, the peril in the wild, right? Not at not at a store, but you're just out and about, maybe you're having a nice night out or something. Did you? Can you remember that? Tanner Krause 45:43 I haven't been out of the house in about nine months. If I go back deep into the archives, I can have a couple of things that come to mind. Yes, Marc Gutman 45:51 yeah. And so when you think of that, like, maybe maybe you can share with us like real briefly like what you're thinking of? And then like, how does that make you feel when you see someone wearing your brand kind of out and about town and rep and Kum & Go and they don't know who you are, you know, you're just you're just across the square or whatever? Like, like, Can you share that with us. Tanner Krause 46:10 It's a unique feeling to work for a family business, it's, you know, I worked outside of the company, I've worked inside the company, and the amount of pride that I have for Kum & Go is unparalleled, I wouldn't be able to find this working for I don't think any other company in the world. And so when I see, other people choose to associate themselves with our brand. Again, we're not a company that really earns any money on memorabilia, or products, or merchandise or wearables, that is not what we do. So the fact that somebody who's going beyond just, you know, buying drinks and buying gas from us, but to say, you know, what, this company, this brand, this store, this experience is so cool, I want it to and I want it to be a part of my personal story and my personal brand, I get really proud, I'm really happy I see it, and it brings a smile to my face. Marc Gutman 47:08 And you're talking just prior to that to about your involvement with the LGBTQ community. You know, as you know, I've been following you on your company on social and you're your champion of a lot of progressive issues. Where does that come from, like this idea of, of being a Stuart, a champion, a representative for these types of issues, again, we just don't see a lot of convenience stores or a lot of businesses, and there's a lot of businesses don't even do it in general, that are out there as a champion for these groups. And where does that all come from? And what's that all about? Tanner Krause 47:40 You know, my family's extremely privileged. I mean, just extremely wealthy. I mean, it's not really a secret, right? I mean, we are who we are. And through that privilege, we've been able to see a lot of the world. And we're extremely well traveled, I'm very fortunate to, you know, have the experiences that I've had in life, I've been able to live in foreign countries, my brothers have lived in foreign countries, I've been able to educate myself to a master's level, as have all of my siblings. And you know, with that comes perspective. And we've always been raised with a strong sense of, you know, what's right, and a strong sense of respect and dignity for others. And, again, going back to my grandfather, who has one of the most prominent figures in the state of Iowa, and was not going into stores and barking orders, but he was changing trash as a, you know, 70 year old man and expensive car in the parking lot. And we've always just felt a general respect for humanity. And personally, I feel responsible to stand up to improve equality in this country. And inequality exists in a variety of forms in America. And in order to make an acceptable progress. It cannot be the oppressed, that drive change, the privileged have to drive change, for us to really make transcended progress and success in matters of all sorts of equality. It has to be people like myself, people who look like me, people who have wealth and opportunity, like I have people have education, like I have that recognize this and say, You know what, my family has plenty for generations, families like ours, and even families, less affluent and privileged as ours are doing so well. That it's time we look around and say why don't we be the force of change? And why don't we reach a handout and help some of our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our associates, our customers in these oppressed communities and say, I see you I respect you. I'm here for you. And I'm going to Put your needs, and you get into basic levels of human dignity about me getting who knows a lake house or some other, like ostentatious acquisition that we could do. Because that, you know, the time has come for, you know us in power and us in privilege to join this fight, and to, to stand up for matters of equality, because, you know, it's, it's been on too long. And I recognize now that, you know, I've got this platform, I've got podcasts like this, I've got other engagements where I can speak on things. And I want to draw attention to these. And it is rare, unfortunately, in our industry, and it's rare, unfortunately, in the corporate world. And that's too bad. But maybe if I go first, and other leaders and companies say, okay, like they did that, and guess what, like their business didn't fail, or customers didn't leave them wholesale, or whatever measurement they might be worried about that outcome didn't happen. And guess what, people got a little bit better life out of it. Did that success, the impact that I want to leave in this world? Sure. It's about coming up being sustainable. But it's about bigger than that. It's about how do we how do we push for a better humanity and, and one of the things of just how America is constructed is that private enterprise drives an outsized amount of change in the world, we have this free market approach to most of our economies, to most of our societies. And so I look at something that we did last year where we gave maternity leave to our frontline associates. And so now Kum & Go associate working in a store to get six weeks of fully paid maternity leave, that is rare for retail in Iowa, we were able to give that benefit to about 3000 4000 people, right, but it's bigger companies look at what we did and say, You know what, that was good. Or now I have to do that thing to be competitive in the labor market with Kum & Go, then those 3000 people, and then these other companies over here, follow, then that might be 30,000 people. And then next thing, you know, we might have just gone a whole generation of islands or Americans that have access to what should be a basic civic right to be in this country of paid leave for newborn children got that benefit. And so what we try to do is recognize the inequality in America and stand up for those that are oppressed and do what we can. And listen, before I stop talking. We're not perfect. All right. We're not we don't do everything. Right. All right. And we've not been this way forever. And you've got a long history. And I'm sure there's things that people can point to and say, Well, what about this? And what about that, and those things are probably true, and they're probably fair to say, but what I can say is that we care, we see oppression, we don't stand for it, and we're trying to stamp it out. And we're going to do better every day. But we're not going to be perfect starting today or tomorrow. But I promise you, we're gonna make progress in the right direction. Marc Gutman 53:07 Yeah, and certainly, you know, if you can't hear it in Tanner's voice, you know, I thought he was gonna come through the screen at me so passionate about this issue. And so he does care. And Tanner as we as we kind of come to the end of our time here. I've got two more questions for you. The first being What's your favorite store, or at least the the one that you're most proud of, and why? Tanner Krause 53:30 My favorite store is at the corner of 16th and Ashworth road in West Des Moines. Because that was where I started working. The family age of first employment Kum & Go is nine. And so at nine years old, I put on the white shirt and tie for our uniform then. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school, I would go to work, I would sweep, I would mop I would stop the cooler, I would clean the shelves. And if I was lucky, I could run the register. And so for me, that's where it all started. Yeah, I Marc Gutman 54:03 mean, I can only imagine you're like, you know, just waiting probably as eight year old Tanner to become nine to go put on that uniform. Tanner Krause 54:10 I actually tried to negotiate an earlier start date this is speaks to my passion to the company. So my brother started at nine as well. And he's just older in his grade than I was he's an October birthday. So he turned nine early in third grade. I'm a June birthday. So I turned nine late in third grade. And so I tried to negotiate with my dad, you know, Hey, Ryan got to be working in his second month of third grade. Therefore, I think I should be able to start working and my second month of third grade and does the no you start working when you're nine. And so I went back to school. Marc Gutman 54:45 Are you June 19 by any chance? Tanner Krause 54:48 June 22. Marc Gutman 54:49 thought we're gonna share a birthday. I was really excited. I was gonna announce it like live on the show that we we had a similar birthday but Tanner, so I want you to think back to That nine year old boy on that first day, walking into comigo and that brand new uniform, so proud and what do you think he would say, if he saw where you are today, Tanner Krause 55:11 but I haven't fast this ascension into leadership happen quicker than my wildest dreams. But, you know, I, I was I made that nine year old proud, you know, I hope I make all 5000 people that we employ proud I take a two minutes of pride in this company. I hope I make my grandfather proud. He's an incredible role model in my life. And he passed away in 2013. And, you know, he knew I was I was going down this career path. And so I was fortunate enough to have that alignment with him before he passed. But I think about him every day. And you know, I I just try to take my responsibility and stand up for what's important and make those around me proud. Marc Gutman 56:02 And that is Tanner Kraus, president of coming go. I'm sure you could feel Tanner's passion and commitment coming through the mic. We had a chance to talk a bit after and it dawned on me that Tanner sees entrepreneurship, the business not as the purpose. But as the tool, the tool that can affect change, both locally and globally, the tool that can provide better lives for their employees and the tool that can be a voice for those who can't speak for themselves. And yes, we're still talking about convenience stores. But when done right, like Kum & Go, any business can change the world. And a big thank you to Tanner Krauss and the team that Kum & Go. Your brand was started as a love story. And I can't wait to see where the love story goes. Next. We will link to all things Tanner and Kum & Go in the show notes. Well, that's the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstory.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS so you'll never miss an episode. A lot big stories and I cannot lie to you other storytellers can't deny

BGBS 051: Ariel Rubin | Kum & Go | Twitter Is Hard! Ariel Rubin, Director of Communication for Kum & Go, is a Webby Award-winning digital strategist with over 10 years of experience in social media and content creation in Uganda, Sudan, Turkey, Switzerland, and the United States. Ariel is a master at Twitter, bringing progressive, fun, and human content to Kum & Go, a fourth-generation convenience store chain with its headquarters based in Iowa.  As Ariel puts it, brands have a responsibility to be good corporate citizens. He uses Kum & Go's signature humor to bring an audience large enough to amplify the voices of marginalized communities that don't usually feel like they are heard. We applaud Kum & Go for continuing to stand up for humanity and feel inspired to do the same. With that, we ask you, who will you stand up for today? In this episode, you'll learn... Ariel has lived all over the world, including Turkey, Switzerland, Uganda, London, and more before talking to the president of Kum & Go and deciding to settle down in Iowa  Kum & Go is a fourth-generation owned business from a family that has lived in Iowa and has served its people for over 60 years The reason why Ariel chooses to be funny on Twitter is because when he wants to speak on a serious issue, he has a built audience that will listen Ariel describes Kum & Go as compassionate, welcoming, inclusive, and open. When tackling today's issues, they put humanity and science first You can't underestimate the power of publicly standing as an ally in a state like Iowa, where people may feel like their voices aren't heard All of the content created for Kum & Go is organic, created in-house, and on free software without many promotions. And yet they've found outstanding traction in the online world One of Ariel's biggest posting failures was a meme about college football. Of all his time posting about global crises, he never received nearly as much rage as with the college football scandal When posting on social media, Ariel does not just compete with other convenience stores for your attention. He competes with your texts, streaming shows, the news, and more. Getting even 5 seconds of your time is difficult  Maintaining relevance is a challenge because audience behavior is changing every day. That is why Ariel never plans a tweet and would rather begin conversations based on what happens that day on social media Consistency is key with social media, even when you don't find easy success. Resources Ariel Rubin LinkedIn: Ariel Rubin Twitter: @arieljrubin Kum & Go Twitter: @kumandgo Instagram: @kumandgo TikTok: @realkumandgo Quotes [9:27] Here at Kum & Go, it's actually about some really inspiring things. And to me, that was what was exciting about it. It wasn't just a convenience store, it was a place that cares about some really progressive causes and actually wants to show up in the community in a really powerful way. [21:04] I think brands just assume that people care about their thing as much as they care about their thing. And the thing is, you've got to earn your audience's care and earn their trust...The strategy behind this whole thing is that I want to be funny on Twitter because when I have something serious to say, I want to have someone to say it to. [23:46] Frankly, our strategy, I don't put much stock into that, because the platforms are changing so quickly, algorithms are changing so quickly, the audience behavior is changing every day. I haven't planned a single tweet in my life. I don't have a tweet ready. I don't know what I'm gonna tweet today. I don't know what I'll tweet tomorrow... And that is on purpose.  [27:28] There's a lot of people here who don't feel like their voices are heard and I think if we can help amplify those voices and help show up to this community, I think we're doing good work. Podcast Transcript Ariel Rubin 0:02 We did a tweet about the cyclones and the hot guys college football and it was one of the teams lost and so the team, we ended up getting image of a team getting pushed down the stairs, it like spread on Reddit and spread all over and people were absolutely livid. I mean they were taking photos of themselves cutting up their come and go and rewards card and tweeting it and calling for boycotts. And it was like this huge fear and we had like emergency meeting and people were would never I mean, I would I had like, it reached like the far reaches of the internet in Iowa. And it was like a real And anyway, the news covered it. I was quoted in the Des Moines register. I'm very proud of them to have this on my resume at the time. Twitter is hard says come and go spokesperson horio ribbon. Marc Gutman 0:55 Casting from Boulder, Colorado. This is the Baby Got Back story Podcast, where we dive into the story behind the story of today's most inspiring storytellers, creators and entrepreneurs. I like big back stories and I cannot lie. I am your host, Marc Gutman, Marc Gutman, and on today's episode of Baby got backstory. We are talking with Ariel Rubin, the director of communications that come and go, Wait, wait, you mean, come and go that convenience store and gas stations with that funny name? Yep, that's the one. Today's guest Aereo Rubin is a Webby Award winning digital strategist with over 10 years experience in social media and content creation in New gunda, Sudan, Turkey, Switzerland and the United States. And today, he heads up social media, and communications that come and go. That don't go anywhere. I'm going to tell you why Ariel is going to be a must listen episode right after I remind you to rate and review this show. If you're listening, I'm assuming you like it. And if that's the case, please take a minute or two to rate and review us over iTunes or Spotify, iTunes and Spotify. Use these ratings as part of the algorithm that determines ratings on their charts. Better yet, please recommend the show to at least one friend who you think will like it. If this is your first time listening, please consider subscribing. subscribing is like being best friends BFF. We might even get BFF bracelets. But only if you subscribe. Alright, back to Ariel. I asked Ariel to be a guest on today's show. Because I was drawn to his work. I noticed that Kum and Go was showing up on social media, first Instagram, and then Twitter. At least that's how I discovered them. And I was immediately engaged with their content. They were funny, progressive, human, fun, interesting. And they are a convenience store. And that began my stocking of Ariel. I had to know how all this worked. Who was the crazy person behind building out a strong voice on social media? What did their operation look like? Did they have 100 interns creating all this content? Spoiler alert, they do not. How did they approach social media? Is it working and on and on and on? Ariel covers all that and more in our conversation. And this is his story. I'm here with Ariel Reuben, the Director of Communications for Kum & Go, Ariel, what is Kum & Go and what does the Director of Communications do at Kum & Go? Ariel Rubin 3:50 Well, first, thanks for having me. Marc, It's fun to be here. What is Kum & Go? Kum & Go is a convenience store chain based in headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. We have about 400 stores a little over 400 stores now in 11 states. And basically, we're a fourth-generation family run business that started here and really has grown up to be a place it really prides itself I think I'm an opening his doors to everyone really being welcoming, being there for the community, we give 10% back of our pre-tax profits to communities we serve to charities. That sets us apart. And we're really kind of a country that's led by our values, you know, we really look to the communities we were serving and think about how we can kind of make things better for them. So it's a sweet place to work. I really like it. I've been there for about a year and a half. And the Director of Communications, as Director of Communications, my kind of remit is, is our public and kind of internal communications work in our PR or social or events that we put on. Obviously, we're doing quite a few less events in person, at least right now due to COVID. But that's sort of the world we work in and then yeah, everything in between. Marc Gutman 4:55 Yeah. And to those of you listening so you might be asking yourself like why are we talking to a guy that you know does communications for a gas station and convenience store? And you know, a little bit of the backstory is that Kum & Go has gotten my attention for their very progressive, very engaging social media campaigns, particularly on Twitter, they have a really nice presence on Instagram. And so I personally was so intrigued, I was so captivated. You know, I've also been a fan of the actual the store locations, when it when we're on road trips, my kids all want to go because you can feel that there's something different. And I think that that's a really cool thing about a brand is you don't always know why you love it, you don't always know why you're drawn to it, but you feel that it's different. And you walk into a Kum & Go store and they're friendly, and they're light, and they're bright. And they offer, you know, different offerings in terms of healthy food options, and all sorts of things. And people just generally seem happy there. So that's a little bit of the context of why we're talking about Ariel. Like, I want to get into your story. And I kind of want to, you know, get to how you're doing social media and why you've even decided to do it. I mean, I don't follow any other convenience stores and gas stations. But you know, when we met, I was super intrigued by your your background, because you're not from Des Moines. You certainly don't have a background in convenience stores or the oil industry or gas stations. You know, why don't we go? I mean, did when you were growing up? Did you think that you'd be running communications and social media for an outfit like Kum & Go? Ariel Rubin 6:34 Oh, that's a no, I I don't think I did. That was not necessarily something I was planning to do. But you know, as my grandmother would have said, Man plans and God laughs so, you know, here we are. No, it's been a while. I mean, I guess a bit of background on me. I'm, I'm not from Iowa. As you mentioned, I'm a bit of all over. I was born in Canada, I grew up in North Carolina, I went to University in New York. I was in New York for a while, and then I kind of was all over the place I was in journalism, or trying to be for a long time. Many years ago, I worked in Uganda as a newspaper, I had a Master's from the London School of Economics, actually, in human rights and development in the UN were actually involved in communications. And that was really where that my passion for that came, I started the first Twitter account for UNDP, the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan, or done blogs there ended up I was in Sudan for three years and then went to Turkey for two years where I worked for the UNDP there as well running digital content. And then I worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland, where I was the head of digital content. And that's where I got to do some really cool stuff with the pretty amazing humanitarian organization there traveling all over the world, producing some cool kind of, you know, engagement campaigns, both with communities we work with for there, you know, communities in Sudan, or Iraq or wherever, but also community back home, how do we get people engaged? How do we get Americans and Europeans engaged in some really, really tough subjects? So that was what I was doing for almost a decade. And I ended up through sort of a kind of a fortuitous circumstance, having a conversation with the president of Kum & Go. At a time when I was kind of ready to move back to us, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. But I wanted to get out of the nonprofit world for almost 10 years, and I wanted to try something completely different. And Tanner Krauss is the 32-year-old president of Kum & Go really cool guy, really personable guy. And I think a really strong visionary for kind of what a company like his can look like in the future. And he really, we had a great conversation about it. And he kind of got me excited, and the job was there. And I applied and ended up, you know, I came here from Switzerland with my wife and my one-year-old daughter at the time, and we really liked it, you know, it was like a really fun turn for me. And I just thought, you know, I think when you're doing these kind of communications jobs in general, I, for me, at least, I always want to make sure that I can do it in another space so I could I figured out how to do this in a way it's easy, quote unquote, easy to, to get people interested, I think or to do content about what's going on in a place like Syria or Yemen. You know, it's it's a pretty tough subject. And it's easy to kind of show that. But I guess the challenge for me with a place like Kum & Go was like, how do you do that for hot dogs? Like, I don't mean to make light of it. But it's really it's like, how do you get people to care about something? Ultimately, as a communications person, my job is to make you care about something that I'm doing the Red Cross of the UN, it was about some pretty tough things and here at Kum & Go, it's actually about some really inspiring things. And that was, to me, what was exciting about it was, it wasn't just a convenience store, it was a place that that cares about some really progressive causes and actually, you know, wants to show up in the community in a really powerful way. And they hadn't really figured out how to tell that story, and how to get their audience to really care about it or to know about it. So that was a challenge that sort of presented to me. And what I found really exciting to do was like, how do I get people to care about this store with a kind of a funny name, you know, how do we turn it from? It's coming out to like, wow, this is a community that's at the forefront of some really important issues right now. So That's sort of the connection for me. Marc Gutman 10:02 Yeah. And take me back to that conversation with Tanner. I mean, I can only imagine Here you are. You're, you know, living in Switzerland you're doing, you know, important work, you're doing heavy work, you're, you're accomplishing experience. It's not like you're just out of school and kind of like looking to take anything. And this young CEO of a convenience store says, "Hey, I want you to do my communication, like, what's that look like? I mean, are you at first skeptical? Are you like, all in like, What's that? What's that look like? Ariel Rubin 10:32 I think that I'm always been someone that's Personally, I've always been interested in first, I've always wanted to live anywhere. So for me living in Des Moines is as bizarre as living in Khartoum is as bizarre as living in, you know, London, or whatever. I think every place is can be really fascinating and can be really exciting, presents different challenges and different opportunities. So when Tanner and I spoke about it, I didn't get I didn't, wasn't fully I personally wasn't super serious about it at first. But again, he really did a great job kind of convincing, not convincing me even but just like kind of expressing what his ambitions were, when I saw his ambitions were really quite, quite big. And he has a really, he's got a really big vision for what he wants this to be, that was what got me excited, you know, it was kind of almost this, like, fantasy startup mentality, but he, you speak him, you'll kind of hear this and he's just got a real passion for this stuff. A really, like convinced me that this was more than just like coming to a place and filling out some press releases. And that's not what I wanted to do. And I wanted to, for me the condition that was like, conditions. But for me, the thing that was exciting about it was that I would have the opportunity to kind of run some of the social parts, the way that I thought could be effective. So having the freedom to do that, and really let it figure out, you know, give it a voice was what was really appealing to me. And again, the social part wasn't even a big part of my job description. But I was very keen, I really I said, if I'm going to do this job and do it well, I want to focus a great deal of attention on social media, because I believe that's where the energy is. And I believe that's also where audiences so they said, "Sure, go for it." Marc Gutman 12:07 Yeah, so I imagine you and I'm sure I've got this all wrong, but I imagine you skipping through the streets of Switzerland, maybe some chocolate in hand, and Ariel Rubin 12:15 Sure, yeah, fondue. Marc Gutman 12:17 Yeah, exactly. yodeling up the stairs, and you come home and you tell your wife. Yeah, we're moving. We're moving to Des Moines. Because I'm going to earn it. I don't know how that goes down. Or if you have a conversation around it, perhaps. But you know, and you're like, Hey, I really want to go to Des Moines and run communications for this convenience store. Like, what was that conversation like? Ariel Rubin 12:41 She, my wife is originally from the Midwest, and she grew up in Michigan. And so she was not necessary, I'd say, at first dying to move back to the Midwest, she sort of, I think, left for me for a reason. But her parents are in Milwaukee for they're pretty close. And we have again, we have a young child there. Now, our daughter's three, but at the time, it was really important for us for our daughter to spend more time with our family and be closer to family and friends here. So it worked out. I mean, it was not like, you know, it was and i think that you know, she and I have both grown really, really liked Des Moines and and actually find it quite cool. And I think before, obviously before COVID it was different, but now that it's COVID in a way every This is gonna sound bad, like every place is almost like a Des Moines. I don't know, there's not that much to do anywhere anymore. So I don't know if it was like, Yeah, okay, we're not in Switzerland anymore but actually Des Moines has a lot to offer. It's it's actually really fun. The people are lovely, the surprisingly good. I could go on and extol the virtues of Des Moines. But I don't know. My wife listens to this now, she's probably gonna be annoyed with me, but I think that yeah, it was you know, it was a fine conversation. She was she's down with whatever. To her credit. She rolled with it. Marc Gutman 13:49 Cool. So like, how would you describe the voice of come and go social media? Ariel Rubin 13:56 Um, yeah, I mean, I think you know, like I said, I guess when I started in the role, I was really keen to kind of look at the different platforms we were already on and see which we're working in how they're working together, what kind of voice you wanted to have for which. So for me, I naturally gravitated towards and as I do Twitter, because that, to me, it's the medium I understand the best I think, my demographic, my age, my sort of background at Twitter, sort of by era. And the first thing I did was I got clearance to kind of hire a social media specialist who and the person I hired is someone who absolutely kills it on Instagram, she was just like, I saw her on Instagram and the work she was doing and he had six times the followers that Kum & Go had on Instagram at the time. And I was like, I want someone who really wins at this platform to like run this and to me Instagram is visual is the most important visual platform we have on social media right now. It is where people are seeing your brand. I mean, that really is for me, it's Twitter's more about language and words and if you can be clever there and Instagram is really about sort of like what is your most beautiful life your most beautiful, whatever your most aspirational, living So she really gotten to use and gets Instagram just like perfectly and then she and I work really closely together on those platforms and really spend a lot of time talking about how we're gonna engage an audience what we're gonna do, we have work, she's, she's very different. She's 12 years younger than me, she's a totally different person than I than I am. But we get along really well. And I really enjoyed working with her because she's just got a great understanding of the sensibilities of the platform and aesthetics of it and voice for it. So our voice on Twitter is more of my voice, maybe in a way, it's, it's a bit cheeky, or it's kind of funny, I we don't punch down that sort of thing we try to maintain, but we try to really, you know, be part of the Zeitgeist and the part of the conversation that's happening. Like I said, I believe culture really emanates from Twitter, I think, no, I would say like, not everyone's on twitter at all. But every journalist is on Twitter. So even if my mom might not be on Twitter, she is now but my mom was on Twitter, every journalist that my mother reads or watches on CNN or whatever is on Twitter, and is developing their kind of opinions based on what they're seeing on Twitter. It's a really important platform. I mean, you know, Donald Trump understands extremely well. So it's up—to our own peril not to understand and maximize that platform, I think really well. Instagram, like I said, I think is a great place for that culture to kind of get spread further and into a younger demographic. And then the third thing is is TikTok. And we were again, really fortunate to have in our lead leadership that lets us kind of run with this stuff, we hired a 19 year old, fresh out of high school, basically, to go on TikTok because this person understood TikTok week, they had 200,000, they have 200,000 followers on Tiktok. And I said, we don't have a TikTok make it for us like go first. And their name is Evelyn Meyer, and they're brilliant. So between Evelyn, Nadia, and myself, we're kind of like the social media, I guess, brain trust of Kum & Go. And we each have a bit of a different voice. And I would say the other thing is that we we work really we're all really embedded, especially naughty, I really embedded with our associates and our colleagues and our team and our leaders. So we kind of get a sense I've been through a lot of trial and error, what that voice should be. And you know, when you hit a kind of a red line, or a third rail, you kind of know it, like there's some tweets that have definitely failed. And there's some Instagram posts that we've had to, you know, rethink, because ultimately, like, you've got to be a little bit, you've got to push the boundaries a little bit, you got to figure out where your audience is and where they want to go. And there's a lot of trial and error, you know, and that's sort of how we, we built it up. But the numbers, I think, you know, ultimately, we're judged by the numbers, it's not by what I think is funny. But by what Nadia thinks is attractive. It's really buy what our audience finds appealing. So for audience loves a photo of beautiful, we know it because the internet is the world's largest free focus group, right? It tells us very, very quickly what works and what doesn't. So we slowly over time really A/B tested it, I think a lot of different ideas and a lot of different pieces of content. And Nadia and I message each other every day, a million times ideas, and we've kind of workshop stuff on what's up what's appetite as we go. And, and that's sort of how we developed it. And again, none of this would be possible again, without can't stress this enough, without a leadership that totally trusted us. Trusted me and trusted Nadia and trusted Evelyn to do it. Because if there are layers, I think to social has to be immediate, and has to be reactive. And if there are layers of validations, and approvals and back and forwards, you really lose lose kind of the special thing about what social is, which is that's just happening so quickly, you just want to be part of it. And what happened yesterday is already is it might as well be five years ago, right? So by having the trust of our leadership by our bosses, and all the way up to the CEO, we're in a really fortunate space to be able to really try some fun stuff. And, you know, we fail tons. We also some really, really fun successes. Marc Gutman 18:31 Yeah, and you know, there were I can't, you know, start with that question was just that, like, you and your team have done something that's so to me, you know, challenging and unique, which is really giving a unique voice to something that is hard to give a voice to, you know, I think it's like a hard, hard product to brand sometimes, and you've done a really good job and maybe walk me through that process a little bit. I mean, did you say like, hey, like, Kum & Go is like the cool new, like, you know, whatever, and you're like you have a persona or a profile, or is it more organic than that? Ariel Rubin 19:08 You know, I, when I again, I'm not from the Midwest, but when I came here, I remember I said it in my interview. I lived in New York for a really long time. And in New York when I was in college, I went to NYU 15 years ago, whatever. I don't remember. Yeah, it was 15 Oh, my God. Anyway, 15 years ago, I was at NYU and we lived in. I lived in Brooklyn and we drank Pabst Blue Ribbon all the time. And we drank Pabst Blue Ribbon, not because it was a great beer and not because it was it was just the cool thing to drink. And it was $2 and you drank Pabst Blue Ribbon because we're like a posturing hipster. So I remember the how iconic Pabst Blue Ribbon was and it was like, for me it had this feeling of like, what real America is, right? And I think that so many things that feel like what real America is really come from this space in the Midwest, you know, whether it's Harley Davidson, Budweiser, john deere, Pabst Blue Ribbon, whatever, you know, Anheuser Busch, I'm I don't want a beer but equally to me come and go felt like it had that similar iconic or should have that similar iconic feeling of like a truly American thing. This is fourth generation family that from Iowa from, you know, always when I would came through and built this thing, you know, and that's like a really special, it was special, but it's still there, it's still their thing. It's not like owned by some conglomerate. It's just this family doing this thing. And I think that's like a really special thing. And I think, you know, I'm just cheesy, but like in a world where like, what is American is kind of very politicized and very, like, you know, divisive in a way. What's nice about the story that of this, and the product is like, it's just like a really nice thing. It's about like America that really welcomes everyone that opens its doors that supports black and brown communities, it supports gay communities. And to me and is this you know, as it's been around, has been there for its people for 60 years, and continues to do that. So I think that that was a really compelling story for me. And so, to be able to tell that story on social, we first needed to have an audience to tell it to so I think a lot of brands maybe make a mistake, but like, other brands just assume that people care about their thing as much as they care about their thing. And the thing is, you got to earn your audience's care and earn their trust, and you've got to you got to find them, you got to get them to care first. So we spent a long time getting people to care first, and then finding clever ways. You know, the strategy behind this whole thing is that I want to be funny on Twitter, because when I have something serious to say, I want to have someone to say it to. So if I can do a bunch of tweets that get me thousands of likes or retweets, that's great. Because the one time out of 10, that I'm going to tell you about why we're supporting this young LGBTQ group here that does incredible work with community, "Here's why you should support them," I want to be able to tell that to now I can tell that to 50,000 people, whereas a year ago, I only been told that to 20,000 people and the year before that only until that to 5000. So it slowly grows and builds that community and then people really start to recognize us for it. So I don't know that I kind of went on a tangent there. Marc Gutman 22:00 But it's great, you know, and it really seems to me that the leadership Kum & Go, assuming Tanner, really see this more as a platform not not not even social, but the business as a platform, and a enable a tool of change rather than you know, like, Hey, we, you know, yes, we're in the business of convenience stores. But really, it's that's a tool to do some other things and like, to me that, in general is a rare concept. But for a convenience store a gas station in the Midwest, I mean, you know, I think it's incredibly rare to be putting, you're not only to be backing a lot of these progressive causes, but to be like, shouting about it to be like forthright to be like front and center and saying, Hey, this is what we believe. And in no matter when you say that it's scary. But in a you know, you could be worried about polarizing a good subset of your audience or your customer base. Like where does like this just drive to be progressive come from? And then like, Do you ever get any backlash? Or do you ever like, Are you ever concerned? Like, concerns the wrong word? But yeah, do you ever get any backlash and push back on it? Ariel Rubin 23:15 Yeah. You know, I don't even know if they would admission, if they hear if they would describe it as progressive. I think they would just describe, you know, there's a very pragmatic thing in the Midwest, which I'm not familiar with, but I'm learning about which is that people just, I think that they really, it's, they just see it as human rights. They look at these issues. They look at human rights and science on these issues. And that's what we're talking about Mask use or whether we're talking about Black Lives Matter. We're looking at what is the human issue? And what is how is this issue impacting our community? And what does the science say? So I don't know if even Tanner or Kyle Kyle's, the CEO Tanner's the President, I don't know if either of them would necessarily describe themselves as company as progressive, I think they would describe it as compassionate, a welcoming, inclusive and open. And whatever that means, in today's 2020 COVID. Society, I think, inevitably becomes politicized. But ultimately, I really, I think they really would, in a way push back against it. But that being said, I think that we certainly we get we certainly received, we received comments. Sure, but I, you know, not as many as you would maybe think. I mean, really, it's been overwhelmingly I think, positive feedback we have and you know, I think one thing I really respect about Tanner in particular on this, and Kyle as well is that they're not afraid like you said it's applied, do you see this as a platform? They're not afraid, I mean, Tanner says all the time. You know, it's our job. It's on me. And it's not me. And him. He's a it's incumbent upon him to use that platform, that privilege that he was born into, and that he lives with every day, for some good and to really stand up as an ally. We just accepted an award last night from a LGBTQ organization, the Tanner spoke at it as an ally, its partner in progress. And Tanner literally just said that it said just that, and I think, again, quite why I joined I wouldn't have joined if that didn't exist here. To join, if they didn't, I'm thrilled that they let me use social as a way to amplify those messages and find creative ways tell those stories. And we've given some extraordinarily think, I would say progressive organizations and that are doing great work for Black Lives Matter and for our gay and lesbian trans communities. So, to me, it's a really exciting time to be part of a company, I Kum & Go again, I think, thanks to the leadership who have visited that, you know, that's, that's on them. So Marc Gutman 25:28 I think I think it is something though, that's unique, you know, I live in Boulder, Colorado, which is, you know, I would say, is a progressive area. But certainly, we don't have like a whole lot of convenience stores or gas stations that, you know, outside of Kum & Go that are like, Kum & Go. I also spend a good, you know, I'm from the Midwest, I'm from, you know, grew up in outside of Detroit spend a lot of time in northern Michigan, and there's, you know, you know, it's indicative of America, you know, it's split, and I would say that there is a lot of, you know, welcoming areas, and there's a lot that are less so and, you know, I again, I just you know, I find it very unique, and I don't want, you know, this to get lost, like how special this is that a gas station in the Midwest is really, you know, talking about these issues at the forefront of these issues. But were you gonna say something? Ariel Rubin 26:19 Yeah, well, you know, it's funny, I mean, we had a with this group that from last got this award from I remember, they said, they did a talk to our company. And they said this, that, you know, is it hear it when companies like Kum & Go say that, you know, publicly stand up as allies in a place like Iowa, the impact that has is extraordinary. And they said, I remember they gave us they were telling us how, like, you know, I'm from New York, I'm from the east coast. So for me, it was not as it felt like, Oh, yeah, this is just what people do. But actually here, it's not necessarily what every does. And it's not what every convenience store necessarily has. It's not just assumed. And so you have I'm not trying to, you know, top at my own peril and shoulders, you're too much I don't backs too much. But I think that, you know, they were like, you know, for a small town kid growing up in a farm community in Iowa who's gay. To hear that come and go welcomes them and stands up for is extremely powerful. But like, you can't underestimate how, how powerful that is in a place like Iowa and the communities you serve in, in Missouri and Arkansas, and all over I mean, frankly, so I that really stuck with me. And I think it's, you know, it's cool that we can do stuff like that, because there's a lot of people here who don't feel like their voices are heard. And I think if we can help help amplify voices and help show show up to this community, I think we're doing good work. Marc Gutman 27:39 This episode brought to you by Wildstory. Wait, isn't that your company? It is. And without the generous support of Wildstory, this show would not be possible. A brand isn't a logo, or a tagline. or even your product or a brand is a person's gut feeling about a product service or company. It's what people say about you, when you're not in the room. Wildstory helps progressive founders and savvy marketers build purpose driven brands that connect their business goals with the customers they want to serve. So that both the business and the customer needs are met. This results in crazy, happy, loyal customers that purchase again and again. And this is great for business. If that sounds like something you and your team might want to learn more about, reach out @ www.wildstory.com. And we'd be happy to tell you more. Now back to our show. So kind of getting back to like when you decided to come aboard, I mean, with management. Was there this vision to have social be a core part of the communication strategy? And? And if so, just kind of like what were they thinking? Because again, like, it all kind of makes sense now it seems really like, like it fits now like, but like I go back to that probably that moment where that had to be risky, like, you know, no business I've ever worked with has too much money. No business I've ever worked with has too many resources, right? Like every decision is always like, "Where can we you know, make best use of our limited resources?" And so just to have that, like, thought, like, we're gonna invest in this area, like, can you kind of walk me through that a little bit? And what that looks like? Ariel Rubin 29:28 Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the funny thing I guess is that it's, it's not a big investment. It's organic content, by and large investment was in was in me and my, and in our social media specialist, and then in our TikTok kind of intern, the three of us is it and actually we're actually probably a lot cheaper than the agency that we were paying to do it before. So we're not, you know, it's not I do everything. We do it all in house. We do it all on free, Canva software, and it's free. You know, we don't really put money into from to promote content, like the content that does well as well because the audience finds it and and we've we've done a few campaigns with a few different smaller kind of agencies, one in particular, that was really cool and fun for us. But these are small campaigns. These are not like big, multi, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollar things. It's not at all like that. I mean, really, to me, what's social, I always want social to be a space where we can experiment and your point like no company is ever like, we make too much money. Like, I want to have that freedom to do that, not because I'm a narcissist, although it doesn't hurt and I am. But it's because I think that we can do really cool stuff that we can really find a new audience. And again, only this company where we're family run, so we don't have you know, we don't report to there's not a bunch of different stakeholders that that we have to report to, you know, the, our stuff, we don't have a store, we're not publicly traded. So there's not some stock price that I have to maintain or something you know, that a tweet could sink or something like, I am fortunate again, like a very patient tolerant and open minded leadership team. I remember there was one time, there was a tweet that we had done, I forget what ages ago and Kyle Krauss the CEO, who's on Twitter is doing a great job on Twitter, that he had this reply where someone's like, I can't believe they like let him do this. And Kyle replied, like, isn't, I don't understand what he does sometimes, but I'll always support it. And I think, as a leader, what an incredible gift right? Like or as sort rather, as for me, what an incredible gift have a leader like that, who he just trust that I'll do an okay job or that might have been I'm trying to get him to get his company to a good place, there's a need to understand like, what the meme is, or the joke, or the particular cultural thing I'm trying to get at and that maybe I miss on. He's simply saying, like, Here, you have this space to play him, go for it. So I'm really applauding them for letting me again, letting me take the risk with it. But I don't put that much. It's not very expensive, because it's really just like, you know, Nadia shoots all the photos. She's brilliant, like I do, you know, they were just kind of like a, where I see a sort of an in house creative team, really to be honest with you. And I think that that's what makes it kind of again, that's what makes it fun. Marc Gutman 32:08 Yeah. And so how do you measure success? Man, I know, you probably measure by some some typical social metrics, number of followers engagement, but are you able to track back like increase in revenue and things like that back to your efforts? Ariel Rubin 32:24 Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, yeah, there's the there's the standards. There's the standard, you know, ROI in terms of our engagement, we look at our engagement, we look at our follower growth, we look at, you know, we look at what's working, what isn't and we ideator iterate based on that. And then we beyond sort of social success. When we look in store, we look at certain campaigns that we have been really kind of getting behind and I mean, I can tell you, for example, we just launched all day breakfast pizza. So we did breakfast pizza till 10. Now we do breakfast pizza all day, I don't remember when it stops. But when it kitchen closes, basically. And we did a fun play on that on social and, and we've seen like a major bump in power breakfast pizza. So now, it's always hard, I think to do causation and correlation with social, we also have been there is another side of Kum & Go that does marketing that does, it does do marketing, the more traditional marketing side, we don't do it at all. I'm a comms person. And I run this organic social scientists in the tire of the park side, my boss, Ben, Vice President marketing communication leads that body of work. So that also exists as an aside, but I think for us, when I look at what successes there, I see stuff like breakfast pizza selling, and I see us pushing it. I like to think that there's a nice correlation there. I think another thing we do, you know, we try to find ways to bring our online energy offline. So we do stuff with fanny packs. We made these fanny packs that have been super popular. We can do giveaways. We just did another giveaway on Twitter yesterday. 500. I didn't you know, funny thing like last person to retweet this gets a fanny pack. And it's gotten retweeted like 500 times. Again, like, we bring those fanny packs to store openings. We had one yesterday and Omaha kids show up at 6am to get these they're gone by 630. So we try to make cool stuff to retain a cool audience to find that the cool kids who are out there who want to come get it and I'd say the biggest example, I think a success online that we've been able to see is we had a really fun collaboration with Anheuser Busch, where we made a Budweiser, they let us make this incredible Budweiser Kum & Go drink a Budweiser shirt with all the proceeds going to a charity for for to benefit veterans. And that didn't we sold them out like it did super, super well. And that was like a really fun social play. We sold out entirely. We sold them online now that actually we had some in stores in another run because it did so well. But stuff like that is just like a really, it's a really fun way to start bringing that stuff offline and showing that success of that energy and where those audience that that audience exists online. And then we can kind of start bringing them into the store. And we're going to continue to do things like that both in store activations and other online. Merch plays, basically. Marc Gutman 34:47 Yeah. And so you've talked a lot about the successes that you've had, and certainly can feel your enthusiasm and energy for what you do. But like what's hard about it? You know what's hard about this endeavor that you're undertaking with communications at Kum & Go? Ariel Rubin 35:03 Um, I mean, what's hard about it? I guess, you know, they've definitely been they've been successes. And they've been total failures and busts. And I don't even mean it like that. Failed forward or anything. I just failed. Like, it just I just did stuff that sucked. And was your worst one. What was your biggest? biggest failure? Yeah, no, our biggest one. And we have a really great failure, which was the, we did Nadia and I did a post a tweet. Basically, I we were both new here. And I'm not from that. I don't really know anything about sports in general. And I certainly don't know anything about college sports. But we did a tweet about the cyclones and the hot guys are the two teams here, college football, and it was one of the teams lost. And so the team remember, we had it like it was a good image of a team getting pushed down this, like spread on Reddit and spread all over. And people were absolutely livid. I mean, they were taking photos of themselves cutting up there Kum & Go and rewards card and tweeting it and calling for boycotts. And it was like this huge fear. And we had like emergency meeting and people who had never, I mean, who had like, I had, like, it reached like the far reaches of the internet in Iowa. And it was like a real And anyway, the news covered it. I was quoted in Des Moines Register, which is I'm very proud of them have this on my resume at the time says, Twitter is hard says Kum & Go spokesperson Ariel Rubin. And I was very proud of that, quote, because you know, the end of the day Twitter is hard. And frankly, I learned a lesson which is in the Midwest, maybe, you know, don't talk about politics, or sports or religion. So you know, stay out of those three. So I, we don't talk about college football anymore. And I frankly, didn't even really understand that. But I learned from that, you know, we got a lot of engagement out of it. We got a lot of followers. But you know, obviously you don't want to do that at the expense of your base and your people. And I didn't want you know, I remember our legal our general counsel was like I dad called me is like my dad's 90. And he's like, what are you doing on Twitter? He's like, my dad doesn't even know what Twitter is. What happened? So, again, credit to everyone we work with, and everyone above me who allowed us to continue going and didn't change, do we didn't have to change, really anything. We just kind of, you know, we learned we learned a really big lesson there on that. So I think I think failures like that are super important that because you really do you learn as you develop this, but it's like a year and a half ago, we we were developing our voice and we're figuring out where those where those third rails were. And we certainly learned. Well, I mean, I got emails, I got death threats, like it was I've never I've worked in on the most hot button issues in the world, Israel, Palestine, whatever. Nothing compares to be animosity, and just deep, deep rage I got on the because of this, this one tweet. So I felt bad. And we apologize. We moved on. Marc Gutman 37:46 Yeah, as I mentioned, I'm a Midwest guy, and you don't mess with cross state rivals and college football. That's just a No, no. But like, as you were telling me that story again, like, I'm just sitting here, buddy, like, Oh, no, like, I can only imagine like, early in your your career here. And like you're already stepping in it. I mean, we were freaking out or did right away was management. Like, look, we got you. But we got to work this out. I mean, how does that go down? Like you're creating quite a ruckus early in your career? Ariel Rubin 38:16 I know. Yeah. Again, man, I don't know, I got lucky to have the management. I got like a, you know, I wrote them an email, I was like, I got some bad news. They're very cool. They're very, they're very relaxed about it. Like they, you know, they had faith in the process. You know, I think, something that I learned, maybe from that, but also, I think some in general, and this year has been a good example of that, as yours just been so crazy, I think news is that these cycles, if you I think it's always a good lesson, as a comms person, remember that, like, the outrage cycle will pass. And not only will it pass, no one will have any idea what it even was in three days. And if you can weather that storm, because everyone's everyone's, I believe everyone's attention span has just become so withered by the kind of onslaught of news and media, and then, frankly, like terrifying kind of things that are happening on a daily basis that the brains have really kind of like goldfish out and are really incapable of like handling too much just constant stimulus. So I think that where the again, the lesson from there was, was like, if you can say that you have to, I think if you can weather a storm that you can recognize that this too, will pass. And it's important always have perspective, in the midst of a kind of social media crisis or any media crisis, which is like, really, the Eye of Sauron really moves on rather quickly these days. And it's, it's important to remember that even at the time when you feel like oh, my God, this is a cataclysm and you know, our sales didn't change for the negative, we follow it. I followed it through I followed up on it with like our analytics team, and we looked at it and sales and stuff and the impact ultimately was practically non existent. So again, fortunate to have to have leadership and colleagues that that were at the time. Really very cool with it. Yes, I was. I was I was very nervous. Marc Gutman 39:56 And was that the strategy to ride the storm? Or did you have to kind of do a mea culpa and apologize, are we ever did that look like? Ariel Rubin 40:03 we did a mea culpa, we did a mea culpa. And it was actually my boss. It was her. I was like her first week, and she just been hired. So she really, I felt really more bad for her because I'd maybe been there for four or five months. And she was really new and was like, Oh, my God, you know, through this ad or like the first week. So we did do a call, but I, and I think it was probably the you know, I was he was a good thing to do kind of diffused in a bed. You know, I said, People really upset I felt really badly hurt by that. Now it was, like I said, it's never our intention. never actually anyone was attention to find it funny. I knew it is the funny joke at the expense of another audience, you know, so, you know, you live and learn? I don't know. Marc Gutman 40:48 You know, so shifting a little bit when we first spoke, you said something to me that that resonated and it was a paraphrasing, or maybe not, but it was something to the effect of socials where the conversation is, you know, can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, like, what do you mean by that? Ariel Rubin 41:04 I think that every day I wake up, and I work for Kum & Go, and all I'm trying to do is get my job is to compete with every single thing that you can do on your phone. My job is compete with the text message from your, your wife, or the photos of your kid, or the Amazon Prime membership, or Netflix or every other brand in the world. I'm not just competing with Kwik Trip, or Casey's or whatever, I'm competing as a brand for your attention and I'm competing with the Red Cross and competing for literally anything and everything. And I think that, you know, we, I just want to get, I want to get five seconds of your time today to think about her coming up. That's funny, or they did a funny tweet, or Wow, they have a great Instagram, or I got to go there and pick up a hot dog because that was awesome, whatever. Like, I'm trying to get that little slice of time. And so I think that when I say that, that's where the conversations, literally I look at audience behavior. And even now, I mean, now accelerated by the pandemic, but we look at social use and and can phone use and it's it's through the roof, it's only growing. And so as we continue on with very connected digitally native younger audiences, or consumer bases, we're only going to continue to be focused there. So it's why I see something for example, like TikTok, I have no real conception of and no real understanding of, but I know is where conversation is happening or culture is kind of created. I know, I want us to be a part of that. And I want us to be a part of that in a way that's authentic, both to the platform and to our brand. So I don't want to be me on TikTok talking because it's inauthentic for me because I literally don't get it. And I would look like the 35 year old. So I want to find ways to to kind of be part of this conversation tonight. I think, you know, social is the watercooler of our time. And there's I don't know where everyone else is. But they're all there constantly. And I think probably much to our society's detriment, but is what it is. Marc Gutman 42:54 Is that why you do what you do? Ariel Rubin 42:56 I mean, I think I'm a product of of our broken brain, social media generation. Yeah, I mean, I was probably, you know, and I, I find it really exciting because I think as when I was younger, I wanted to be a journalist, because I thought that was a really compelling way to kind of tell stories and share news with people. And I think, as I got into journalism, and I had a terrible career as a journalist, I wasn't very good. But I think that, as I got into it, I realized that early on that, you know, what was really, for me really exciting was the kind of constant flow of information that was happening in places like Twitter. And at the time, Facebook when I was younger, and I think that was, I've always found that really addictive. I mean, again, for better or for worse, it certainly has ruined my ability to like, read a book from start to finish. But I really I appreciate and I think I'm okay, a fairly decent at cracking the code of understanding how to get other people interested in what I think is cool. And that's what I try to do at Kum & Go. Marc Gutman 43:50 Yeah. And so like, what's the biggest challenge for you and your team right now, as it pertains to social and kind of how you see the world? Ariel Rubin 43:57 I mean, I think, you know, it's always a challenge in trying to be relevant, and try to maintain relevance, as always, because again, I think, I think, frankly, our strategies, and this matters, like, I don't know how much I don't put much stock into that, because the platforms are changing so quickly, algorithms are changing so quickly, the audience behavior is changing every day. I don't even plan to single tweet in my life. I don't have a I don't have a tweet, right. I don't know what I'm gonna tweet today. I don't know what I'll tweet tomorrow. I don't know what Nadia is going to put on Instagram, we, we do it by that. And that is a on purpose. Because I believe to be truly effective. You want to know, you want to wake up, go on Twitter for five minutes, see what people are talking about and then start developing what that conversation is going to be and how you're going to be a part of it. So I think that the challenges are always in that process. It's tough, like to kind of do that and to maintain, I think, an energy to kind of keep up with it. It's kind of exhausting. It's like there's always that kind of that challenge. And then I think more broadly, you know, it's something you touched on earlier, but it's like, we always want to think about how we can I think show success and show that we're able to not only just get lolz on Twitter or likes on an Instagram post, but actually how we can convert and drive that traffic into stores. That's always the challenge. And I always find that chall—I find, you know, I've been doing this job for a year and a half, I still find that challenge be really rewarding and fun. Marc Gutman 45:15 Yeah. And so, you know, do you have any advice that you could give anyone who is either starting their career and social and or looking to add this to their brand? Who might just be starting a little bit flat footed or don't don't know where to go from here? Ariel Rubin 45:31 Yeah, I mean, I think a few things. I think, I think consistency is really key with this stuff. I don't think, you know, I think it's, when you're building an audience, and I'm building an audience, we're all trying to build audiences. And it's really hard to build an audience like the hardest thing to do, because I'm one store out of a billion stores and one and, you know, one voice out of a billion. So I think, really, I think, consistently kind of like going out every day, and pushing and not getting deterred when you don't find easy, easy or quick success, because I think it takes a long time. And the other thing I would, I would say is, I see this actually a lot like, I think if you're starting your career, you're young, in your career, you're young, you have such an advantage. And tomorrow, in terms of this kind of world, because you grew up in it, you grew up immersed in it, you grew up, you know, I grew up with a dial up modem and AOL and it's just a different world, things are changing so quickly. And I think you grew up with Twitter, Twitter's around for what, 15, 20 years now, like, you know, that's part of and you're 20 years old, like it's just, it's always been there for you. So, you know, the language that you have that you speak in is, is you're already at such a competitive advantage to someone like me, because you just get it better, and you understand it more and you're quicker. So I think, frankly, use your youth I think is an advantage what I'd say to young people starting out and I tell people who are older who are maybe more gatekeepers or leadership positions. I always say this though, it's just like, you have to find people, trust them, and then let them do whatever they want. And that's it to me, it's fine to people that are good at this stuff. And then don't try to ruin it by like, like, Yeah, but where's my brand go? Or like, what about putting this in the photo, like, let the people that are really, really clever at at figuring out a platform or, you know, under understanding an audience, let them do that work for you. And really trust them to do it. Because that I think, is where certainly we've seen and I've seen Nadia and Evelyn are my two kind of colleagues really extraordinary success and some really really fun stuff happen. Marc Gutman 47:18 And so outside of your mobile phone, what's your favorite social media tool? Ariel Rubin 47:24 Outside of my phone? Like what's my favorite tool to—? Marc Gutman 47:28 Just mean like use your phone to tweet and take photos and things like that. But yeah, so like, to me that would be my like, I was just trying to like, you know, get you to not say my phone. Like, what's your favorite tool? Ariel Rubin 47:40 Like but like even like platform that I'm on or— Marc Gutman 47:44 No no no no like actual tool for for doing your job. And I'm hoping to— Ariel Rubin 47:48 Literally just my phone, I don't have anything else. I don't have a single other thing. I have this laptop that I'm talking to you on. I hate it. So I it is truly, truly just my phone. I don't use a camera, I don't use I used to use a to shoot and I mean, I edit and shoot stuff. I you know, another thing I would say generally, it's like, learn how to do everything, at least a little bit well, or at least basic, you know, like learn how to shoot, learn how to edit photo, and video learn final cut or, you know, or Adobe Premiere. I think having basic knowledge, that's not a POC, I want to learn how to do podcast, no idea how to get like, think learning all that stuff is really important. So I can do a little bit of all of that. But the Yeah, I just use my phone for anything. Marc Gutman 48:27 Incredible. No, it's good. Like, I'm a tool collector, you know, so like, some tool. Um, but actually my favorite tool is probably Facebook Creator Studio, because I like that I can you know, do it with Insta and load up, you know, schedule posts and things like that. Before it was only like you can't do or you have to have some weird, weird thing. So yeah, so that's what I like the most. But you know, there's people out there like, you know, Hootsuite and Buffer and all this stuff. But yeah, that's not me. I'm on a more like one to one. Ariel Rubin 49:01 Right on. Yeah, yeah. So you know, as we thank you guys, we come to a close and towards the end of our time here, like what does the future look like for for you in Kum & Go and the social team like where do you think this is all going? I have no idea. But I'm you know, I think again, like this has been the year I'm like any that I've ever I've ever experienced that, you know, earlier, we asked me how I got from Switzerland to here and I think I was working on Ebola at the Red Cross and things like that. And I was like, I'm done with all that, like, I want something that's going to be light and I want to live in Iowa and I want to relax and I ended up coming here and having like the most politically and sort of, you know, intense it's been an intense year and you know, dealing with you know, COVID-19 has been super intense. So I, I hope I hope the future for coming go in future for the country and the planet is one which sort of we'd get Oh, grab a grip on this pandemic and can kind of go back to it. I don't think we're going back to normal ever But I think go back to, I don't know, pretty, you know, it's content that's a bit more fun and a bit lighter. Because it's just been a really it. It's been a tough year for a lot of people. And I hope that for Kum & Go in general that I, you know, again, I think that I think we have a really exciting plan for what this company, how this company wants to be ended up. It's been around for 61 years, it's gonna be around for a lot longer. And I think there's a lot of interesting ideas for how you make and how you reimagine and re envision what convenience looks like in the 21st century, especially post COVID, I would say. So I think it'd be interesting to see what this company does and where it goes. And I'm excited to be part of it and hopefully, continue driving really interesting conversation and building an ever bigger ever growing audience. Marc Gutman 50:39 Yeah. And I kind of alluded to that was my last question. But you've made me think of one more. You know, I think that there's something really interesting that has happened that there's this shift where people are looking to brands, for their news, they're looking to brands for their information, they're looking to brands to like, how do you feel about COVID? How do you feel about politics? How do you feel about what's happening in the world? I think that's, like, a real, profound shift that that is not happening has happened. You know, you know, and, you know, so how do you? How do you approach that? How do you handle that, when so many of your community, so many of your of your audience, your customers are looking to you for commentary on like, big topics like that? Ariel Rubin 51:26 Yeah, I mean, you know, I think you're absolutely right. I think it's, it's scary, that that's where we are as a society, I don't think it bodes well for us. But leaving that aside, I think that brands have a responsibility to be good corporate systems and be good people and kind of be a good, good corporate citizens. And I think that this isn't a new burden, maybe for brands. And I think, you know, I think the brands that succeed, and the brands that we're going to talk about in 5, 10, 20, 50 years, we the brands that took this kind of moment seriously and took that responsibility seriously, and and, frankly, are the ones that I think that we're on the right side of history. So again, I I'd say that I wouldn't work for a company that I didn't think was on the right side of history when it comes to these really important issues. And I'm proud to work for a company that is has been pretty explicit with where they stand on this stuff. So I think yeah, I think it's a brave new world. Marc Gutman 52:21 And that is Ariel Rubin, communications director and social media mastermind at Kum & Go. I hope you felt like you got a social media master class, because I certainly did. And did you hear what he said? It really doesn't take much to do social right? To build an audience to create a platform. But it does take time. It does take mistakes. And it takes a whole lot of trust between internal collaborators. And of course your audience. Business is the platform for social good for creating corporate citizenship as Ariel put it. So what are you waiting for? Build a social media team, have some fun, change the world. A big thank you to Ariel Rubin and the team as Kum & Go. Continue to be that voice for your community that might not be able to shout loud enough for themselves. We will link to all things Ariel Rubin and Kum & Go in the show notes. Please make sure to go follow them. Check out their socials, you might just learn something. Well, that's the show. Until next time, make sure to visit our website www.wildstory.com where you can subscribe to the show in iTunes, Stitcher or via RSS so you'll never miss an episode. I like big stories and I cannot lie, you other storytellers can't deny. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

BGBS 051: Ariel Rubin | Kum & Go | Twitter Is Hard! Ariel Rubin, Director of Communication for Kum & Go, is a Webby Award-winning digital strategist with over 10 years of experience in social media and content creation in Uganda, Sudan, Turkey, Switzerland, and the United States. Ariel is a master at Twitter, bringing [...]Read More...

Season 2 is in full swing and we are kicking things off strong! In today’s episode, we’re talking to Ariel Rubin,  Director of Communications for convenience store chain, Kum & Go. With 400 locations, they may not be the biggest player in the category, but you wouldn’t know that by the amount of clout they’ve built up as a brand. Ariel has certainly had a hand in that.   Heading up communications for a company that services hundreds of thousands of customers is no small feat. Yet, Ariel is on the front lines of the Kum & Go’s Twitter, because of the upside the platform has for both PR & brand awareness. In today’s episode, we discuss the hurdles companies need to overcome to be authentic what it really takes to build momentum on social media And why sleeping on twitter is a huge mistake Links mentioned in the episode: Ariel's Book Recommendation: Anti-Social by Andrew Morantz Kum & Go Social Pages: Twitter: @kumandgo Instagram: @kumandgo TikTok: @realkumandgo Connect with Ariel on Twitter: @arieljrubin

Hello, I’m Hillary Rubin and this is... the 11th episode of the Create Like A Mother Podcast. On my quest to reconnect with my creativity, I sat down with another inspiring woman Ariel Rubin, who turned a playdate into a business. As a mother she focuses her energy on fostering what is naturally wonderful about her two children.  We’re going deep into Creating Space to Shine At What You’re Good At, we talk about... HOW her business allows her to be herself, WHY it’s important to focus on who our children are, AND Fate Vs. Self Will when creating our lives.  Buckle up, get ready for the wisdom nuggets… AND Thank you so much for listening, reviewing & sharing  Remember this is your safe place to hear what other mamas who are just like YOU  do to stay connected to their creativity. Mentioned in this episode:  Wild Optimists  Lola Pickett Episode  Lola Pickett Tarot Deck  Kickstarter Blog  Immersive Theatre World  Immersive VR World  VR World  Escape Room in a Box  Escape Room in the Box Flash Back  The 5 Love Languages  Hayley Cooper Immersive Escape Room Houston  Tales by Candlelight in LA  Get Social With Ariel:  Ariel on Instagram  About Ariel Ariel Rubin is the co-creator of Kickstarter sensation Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experiment, now licensed to Mattel and winner of Game of the Year at the Mattel Inventor Awards. Ariel and her design partner, Juliana Patel, have combined their theater and writing backgrounds and lifelong obsession with games to become: The Wild Optimists. Together, they create the next generation of playful experiences as they gamify live events and design escape rooms and tabletop games.

Tommy and Adam talk to "Escape Room in a Box" creators Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin about creating a successful Kickstarter campaign. They offer a lot of helpful advice to anyone who has ever wanted to crowdfund a game (or other project).

Dennis visits the San Fernando Valley home of Ariel Rubin to talk with Ariel and Juliana Patel, the co-creators of "Escape Room in a Box" which is exactly what it sounds like; a home version of an escape room. They talk about how they met playing werewolf, getting the idea, creating the incredibly complicated prototypes, the support they got from the game community, finding a factory to make the game and the red locks that drove them crazy. They also talk about putting together their Kickstarter campaign, their nerves going in, following the advice of previous campaigners, working the media and making their goal of $19,500 in 14 hours and finishing the campaign with $135,000. They also talk about being women in an industry that's historically very male and being an inspiration to other women and girls. They recall how they got the licensing deal with Mattel, going in to pitch and play test with them and what it's like to work with Mattel on an ongoing business. Other topics include: getting flown to the Netherlands to speak at a conference, creating games for weddings, why they named their company Wild Optimists, juggling their busy leaves, winning a big award and the Halloween costume that was totally prescient. www.escaperoominabox.com  

Richard interviews Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin who created the extremely successful Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment that is now being published by Mattel. He learns all their secrets about in their 2,000+ backer debut campaign! Some specific topics: Partnering with Mattel Escape room game opportunities Replaying escape room games Playtesting an escape room game Creating the puzzles Lessons learned from the Kickstarter campaign Finding your audience References: Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment Kickstarter Campaign - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/361817408/escape-room-in-a-box-the-werewolf-experiment  

The post [BONUS] Juliana Patel & Ariel Rubin on How to Run an Effective Co-Design Team appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.

The post [BONUS] Juliana Patel & Ariel Rubin on How to Run an Effective Co-Design Team appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.

Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin, designers of Escape Room in a Box, discuss the ins and outs of creating an escape room game.Juliana and Ariel are busy moms who find time to get together and design games, and they have a ton of insight on what makes a great escape experience. Escape Room in a Box was... The post Designing Escape Room Games with Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.

Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin, designers of Escape Room in a Box, discuss the ins and outs of creating an escape room game.Juliana and Ariel are busy moms who find time to get together and design games, and they have a ton of insight on what makes a great escape experience. Escape Room in a Box was... The post Designing Escape Room Games with Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin appeared first on Board Game Design Lab.

The first escape room board game on kickstarter was wildly successful, and we got to interview the creators Juliana Patel & Ariel Rubin! Not only that, their game was picked up by Mattel and is no available on Amazon to purchase, and will be available in stores early next year!Tune in to hear all about how Juliana and Ariel brought Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment, to the world! If we were smart, we would have taken a picture of us posing with the box! The parody was written by Manda Whitney, and a huge thanks to our returning guest singer, Noelle Sorrell, who has been singing since she came out of the womb. She works as the Ops Manager at Hidden Trail in Windsor, Ontario.

Episode 150: Escapewolf Length: 1:03:56 Show Links: RSS | iTunes | Stitcher | Download Episode   Welcome back to Vox Republica, the Cardboard Republic Podcast! We post new episodes every other Thursday, with each episode being about 45 minutes long. Vox Republica is proudly supported by our Patreon. Consider contributing today! DESCRIPTION: This week, Erin and Ryan talk about a few post Gen Con games that made it to the table and then interview Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin, the creators of Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment. GUESTS: Juliana Patel & Ariel Rubin RECENTLY PLAYED GAMES - (01:19): Champions of Hara by Greenbrier Games (BGG Link) Stop Thief! by Restoration Games (BGG Link) Mountains of Madness by IELLO Games (BGG Link) QUICK TOPICS – (00:36): Stay tuned next week for a special bonus Vox episode focusing solely on Gen Con 2017! FEATURED TOPIC - (29:56): We speak to the creator’s of Escape the Room: The Werewolf Experiment about bringing physical escape rooms to the table. We talk a bit about what separates this game from other escape room games, and about the design and playtesting process going into such games. Julianna and Ariel also provide some insight into the current state of the board game industry and reflect on what it’s like to be extremely competitive people designing an extremely cooperative game. PLUGS - (1:03:14): We’re raffling off a copy of Unlock to a lucky Patreon backer. Consider donating today! As always, Cardboard Republic YouTube videos, Instagram pictures, and the BGG Guild are still ongoing. Subscribe to one or two - or all of them if you really love us. You do really love us, right?   We’d love to hear from you! You can send questions or feedback via email at podcast@cardboardrepublic.com. You can also reach us social media, including Twitter, Facebook, and BoardGameGeek.   Audio Credits: Intro music track is "Swing!" by Bargo!, used under Creative Commons license.

We go off the beaten path this week to talk to the creators of Escape Room In A Box: The Werewolf Experience, which aims to bring the escape room genre home. The duo behind the game--Juliana Patel and Ariel Rubin--are two stay-at-home moms who love escape rooms but find it increasingly hard to get everything in order to get out to them. So they used their game playing acumen--and their theatre degrees, what???--to create a dramatic, at-home version of the phenomenon. Come along as we talk about bringing he escape room experience home, and the pitfalls of crowdfunding--something I know more than a few of you have either considered or know a thing or two about yourselves.