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3 episodes with downtown project
2 episodes with downtown project
2 episodes with downtown project
Want more MTM Vegas? Check out our Patreon for access to our exclusive weekly aftershow! patreon.com/mtmvegas Episode Description: As a reminder you can watch this show as well at: http://www.YouTube.com/milestomemories This week Wrestlemania took over Las Vegas with multiple days of events, fan festivals and fun. It didn't go off without incident though as we had headaches and people acting dumb. In the end was it worth it for Las Vegas and how did wrestling's biggest event do in Las Vegas? In other #news Waldorf Astoria Vegas has a new GM and even more changes planned. We also discuss: the locations of two new poker rooms, the closure of a trailblazing business, back to the 80s cafe, Vegas Unstripped, Durango's new poolside gaming, Tony Hsieh's will and whether or not the roving showgirls are a scam. 0:00 UNLV golf's big splash! 0:32 Wrestlemania's Vegas spectacle 3:25 Caesars Palace poker room update 4:10 Planet Hollywood's amazing new poker space 5:05 Smoke & Mirrors closes 6:13 NYNY roller coaster prices & packages 7:30 Vegas Unstripped returns this weekend 8:47 Foreigners canceling Vegas trips - What will be the impact? 10:25 Back to the 80s cafe - Retro coolness 11:22 Durango's pool side gaming is now open 12:15 Tony Hseih will found - Huge wrench in Downtown Project? 14:23 Waldorf Astoria Vegas gets new GM - More changes coming 16:48 The Vegas Showgirls scam? 19:10 Is it time for officials to regulate street performers on the Strip? Each week tens of thousands of people tune into our MtM Vegas news shows at http://www.YouTube.com/milestomemories. We do two news shows weekly on YouTube with this being the audio version. Never miss out on the latest happenings in and around Las Vegas! Enjoying the podcast? Please consider leaving us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform! You can also connect with us anytime at podcast@milestomemories.com. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or by searching "MtM Vegas" or "Miles to Memories" in your favorite podcast app. Don't forget to check out our travel/miles/points podcast as well!
We're examining what happened to the downtown YMCA project and why so much of it has been abandoned. Could it be the next Boise Hole? And we're looking at what can only be the weaponized incompetence of the attorney general's office in one of the state's abortion ban lawsuits. Plus, we've got some subversive and holiday cheer picks of the week. Want some more Boise news? Head over to our Hey Boise newsletter where you'll get a cheatsheet to the city every weekday morning. Learn more about the sponsor of this November 15th episode: Inn at 500 Interested in advertising with City Cast Boise? Find more info HERE. Reach us at boise@citycast.fm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Muralist Eliana Davilla with Elistry discusses the Forever Pella mural commissioned by the Spirit of Pella.
Catch “The Drive with Spence Checketts” from 2 pm to 6 pm weekdays on ESPN 700 & 92.1 FM. Produced by Porter Larsen. The latest on the Utah Jazz, Real Salt Lake, Utes, BYU + more sports storylines.
While this five-part series is about one extraordinary man who deserves as much name recognition as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, it's also about the many overlapping contexts that explain his successes, his tragic downward spiral, and his evergreen comments on how to be happy. Tony Hsieh spent his life studying and trying to create and spread happiness, implementing elements of rave culture, the Silicon Valley lifestyle, Howard-Hughes-level renovation ideas, and outside-the-box theories. The results: a shoe company where meetings were more like pep rallies, Tony's llama obsession was apparent, and decor and toys abounded; a Vegas project set on creating the happiest city on Earth in just five years; a “Happiness Tour” that spread fun and games nationwide; and even more pursuits. However, Tony's ambitious projects also brought chaos, misery, loneliness, and confusion to many - including, unbeknownst to some, himself. Each episode in this mini-series covers both Tony Hsieh's life story and seemingly unrelated stories that took place simultaneously. At the end, the different puzzle pieces will form a clear picture, one that shows what happiness is, was, and could be. This is part three: All about The Downtown Project, which gave downtown Vegas a makeover, gave entrepreneurs dream-come-true funding and opportunities, and created an atmosphere that was a party until it suddenly wasn't. Plus: the sales of a recluse; a growing but stumbling “Happiness Industry;” and increased attention towards “Holacracy,” a system billing itself as bureaucracy's antidote. If you enjoy this episode, check out past episodes of Enthusiasts below! https://17caratkpop.weebly.com/enthusiasts.html Revisit part one here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hope-jacobson/episodes/Tony-Hsieh-and-the-Quest-for-Happiness-Enthusiasts-Ep--66-e2ha4ni Revisit part two here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hope-jacobson/episodes/Part-2-Tony-Hsieh-and-the-Quest-for-Happiness-Enthusiasts--Ep--67-e2i4k9b --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hope-jacobson/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/hope-jacobson/support
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Rob Solomon is the Co-Founder of DIMO, an open-connected vehicle platform. Rob's background is in finance, investing, and organizational design. Most recently, he worked at Consensys, the largest Ethereum-focused development company, focusing on finance, internal economics, and decentralizing the organization. Prior to that, he was at Vroom, a pioneer in the online used-car marketplace sector. He started his career at the Downtown Project in Las Vegas (a spinoff of Zappos.com), working on corporate finance and investments and implementing Holacracy.In this conversation, we discuss:- DePIN- DIMO - building the future of mobility- 2024 trends- DAOs- The peer-to-peer economy- Internal economies- $DIMO- Ethereum's death has been greatly exaggerated- Polygon Zk-tech- Working at Zappos- Holacracy- Building a blockchain for consumersDIMOWebsite: dimo.zoneX: @DIMO_NetworkDiscord: chat.dimo.zoneRob SolomonX: @robmsolomonLinkedIn: Rob Solomon --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is brought to you by PrimeXBT. PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders that demand highly reliable market data and performance. Traders of all experience levels can easily design and customize layouts and widgets to best fit their trading style. PrimeXBT is always offering innovative products and professional trading conditions to all customers. PrimeXBT is running an exclusive promotion for listeners of the podcast. After making your first deposit, 50% of that first deposit will be credited to your account as a bonus that can be used as additional collateral to open positions. Code: CRYPTONEWS50 This promotion is available for a month after activation. Click the link below: PrimeXBT x CRYPTONEWS50
It's Fall Fund Drive, and we're broadcasting live from our studios in downtown Sarasota. First: A few months ago, a local builders' group suggested Manatee County should end local wetland protections, arguing that state wetland buffer regulations are good enough. The Manatee County commission obliged and, in a matter of weeks, rushed the builders' suggestion through the process. Two weeks ago, a local environmental organization reacted by calling on its supporters to flood Manatee County with scientific evidence at a land-use meeting on Oct. 5, when the commissioners were expected to cast their final vote on the measure. Suncoast Waterkeeper wanted it to be on the record that cutting wetland buffers in half was a bad idea. Our news team was at the meeting yesterday. Then: WSLR reporter Ramon Lopez was at the closing event of a charrette yesterday. It ended a three-day process in which Benderson Development hunkered down with neighbors, to hash out a big project in downtown Sarasota. Big projects usually trigger big pushback. But this one was unusually harmonious.
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? "A gripping tale" - The Guardian Listen and follow now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The feverish excitement around The Downtown Project begins to give way to frustration, confusion, and disappointment. Tony's utopian vision is concealing something toxic. And it isn't just businesses and investors at stake. All of a sudden, so are people's lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? Listen to the full series now: https://link.chtbl.com/costofhappiness To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tony Hsieh est un entrepreneur qui a bouleversé le e-commerce quand il a lancé Zappos. Mais plus que le e-commerce, Tony a créé un vrai mouvement. Tony Hsieh devient un véritable gourou pour beaucoup et surtout il devient riche. Pourtant, il va plonger dans l'alcool et la drogue avant de connaître une fin tragique. Dans ce 2e épisode, Tony Hsieh décide de tout investir dans Zappos. Il met une grande totalité de l'argent de LinkExchange dans Zappos et en devient rapidement le CEO. Zappos ne gagne pas d'argent mais se développe très vite. Le chiffre d'affaires passe de 1,6 millions en 2000 à plus de 800 millions en 2007. Tony développe 2 choses : un recrutement, une intégration et un management très différent avec une grande liberté et surtout un service client qui est probablement le meilleur au monde. Ils n'ont pas de script et doivent répondre à toutes les demandes des clients. Avec la crise de 2008, l'argent se fait rare et sous la pression du conseil d'administration, il décide de se vendre à Amazon et négocie en personne avec Jeff Bezos. Zappos est vendue 1,2 milliards de dollars et Tony récupère plus de 200 millions de dollars. Mais il a déjà un autre projet en tête et cette fois, encore plus vaste, le Downtown project. Notes => https://inspire-media.fr/tony-hsieh-zappos-lentreprise-du-bonheur-ep-2/
Billionaire Zappos founder and tech CEO Tony Hsieh was obsessed with happiness and helping people achieve it. After running “the world's happiest company” for two decades, Hsieh created his experimental community — The Downtown Project — dedicated to pursuing happiness. But what do Tony's life and death reveal about Silicon Valley's obsession with re-imagining how society functions? Series premieres December 5. Subscribe and follow now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Talking all things California politics, the conversation with Steve starts with a question about the Bill extending the life of Diablo Canyon. Also discussed is the move toward forcing all Californians to purchase an Electric Car. Plus the conversation includes the new bill that could allow fast food workers to unionize which could raise prices in your fast food. An FBI agent who was accused of bias in handling the investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop has resigned. Convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has become prison pals with notorious killer Narcy Novack who murdered her rich husband and her mother-in-law in a bid to get her hands on their estate, according to a new report. A downtown Fresno project 13 years in the making that was supposed to open in 2019 may receive another extension. Baseball history could be on the horizon as Aaron Judge approaches the elite mark of 60 home runs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Tony Hsieh has long been painted as a tortured visionary — most recently in the posthumous biography by two Wall Street Journal reporters dramatically titled “Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh.” But longtime Las Vegas locals have observed the last decade of transformations along Fremont East (funded by Tony's company Downtown Project) with mixed emotions. Lifelong resident and writer Nicholas Russell recently penned an essay in the Baffler about the problem with mythologizing Tony Hsieh — he and host Dayvid Figler bust some Downtown Project myths, examine Tony's legacy downtown, and break down just why it was so easy for Tony Hsieh to set up shop in Las Vegas. How do you feel about downtown Las Vegas? Leave us a message or shoot us a text at 702-514-0719. We're also on Twitter! Follow us at @CityCastVegas Want more Vegas news? Get our morning newsletter at lasvegas.citycast.fm/newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we're joined by former guest to the show, Rob Solomon, a cofounder at DIMO, a blockchain enabled IoT protocol for mobility. His background is in finance, investing, and organizational design. Most recently, he worked at Consensys, the largest Ethereum focused development company, with a focus on finance, internal economics, and decentralizing the organization. Prior to that, he was at Vroom, a pioneer in the online used-car marketplace sector. He started his career at the Downtown Project in Las Vegas (a spinoff of Zappos.com) working on investments and implementing holacracy. Tune in to this episode as we discuss the latest developments in Rob's work since he last spoke on the podcast, how DIMO is like building a city from scratch, understanding the main functions of an organization, and why the future is bright for DIMO. A full transcript of the episode can be found on our website: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/rob-solomon/ Key highlights we discussed: > DIMO's infrastructure and open-source technology > Creating an organisation with permissionless contributions > The role of data unions in managing decentralized data ownership > Defining decentralized organizing and DIMO's ecosystem > Redefining the thesis of ownership and incentives > Raising capital for a Web3 project To find out more about DIMO and Rob's work: > LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertsolomon1/ > Twitter: https://twitter.com/robmsolomon > Website: https://dimo.zone/ > Application: https://app.dimo.zone/ > Written documentation on how DIMO works and the token: https://docs.dimo.zone/dimo-overview/overview/what-is-dimo Other references and mentions: > Software and Protocols for a new way of Organizing — with Bryan Peters, Rob Solomon & Sascha Kellert: https://boundaryless.io/podcast/bryan-peters-and-sascha-kellert-and-rob-solomon/ > DIMO Podcast – Podcast #1: Rob Solomon & Kacy Qua: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gno-bhNHxGk Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast/ Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://boundaryless.io/podcast-music Recorded on 17 May 2022.
Ellen Ruby, Executive Director, Lewisburg Downtown Partnership, on the next Live! from Lewisburg Live Variety Show May 18 at the Campus Theatre. We'll talk about the success of last year's event, the event this year, the bands, music, entertainers, emcee and the work of nationally known, and locally beloved entertainer, speaker and singer/songwriter K.J. Reimensnyder-Wagner.
As we conclude this “Future Focused” series that looks to the future of work and our world at large, we were really interested in exploring how cities and businesses will grow together. Meet Maggie Hsu, the former Chief of Staff to the late CEO of Zappos, Tony Hsieh, who was heavily involved in the Downtown Project. The Downtown Project aimed to build and revitalize the community of Las Vegas. Maggie has spent her career thinking ahead about ways to make our future world better. In this episode, Maggie explains the intent and legacy of the Downtown Project, dives into holacracy and its connections to blockchain, how cities can be cryptofriendly, and how she thinks work, life, and play have fundamentally changed after the pandemic. It's one of our more thought-provoking discussions as we look ahead to 2022. This wraps up our No Turning Back content for 2021 - we look forward to an exciting year exploring new topics, and mini-series, with you next year.
My guest for this episode is Rebecca Weaver. She is the Founder and CEO of HRuprise, a marketplace and community that connects people with HR coaches to help them grow, develop, and navigate their toughest workplace challenges. After 20 years of working in HR, Rebecca grew frustrated with just how much is stacked in favor of the company, including the role of HR. Her experience has run the gamut, from well-established companies like Target and Home Depot, to experimental companies like Tony Hsieh's Downtown Project. Rebecca created HRuprise to level the playing field for employees, providing HR that works for employees, rather than the company. In this episode you will learn: Why and how Rebecca imagined and created a different HR structure where HR pros work for employees not their bosses Why there is in an inherent conflict of interest when navigating employee relations How and why you should value the advice you give as an HR professional How you may be able to do HR differently while still working your day job Connect with our host: Website LinkedIn Connect with our guest: Website LinkedIn
On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with David Roger, founder of Felix Gray, the e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. David and I talk about the founder's journey of launching a new category of eyewear and the challenges along the way. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we bring the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with David Roger, Founder of Felix GrayBrian Ardinger: [00:00:30] Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have David Roger. He is the founder of Felix Gray, an e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. And he's got quite an interesting story. So welcome to the show, David. David Roger: [00:00:57] Thanks so much for having me. Brian Ardinger: [00:00:58] Our paths have not crossed until today, but a lot of our common network have in the past. You started your company, Felix Gray in 2016. Let's go back to the beginning and let's talk about how you got involved in becoming an entrepreneur. David Roger: [00:01:13] In college, I initially thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That's what I went to school for and by sophomore year I realized I did not want to do that. And I kind of loved this idea of starting businesses. And this is the time where TechCrunch was starting to get really popular, and you'd read a lot of different things and different entrepreneurial things. And it was something really exciting. I ended up starting my first business in college, which was a secondary school newspaper. And I had to sell print advertising to local stores and shops and businesses. And if you want to learn how tough selling is, try doing that. And then when I left Cornell, I went and joined Venture for America, which is basically Teach for America, but applied to startups and entrepreneurship. Founded by Andrew Yang, who is running for democratic nominee couple of years ago and is now running actually for Mayor in the New York Mayor race. And so that's kind of how I got into entrepreneurship.Brian Ardinger: [00:02:06] I think you started in Vegas, is that correct? Working with Tony Shay and the Downtown Project. And maybe tell us a little bit about that Vegas Tech Fund and some of the stuff that you've done in there. David Roger: [00:02:17] Through Venture for America, they are in partnership with Tony's Downtown Project. And so that's how I got connected with them. I interviewed out there, really bought into the mission, really thought it was an amazing thing to fill a walkable livable downtown area, which is, Vegas is not known for that. It's basically all suburbs. And then essentially the strip, which is a transient first population.And so, I thought that was an amazing mission. I was part of the biggest tech fund, but my primary job was on their operations team. Basically, when I got there, Tony had put in $350 million of his own money into revitalize the area, and we had no idea if projects that we had going on ranging from a million, to twenty-five million dollars, we're going to make money or lose money. It's kind of the wild west.And they threw me in, and they said, go figure this out. And so, it was really cool. Great job right out of school. I will say it did mean that I was in front of Excel, building financial models, 12 hours a day. That's when my eyes started to absolutely kill me. I was looking around, looking at everyone else, complaining about the same things our eyes being tired at the end of the day, their eyes being dry, headaches, blurry vision. And kind of looked and said, okay, why is this a thing. Everyone I know at work and half the people I know in my friend group that are in different jobs all around the country, why are we all complaining about the same thing? That's when I started talking to Optometrists Ophthalmologists. Learned around what screens produced, which is blue light and glare and basically that caused a lot of these issues that get categorized as digital eye strain. So, if you get filtered blue light, you can eliminate glare. You create this more comfortable experience. Brian Ardinger: [00:03:50] I love the genesis of that. But not every new idea becomes a company. And so how did you make that jump from, hey, I've got an individual problem from the standpoint of, you know, my eyes are getting strained from all the work I'm doing on screens to, hey, I think there's something here that I can create a company around?David Roger: [00:04:08] So the first thing was really recognizing that problem. Right? So, recognize the problem myself and then recognize that problem in a lot of other people. Whether it was people complaining about it firsthand, or me saying, hey, do your eyes ever get exhausted at the end of the day? You ever deal with a headache?And everyone's saying, yes. You're like, okay, there's something here. So, then I start to understand, okay, what is going on? So that's when I started talking to eye professionals for a better understanding what could be these root causes. And so when I'm talking to ophthalmologists and optometrists they are saying look, screens are a large driver behind this, and particularly what screens produce, light and glare.And so like, look, you can filter blue light, and you can eliminate glare. You can create a more comfortable experience. There are these glasses out there, they're yellow or orange lenses, and basically, they're going to help. So, I look, and they're not only yellow and orange lenses, but they look like hunting goggles.And if you put them on your face you look like one of the X Men. And I'm like, I can't wear that, and we'll show this to plenty of other people like, hey, this will solve your problems. They're like, I'm not wearing that. Right. So basically, the idea was okay, well, how do you create something that is functional, but also can look good. At the flip side, there were a couple other things in the market at the time, and this is still the case today. But these clear lenses, basically the Optometrist, the Ophthalmologist, the real eyecare professional said this stuff is not really filtering real blue light. It's filtering 2 to 3% of blue light where it actually matters, which produces blue light. It is basically placebo. It's not worth buying. So, what I did then was said, okay, well, how can you marry the fashion function?How can you create something that has a beautiful frame, but a really functional lens? And that's when I started working through a lot of networking with, with different lens suppliers and ended up developing a proprietary way of filtering blue light that can still have a clear lens. But be highly effective, right?So, Felix Gray's lens, even today, filters 30% of blue light instead of 2% of blue light at the 455-nanometer range, which is where screens produce blue light. Right. So basically, we filter 15 times more blue light where it's important. And that's why 9 out of 10 people who wear Felix Gray report significant improvement, but that was the genesis.So, it was okay, let's spend time building a great product off the bat. That's not only going to make your eyes feel great, but make you feel great. You feel confident in what you're wearing. And from there start. Brian Ardinger: [00:06:34] And obviously there were some signals in the marketplace that e-commerce was taking off. Warby Parker, I think had just been around and being introduced to the concept of cheaper or less expensive frames that you would buy than going to the store and stuff. So, there's some signals in that. How did you go from, and the concept of there's a problem here. I think I can solve it from technology perspective and then creating an e-commerce company? Those are different things as well. How did you go about building the team and experimenting your way to where you're at now? David Roger: [00:07:01] Ecomm was definitely growing. I would say that the distinction between the fields where I was doing and a lot of what other direct to consumer was doing was direct to consumers basically saying here's a toothbrush, you've always bought a toothbrush, let's make a prettier looking toothbrush. And let's cut costs through the supply chain and then be able to deliver it to you and use, you know, Facebook advertising, et cetera, in order to get it off the ground. We were basically creating a new category. We're saying, look, we believe that this is a big problem. After looking at lots of research through companies like the Vision Council, which is an independent group of optometrists and ophthalmologists, you're learning that 60 to 70% of people are experiencing digital eyestrain. So you're realizing this is a big problem, but the market is really low. So, the awareness is not there. The problem is obvious. It's just that no one has applied all that's known on that problem. And no one has brought a real great solution to the market. What we said is the best way to do that is to do that through a new age direct consumer model, as opposed to the traditional retail model. Because especially when something is new, a retailer's not going to say, sure, I'm just going to buy this thing. You know, I'm going to help educate your potential customers. It doesn't work like that. Right? So, we had a lot better direct connections with the customer. If we could go straight to B to C. Brian Ardinger: [00:08:20] My understanding is you got scrappy early stages when you're trying to start a new category, sometimes there's not investors that are interested in starting a new category and that. So, talk us through how you got off the ground? David Roger: [00:08:31] I remember, you know, at the time Away Luggage had just raised $2 million pre revenue. My co-founder and I said, okay, look, we're two smart, you know, guys. He came from hedge funds. I came from an entrepreneurial background. And we said, look, we can go raise some money.And we basically got laughed out of the room because people said, you're not going to start a new market. And especially we are selling specifically non-prescription glasses. So, people with either contacts or 20/20. So, you're not going to get people who don't wear glasses, to wear glasses. And so, we actually said, we believe in this product. We've tested it among friends and it's a really good success.So, the first thing we did when we really got scrappy is when we launched in January 2016 in a closed beta, we actually did what we called an office trial. We worked with offices all around New York. Spotify, Uber, Barclays, LinkedIn. And we would go in and offer up to 50 pairs of glasses to employees for two-week free trial period.We took care of everything. So really easy for a Culture HR team to just say, hey, this is a fun little perk. We don't have to do anything. And it's a nice thing to offer. And at the end of that program, people could either return them. We come and pick them up. Or they could use their own credit cards to buy.And we saw about one in three people without knowing about Felix Gray, without knowing about blue light, bought right off the bat. And then we always get emails like we'd always pick up on a Friday. And then by Monday, Tuesday, we'd always get all these emails saying, actually my eyes are killing me. Can you come back so I can buy those glasses? So, we knew we had something there. Brian Ardinger: [00:10:02] So you did an Indiegogo campaign as well and raise some money from friends and family and then manufacturing and that's expensive. So how do you get off the ground with just selling individual orders? David Roger: [00:10:13] That private beta happened after the Indigo campaign. When we did the Indiegogo campaign, we really didn't have a company at all. There's no supply chain in place yet. Basically, it was rough estimates of what we would need in order to place our first order quantities. And we didn't even know what the suppliers were. We just knew that was roughly what it was going to be. And we would figure that out later. So, I think for us, we were in a position where we use Indiegogo very much as a friends and family way of raising some money.People could contribute $50 here, $100 dollars there. And then, you know, some people, you know, friends of friends got interested, excited about the idea, but you know, you see some Indigo Campaigns that are really, really polished. They really know their supply chain. They know exactly what's going on.They've already built prototypes. And now they're racing for, you know, that full kind of, I'd say seed round, right. It goes beyond actually just the production there's marketing expenses that they're looking to raise and things like that. We were very much like, hey, we don't know if this is going to work. Let's raise as little as possible off the bat. We didn't raise our official seed round until a year after we launched. So again, 2016, right. So, we raised our first seed in March of 2017 once we started to have traction. Brian Ardinger: [00:11:30] And so flash forward. We're what, five years or so into your journey? What are some of the lessons learned along the way? And then we can talk about where you're at today. David Roger: [00:11:39] Starting with a really high-quality product, particularly one of ours that is proprietary and just works better than others, does mean a lot, right. Because at the end of the day, you can have best frames, the best marketing. If you don't have a great product, it can win, but it often doesn't, especially if you're trying to be scrappy. You know, word of mouth is still our largest source of revenue from any individual channel. We do a lot of advertising on a lot of different channels, including podcasts, including, you know, Facebook, Instagram, Google influencers, things like that. So, it's not like we're not marketing. Just word of mouth still continues to be really strong. Another thing I'd say is, you know, when we launch, we launched as a blue light company. We launched as a blue light product. We were really growing this market. Over time, I think it's important for brands to understand really at the core, what they stand for. For us that is this idea of your digital wellness, right.So, we fundamentally believe in improving the relationship between people and their technology. We believe that like, if you are able to do that, you can help people live a happier, healthier, more productive life, and change the world, right. You're happier because your eyes aren't killing you at the end of the day.We've even had the best review I ever got was a person saying that their marriage has gotten better with their spouse because they don't come home grumpy, cause their eyes aren't exhausted. And at the same time, you can also be more productive, right? So, you might have to burn the midnight oil to get a project done. And you're able to do that because your eyes aren't fatigued. You're not dealing with that headache. But at the core of what we stand for, it is really this idea of how do we help your digital being. If we care about the food we put into our bodies. We care about that exercise we get. Then we sit in front of our laptops or monitors for 10 plus hours a day, watch TV for a couple hours or on our phones for every minute in between.We know that's not good for us. So why not have a healthy relationship during that day. And that is ultimately what drives new product development that's in the works. It ultimately drives the conversations that we want to have with customers, the type of partnerships we're looking to do. And so I do think that finding your brand North Star is very important.Brian Ardinger: [00:13:51] So we've had a challenging year, as everybody has around the world. I always like to ask the founders, what have you learned over this past 18 months in COVID and that. How has that affected your business? How's it affected your ability to manage teams and grow what you're growing. What are your takeaways from where we've been and where we're coming out of?David Roger: [00:14:09] Yeah, from a business standpoint, I think, you know, particularly in the beginning of the pandemic, everyone's indoors, everyone's now learning to use Zoom. And, you know, we saw, you know, blue light, the category really exploded. I think now you're seeing kind of the opposite happen, where everyone is just focused on being outside and most people are vaccinated and which is to be expected.You know, it makes sense, but the awareness overall has risen a great deal. A customer said, you know, 80% of our customers do their research beforehand. So, you know, as the space matures, there's a lot of competition out there from $20 products on Amazon that are honestly pretty crap, to like, you know, $150 products. And people are wondering because that price point is so wide. What are the differences? And a lot of times they'll do their research. So we're learning a lot about that. In terms of business and managing a team, you know, we've always had a fundamental philosophy of it's more important to get your work done and get your work done well than to just be in the office.And so, while we had an office first culture, performance was not relying on if you showed up to the office or not. You had a plumber that needed to come, of course you could work from home for the day. If you just weren't feeling like coming in, you can work from home for the day. So, we already had, I'd say an innate level of trust with everyone on the team.And so, when we switched to work from home, I think it was less of transition for us and less a transition for people that manage teams here, than it was for other companies where that cultural is less so. Now I will say that over time, you obviously miss those interactions with individual people, you miss just being able to get in touch.And so, you know, we started doing randomized lunches every other week, so that you can kind of have these small group lunches. That was really nice. Also a nice thing is a lot of people are Slacking all the time now. And it was really nice to just Slack call or actually call someone because I liken it to just swiveling your chair around and then talking to the person next to you.And we weren't able to do that anymore. And you lose so much if you're just texting. If you're just typing on Slack, you lose all that tone. So that was another thing that we learned over time. Like, hey, let's just get on a one-minute phone call. It doesn't have to blow up into this whole thing. It can just be a one-minute phone call to talk through something.Brian Ardinger: [00:16:27] So coming out of it, are you going back to the office? Are you doing hybrid? Where are you sitting? David Roger: [00:16:31] We'll end up having a hybrid. So, we're figuring that out right now, but it's clear that most people want some office environment, but they don't want to go back five days a week. We've also started hiring people outside of New York, which I think has been awesome.It's a great way to expand the talent pool and the way that I see those things going is having a couple of off-sites every year to bring everyone together. And I actually think having multiple off-sites is really helpful anyway, because everyone, especially in a small company, working and being pretty busy.Everyone is so heads down often. It's really hard to get people up and just kind of have their heads out of the sand. And that's, especially true of people who are, you know, at lower levels in the company. And that's really, really important to get their perspective too. And off-sites are a great way to do that. Brian Ardinger: [00:17:21] Do you have any kind of go-to resources that you'd recommend for entrepreneurs or innovators out there that you rely on or use to keep you up to date and moving forward?David Roger: [00:17:29] The best thing is your own network. And as you build that network, then you might become in text groups or Slack groups and different things so that, you know, what's going on. Whether that's marketing or supply chain, or leadership. I think surrounding yourself with a couple of key mentors is also really important to better understand how to build teams in particular.So, I would say network more than anything. There's a couple of good newsletters and stuff like that. Fore Runner has a really good one. I always liked to read, Not Boring, which is not usually in the D to C space, but I think it's just very, very thoughtful and strategic. And you can learn a lot about the thought that companies put into their strategy through newsletters like that. But I would say more than anything, it's building your own network because that's where the real value has to come from. Brian Ardinger: [00:18:15] What's next for Felix Gray? What do you see coming out in the next few months, years? Where do you see the company going? And what's new and exciting in your world. David Roger: [00:18:22] Yeah. So, we're really focused on the digital wellness space. So, you know, there'll be some things that we're going to launch a Warranty Program pretty soon. We'll launch accessories pretty soon. Really just additional things on the eyewear side. But we do have a couple of products that are not eyewear related that we're looking to launch one of them in actually like late summer, early fall.It's a product that helps your long-term eye health and also helps your short-term eye comfort. So, it's kind of something that we look to be in addition to Felix Gray. And the way that we're thinking about the business overall is really this idea of we want to own and help facilitate the conversation around new digital wellbeing, and then create products that support that right products that support the fact that we weren't evolved to be in front of screens all day, every day. There are negative effects that are associated with that. And we want products that help mitigate the same effect. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: [00:19:14] Well, David, thank you again for coming on Inside Outside Innovation to share your founder journey and give us some insights into where you see the world going. I really do appreciate it. If people want to find out more about yourself or about the company, what's the best way to do that?David Roger: [00:19:27] You can follow us at Felix Gray. So, it's the same F E L I X, G R A Y S. Felix Gray was taken when we first started that. You obviously can sign up to our newsletter as well. Those are probably the best, two ways to follow the company. Brian Ardinger: [00:19:43] Awesome. Well, thanks again for being on the show and looking forward to continuing the conversation in the years to come and appreciate all your time.David Roger: [00:19:49] Thanks so much for having me. It was great.Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. 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On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with David Roger, founder of Felix Gray, the e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. David and I talk about the founder's journey of launching a new category of eyewear and the challenges along the way. Let's get started.Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help you rethink, reset, and remix yourself and your organization. Each week, we bring the latest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses, as well as the tools, tactics, and trends you'll need to thrive as a new innovator.Interview Transcript with David Roger, Founder of Felix GrayBrian Ardinger: [00:00:30] Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have David Roger. He is the founder of Felix Gray, an e-commerce eyewear company with proprietary blue light filtering technology. And he's got quite an interesting story. So welcome to the show, David. David Roger: [00:00:57] Thanks so much for having me. Brian Ardinger: [00:00:58] Our paths have not crossed until today, but a lot of our common network have in the past. You started your company, Felix Gray in 2016. Let's go back to the beginning and let's talk about how you got involved in becoming an entrepreneur. David Roger: [00:01:13] In college, I initially thought I wanted to be a lawyer. That's what I went to school for and by sophomore year I realized I did not want to do that. And I kind of loved this idea of starting businesses. And this is the time where TechCrunch was starting to get really popular, and you'd read a lot of different things and different entrepreneurial things. And it was something really exciting. I ended up starting my first business in college, which was a secondary school newspaper. And I had to sell print advertising to local stores and shops and businesses. And if you want to learn how tough selling is, try doing that. And then when I left Cornell, I went and joined Venture for America, which is basically Teach for America, but applied to startups and entrepreneurship. Founded by Andrew Yang, who is running for democratic nominee couple of years ago and is now running actually for Mayor in the New York Mayor race. And so that's kind of how I got into entrepreneurship.Brian Ardinger: [00:02:06] I think you started in Vegas, is that correct? Working with Tony Shay and the Downtown Project. And maybe tell us a little bit about that Vegas Tech Fund and some of the stuff that you've done in there. David Roger: [00:02:17] Through Venture for America, they are in partnership with Tony's Downtown Project. And so that's how I got connected with them. I interviewed out there, really bought into the mission, really thought it was an amazing thing to fill a walkable livable downtown area, which is, Vegas is not known for that. It's basically all suburbs. And then essentially the strip, which is a transient first population.And so, I thought that was an amazing mission. I was part of the biggest tech fund, but my primary job was on their operations team. Basically, when I got there, Tony had put in $350 million of his own money into revitalize the area, and we had no idea if projects that we had going on ranging from a million, to twenty-five million dollars, we're going to make money or lose money. It's kind of the wild west.And they threw me in, and they said, go figure this out. And so, it was really cool. Great job right out of school. I will say it did mean that I was in front of Excel, building financial models, 12 hours a day. That's when my eyes started to absolutely kill me. I was looking around, looking at everyone else, complaining about the same things our eyes being tired at the end of the day, their eyes being dry, headaches, blurry vision. And kind of looked and said, okay, why is this a thing. Everyone I know at work and half the people I know in my friend group that are in different jobs all around the country, why are we all complaining about the same thing? That's when I started talking to Optometrists Ophthalmologists. Learned around what screens produced, which is blue light and glare and basically that caused a lot of these issues that get categorized as digital eye strain. So, if you get filtered blue light, you can eliminate glare. You create this more comfortable experience. Brian Ardinger: [00:03:50] I love the genesis of that. But not every new idea becomes a company. And so how did you make that jump from, hey, I've got an individual problem from the standpoint of, you know, my eyes are getting strained from all the work I'm doing on screens to, hey, I think there's something here that I can create a company around?David Roger: [00:04:08] So the first thing was really recognizing that problem. Right? So, recognize the problem myself and then recognize that problem in a lot of other people. Whether it was people complaining about it firsthand, or me saying, hey, do your eyes ever get exhausted at the end of the day? You ever deal with a headache?And everyone's saying, yes. You're like, okay, there's something here. So, then I start to understand, okay, what is going on? So that's when I started talking to eye professionals for a better understanding what could be these root causes. And so when I'm talking to ophthalmologists and optometrists they are saying look, screens are a large driver behind this, and particularly what screens produce, light and glare.And so like, look, you can filter blue light, and you can eliminate glare. You can create a more comfortable experience. There are these glasses out there, they're yellow or orange lenses, and basically, they're going to help. So, I look, and they're not only yellow and orange lenses, but they look like hunting goggles.And if you put them on your face you look like one of the X Men. And I'm like, I can't wear that, and we'll show this to plenty of other people like, hey, this will solve your problems. They're like, I'm not wearing that. Right. So basically, the idea was okay, well, how do you create something that is functional, but also can look good. At the flip side, there were a couple other things in the market at the time, and this is still the case today. But these clear lenses, basically the Optometrist, the Ophthalmologist, the real eyecare professional said this stuff is not really filtering real blue light. It's filtering 2 to 3% of blue light where it actually matters, which produces blue light. It is basically placebo. It's not worth buying. So, what I did then was said, okay, well, how can you marry the fashion function?How can you create something that has a beautiful frame, but a really functional lens? And that's when I started working through a lot of networking with, with different lens suppliers and ended up developing a proprietary way of filtering blue light that can still have a clear lens. But be highly effective, right?So, Felix Gray's lens, even today, filters 30% of blue light instead of 2% of blue light at the 455-nanometer range, which is where screens produce blue light. Right. So basically, we filter 15 times more blue light where it's important. And that's why 9 out of 10 people who wear Felix Gray report significant improvement, but that was the genesis.So, it was okay, let's spend time building a great product off the bat. That's not only going to make your eyes feel great, but make you feel great. You feel confident in what you're wearing. And from there start. Brian Ardinger: [00:06:34] And obviously there were some signals in the marketplace that e-commerce was taking off. Warby Parker, I think had just been around and being introduced to the concept of cheaper or less expensive frames that you would buy than going to the store and stuff. So, there's some signals in that. How did you go from, and the concept of there's a problem here. I think I can solve it from technology perspective and then creating an e-commerce company? Those are different things as well. How did you go about building the team and experimenting your way to where you're at now? David Roger: [00:07:01] Ecomm was definitely growing. I would say that the distinction between the fields where I was doing and a lot of what other direct to consumer was doing was direct to consumers basically saying here's a toothbrush, you've always bought a toothbrush, let's make a prettier looking toothbrush. And let's cut costs through the supply chain and then be able to deliver it to you and use, you know, Facebook advertising, et cetera, in order to get it off the ground. We were basically creating a new category. We're saying, look, we believe that this is a big problem. After looking at lots of research through companies like the Vision Council, which is an independent group of optometrists and ophthalmologists, you're learning that 60 to 70% of people are experiencing digital eyestrain. So you're realizing this is a big problem, but the market is really low. So, the awareness is not there. The problem is obvious. It's just that no one has applied all that's known on that problem. And no one has brought a real great solution to the market. What we said is the best way to do that is to do that through a new age direct consumer model, as opposed to the traditional retail model. Because especially when something is new, a retailer's not going to say, sure, I'm just going to buy this thing. You know, I'm going to help educate your potential customers. It doesn't work like that. Right? So, we had a lot better direct connections with the customer. If we could go straight to B to C. Brian Ardinger: [00:08:20] My understanding is you got scrappy early stages when you're trying to start a new category, sometimes there's not investors that are interested in starting a new category and that. So, talk us through how you got off the ground? David Roger: [00:08:31] I remember, you know, at the time Away Luggage had just raised $2 million pre revenue. My co-founder and I said, okay, look, we're two smart, you know, guys. He came from hedge funds. I came from an entrepreneurial background. And we said, look, we can go raise some money.And we basically got laughed out of the room because people said, you're not going to start a new market. And especially we are selling specifically non-prescription glasses. So, people with either contacts or 20/20. So, you're not going to get people who don't wear glasses, to wear glasses. And so, we actually said, we believe in this product. We've tested it among friends and it's a really good success.So, the first thing we did when we really got scrappy is when we launched in January 2016 in a closed beta, we actually did what we called an office trial. We worked with offices all around New York. Spotify, Uber, Barclays, LinkedIn. And we would go in and offer up to 50 pairs of glasses to employees for two-week free trial period.We took care of everything. So really easy for a Culture HR team to just say, hey, this is a fun little perk. We don't have to do anything. And it's a nice thing to offer. And at the end of that program, people could either return them. We come and pick them up. Or they could use their own credit cards to buy.And we saw about one in three people without knowing about Felix Gray, without knowing about blue light, bought right off the bat. And then we always get emails like we'd always pick up on a Friday. And then by Monday, Tuesday, we'd always get all these emails saying, actually my eyes are killing me. Can you come back so I can buy those glasses? So, we knew we had something there. Brian Ardinger: [00:10:02] So you did an Indiegogo campaign as well and raise some money from friends and family and then manufacturing and that's expensive. So how do you get off the ground with just selling individual orders? David Roger: [00:10:13] That private beta happened after the Indigo campaign. When we did the Indiegogo campaign, we really didn't have a company at all. There's no supply chain in place yet. Basically, it was rough estimates of what we would need in order to place our first order quantities. And we didn't even know what the suppliers were. We just knew that was roughly what it was going to be. And we would figure that out later. So, I think for us, we were in a position where we use Indiegogo very much as a friends and family way of raising some money.People could contribute $50 here, $100 dollars there. And then, you know, some people, you know, friends of friends got interested, excited about the idea, but you know, you see some Indigo Campaigns that are really, really polished. They really know their supply chain. They know exactly what's going on.They've already built prototypes. And now they're racing for, you know, that full kind of, I'd say seed round, right. It goes beyond actually just the production there's marketing expenses that they're looking to raise and things like that. We were very much like, hey, we don't know if this is going to work. Let's raise as little as possible off the bat. We didn't raise our official seed round until a year after we launched. So again, 2016, right. So, we raised our first seed in March of 2017 once we started to have traction. Brian Ardinger: [00:11:30] And so flash forward. We're what, five years or so into your journey? What are some of the lessons learned along the way? And then we can talk about where you're at today. David Roger: [00:11:39] Starting with a really high-quality product, particularly one of ours that is proprietary and just works better than others, does mean a lot, right. Because at the end of the day, you can have best frames, the best marketing. If you don't have a great product, it can win, but it often doesn't, especially if you're trying to be scrappy. You know, word of mouth is still our largest source of revenue from any individual channel. We do a lot of advertising on a lot of different channels, including podcasts, including, you know, Facebook, Instagram, Google influencers, things like that. So, it's not like we're not marketing. Just word of mouth still continues to be really strong. Another thing I'd say is, you know, when we launch, we launched as a blue light company. We launched as a blue light product. We were really growing this market. Over time, I think it's important for brands to understand really at the core, what they stand for. For us that is this idea of your digital wellness, right.So, we fundamentally believe in improving the relationship between people and their technology. We believe that like, if you are able to do that, you can help people live a happier, healthier, more productive life, and change the world, right. You're happier because your eyes aren't killing you at the end of the day.We've even had the best review I ever got was a person saying that their marriage has gotten better with their spouse because they don't come home grumpy, cause their eyes aren't exhausted. And at the same time, you can also be more productive, right? So, you might have to burn the midnight oil to get a project done. And you're able to do that because your eyes aren't fatigued. You're not dealing with that headache. But at the core of what we stand for, it is really this idea of how do we help your digital being. If we care about the food we put into our bodies. We care about that exercise we get. Then we sit in front of our laptops or monitors for 10 plus hours a day, watch TV for a couple hours or on our phones for every minute in between.We know that's not good for us. So why not have a healthy relationship during that day. And that is ultimately what drives new product development that's in the works. It ultimately drives the conversations that we want to have with customers, the type of partnerships we're looking to do. And so I do think that finding your brand North Star is very important.Brian Ardinger: [00:13:51] So we've had a challenging year, as everybody has around the world. I always like to ask the founders, what have you learned over this past 18 months in COVID and that. How has that affected your business? How's it affected your ability to manage teams and grow what you're growing. What are your takeaways from where we've been and where we're coming out of?David Roger: [00:14:09] Yeah, from a business standpoint, I think, you know, particularly in the beginning of the pandemic, everyone's indoors, everyone's now learning to use Zoom. And, you know, we saw, you know, blue light, the category really exploded. I think now you're seeing kind of the opposite happen, where everyone is just focused on being outside and most people are vaccinated and which is to be expected.You know, it makes sense, but the awareness overall has risen a great deal. A customer said, you know, 80% of our customers do their research beforehand. So, you know, as the space matures, there's a lot of competition out there from $20 products on Amazon that are honestly pretty crap, to like, you know, $150 products. And people are wondering because that price point is so wide. What are the differences? And a lot of times they'll do their research. So we're learning a lot about that. In terms of business and managing a team, you know, we've always had a fundamental philosophy of it's more important to get your work done and get your work done well than to just be in the office.And so, while we had an office first culture, performance was not relying on if you showed up to the office or not. You had a plumber that needed to come, of course you could work from home for the day. If you just weren't feeling like coming in, you can work from home for the day. So, we already had, I'd say an innate level of trust with everyone on the team.And so, when we switched to work from home, I think it was less of transition for us and less a transition for people that manage teams here, than it was for other companies where that cultural is less so. Now I will say that over time, you obviously miss those interactions with individual people, you miss just being able to get in touch.And so, you know, we started doing randomized lunches every other week, so that you can kind of have these small group lunches. That was really nice. Also a nice thing is a lot of people are Slacking all the time now. And it was really nice to just Slack call or actually call someone because I liken it to just swiveling your chair around and then talking to the person next to you.And we weren't able to do that anymore. And you lose so much if you're just texting. If you're just typing on Slack, you lose all that tone. So that was another thing that we learned over time. Like, hey, let's just get on a one-minute phone call. It doesn't have to blow up into this whole thing. It can just be a one-minute phone call to talk through something.Brian Ardinger: [00:16:27] So coming out of it, are you going back to the office? Are you doing hybrid? Where are you sitting? David Roger: [00:16:31] We'll end up having a hybrid. So, we're figuring that out right now, but it's clear that most people want some office environment, but they don't want to go back five days a week. We've also started hiring people outside of New York, which I think has been awesome.It's a great way to expand the talent pool and the way that I see those things going is having a couple of off-sites every year to bring everyone together. And I actually think having multiple off-sites is really helpful anyway, because everyone, especially in a small company, working and being pretty busy.Everyone is so heads down often. It's really hard to get people up and just kind of have their heads out of the sand. And that's, especially true of people who are, you know, at lower levels in the company. And that's really, really important to get their perspective too. And off-sites are a great way to do that. Brian Ardinger: [00:17:21] Do you have any kind of go-to resources that you'd recommend for entrepreneurs or innovators out there that you rely on or use to keep you up to date and moving forward?David Roger: [00:17:29] The best thing is your own network. And as you build that network, then you might become in text groups or Slack groups and different things so that, you know, what's going on. Whether that's marketing or supply chain, or leadership. I think surrounding yourself with a couple of key mentors is also really important to better understand how to build teams in particular.So, I would say network more than anything. There's a couple of good newsletters and stuff like that. Fore Runner has a really good one. I always liked to read, Not Boring, which is not usually in the D to C space, but I think it's just very, very thoughtful and strategic. And you can learn a lot about the thought that companies put into their strategy through newsletters like that. But I would say more than anything, it's building your own network because that's where the real value has to come from. Brian Ardinger: [00:18:15] What's next for Felix Gray? What do you see coming out in the next few months, years? Where do you see the company going? And what's new and exciting in your world. David Roger: [00:18:22] Yeah. So, we're really focused on the digital wellness space. So, you know, there'll be some things that we're going to launch a Warranty Program pretty soon. We'll launch accessories pretty soon. Really just additional things on the eyewear side. But we do have a couple of products that are not eyewear related that we're looking to launch one of them in actually like late summer, early fall.It's a product that helps your long-term eye health and also helps your short-term eye comfort. So, it's kind of something that we look to be in addition to Felix Gray. And the way that we're thinking about the business overall is really this idea of we want to own and help facilitate the conversation around new digital wellbeing, and then create products that support that right products that support the fact that we weren't evolved to be in front of screens all day, every day. There are negative effects that are associated with that. And we want products that help mitigate the same effect. For More InformationBrian Ardinger: [00:19:14] Well, David, thank you again for coming on Inside Outside Innovation to share your founder journey and give us some insights into where you see the world going. I really do appreciate it. If people want to find out more about yourself or about the company, what's the best way to do that?David Roger: [00:19:27] You can follow us at Felix Gray. So, it's the same F E L I X, G R A Y S. Felix Gray was taken when we first started that. You obviously can sign up to our newsletter as well. Those are probably the best, two ways to follow the company. Brian Ardinger: [00:19:43] Awesome. Well, thanks again for being on the show and looking forward to continuing the conversation in the years to come and appreciate all your time.David Roger: [00:19:49] Thanks so much for having me. It was great.Brian Ardinger: That's it for another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. If you want to learn more about our team, our content, our services, check out InsideOutside.io or follow us on Twitter @theIOpodcast or @Ardinger. Until next time, go out and innovate.FREE INNOVATION NEWSLETTER & TOOLSGet the latest episodes of the Inside Outside Innovation podcast, in addition to thought leadership in the form of blogs, innovation resources, videos, and invitations to exclusive events. SUBSCRIBE HEREYou can also search every Inside Outside Innovation Podcast by Topic and Company. For more innovations resources, check out IO's Innovation Article Database, Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, and Innovation Video Database.
In our research at Boundaryless on the concept of the Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Enabling Organisation, aka EEEO or 3EO, we've been wondering if a common approach to organizational development is emerging from the success stories of several pioneers, such as Haier Group, Amazon, Buurtzorg and others. In this conversation, Simone is joined by several guests who have experience to share in this field. The first one is Bryan Peters, co-founder at Sobol.io - an app that helps teams visualize and manage dynamic organizational accountability structures - and is focused to explore what opportunities live at the intersection of human collaboration networks and decentralized technologies like the Ethereum blockchain. We're also joined by Rob Solomon, founder of Cone, which is an application that enables companies to organize themselves as a platform, where teams operate and interact with one another in a marketplace as if each were its own autonomous startup. Rob also worked with ConsenSys, Zappos, and The Downtown Project on various experiments with Holacracy and marketplace dynamics. Finally, we're joined by Sascha Kellert, the Founder of Rekursive, a venture-backed startup building the ownership economy aimed at making it easy for platforms and creators to make any person a co-owner in their business – simply through the web without lawyers or notaries. In this episode, we discuss the 3EO ecosystem concept and the impact of the ownership economy. Tune in to learn more about how crypto can help design powerful new incentive structures and visual tools, and striving to work from a shared grammar. Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our Medium publication: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast-S2E18 To find out more about their work: > Bryan's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-peters-3125373/ > Sobol: https://sobol.io/ > Rob's Twitter: https://twitter.com/robmsolomon > Cone: https://www.cone.network/ > Sascha's Twitter: https://twitter.com/kellert > Rekursive: https://rekursive.org/ Other references and mentions: > Viable Systems Model by Stafford Beer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model > Last mover advantage: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/last-mover-advantage > Phantom equity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_stock > Corporate Rebels Articles by Rob Solomon: https://corporate-rebels.com/rebel/robsolomon/ > EEEO Toolkit: https://platformdesigntoolkit.com/eeeo-toolkit/ Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/podcast Thanks for the ad-hoc music to Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: www.platformdesigntoolkit.com/music Recorded on 5 May 2021
A lot has happened since our first Downtown episode, so it's time for an update! In this episode of the City of Redding Podcast, Steve Bade, Deputy City Manager and Mark Christ, Housing Specialist with the City of Redding share the nitty gritty on all things Downtown. From parking and the Block 7 Project Mixed Use Development to the Diestelhorst to Downtown Project and how and why the decision was made to close Riverside Drive - you'll want to hear this. Good things are coming Downtown! Visit www.cityofredding.org/downtown for key project updates.#Parking #DowntownParking #DowntownRedding #Redding #ReddingCalifornia #CityOfReddingPodcast
Tony Hsieh wouldn't join a startup company called Shoesite unless Fred Mossler came along. Fred Mossler said he wouldn't sign on until Tony Hsieh did. Despite barely knowing each other, both said yes, and both turned Shoesite into Zappos -- and helped turn downtown Las Vegas into what it is today. Fred was also a co-founder of The Downtown Project and owns Nacho Daddy. Fred shares stories from those early days, and says downtown's progress is just beginning. But he won't reveal the source of the key ingredient in Nacho Daddy's signature Scorpion Shots! Hosts: Jonathan Jossel, Lisa Melmed
*charles insists you know that he did not write this bio & rather dislikes bio’s in general. charles ressler began his career as a child actor in new york city. he is a graduate of the prestigious Professional Children’s School, studied acting at the T. Schreiber Studio and was the youngest person to ever be admitted into legendary actress Betty Buckley’s masterclass. he has studied voice with Don Lawrence, Mike Mitchell, Bob Marx, and Jimmy Lockett. in 2015 charles sold out the Smith Center for the Performing Arts (a 2000 seat concert hall) with his self-produced one-man-show, Brave. his performing career is juxtaposed by his work as a c-suite executive guiding the creative, marketing, and brand strategy of some of the worlds most recognizable brands. Bergdorf Goodman, ABC Carpet and Home, ABC Kitchen, ABCV, and Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project are just a few of the iconic companies ressler has helped to shepherd. charles is the executive producer of critically acclaimed record Resonance, which features Grammy winners Freddy Cole, Phoebe Snow, Jack Antonoff, and Broadway star Joey Pero. in late 2013, after a series of tragedies, charles founded #dreamMaker. #dreamMaker is a growing movement that helps strangers across the world achieve their wildest aspirations without using money; only creativity ingenuity, hard work, and the fellowship of community may be employed. since it’s founding in 2013, #dreamMaker has helped countless people live the life of their dreams including helping a boy with a rare chronic illness see the northern lights, helping strangers write and publish children’s books, start business’, become on camera talent, even achieve historic landmark status. #dreamMaker has been featured in People Magazine, twice. charles conceived and oversaw the creation of the inaugural fine art program of the Life Is Beautiful Festival, and helped build the struggling First Friday Arts Festival from 1,200 to 30,000 attendees monthly. shortly thereafter, he was recognized with a Congressional Proclamation for the economic and artistic impact of his work. ressler has served as a ghostwriter for three prominent ceo’s, as a columnist for Jewcy Magazine, and a regular guest columnist and tv personality for Robin Leach. charles spent a year working closely with Kris and Kendall Jenner and was the mind behind the now infamous campaign launching Kendall as the face of Proactiv. He also has been described by Portia de Rossi as a “brilliant cmo” and helped her develop a social, marketing, and communications strategy for her company General Public. currently, ressler is developing three unscripted television concepts, working on a memoir, and helping strangers around the world live the life of their dreams
On this episode of the Startup of the Year podcast, Frank Gruber talks with Mike Evans at our 2020 Summit. Mike shared his story behind starting and taking GrubHub to IPO. He also talked about his new startup Fixer.com, and forthcoming book Hangry. Frank also takes a moment to share that the Established team has been mourning the recent loss of Tony Hsieh, the former CEO of Zappos and author of Delivering Happiness, and the man behind the Downtown Project to revitalize downtown Las Vegas. Tony was a visionary whose thoughts on culture changed the e-commerce industry with Zappos.com and inspired us and so many to lead with a solid company culture. He was a very generous person who dreamed big and chased the vision rather than the money. He was an investor in our previous company, TechCo and we worked closely with him over the last decade. His work in downtown Las Vegas impacted many with the small business and startups that were attracted to the area to take part in his huge vision to revitalize the previously faceless downtown area and make it a place for live, work and play. He was loved by us and so many, he will be missed greatly. Gone too soon at only 46 years old, rest in peace, Tony Hsieh. We also hear some segments from some of our Established Team members. Rich Maloy of Established Ventures provides some tips for our startup founder listeners during the “VC Minute.” Also, our Director of Partnerships, Jacqui Dietrich, provides an update about our Partner Programs and specifically discusses the following: AFWERX SBIR Open Topics - Contracts worth up to $50K http://afwerxlearning.com/ Centrepolis - Industry 4.0 Accelerator Program https://www.centrepolisaccelerator.com/Programs/Industry-4-0-Accelerator MassChallenge - Applications Open - https://masschallenge.org/ Thank you for listening, and as always, please check out the Established website and subscribe to the newsletter at www.est.us Checkout Startup of the Year at www.startupofyear.com/ Subscribe to the Startup of the Year Daily Deal Flow: www.startupofyear.com/daily-dealflow Subscribe to the Startup of the Year podcast: http://startupoftheyear.libsyn.com/ Subscribe to the Established YouTube Channel: https://soty.link/ESTYouTube *** Startup of the Year helps diverse, emerging startups, founding teams, and entrepreneurs push their company to the next level. We are a competition, a global community, and a resource. Startup of the Year is also a year-long program that searches the country for a geographically diverse set of startups from all backgrounds and pulls them together to compete for the title of Startup of the Year. The program includes a number of in-person and virtual events, including our annual South By Southwest startup pitch event and competition. All of which culminate at our annual Startup of the Year Summit, where the Startup of the Year winner is announced, along with an opportunity at a potential investment. Established is a consultancy focused on helping organizations with innovation, startup, and communication strategies. It is the power behind Startup of the Year. Created by the talent responsible for building the Tech.Co brand (acquired by an international publishing company), we are leveraging decades of experience to help our collaborators best further (or create) their brand & accomplish their most important goals. Connect with us on Twitter - @EstablishedUs and Facebook - facebook.com/established.us/.
Kruser talks to Bob Babbage and Terry Sweeney from the Downtown Project.
City View with Mayor Tom Koch- Episode #25This week, Mayor Koch discusses these issues...1. City Events in the coming Months & Recent News2. The Restoration Process of Seawalls in Quincy3. New Downtown Project Update and Labor Day4. The Aug 28th Announcement of the Quincy 400 Mayoral Advisory Committee Chairs and the release of the Historic Heritage Ecosystem Report.
On this episode of the Austinpreneur podcast, we sat down at SXSW to catch up with Frank Gruber, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Established. We talked about everything from The Downtown Project in Las Vegas to what his team was up to at SXSW to why founders are so important to startups.
Mark is an Anglo-Aussie living in the US with his wife Danielle and two kids Jack and Emily. Mark emigrated to Australia immediately after finishing his BSc in Management Science from the University of Manchester and started to work with PwC in Sydney. He stayed with PwC for 10 years working in the Assurance, Corporate Finance and Consulting practices and gathered great experience working in 6 countries and 5 separate industries where he became interested in the underlying social systems in the different companies, industries and countries he was exposed to. Mark left PwC when IBM acquired the consulting arm and became GM Strategy & Business Development within Coles Myer Limited (now Wesfarmers) where he remained for 4 years prior to becoming the Chief Executive Noodle of Wagamama in Australia. At this time Mark had his first experience of executive coaching and it was so impactful that he decided to become a qualified coach himself and created his leadership style around coaching. Mark then co-founded an e-commerce company in Sydney which was the first pure-play major shoe store in Australia which he exited in 2013 and relocated to the US to support Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project in Las Vegas. He is currently supporting the U.S. Air Force’s culture of innovation initiative called AFWERX working with the 670,000 men and women of the Air Force to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of grass roots innovation on base and also helping connect the Air Force with the private sector and academia. In this episode we discuss Mark's journey of self expression and self discovery across 4 countries as Mark determines that the key performance indicator that matters most to him is how many happy minutes fill his days and the days of those around him.
There's been lots of talk lately about why brands should think like, and even become, media companies. But how do you actually build a media company? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Frank Gruber shares the story of how he created Tech Cocktail and eventually transformed it into TechCo, a startup-focused media company that was recently acquired. From how to develop and grow and events business to the best way to build a robust content engine and strategies for building an audience, Frank covers in detail the strategies and tactics he used to transform TechCo from a scrappy grass roots network of startup founders into a thriving media business. Listen to the podcast to learn more about Frank's journey with TechCo and what he advised the big brands that he consults with today on when it comes to thinking like a media company. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to The Inbound Success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Frank Gruber, the founder of Established as well as the founder of TechCo. Welcome Frank. Frank Gruber (guest): Thank you, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Frank and Kathleen recording this episode Kathleen: Yeah. For those people who are listening, I have been chasing Frank down for weeks if not months to get him on this podcast- Frank: Sorry. Kathleen: -because, selfishly ... No, no, no. It's worth the wait. Selfishly, I have been wanting to pick your brain because you are somebody I met several years back in a networking group and in the time since, you grew TechCo quite a bit as a media platform, exited, and now you have a new company. But the reason I was excited to interview you is that I'm at IMPACT, and really, my main focus is transitioning us from an agency-first brand and business model, to a publisher or media company-first model. There's so much I want to learn from you and I'm super excited to dig in, but before I do that, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to be where you are right now. Frank: Sure. Yeah, sure. I have kind of a product background to begin with. Years ago, I was doing product development for bigger brands like AOL and Tribune - a lot of it very content driven. I got into content and was one of the really early bloggers out there and had a site called Somewhat Frank and was a first contributor for Tech Crunch and then started a company called Tech Cocktail. The whole idea behind Tech Cocktail was to better connect and amplify the local communities that were out there. As you saw a rise of these different communities where there were startups happening and not a lot happening to kind of tell the story. So more or less, I started doing events, which turned into an online component, where we started TechCo and we grew that audience over the last decade from zero to millions of readers all around the world. Then, just recently, this last January, it was acquired by an international publisher. So, it's been quite a journey. A decade "instant success" or whatever you want to call it. Kathleen: Right. Frank: Along the way there was a lot of ups and downs and, obviously, we learned a ton because we were really pulled into the direction that we went, because it really started as very much a grassroots thing, and side hustle for me, because I was doing website development for AOL and Tribune, at the time. So yeah, here we are now, and I've kind of transitioned out of TechCo, and that's kind of running, and continuing to grow, and I've got a new company called Established, which is more or less helping brands with innovation slash startup programs. Helping them to better connect and create that innovation which is tough to do internally at big companies, and so we're helping kind of take some of the tools that we learned ... tools, and kind of lessons learned from building a media company, and taking those things, and now putting them onto a bigger stage with some of these larger brands, and helping them along the way, too. So, that's what we've been up to. Kathleen: That's great, and what I was particularly struck by, when you and I spoke about doing this interview, was that we're kind of navigating two different sides of the same coin. So in my case IMPACT has a long history as an agency, and we're trying to build this media company, and now you're really transitioning into an agency model. I think if we met in the middle, we would have the Wonder Twin powers. Frank: That's so true. And it's funny, I mean it's such a convergence right now, and that's what we started to see when we were at TechCo, we were actually behind the scenes, doing more or less agency type work, for brands. And some of those clients we were able to continue to work with, with Established, you know, the folks that acquired TechCo wanted to continue to grow that media component, not so much muddy the water with the different components of creating a, more or less a consultancy, plus running and growing a media company. It's interesting. We're seeing that across the board. You're seeing agencies acquire, or grow, media arms and vice versa. So I think it's really interesting to see, and now we're trying to help some of those bigger guys, now, with the different tactics we learned along the way. Kathleen: Yeah, in our case, we were very much inspired by the two Joe Pulizzi books, Content Inc. and Killing Marketing. Joe was the founder of the Content Marketing Institute, and he's written these books and Killing Marketing is about why you should actually start as a media brand, kind of like you did, and build an audience, and then you're audience will essentially tell you what your product should be through the feedback you're getting. Frank: Yeah. Kathleen: Yeah, and if you create products that come out of that feedback, you're almost guaranteed to succeed. As opposed to the other way around, which is the way most of us do it, where we build the products, and then we're like, "Well geez, now I need to build an audience," so I thought that was pretty interesting. Frank: No, it's so true, it's more or less ... that's how we believe, too. So we started by hosting events to showcase startups all around the country. And we, at one point, were doing 100 events. It's very much a grassroots movement, where we gathered hundreds of thousands of people together, over the course of a year, and more or less we were building this groundswell. And that was our Petri dish of people that we could just send and say, "Okay what is our next thing?" That's how it kind of turned into a media company, is we started producing content, and going that direction, and so I can totally see that. It's all about building that audience, and once you have an audience, you're able to do a lot. You can build a media company, or you could build a product, or you could offer other services, or whatever it is you're trying to do. That's the thing. Bottom line, we all had the opportunity to do that. Whether it be through this, or through a podcast, or through an online blog, or whatever. Kathleen: That's so true, and that's what we're telling all of our clients, is that you need to think like a media company to really be successful at marketing. It's kind of table stakes now. Frank: Right. From Tech Cocktail to TechCo Kathleen: What I would love to do is rewind the clock back to the very, very early days of Tech Cocktail, and I want to start just by asking how did you get people to these events? If you're starting with events, the holy grail is butts in seats, whether those are real seats, or virtual seats, or what have you. But, especially because you did events in different cities, how did you get that word out, and what was your grassroots engine? Frank: Right, yeah. So I think to begin with, it started very simply as a local thing. It was Chicago, and D.C., and then a couple other cities, and that was it, and it was really focused on getting that local word out. For that, we were leveraging our own networks. This is 2006, 2007 timeframe, so if you think about it, there wasn't the social movement. That was just the beginning, right? Of Web 2.0, and the social movement, so ... haven't heard Web 2.0 in a while. So more or less, we were leveraging that wave to be able to get the audience to come out, and so, yes it was a lot of little things, like blocking and tackling, or whatever, but also it was the opportunity now, that there were only a few people on Twitter, and there were only a few people using LinkedIn, and there were only a few people using YouTube, and some of those other technologies, and we leveraged those to grow an audience organically. And so I think that's how we started. Once we started getting into the situation where we were actually doing events all over the country, there weren't those advantages ... 'cause at that time, I think that was an advantage, to use those tools, and obviously time's moved, and things change, and so we had to continue to be flexible, and change as well, and so we started leveraging email as well. We started a big push towards notifying people via email newsletters and things like that in their local area. So, very hyper local about the next event that's coming to Detroit, or Denver, or whatever. I think that was a big part of our success as well, was we were able to get to people's inboxes, and I still feel like that's one of the number one places that you connect with people. Even with all the Snapchats and the Instagrams, or whatever, out there, I think that email's still pretty powerful. And so I think that's what we were able to leverage. And then also, just connecting with our networks, and being able to do the, "Hey, we're coming to town," every time we did it, and kind of connect with the right people. I think where it got really difficult was when we started to do back to back to back. We were literally at one point doing events every single week, maybe sometimes in different cities. Kathleen: Wow. Frank: And that got to be tougher, because it's harder to duplicate the efforts, even if you create systems or whatever, you miss things, right? You can't do the same kind of VIP treatment that you would on every single event, and that's where it got really difficult. And we learned from that, so obviously scaled it back, and continued on our efforts on the online side. But, we also learned that as that was happening, everyone was creating spaces. Like there was now hubs in every market, like the 1871s in the world popping up, and accelerators in every single market, which didn't exist 10 years ago. And so all these different places were already converging people, and so the point of bringing the events together, and bringing people together was to create that convergence, and create the collisionable moments that happen and there's still a need for certain kind of events that connect people, but it was becoming table stakes, in that there was stuff happening everywhere, so we started to scale back the events, and really push towards the online component, when we saw that happening. And I think it was the right move for us, and ultimately, we were able to move all our offline events into an online program called Startup of the Year, which we're actually still running, to better showcase startups from all around the country. Kathleen: Now is that, that's an awards program? Frank: Yeah, it's a program that tries to find the most interesting companies all over. It's very inclusive. We look for really diverse startup founders, as well as teams, and geographically diverse as well. So yeah, it was basically our kind of community slash events program, that we were doing forever as Tech Cocktail, and we rebranded as Startup of the Year, and we're continuing to push ahead with that. It's about a ten month program. Kathleen: And how do you identify those startups? Do you have a network, or are they applying? Frank: Yeah, so they're applying. It's a little bit of everything again. So similar tactics, in that we were leveraging emails before, we're still now leveraging emails. We were able to continue the email focus from Startup of the Years past, as well as our personal networks, as well as reaching out to different local community leaders. We're part of something called the Startup Champions Network, which is basically ecosystem builders in every market, and we partnered with them, as well, and more or less, trying to find those local community leaders that can help spread the word is a big part of it, but also, we're still leveraging social. There's certain components of social that work really well. Some that we used in the past that worked great don't work as well anymore. It's interesting to see that trend. We even saw a trend in things like Facebook, which for a long time was driving a significant amount of interest, and whatnot, and engagement, and now it's gone to pay. You can't really get anything found unless you pay, and so that's totally different. Think about when we first started using Facebook. It wasn't that way. Things bubbled up and you were able to find things. Now the first thing they offer you is, "Oh, would you like to boost this?" You know? And you're like, "Well, no! I posted it, I thought that was all I needed to do!" So now you're seeing more people throw more money towards that effort, in a really strategic way, too, there's even companies that do it. I don't know if this is a thing you want to talk about or not, but there are literally companies that are paying for the demographics that they want, by leveraging companies that will get it for them via paid advertising on Facebook. So, you're a media company, and you wanna connect with the millennials of the world, you can literally pay your XYZ company, I'm not gonna name names, to get that exact traffic, and pay them thirty grand a month to do that. So, very eye opening. To me, I started to realize, there is just nothing pure in this world anymore. Literally. Kathleen: So true. Frank: Everything's pay, so it's funny to see that, and it was kind of a big lesson for us to learn, 'cause we were very organic in our growth and promotions and everything, and started to realize that, "Wow, there's a lot of people paying for this." Kathleen: No, we always say marketers ruin everything, and I think it's really true. So, going back one more time, you mentioned you had all these events in different cities, and you were leveraging your personal network. So did you actually have either team members, or brand ambassadors in these different locations? How did you handle covering all that territory? Frank: We didn't. We didn't have people in each market At first, we would literally go around the country, almost like touring, to each city, and as before we did, we'd reach out to anybody we knew in that local market, and connect with them ahead of it. And that worked for a while. Then once we started get the point where we were doing events in a ton of cities, that didn't scale anymore, so we basically created an ambassador network, right? We created a group of people, locally, that were our eyes and ears on the ground, carrying the, at the time, the Tech Cocktail, then TechCo flag, and continued to basically help create the events, get the excitement around them, and get people, obviously, to attend. And so we had some great brand champions in Albuquerque, and Boise, and all these different, Detroit, all these different cities along the way, and that really helped us a ton. At this point, to be able to scale to every market, and have people locally, I mean you need ... first off, you need a Groupon or LivingSocial sized sales force, when they were at their peak, right? When they were literally selling locally to be able to host these events to get them to be covered. And then you also need the other side of it, which is the marketing side, to get people to know about it. So, I think that wasn't, for us, scalable. We hadn't raised any funding to do that, and we didn't raise funding for quite some time, actually. We boot strapped for six years, and eventually took funding, and that's when we were able to scale it a little bit more, but we felt like that approach of having local people on the ground that were full time people, was just not a scalable thing for us. It's just too capital intensive. So we started with, okay, we've got a head of marketing slash events that then would manage of an army, more or less, of our ambassador network. And then that's kind of the approach we took. Some markets worked great, others didn't. I mentioned some of the high, like shining stars, and already some of the cities that did great work, and some, they did great for a while, then they got kind of pulled in, because of life, and work, and everything else, and so we had to continue to try to find their backups, right? And continue to refresh that network, which ultimately was a full time job, because you were constantly trying to find and refresh, people are changing roles, and having babies, and moving, and doing all these things all the time, and so it was difficult to keep a hold of, unless you had one person, or two people, working on that continuously. More or less community development, right? And continue to manage it. Kathleen: Right. And how did you structure that brand ambassador program? Because I would imagine that there has to be something in it for them, otherwise you can't really rely on them. Frank: Well. Kathleen: Any advice there? Frank: No, we tried everything. Every kind of setup you could. Because we didn't know. We were going into it blind, like, "How do we scale this? How do we get people on board, and continue to maintain the heart, right? And in it for the right reasons, right? So we struggled a little bit, to try to figure that out, and we tried a number of different attempts, and ultimately ones that worked the best were ones that just wanted to do it because of the good of the community or whatever. It's hard to find those people all the time. Especially in every market. And the ones that were doing that were now ... things started to be created, new things. So all of a sudden there was startup weeks, and there were startup weekends, and there were XYZ, whatever, meetups. So people that were those doers started to get consumed with all these things, and so we were, in some markets, we were really early, and others we weren't, so more or less we had to figure out, "Okay, what's the carrot that gets these people motivated and want to be a part of it?" And in many cases, the ones that were our best were just in it for the love of their local community and wanted to do the best thing they could. We actually started a pay model, where we literally were paying. "Okay, you go raise the money for it, and keep it. We don't care." We just wanted to do the event. So there was all these different challenges with that program, because we iterated and iterated and iterated, and interestingly, we ultimately, at the end of the day, said, "Okay, do you want to continue to do this kind of thing? We're not doing events anywhere all around the country, like we were, anymore, so if you want to continue to do it, do it, if you don't, that's okay." And it's funny, the ones that were in it for the love of the game, continued, and the rest were like, "We're done," kind of thing. And that was okay. We turned everything to an online competition, with a big culmination event at the end of the year, called Innovate Celebrate, which is coming up here in Boston in October. So things change, we had to continue being flexible. We did this for over a decade. So, if you think about what has happened- Kathleen: Yeah. Frank: There's no iPhone when we started. Like, think about that. Like ... it's nuts. And so, it wasn't that long ago- Kathleen: It's amazing. It's amazing how much it's changed. Frank: Right. Exactly. So- Kathleen: Yeah. Frank: This was like, at the beginning, a place of convening people, and then ultimately, that got created by a lot of different things, you know, with the different social networks, and different mobile apps, and everything else. So, we kind of continue to evolve, and we had to as we continue to grow. Kathleen: Now, let's just talk a little bit about the online media platform because you really built out a publisher site, or at least that's what it looked like from the outside, 'cause I spent some time on the site. There's a lot of great content on there. Can you talk me through ... You mentioned how you started. You started recognizing that people were creating spaces online all the way through to what it became. Frank: We had our own team to begin with, right? To begin with, we were writing all the content. At one point early on, 2010, up to ... we started in '06. So up to 2010, I was even writing up to five articles a day, which ... That was right when we first started doing it full-time. It took a while to be a full-time thing, and then we started ... remember hiring our first editor because I was like, "I need help managing all this." And then that turned into, "Okay, we need more writers." And at a certain point we had 10 or so writers and editors doing their thing and covering a lot of content and producing a ton. But then we realized like, in the media space, it's never enough. Even if you're a very niche publication, you still ... We got kind of pulled into from the offline events piece where it was very sponsorship driven, we got pulled into, "Okay. Now how do we generate revenue online?" Right? Because we're now doing most of our stuff online. And so, yes there's Google advertising, and there's all these different components out there that you can do to kind of generate revenue, affiliate is one of them. All that stuff is very driven by numbers. You need to have an audience - a huge audience to be able to make it work right. Or a very niche audience that is looking for exactly what you're offering. And so our content was so spread across startups, and innovation, and across cities, right? So it was very broad as far as that goes, but very much focused on innovation and tech. And there's a lot of that kind of content. And so, we were trying to really differentiate in the local space, and so, in the local space we were trying to continue to cover these things as the heartbeat in a lot of the local communities. Anyway, long story short, we got pulled into content and content marketing. And so we started to work with different larger brands that we were working on, on the offline stuff in the events, and they were like, "What else do you have? What else can you offer? And how could we reach a bigger audience?" And so we started working with them on some of our first content-marketing pieces, and didn't even know what it was at first ourselves. We were just like, "Well, we're going to just start writing the content, and it'll be brought to you by you, and it's gonna be similar content, but it'll be about this topic or whatever topic we decide, and we can do a whole series." And I still remember some of the first meetings with our team like, "What are we gonna do? How much are we charging?" But we figured it out, right? So we figured out what we should do, what's kind of the going rate, and ultimately, we were able to work with a number of bigger advertisers that we already worked with on events, and continue to extend that relationship online. And it turned into yearly contracts. In some cases it started as like, "Okay, here's a 10-article series for X amount." And now it's like, "Okay, now we're going to do a full year of content about this." We'll kind of space it out. And at one point, I think we had one that was like 54 articles. I'm like, "Wow. That's amazing. That's a really long deal." So, it was exciting and that's kind of the direction we ended up and ended up going, and we learned a lot about that along the way. But what we learned also is that, even with that, you're continually under this gun of how do we show metrics? So we had to find a metrics tools that showed not just like page views, engagement, and a lot more ... the answer if you're not CNN.com or something like that, right? Like we were trying to compete in so much space with them, as well as even some of the social networks are doing similar things than ... Basically, we were competing with everyone for attention, right? And so, but this was very niche kind of content. So more or less, it was a game where we always had to get bigger and grow and grow and grow, and we leveraged a lot of tools. Facebook was one of them. Twitter was one of them to begin with. I think one of the hidden gems out there is Flipboard. I don't know if you're familiar with it. If you're doing content, you should be on Flipboard because it can really engage a lot more users that don't even ... you may not even realize they're out there. Everyone's on their phone all the time and they offer really great interface to flip almost like an RSS reader, but a beautiful interface. Kathleen: Yeah. Frank: There's a lot of tools like that, that are out there that we kind of continue had to evolve and find because as you continue to grow, you always are trying to find more eyeballs, more or less, and as you try to compete with the larger folks out there. Kathleen: So you talked about how you were going to be able to demonstrate value to your sponsors and your advertisers. Frank: Yes. Kathleen: And kind of the different metrics that are out there to measure that, and I'm curious, when you would enter into conversations with prospective sponsor advertisers, what did those conversations revolve around in terms of, hey, this will be a successful partnership if what, for them? Is it if we get X number of leads, or was it engagement, or was it page views? What were those companies looking for from you? Frank: It was a mix, and that's we, we worked kind of backwards. So based on goals. So a brand may want to just have a great series of content out there about personal branding, right? And they wanted that because it was in line with the campaign that the were doing. Right? And so we worked backwards, like how do we create great content that fits our audience, that resonates well, is going to get great engagement? And we created a whole content calendar around how that would work. And then that's what we would present. Like, "Okay. This is what we're gonna do. This is what we think's gonna work. And it's gonna tie back to your campaign which is all about personal branding because that's your latest campaign or whatever." And that's just an example, but you get the idea. So then in the bottom of it, we would say, "Okay. This is brought to you by XYZ personal branding, blah, blah, blah, and link back if you want more information." So obviously those links were important to the brands, but at the end of the day in many ways, the minute that they're reading the content, and if there's some way that ... Sometimes we would incorporate the brand that were actually the sponsor of that content, and a lot of times you wouldn't, though. It just felt like we didn't need to, right, because they were already included in this brought-to-you-by kind of capacity. So, it just depended on what they were trying to do. We didn't love doing the content marketing that was to drive leads to a lead-gen form kind of thing like that as much. It was harder to do. Harder to measure. The audience that we were getting weren't sure if they were going to do that or not. It depended, you know. And we didn't want to be held to like, "Okay. We need to get XYZ brand to get this many signups," right? Or whatever. That made my heart race just even talking about it, like, I don't want to. Because ultimately, the minute we put that out there, we wrote that content for them about that specific thing or about that whatever it was, we already wrote the kind of the advertisement content for them in some ways. It wasn't. I mean, it was great content regardless, but we wrote almost like the advertisement piece if you were looking at it in line with like, "We're going to create a commercial," right? Well, the commercial is the content at this point. And we already created that for them which has value. So that's where, as a smaller, you know when I say smaller, we still had millions of readers, but smaller compared to the TechCrunches of the world or maybe CNN Money, or I don't know what their traffic is, but ... or Box. That's a good example, right? Verge. But they've also raised millions of dollars, like hundreds of millions of dollars. We did not. We raised two and a half. And so more or less, we were trying to compete in that same space, and the way to work in that space was more or less to add as much value. So we were trying to create the content, and then offer them the content to use. Like, if they wanted to use the content on their own site, they could feel free. We don't care. It's great. So we were almost like, in some ways, a content agency for them, and doing that allowed them to then use it in other ways. It tied in with the campaign that they had. They were getting online traffic and awareness from just being out there on Tech.co at the time, and then more or less, it was a better offering than a lot of the other folks were offering. Kathleen: Now that's really interesting. So, you had these partnerships, and it sounds like what you were selling is you creating the content for them and then publishing it, but also giving it to them to do what they wanted. Were there cases where you had sponsors or advertisers who came and said, "We want to do a five article series, but we want to create the content and give it to you for publication?" Frank: We have, and we worked with them on that. And we would actually have obviously final editorial approval on everything on what it would look like, but in that situation, that was even difficult to us, if they were good writers, and had great content. A lot of them did. Frank: So, the tough part of that was when they didn't have great content. And that- Kathleen: That's why I'm asking. Frank: Now we had an awkward conversation to have, because you're like, "Well, this isn't gonna necessarily fit for our audience because the ... you know." So you kind of have to be up front and say, "Okay. We're going to have to rework this." And we did, and that was the only way we could get it published on our site 'cause it wouldn't make sense ... Not to mention, we were really focused on making sure everything that was on Tech.co was very authentic in voice, and didn't rub our audience the wrong way, because our audience was our gold, right? That was what we had, and had to offer. And so, yes they were paying for the content, but they also were paying for this very engaged audience globally. So it was a mix, right? So they were getting a little bit of, almost like a value-add for being able to leverage the content in other ways as well. Kathleen: Now did you have, for the non-sponsored content portion of your site, did you have outside contributors who wrote for you, or was it all staff writers? Frank: Yeah. When we started with a paid staff, we realized that that was really hard to scale faster and grow. We got to the point where like, okay, now we've got to like ... How do we grow from here to here? How do we do that quickly? And so what we did, we started our contributor network which is similar to our ambassador network, but it was online, and it was writers. And so, we ... I don't know if you want to call it a mistake or whatever, we opened it up very quickly, and said, okay. We're going to put it out there, and got thousands of people to apply. We had so many writers, we didn't know what to do with them. And so then we had to reign it back in, and I think at the end of it, they don't have a contributor network anymore at TechCo because this is a lot to manage. Like now you've got a whole group of people that you're managing, and they're constantly asking about, "When is this going to get published," and "How is that going to go?" And you're going back and forth. So we had a whole team that managed that component of it. We had about a hundred and something writers at the end which were really solid and we could kind of depend on. And it would also go in spurts, kind of similar to what I was saying with the ambassador program. Some would write for a long time, and then all of a sudden, life happens. You know? And now they're like, "Well. I gotta take a break for a second." But these were all unpaid writers. They were doing it for the love of the game, to have bylines out there, and to be able to contribute. Some were local focused, some were national focused, some were focused on just the thing that they're really good at, and some were even about brand marketing and things like that. It just depended on what they were interested or excited about. And so, we accept a lot of contributors, but one of the things we had to watch out for is fake people, actually. We had a fake people problem, and I think the Internet does. It's still, in this day and age there are ... I don't know how many times you get these, but I get some random Facebook friends lately, and they're not real. You can go back and trace it. They're using someone else's picture. We've had people use other peoples' pictures. We've had people ... You know there was a lot of that kind of stuff happening, and we basically had to really hone that network into, "Okay. We're going to get on a Skype call with you, and find out if you're real." And we're going to have to pass that test, and then work with them to make sure that these are all real. And that was a lesson learned, and obviously we quickly removed any of the content that we found was not real. Kathleen: Yeah. It's interesting. We're in the early days of creating a contributor program, and definitely learning as we go. We have some contributors who are just rock stars. They're great writers. They're super reliable. And then we have others who are really smart but maybe take more handholding to get their articles to the point where they're ready for publication. And so, I've been working with my head of editorial content on how do we ... Let's look at the value we're getting vs. the time we're putting in, because in some cases it's just not worth it. Frank: Right. So the company that acquired TechCo, they did that analysis. The company's called MBF Global. Great company out in the UK. If you haven't heard of them, they're growing like crazy. And more or less, they were trying to build this media arm, and that's why they acquired TechCo. But they did that analysis, and they're like, well, it doesn't make sense. Right? We're going to be going in this direction, and we know what direction we're going to go in. It was a staff of people managing that from our side. We looked at it, as a funded company, and our goal is growth, right? Continued growth. And the best way to do that in the most capital-sensitive way, was to do it this way, right, and have these unpaid contributors that we're managing vs. having ... If we had to pay 100 contributors to write for us, that was just not the move to do. And so, it just made sense. And so I think, it just depends on your situation. If you have the time and effort, and you want to be able to do that, manage that group, then it makes sense. And if your goals are growth. But if it's a specific voice ... 'cause you're going to have now a lot of different voices, and a lot of different opinions about what should be going out and what shouldn't. And we even had some that we had to kind of pull back because they were too critical about certain companies we liked, or brands that we ... These are not all op eds. Now in this day and age, with political stuff, we're like, "Whoa. We can't, we're gonna have to keep an eye on that stuff as well." So it does open up just a Pandora's box of things you need to watch, watch out for, man. Kathleen: Yeah. Now you mentioned that your kind of North Star was growth, and as a media company, I know I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Obviously growth is synonymous with audience size, subscriber base, like especially owned audience. Can you talk a little bit about what some of the most effective levers were for subscriber growth for you guys? Frank: Yeah. To begin with events, right? We were able to get folks coming to something and they were super engaged in their local community. They were super engaged with our brand. They were an army of people locally that loved, at the time, Tech Cocktail, and then TechCo, and they would come out anytime we shined the Tech Cocktail symbol up there like the bat symbol, right, whatever, right? We started offering a number of different things that would grow us that subscriber base. Everything from reports ... We had some of the first ever reports about accelerators, we ranked the startup accelerators out there, and that was kind of first-to-market thing. Now you'll see like Forbes, and some of these others, already doing that. It's been almost six, seven years now, or maybe even longer since we first put our first one out there. And so you're seeing a lot more folks do that, so that doesn't necessarily make for a great report anymore. But as we started seeing folks do that, we started saying, "Okay, what other resources can we offer?" And so we started really trying to focus on online resources that offered value outside of just the regular articles that we were putting out. And then obviously, we traded the resource for their email address, and grew our audience. So we did a lot. That was kind of our growth strategy after the events, because the events became really capital intensive and time intensive, and not able to scale. There's only 365 days a year. We can only do 365 events and keep our sanity. Yes, you could do multiple events on multiple days. We did it. It was insane. But I wouldn't recommend that, especially if you only have a core team of ... a smaller core team. So I just think that, in this day and age, if you do the online kind of resource play and offer something of value, you can actually grow an audience that way. I would even, today, say with the platforms that are out there, things like Instagram are a great place to start. In some cases, you don't even need a website. It's crazy these days. You could literally start with an Instagram account with a "subscribe" link in your bio, or something like that, and grow that way. You may not get as much traction. It depends on how good you are at Instagram. But ultimately ... 'Cause it's not like you're off every photo. You're like, "Oh! That's resource." No, it's not. It's just a picture. So, it may be hard to get people to go back. So, that's where it's like at the end of the day, if we could create something that was valuable to someone, so the exchange is a one-to-one? You know, information for your email? That's the best way to do it, in my opinion. Some other things? Events. Obviously, if you can do them in a larger scale. We did some large things in DC with ... I don't know if you remember Digital Capital Week. We did that festival for three years with iStrategy Labs. And that grew ... You know, we had 10,000 attendees. So, that grew an audience locally of support, that knew about us, and what we were up to, and follow ... Some of them, you know, joined in the file, the content that we were putting out after that? So, that was another kind of strategy. And then, I think, just in general it was a ... We were focused on doing things that would create a sharable moment, or a way that we could engage somebody later with some kind of a resource. I mean, really, that's what we were focused on at the end. And that the strategy, obviously, I'm not with TechCo anymore. I should mention that early. I've transitioned out. So, their strategy now, I don't know what it is, but it's different. And that's totally fine. So, more or less, I'm speaking from when I was with TechCo up until we sold the company in December of 2017. So. From TechCo to Established Kathleen: Now, you mentioned earlier that these days you might not even need a website to be successful. So, you've sold TechCo. You've now started Established, where you're advising bigger brands on how to leverage this media, or publishing approach, in order to grow. If you were to try to start this all over again today, in the world we live in right now, which is really different- Frank: Critical. Kathleen: ... how would you do it? And like, what do you tell your clients? I'm curious. 'Cause it is, it's a completely different game these days. Frank: It is! I mean, it's a lot harder, in my opinion. It's harder and easier, if that makes sense. It's harder because there's ... Back when we started, there wasn't as much noise. Now, there's so much. Like, there is so much content. I mean, not just talking about our kind of content, I'm talking about like you have to choose between Netflix and Amazon, and all these different producers. HBO has ... I mean, there's so much content. And we only have the ... We have the same amount of time. So, it's just really ... That's, I think, the struggle that we have now is, from 10 to 12 years ago, there wasn't as much. You couldn't get things streamed to your phone. And so, you're competing with everything now. And so, I think, that's the challenge. The benefit is, from now, is that there are tools that can help. There's a lot more tools that can help you connect with people. Everything from ... Like I mentioned, Instagram's a big one. I mean, I just started a Podcast as well. It's called, Somewhat Frank. I brought back my old blog, which was called, Somewhat Frank, and repurposed it as now the Podcast, Somewhere Frank, because my name's Frank. And I thought it was clever. Kathleen: I like it. Frank: And I can be somewhat Frank on that, right? So, anyway, long story short, you know, without it, I didn't start a site right away. I just started Instagram, starting growing an Instagram account, leveraged that Instagram for a while. And then now, I've got a site. It's kind of that one-two punch after you've got a little bit of an audience. And then, the other thing is we're working with different groups. Like we're working with a group down in Tampa that has an innovation hub, and we helped them with a launch recently. And it's called, Embark Collective. And we're helping them with content strategy and growth, and whatnot. And kind of what we started talking about at the beginning is you need an audience. So, you need to build your own audience, because you can't rely on the local media, or the national media, or whatever, to tell your story for you. You have to tell it yourself. I mean, that's the whole thing. If you create an audience, you can talk, you don't worry about what The New York Time is covering, right? 'Cause you've got this really engaged audience that is already following along for the journey. And so, that's what ... You know, that's the approach we kind of take. That's the approach we're taking with Embark Collective, and we're doing it in a way that's the voice that they wanted to get out there, which is very founder led, versus talking about ourselves, right? So, it's a little bit- Kathleen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Frank: ... a trickier thing with that kind of a lead. Especially with a new thing, right? When you have a new thing, you kind of need to tell people what it is. I mean, we're doing it in a way that's like through others can be more challenging. So, I think that is the challenge now. It's doing it in the right way, and kind of sharing that message. Frank: So, to tell ... You know, I guess the bottom line is there's still these great platforms that allow you to grow, and we're continuing to watch that. There are ... I mean, if you really wanted to jumpstart it ... And I've even heard some of the great marketers out there tell people to do this ... You can buy an audience. It's nothing that we did at TechCo, but you can. You can get a jumpstart with buying ... whether it be Twitter handles, or Instagrams, or Facebook, or even websites, right? 'Cause now you've got an audience that's already going to a website. So, those are other options. Like I said, TechCo was very organic. We just grew it from the ground up with events, and then online. So, that's where I'm more comfortable with, and understand better. Frank: Another example would be ... Here, I'm in Las Vegas. It looks like I'm in a locker room. I'm not. I have little lockers here with our secret things. No, we don't have anything over here. Kathleen: I know I'm dying to know what's in those lockers now. Frank: Yeah. So, basically, it's just where we put like things we used to do at events and stuff. But that's not really locker. Anyway, yeah. In Las Vegas, there ... we moved out here because of the Downtown Project. And so, one of the things that we start working on with them, Downtown Project, was this project by the CEO of Zappos Tony Hsieh. He started this 40-million-dollar project, Invest in Downtown. And, more or less, we started bringing people out every month. And it was more or less like a little summit. And we'd bring people out, and show them around, as the backdrop being downtown, but the ultimate payoff was that you were actually meeting great people. And so, as an opportunity to kind of connect, but that turned into, well, you also learned about the downtown. So, that is one kind of ... If you're doing things locally, and you're trying to get people excited about what's happening in your local area, that's one example of the way to do it. It's expensive and very timely, or time intensive. Kathleen: Consuming? Frank: Yeah, consuming. Consuming because you're now doing, you know, you're doing VIP kind of treatment for a lot of different folks that are coming in from all over, and you're the tie touch. So, I wouldn't recommend that to everyone, unless you ... Or they wanna do a lot of that. So, I think it just depends on what your goals are, and what you're trying to do. But I do think ... I guess you asked me would I start a media company today? I don't think so. There's just so much right now. I think there's so many other things you could do that would ultimately have to do similar things to a media company, and you'd still get that ... But you actually have a little bit different product, right? So, I love media. I've been doing it for a long time. I used to build the media sites at Tribune, so I've got a huge background in media, and as well at AOL, personalized news, and whatnot. So, I love media and news. I just think it's ... There's so much of it right now, I think that it's hard ... It's a lot harder to break in. Kathleen: Yeah. Well, so many interesting insights, and I feel like you've been in the media industry during a fascinating time, because it really has changed so much over these years. You know, here on this podcast, we talk a lot about inbound marketing, which at its heart is really just about using content to organically draw your audience in, which is kind of what you talked about in the beginning between events and some of the original content you were creating. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: As somebody who's been in the space for a while, I'm curious ... Company or individual, I always like to ask this question: Who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Frank: Yeah. And I ... While you were saying that, I was thinking about other media brands that have done it really well recently. So, I'm gonna answer that question, and then I'm gonna answer your question. So, one of the brands that has done an amazing job, and has gotten a lot of traction through influencers, and is doing content marketing well, is Cheddar? So, if you're familiar with Cheddar. They went kind of a online component, but now they're on like Sling and other places. So they worked on distribution. And I think that's still really ... Any company, whether it be a start-up in the media space or any space, distribution is still like the most under-appreciated/thought of thing. Really. I mean, distribution is such a big deal. And so, the founder came from kind of a background of HuffPost and some others ... media sites, and had relationships. So, built great relationships, and leveraged them to build, what is now Cheddar. I think a lot of folks look at that and like, "Wow! That's just magic." It's not. It's relationships. At the end of the day, everything we do is relationship-based, and so I think a lot of that, he's done a really great job with platform, and then ultimately turned to relations. So, they're doing a great job, and they're on your television set, they're on your phone, they're on all the different social channels, and they're able to leverage media. So, if I was to start a media company, I'd wanna start something more like what he did, which is video-based, and then like growing it versus typing content and all that kind of thing. So, that's that whole answer to that question. But to your question about who's doing a good job? I may get a lot of newsletters. Obviously, Gary Vee is a leader in the space. I'm a big fan of his, for a long time. Brian Solis. I like his stuff as well. But, ultimately, I think I only ... I mean, everybody gets so many newsletters. One of the newsletters that I say and believe continuously is this Fortune Term Sheet? I just couldn't think of the name of it recently. I was like, "What's the name of that? The Fortune one." It's basically startup news and updates about investments, things that are ... I'm kind of looking towards, "Okay, how do I continue to invest in startups? How do I continue to grow our investor community to grow into our startup of the year stuff that we're doing to continue to invest in those great companies all over? 'Cause there are great companies all over the country and world, that aren't finding the funding that they need. So, because of that, I'm more focused on that kind of content lately. And so, I've been really focused on this Fortune Term Sheet email that goes around every day, actually. So it's a daily email which, I mean, we all get a lot of emails. That's the one that I continue to read continuously? Kathleen: And what makes it so great? What is it about that that you like? Frank: It takes time. It's got a great roundup. It used to be ... It's kind of a space that, like a TechCrunch, Crunchbase should be in, or I don't know if they do have a newsletter. I should probably look. But it's that, more or less, updates about things that have happened in the space. So like, "This company just got funded by this," or, "This just happened here," or that, you know, so it's kind of that quick rundown, and it's bulleted, so it's not like I have to read like a ton. And it saves me time about everything that's happened in the kind of venture space. And, in some ways, not just venture space, 'cause it is Fortune. They're looking at bigger companies as well. So, see. So, that's one that I read a lot. I'm trying to think if there's any others that do a really good job. Mine are so focused more on startup piece stuff. Oh, one of- Kathleen: Yeah, but that's great. I love hearing about examples outside of marketing. Frank: Well, here's one that's not. And it's kind of just my own ... Like I guess it would be called like just ... I don't consider myself an auto enthusiast. I just like looking at cool things. I used to love Jetsetter. So, I used to love the newsletter they sent out? 'Cause it was like a vacation. You'd like see this amazing resort, and the pictures. And it was in this beautiful place, and you could take a second, look at that. And I would save those. It's just changed to a different model, slightly. They don't have the same beautiful emails anymore. And they were, I think, acquired as well, right? So, they kind of changed a little bit. But they, for a long time, were like, "Wow! This is my daily vacation from whatever I'm doing. I'm gonna look at this Jetsetter email, and think about, "Wow! Wouldn't it be great if I went to this, you know, Bora Bora- Kathleen: Right. Frank: ... this beautiful place?"" Kathleen: If I was sitting on the beach with a piña colada right there, right now. Frank: Right, right. And they were offering affordable ways to do that, right? They were selling the dream. Frank: One that's similar to that, and I'm not a car enthusiast, but I get this new one called, Bring a Trailer. And it's basically an auction site for automobiles. Like I love looking at old like FJ Cruisers, which are like the Toyota big trucks and whatever. And like they have Porches. You know, like they have tons of stuff on there. It's my daily escape from everything that's like the chaos that's happening in my world. And I just take a look at those pretty daily to see what's going on. Frank: So, those are the ... I don't- Kathleen: Oh, I'm gonna have to tell my husband about that, because he loves looking for old Willys Jeep, and- Frank: There you go! Kathleen: ... old, like classic pick-up trucks. Frank: Right. Kathleen: So. Frank: Right, yeah. So, you could find that on that site. You can set a little alert, and they'll send you an email when that happens. So, it's a little bit more on the product side but, at the same time, it's kind of a guilty pleasure, if I have one. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. Frank: So, you know, you're living in Las Vegas- Kathleen: No, that's great. Frank: You really can't have any vices if you live here, so that's mine. I look at, I guess they'd be auto porn. I don't know what that is, but I get right into it. Yeah. Yeah. Kathleen: That's awesome. Well, I'm definitely gonna check that out. Kathleen: Now, the second question is, you know, you're somebody who's in the world of marketing. With digital changing so much all the time, how do you stay up-to-date? How do you educate yourself? Frank: Yeah. Well, I read a ton. So, I mentioned Flipboard. I have that on my phone, and I'm on there a lot. And to the point of like ... I mean you're just ... Like I just flip, flip, flip, and try to keep up with everything. And I have different channels set up about different components of marketing or technology, or business, or whatever. And sports even, 'cause I'm the biggest sports fan. Go, Cubs. But the other thing I do is I've a friend that worked in ... to try to keep up to speed there as well. I used to attend a lot of events. Once I started hosting a ton of events, you started finding yourself not going to as many events. But then you become like, "Well, I'm disconnected from all the events. Why is that?" So, I started more recently going to more things. Like we were in our group together. Mindshare, right? So, that was me getting out and trying to do more event-related things to meet other folks in the industry, or we would never connect like this, if I hadn't been in that. So, I think that's my new approach for that. There's other events that are kind of more intimate that I've been trying to kind of get to. But again, I'm not doing as much of that, and so it's more or less, you know ... Daily, it's just like keeping up with the updates that are happening. And, obviously, the more high-test stuff is actually getting out and connecting with people. Kathleen: Yeah. It's definitely like drinking from a fire hose, right? Frank: It is, but like you know HubSpot does their big conference INBOUND every year. It just happened a little bit ago. That's a great opportunity for trying to connect with folks that are doing it, doing inbound marketing, and things like that. There's others, right? And there's niches too. So like, I just came back from Denver Startup Week. I gave a fireside chat with somebody out there, but also there was a summit for this group we're part of called, The Startup Champion Network, so SCN. And so, they kind of piggy-backed on each other, and that was an opportunity to connect with more people that were there, and vice versa. So, I try to make those kind of more strategic opportunities, right, that make sense. And you can continue to really refresh and re-up what your learnings are from those different opportunities. Kathleen: Great. Frank: Okay. Kathleen: Well, I have like a million more questions I could ask, but I know you have a life, and so I'll let you get back to it. But if somebody wants to learn more about what you're doing, or has a question about what you talked about here today, what's the best place for them to find you online? Frank: Yeah, sure. I'm just at Frank Gruber. So, Frank rhymes ... Or Gruber rhymes with Uber, dot me. And you can actually just ... I think it has my email on there, but frank@ ... Can I say that on this? Or is this gonna get- Kathleen: Sure, yeah. Go for it. Frank: All right. So, yeah, just ... My email address is pretty easy. It's frank@est.us so- Kathleen: E-S-T dot us? Frank: Yeah. US. Kathleen: Okay, great. I'll put- Frank: You're gonna get E-S-T dot us. Kathleen: ... all those things in the show notes. Frank: Yeah, that's great. So, yeah. I'm just gonna get a flood of emails now, right? Kathleen: Awesome. Well, you'll probably get a few from me, asking all the other questions- Frank: Okay. Kathleen: ... I didn't get a chanced to ask today. Frank: Good. Kathleen: But no, this was great, and really informative, and- Frank: Great. Kathleen: ... I think for any brand that's thinking of becoming a media company, there were so many good tidbits in there about, you know, good ways to grow, and maybe not such good ways to grow? Frank: Right. Kathleen: So, I really appreciate the time you spent. Frank: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Kathleen: Yeah. And if you're listening, and you found value in this interview, please, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or the platform of your choice. Kathleen: And if you know somebody who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing, tweet me at WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Frank: Great. Thanks so much, Kathleen. Kathleen: That's it for this week. Thanks, Frank.
My Airstream trailer park neighbors and friends, Aley and Ashton join me in my Airstream. We talk about their plans to try out the concept of "tiny lives", being based out of one location and traveling to other destinations to live as locals. We recorded this episode as Aley and Ashton were their wedding, they are now officially married! Congratulations, Aley and Ashton! p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #454545} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #454545; min-height: 14.0px} p.p3 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #e4af0a} Show Notes: •Fergusons Downtown: https://fergusonsdowntown.com/ •Rock Salt Music: http://www.rsmusic.com/ •Downtown Project https://downtownproject.com/ •Mini Lives http://observer.com/2014/02/a-month-at-a-time-why-i-quit-travelling-and-started-living-mini-lives/ •Will Smith’s talk on facing fear: https://www.goalcast.com/2017/04/15/will-smith-bliss-other-side-fear/
Our environment can determine so much about our lifestyle and habits. Without the proper infrastructure to support community activity and health, any number of complicated issues can take over the population. For example, unwalkable distances between shops and resources can encourage isolation and sedentary habits, which can contribute to serious health problems for a population. Enter urban planning. In the 1800s, urban planning began as a way to combat unsanitary housing practices and disease spread, and was tied closely to public health initiatives. Today, we’re seeing the rise of that relationship once more, as consumerism rises in the health care industry and urban planning adapts to the evolution of technology. In this episode of The Cerner Podcast, we’re joined by John Curran, the real estate portfolio manager at The Downtown Project in Las Vegas, who also has a background in urban planning. Downtown Project is a privately-funded, for-profit organization dedicated to helping revitalize part of downtown Vegas by investing in people and projects.
The BizChix Podcast: Female Entrepreneurs | Women Small Business | Biz Chix
As a business owner I am hiring Millennials for my team and they are hiring me as a business coach and mastermind leader so I love learning how to understand and serve them better. Amanda Slavin, CEO and founder of CatalystCreativ has built an incredible agency that helps brands connect with Millennials. We cover: Why generations of people behave in ways different from previous or subsequent generations? What motivates Millennials, and how does that factor into business? Whether you’re creating a new marketing plan, designing a new product or service, or looking to hire, it’s crucial to understand people’s motivations, and Millennials and Generation Z are a huge market. Key Takeaways: [:50] This is a throwback to Natalie's favorite interview from 2015 — an interview with Amanda Slaven discussing Millennials and Generation Z. [2:43] Natalie still has some spots left for Masterminds starting in January! [6:10] Where did Amanda grow up, and what was she like as a little girl? [8:22] What is Amanda working on right now? [9:00] What is the Millennial generation? How has Amanda found that the Millennial generation wants to be engaged with differently? [16:21] It is important to understand each generation, because the things that motivated previous generations may not necessarily motivate Millennials or Generation Z. [18:26] What are some campaigns that have been successful in engaging Millennials or Generation Z? [22:12] What is the Downtown Project? [25:19] How did Amanda get to where she is today? [29:15] Entrepreneurs aren't often sure how to connect with large corporate clients. What has Amanda’s experience been building relationships with different brands? [33:24] How has Amanda built a team of people that work best with her? How does she manage her team through the use of technology? [37:13] What is Amanda most excited about for her business? [39:06] Get in touch with Amanda through her website or social media! [41:32] Natalie shares how Amanda’s business has evolved since this interview was conducted, and her key takeaway from Amanda's experience. Join the BizChix Community Connect with Amanda Slavin: ● CatalystCreativ ● Twitter ● Facebook ● Instagram ● LinkedIn Mentioned in this Episode: ● Think and Grow Rich for Women, by Sharon Lechter ● GlassFrog ● Google+ ● Google Drive ● Box ● Slack ● Evernote ● Life is Beautiful Other BizChix Episodes Mentioned: ● “296: Best of 2014 — Interview with Think and Grow Rich for Women Author, Sharon Lechter”
In this episode we talk with Danny Rotter who is the Chief Engineer of Carson City. Among the topics are an update on the Downtown Project, impact of development on Carson City, and a great discussion about water and water rights within the Capital City. In our Carson Connections and Lepire's Corner segments we discuss the new hours for the Carson City Library and why it's so important to have your own representation especially when buying a brand new home.
My guest this episode is Maggie Hsu (email), Chief of Staff to Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. Maggie is an Advisor at the Downtown Project which treats downtown Vegas like a startup, using $350 million of Tony's personal funds, to revitalize the city. After she gave me a personal tour and did a shot of... The post Maggie Hsu on “Engineered Serendipity”, Working with Tony Hsieh, and Revitalizing Downtown Las Vegas appeared first on Andy Seth.
"Great investors see relationships with founders as long-term partnerships." - Zach Ware Zach Ware Former Head of Product at Zappos.com.Managed a ground sales team then later the relaunch of the web business for The Republic of Tea.Developed the six acre Zappos.com HQ Campus in Downtown Las Vegas.Helped launch Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project.Founded Work In Progress, Las Vegas’s first coworking space.Founded SHIFT, a huge integrated mobility company.Co-founded and launched VegasTechFund - Managing Partner. Connect With Zach: Website | @ZachWare Subscribe to the Outlier Newsletter: Click Here If you enjoy Outlier On Air, please Subscribe & Review on iTunes or Stitcher Brought to you by: OUTLIER ENTREPRENEURS CLOSED FACEBOOK GROUP Request Invite
The BizChix Podcast: Female Entrepreneurs | Women Small Business | Biz Chix
The 8 biggest takeaways from my 2015 guests. While I learn something from EVERY SINGLE guest, some of the wisdom hits me deeper and I’m sharing 8 huge takeaways from those interviews today. These are guests that caused me to think differently, behave differently or consider adding a new layer to my business. Katie Davis Ep 169: Video Marketing with Katie Davis | Bestselling Author | Podcaster | Marketing Expert Katie Davis‘ picture books and young adult novels from traditional publishers Harcourt, S&S, HarperCollins, and Diversion Books have sold over 250,000 copies, which is why she then independently published How to Promote Your Children’s Book, a marketing guide for writers which debuted at #1 on Amazon. Website: katiedavis.com | Twitter: @KatieDavisBurps Nicole Walters 199: Mentors and Masterminds with Nicole Walters @NapturalNicole of Monetize Thyself Nicole Walters brings her expertise in monetizing multibillion dollar corporations to you- stay at home parents to small business owners- with her affordable and entertaining webinars, and private monetization coaching. Using her trademarked Pitch & Pray™ method, Nicole will help you embrace the #monetizethyself™ mindset, and realize your brands fiscal goals. Website: monetizethyself.com | Twitter: @NapturalNicole Amanda Slavin Ep 168: Marketing to Millennials and Gen Z with Amanda Slavin of CatalystCreativ Amanda Slavin is CEO and Founder of CatalystCreativ, an experience studio that designs experiences for brands to tell their story in a more impactful way funded by the Downtown Project, (the 350 million dollar city-as-a-start-up project funded by Tony Hsieh CEO of Zappos) most known for CatalystCreativ’s monthly speaker series, Catalyst Week in Downtown Vegas. Website: catalystcreativ.com | Twitter: @CatalystCreativ Roseanne Cook Ep 175: The Productive Home: Tips for Every Life Stage with Roseanne Cook Roseanne Cook is a teacher, wife, mother, best friend, grandma, sister and admired home maker. She is also host Natalie Eckdahl’s Mom and Mimi to Natalie’s three kids. Join this special conversation as Roseanne shares how she created efficiency in her home from the time she was in college through her current empty nest stage and everything in between. Laurie Brucker Ep 165: LA’s Best Personal Stylist – Laurie Brucker of LaurieBstyle LLC Named “LA’s go-to stylist” by the Los Angeles Times in 2012 and “LA’s best personal stylist” by CBS in 2013,certified image consultant and speaker, Laurie Brucker of LaurieBstyle LLC, is all about everyday people dressing with heart. She believes to live an inspired and desired life, all you need is a great belt and an open mind. Website: lauriebstyle.com | Twitter: @Lauriebstyle Jenna Edwards Ep 178: Your Life Can Change in Seven Seconds with Jenna Edwards Jenna Edwards is a Speaker, Writer, Producer andHow-To expert who loves to do and share what she has learned. Hear how a bit part on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a horrific accident both lasting just seven seconds changed the course of Jenna’s life. Now Jenna strives to empower people to be the best they can be, to infuse their personalities into everything they do and to show through her own story of survival that you really can overcome anything and create the life of your dreams. Website: jennaedwardsmedia.com | Twitter: @CreateWithJenna Dr. Romila Mushtaq 192 & 193: Dr. Romie on Setting Intentions | @DrRomila #mindfulness Romila “Dr. Romie” Mushtaq, M.D., ABIHM, is a traditionally trained neurologist with additional board certification in integrative medicine. Dr. Romie helps individuals and audiences learn to heal from stress-based illnesses such as insomnia, anxiety, and career-burnout. Her mindful living program, Mindset Matters, is based in neuroscience, positive psychology, and mindfulness. Website: brainbodybeauty.com | Twitter: @DrROMILA Patricia Walsh Ep 145: Blind World Champion Triathlete – Patricia Walsh Diagnosed with a pediatric brain tumor, Patricia Walshbecame partially blind at age five and lost the rest of her sight at age fourteen. Today, Walsh is a world champion triathlete, award-winning engineer, and author of BLIND AMBITION: How To Envision Your Limitless Potential And Achieve The Success You Want. She is currently training for the 2016 Paralympics in triathlon. Website: blindambitionspeaking.com | Twitter: @BlindAmbitionSp Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE in iTunes and leave a rating and or review. This helps the show rank higher in iTunes search results! Click here to join the Biz Chix community (free) and get an invitation to our Private Facebook Group for Female Entrepreneurs Help Support the Biz Chix Podcast and Community via:
Today I have the good fortune to speak with someone I met last summer at Catalyst Week in Las Vegas. This event is part of Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project to revitalize the old downtown area … AOMW 020 – Live an Inspired Life with Amanda Slavin Read More » The post AOMW 020 – Live an Inspired Life with Amanda Slavin appeared first on Wealth Clinic.
The BizChix Podcast: Female Entrepreneurs | Women Small Business | Biz Chix
Click for Shownotes Amanda Slavin is CEO and Founder of CatalystCreativ, an experience studio that designs experiences for brands to tell their story in a more impactful way funded by the Downtown Project, (the 350 million dollar city-as-a-start-up project funded by Tony Hsieh CEO of Zappos) most known for CatalystCreativ’s monthly speaker series, Catalyst Week in Downtown Vegas. She earned her Masters in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education and wrote her thesis on the impact outdoor community has on engagement creating a metrics of engagement. She has used this foundation of understanding engagement in her approach to grassroots marketing and business development. She started with Paige Management in 2009 and built the events, marketing, social media, online marketing departments from the ground up. She launched the Ainsworth, (number 1 sports bar 3 years in a row by Zagat) with no social media, using only grassroots marketing to do so. She oversaw partnerships with Axe/Unilever and Madison Square Garden, as well as created and spearheaded from the ground up a 16 week activation for LVMH for their new product Moet Ice in 2010 overseeing and activating a 16 week launch of events, tastemaker dinners and experiential marketing in a 15 bedroom estate in Watermill NY. Amanda was listed on this year’s Forbes 30 Under 30 for Marketing and Advertising. Inside This Episode Motivational Quote “Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you never thought could be yours.” – Audrey Hepburn (Do what you love!) Must Read Book Productivity Tool/Tip glassfrog.holacracy.org Other Resources BizChix Episodes mentioned in this episode Connect with Amanda catalystcreativ.com Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Instagram Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider subscribing in iTunes and Stitcher and leaving a rating and or review. This helps us continue to be featured in New & Noteworthy so that more people can find us. Click here to join the Biz Chix community Thank you to our Sponsors:
Charlie Shrem's arrest and MtGox shutting down BTC transfers have caused movements in the price of bitcoin. And Scott visits Tony Hsieh's Downtown project in Las Vegas.
American Ninja Warrior. Calisthenics freak. Battlebar champion. Muscle Beach staple. Parkour artist. Spiritual crusader. Social entrepreneur.These are just a few labels we can attach to the badass known as Travis Brewer. But what is truly inspiring about this airborne athlete with a conscience is his mission to live life to the fullest. Catalyzing positive impact through movement to make the world a better place. And inspire others to become more of who they are.For Travis, it's an inside job. His ability to walk through fear, break barriers, push past physical, mental and emotional plateaus to perform the impossible with death-defying body movement begins and ends with one thing – his devotion to spirituality & meditation.Today Julie and I sit down with Travis to explore the boundaries of human potential – both athletic and beyond the monkey bars; what it truly means to unlock the best of who you are; the crucial extent to which devotion, spirituality and meditation play into his holistic health and peak performance equation; and how he pursues happiness and life satisfaction through service to others.Travis is a fascinating, insightful, considerate and contemplative young man with big dreams for the future of youth, health, movement and entrepreneurship. It was an honor to have him spend an evening with our family, and I'm thrilled to share this conversation with you.Enjoy!All images of Travis courtesy of © PJ Russ – thanks PJ!To set the stage, here's a short little inspiring video on Travis that will give you a sense of his groovy vibe.And here's a gander at one of the insanely cool, gargantuan “bird's nest” art piece creations Travis has a hand in building, as we discuss on the show. Must have!SHOW NOTES* Travis Brewer Website: http://www.travisjbrewer.com* Travis on Twitter: @tbrewer314* Travis on Instagram: @tbrewer314* Pi Lifestyle: http://www.pilifestyle.com* Paramahansa Yogananda & The Self-Realization Fellowship* The Tim Ferris Experiment: http://upwave.com/shows/the-tim-ferriss-experiment* The Downtown Project: http://downtownproject.com/* Catalyst Week at The Downtown Project: http://catalystcreativ.com/downtown-project/* WIRED: How Zappos' CEO Turned Las Vegas Into a Startup Fantasyland: http://www.wired. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Culture is to a company as community is to a city: it's about values, innovation, serendipity, participation, upward mobility, and attraction of smart startups and the creative class. Tony Hsieh is applying his successful Zappos corporate culture model to help build the most community-focused large city in the world in the place you would least expect it: downtown Las Vegas. Research has shown that every time the size of a city doubles, productivity and innovation per resident increases by 15 percent; but when companies get bigger, productivity per employee generally goes down. With this new $350 million Downtown Project, Hsieh is creating a unique hybrid of corporation, community, and city to drive productivity and innovation both for Zappos as well as the city itself. Speakers: Tony Hsieh, David Brooks
FSE Live - Fremont Street Experience (Las Vegas Video Network)
Structuring construction. Producing FSE shows. The Project for Downtown. A first peek at St. Paddy’s Day. Show notes: MOVERS & SHAKERS: Brandon Wiegand, Focus Commercial Group ENTERTAINERS: David Adams – Owner/Producer, Face Productions WHERE YOU FROM?!?: Montage – The process of creating a VivaVision video MEET THE NEIGHBORS: Kim Schaefer – Communicator, Downtown Project BEST […]
FSE Live - Fremont Street Experience - Audio (Las Vegas Video Network)
Structuring construction. Producing FSE shows. The Project for Downtown. A first peek at St. Paddy’s Day.
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