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Swell Spark is a company with concepts such as escape rooms and axe throwing They are known for Blade and Timber and breakout escape rooms, have 11 storefronts nationwide and believe in the importance of having fun to bring people together for shared experiences. Matt was a high school guidance counselor and owned a soda shop when he started an escape room as a side hustle and expanded to six locations within two years They started the axe throwing trend and expanded to six locations around the country. Hoping to launch a new concept in April 2020. www.swellspark.com TRANSCRIPTION: Joel Goldberg: Matt, there are a million things that you're involved in, which means there are a million things that I want to talk to you about. How would you describe yourself? Matt Baysinger: I love having fun. I know that sounds really cheesy, maybe even sounds cutesie or something along those lines, even cheap. Right? But I just really believe that having fun is important. I think it brings people together. That's always kind of been my MO, not even in a professional sense, just in a life sense. Then from a company standpoint, we really made it the company MO as well. We want to gather people for shared experiences. We want to have a heck of a lot of fun together. Joel Goldberg: You do that, I'm sure, and then we'll talk about the culture of your company but also anyone that is going to something that you own or run, that's the goal across the board. It's not just, hey, we're this company, come and do this. You're offering people a lot of ways to have fun. Matt Baysinger: Yeah. The two major brands that we have that folks recognize us for the most are Blade & Timber and then Breakout KC here in Kansas City. We have 11 storefronts around the country from Kansas City to Honolulu. We've been doing this for five years. In that, we've also done things like Choir Bar and Epic Aloha and other kind of popup ideas. I think we are seekers of fun, and so there's a couple check boxes of, "Does it do this? Does it do that?" And I think at the end of the day if it's going to get people together, if it's going to give them a more compelling thing to do than stare at their phone, then it's something that we're interested in pursuing. Joel Goldberg: Let's start with... You want to start with Breakout KC or Blade & Timber? Matt Baysinger: Let's do it. Joel Goldberg: Let's start with Breakout KC. Of course, everybody knows about these escape rooms now. If you've never done one before... I hadn't done one and then suddenly I think my family and everybody... My kids had done them and even my wife had done one at some point. Then suddenly we've got my parents and my kids and this and that. We're all in this room together, and it's exactly what you said. We're having a lot of fun together. This is really cool. Tell me about the origins of that. Matt Baysinger: My wife, Emily and I, we were traveling to Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2014. We had this eight hour stopover in Nashville before we really got going into Chattanooga to visit some friends. We were looking for something to do in Nashville. Never had been to the city. Seemed like a good place. We pull up Trip Advisor. We're thinking what music tour can we do or what sort of entertainment. We pull up, and the number one thing on Trip Advisor is this thing called The Escape Game, and it's a picture of a house. We're like, "What is this?" Matt Baysinger: We didn't end up going on that trip, not knowing what it was. We were going to visit Emily's friend in Chattanooga, which meant I had a whole week to research escape rooms. Over the course of a week, one, I was like, "This looks fun." But, two, it was this brand new experience, this brand new industry in the United States. I came back really kind of rejuvenated from that trip. I pulled in one of my best friends, Ryan, who was in kind of more design fabrication construction. I said, "Ryan, we got to look into this thing. We have to. I think we can do this, and I think we can do it better than anybody." Matt Baysinger: The basic idea for those who have not played an escape room is there's this dramatic experience. It's as though you're Jason Bourne or you're James Bond. It not like you're locked in a room. That was the old version of escape rooms. But you have to solve something. You have to be the hero of a great story. For us, we have 11 different experiences just in the Kansas City area alone, so 11 different movies that you get to play the part in essence. As you mentioned, they are a phenomenal opportunity to hang out with friends or family or coworkers. It's stinking fun. Joel Goldberg: Yeah. How do you go from this looks cool to this is going to be our business? Matt Baysinger: Sure. This was 2014. As a matter of fact, the first time that Ryan and I got together to really talk about this was the Wild Card Game in 2014. That was when the spark ignited. Honestly, when we first started, it was going to be a side hustle. We thought, "Hey, we can do this on the weekends. It might be some passive income. We can build these things. If we end up making a couple of bucks, awesome." And we thought that we would. Matt Baysinger: I was working two jobs at that time. I was a high school guidance counselor at St. James Academy in Lenexa, and I had just started this soda shop, Mass Street Soda, within the last year. We didn't anticipate it doing what it has done. It's been an amazing ride. But we opened. We were able to get some friends in who shared it. I think there was just an appetite for something new among our customers, among the folks who came and supported us. Within two years, we had expanded out to six locations, largely because we thought that we could, and we thought that we should. Joel Goldberg: Were you doing it differently than everybody else? Were you guys able to take it to a different place? Matt Baysinger: Yeah, I think we did a really good job with telling great stories and letting people be heroes of great stories. I think even more so, Kansas City... I think it's the most underrated city in America. When people take a stab at something new in this city, if it is of high quality, what we found is more often than not, the city and the community at whole kind of wraps their arms around you. They're like, "Hey, we take care of our own." Matt Baysinger: So we went from opening to being the top rated escape room in the country within about nine months. We had more reviews on Trip Advisor than anybody else. We had people waiting sometimes three or four weeks to get a spot to come in. I think honestly that's largely due to we told great compelling stories, but I think more importantly we've always had a super high focus on customer service. Whether you have a good time in the room or not, I can't really control that. But we can control how we treat you before the room, during the room, after the room, to make sure that you have just incredible interactions with real people the entire time. Joel Goldberg: Was there a tipping point with that one where you said... Obviously, you believed this to be successful. Matt Baysinger: Right. Joel Goldberg: But like you said, a nice side hustle. What or when was the tipping point where you said, "Wait a minute. This side hustle is actually going to become the main hustle"? Matt Baysinger: Sure. Ryan was a firefighter at the time. Again, I had these other jobs as well. We had this single phone number that would ring to both of our phones. The general rule, because it was the two of us, was, hey, if you can answer the phone go ahead and answer, and if you can't after five rings the other person might answer it. Normally, we'd get one or two calls a day in the first couple weeks. We'd have maybe one or two bookings a day. We only had one room. Matt Baysinger: I vividly remember this experience. Ryan and I, we were building out the second room, and he's up on a ladder. The first call comes in of that day, and I call, hey, Matt... This is Matt with Blade & Timber. How can I help you? We want to book. Great. While I'm on the phone, Ryan's phone rings. Hey, this is Ryan with Blade & Timber. While we're on the phone, I get a beep in. Hey, can I put you on hold for a second? What had happened is two days before that... I went to high school with Matt Besler. We've been friends for quite some time. I said, "Hey, Matt, we started this new thing. Would you come? Bring some friends if you want to." Matt Baysinger: Well, Matt brought almost the entire Sporting Kansas City team. They posted on their Instagram and Facebook- Joel Goldberg: That was it. Matt Baysinger: ... and honestly, that was it. People started hearing about what we were doing. I think it was that day or the next day is when we started booking out not just days in advance but weeks in advance. Within a couple short weeks, we were quitting our other jobs, saying, okay, let's go all in on this and trying to grow that thing as well as we could. Joel Goldberg: This might be a dumb question or certainly... And I don't mean for it to be offensive because I know you believed in your product. If the soccer star with the whole soccer team does not do that, do you still get to where you are in just a matter of... Would it have taken longer? Matt Baysinger: I think so. We still had a great product. That was, I think, the kickstart that we needed. But you know as well as anybody that you can have amazing marketing, but if your product sucks, people are going to say, "Wow, that was amazing marketing. They tricked me into doing this thing." The mountain of momentum came when very quickly we were the top rated experience in Kansas City more than the museums, more than the K, more than all these things. Matt Baysinger: When you looked on Trip Advisor at things to do, we were the thing to do. Might that have taken a little bit longer? Yeah, absolutely. But I think when a lot of folks ask me why we've had success or what that goes back to, I talk about people. I talk about the relationships that I've had and the relationships that I've cultivated over time. Matt was generous enough to come along and help kickstart us, and that was awesome. I'm grateful for him. He probably wants commission right now that he's here in this podcast. I think if you put a great product out there as long as folks find a way to know about it, good things will come. Joel Goldberg: Well, and we could also add in good people in terms of those connections. Okay, you had a long history with Matt Besler. Matt Besler also happens to be a very good person. Matt Baysinger: Absolutely. Joel Goldberg: So it's one thing to be a soccer star and sporting has such a loyal and unbelievable following, but part of that following is the culture that they have too. Matt Baysinger: Absolutely. Joel Goldberg: I'm guessing that that kind of all aligned with who you all are. Matt Baysinger: It was I would say accidental strategic in the early days and that what we've come to find is that we actually overlap pretty well with the type of fans that Sporting Kansas City has. There's not as many folks at MLS Games as there are at Chiefs' games or at Royals' games, but they're oftentimes far more rabid fans. They're far more invested in their team. Coming from that area right by Cerner and some folks that are techy and geeky, escape rooms, they're a little bit nerdy. Matt Baysinger: It is a more active form of entertainment than just going out and grabbing a few beers or something like that. You have to think. Joel Goldberg: You have to think. Matt Baysinger: But that's the fun of it. That's not to say... I think the fear for a lot of people is that they're going to be not smart enough for an escape room. Escape rooms are built for everybody. We definitely had some happy accidents in the early days as far as who we catered to, who we advertised to, who we marketed through and with. I will happily take advantage of those happy accidents that we've had. Joel Goldberg: I always say never apologize for those. They don't really happen by accident either I don't think. You can stumble into something. I guess what I would say is that you can have that happen by accident, but ultimately it's up to you to capitalize on it. Matt Baysinger: Absolutely. Joel Goldberg: And a lot of people don't. Matt Baysinger: Sure. Joel Goldberg: And so then maybe it's not meant to be. You obviously did. How about... I know you've got a passion for film or film background. How much did that help in terms of the stories you guys were telling? Matt Baysinger: Sure. I think quite a bit. My former company was just Baysinger Films, and we did work for Nike and Google and McDonald's and things like this. We also did weddings and just telling people's stories. Again, in the early days Ryan comes from this fabrication background, a wicked smart guy as well. We went to high school together. And I came really from more of a marketing, so I was like, man, I can market this stuff if you can help build it. I'm far more conceptual than Ryan is. I'm for better or worse. We tried to use every skill or talent that we had to push the envelope forward just a little bit more in the early days. I think fortunately we had a pretty good mix between the two of us, and then we had some really amazing folks come on board to help us with that as well. Joel Goldberg: All right. You have the escape rooms, and everybody's throwing axes nowadays. Matt Baysinger: Yep. Joel Goldberg: That has become- Matt Baysinger: Because of us, right? Joel Goldberg: Yes. Well, it's become a thing. Matt Baysinger: Yeah. Joel Goldberg: No one in their wildest dreams would've ever imagined that that's something you could do outside of some kind of 2:00 in the morning programming on ESPN10 or whatever it was. Matt Baysinger: The Ocho. Joel Goldberg: Yeah, The Ocho. Oh man, how long ago that was. So how did this come about? Matt Baysinger: Little context, right? In the early days of the escape room, I vividly... And I've told this story before. But I remember this moment of we lived on coffee at the time and Quay Coffee is down the street, amazing coffee shop in the River Market. We were there twice a day because we were working the stereotypical long hours that you do in startup. This group of gals probably, I don't know, 16, 17, 18 years old had just broken out from one of our escape rooms with 10 seconds to go, so they were hyped. Matt Baysinger: Their immediate conversation is, hey, let's go grab something to eat. They're walking down, and they end up walking to Quay. I'm 10 paces behind them, which is a little awkward, but whatever. They get out of our escape room; we take the group photo of them; they celebrate; high fives; I think, get some T-shirts; start walking. They walk two blocks to Key Coffee. I'm right behind them the whole time. Seventeen-year-old gals. Not a single one of them pulls their phone out. They are just talking to each other trying to figure out what just happened. "Hey, I was doing this thing, and I pulled down on the antlers, and then... oh, that was when the door opened. Oh, my gosh, I was doing this other... " They're piecing together how they actually broke out of this room because it's just been pure something to that point. Matt Baysinger: That was the moment that we kind of realized, "Oh, my gosh we've built something more exciting than your cellphone." I know that sounds maybe a little silly, but you know it's- Joel Goldberg: No, I think everyone gets it actually. Matt Baysinger: And so the question immediately became how else can we do this. We never anticipated being an escape room company. We really found ourselves in this what we call small box entertainment. From almost day one we said, "Escape rooms, and... " We looked at all these other concepts, all these other things. And then as we were just researching online at some point we saw this pub in London that had an axe throwing range in it. We were like, "Huh? Axe throwing and alcohol. That sounds kind of fun. That sounds kind of different." Matt Baysinger: The building that we're in right now we actually built an axe throwing lane on the top floor. We have ping-pong tables and arcade games and all of the stuff that you would expect a bunch of 20 and 30 year olds to have in their offices. Matt Baysinger: The moment that we made an axe throwing lane on our top floor people stopped playing ping-pong, and they stopped playing the arcades, and they stopped... All you would hear is people talking over lunch hour of, "Oh, man, I can't believe you got me. I'm going to get you next game." Our staff started getting really into it. Joel Goldberg: So the same way that those girls were talking about that escape room, putting the phones away and actually having... What is this? Oh, a conversation. Matt Baysinger: Right. Joel Goldberg: You saw a similar type of energy. Matt Baysinger: Yeah. Again, as silly as it sounds, people like doing stuff. People like learning new skills. I think one of the reasons golf is declining is because it's really hard, and it's really expensive, and there's kind of a high barrier for entry to get into it. With axe throwing, we got to a point where we felt like we could teach anybody how to throw an axe in five minutes or less. When it became that simple, it's like, "If my mom can do this, then anybody can do this." I love you, mom. Matt Baysinger: She doesn't have an athletic bone in her body, and she's able to hit bulls eyes underhand with an axe. Once we got to that point we were like, "There's something here." The next question was, "What kind of landlord would in their wildest imagination allow us to throw axes in their building?" Truth be told, we got denied by probably five or six landlords in Kansas City who were like, "This isn't going to work," or "It doesn't sounds safe," or whatever. Matt Baysinger: But we were able to open in the West Bottoms, and I think once we had the proof of concept, same story. We've been able to expand to six locations, seventh coming. Actually, we only have five now that I think about it. Joel Goldberg: We'll get into that one. Matt Baysinger: What's been fun about axe throwing... I guess, quick little tangent. Our second location of our escape room was Honolulu, Hawaii, so Kansas City to Honolulu. What's been really fun, we took axe throwing- Joel Goldberg: Let me stop you real quick. How'd did you go from... I mean, it seems like why wouldn't you, right? Matt Baysinger: Right. Joel Goldberg: It's not that easy. It can't be that easy. Matt Baysinger: So mom graduated high school in Hawaii. Dad was [inaudible 00:17:12]. Our grandfather was military. So we did have kind of a familial connection out there, but also it's a large metro. It's a large metro, and quite frankly, there's not a lot to do once the sun goes down, especially if you're not into drinking or clubbing. What's been really neat with axe throwing with Blade & Timber, we have locations here. We're down in Wichita. We're in Seattle. We're in Honolulu. Those are very different people groups in all of those cities. Matt Baysinger: They have different voting histories. They have different make ups of skin tones and skin colors and all sorts of stuff. But what's really fun is that people love axe throwing in all of those markets. People love having fun in all of those markets. It's been just from a human standpoint to see that this is something that's kind of universally needed is this table for community. It's been a really cool byproduct of what we do. Joel Goldberg: When you put that axe throwing lane upstairs, it was just something else fun or cool to do because you guys have that cool type of office? How did you end up with that axe throwing lane upstairs? Matt Baysinger: Even when you go back to escape rooms we test it first. I think a lot of people think that it was just striking gold, but we built our first escape room in the spare bedroom of my house. When it came to axe throwing, we can make some educated guesses, but we want to at least test it out for logistics. Upstairs the initial goal was simply, hey, let's figure out what axe we need to use. Let's figure out how far or close you should stand. Let's figure out if you should spin it once or twice. It was really to test the concept. Matt Baysinger: When we put it up there, we knew that it was something that we were interested in doing as long as we could figure it out. People just figured it out a lot sooner than we would've anticipated. Joel Goldberg: How did that compare in terms of interest, growth, to the escape rooms? Was it the same type of pattern? Were you stumbling upon the same thing or was it a different animal? Matt Baysinger: Yeah, there were obviously some differences. There were obviously some similarities. But I think when you take a step back, people ask, "All right, Matt, you're with Swell Spark, what does Swell Spark do?" Nothing. The answer is nothing. Swell Spark is an operating group. It's a group of about 20 people here at headquarters who serve all of our concepts. In that capacity, when you look at the long-term growth plans for Swell Spark to be a long-term sustainable company, we need to launch new concepts. That's in our DNA. We have committed to be a perpetual startup of concepts. Matt Baysinger: With that, we talk about velocity, and we talk about velocity of different metropolitan areas. We were able to open our escape rooms in two major metros, being Kansas City and Honolulu. We've been able so far to open our axe throwing in four major metros. Joel Goldberg: Which is Kansas City- Matt Baysinger: Kansas City, Honolulu, Seattle, and we're about to open Portland as well. When you look at the big picture, what do we do and what it is that we're about, we get velocity in metros. Once we open one concept in a metro, we start to accumulate data on who's coming. We start to accumulate data on who we should market to, what parts of town we should be in, what parts of town we should avoid. Realistically, once we opened Blade & Timber, we were able to do a cross promotion with Breakout KC and invite 70,000 people to come out. You can imagine what day one looked like when they're 70,000 invitations to be the first to do something in Kansas City. Matt Baysinger: And so, it exploded. Our first kind of soft opening VIP night, which was literally just me and Ryan posting on Facebook, I think had 300 people show up. Joel Goldberg: Wow. Matt Baysinger: We always set up our experiences to be easy on the eyes. So we set up a photo booth in Blade & Timber and put some places in where it would make it real easy to take a photo so people share on our behalf, which we love. I have three kids, six, four and two. My wife, she probably wishes she didn't start this, but she started making a book a year per kid. It's just a scrapbook, a well-designed scrapbook. We just had all three of their birthdays in the last couple months. And so we're going through and making the new pages or the new years. The pages in those scrapbooks are never about the things we bought for them. Matt Baysinger: There's never a picture of, "Oh, here's your toy that you enjoyed." It's like, "No, here's the stuff we did." Honestly, I think people are, not to say waking up to that idea, but bowling is the great example. Bowling was America's sport for a long time. There's countless research that's been done about this. Bowling died. There's a lot of reasons it died. What the problem is is a lot of people said, "Oh, well, it was because bowling wasn't fun," when really it was a lack of community. Matt Baysinger: For us to have the opportunity to give people that again is just so special. I think people crave it. It's easy to stay in your house. It's easy to watch Netflix and order food. There's nothing wrong with either of those things as long as they're balanced with spending time with your friends and being around other people. We love to provide those opportunities. Joel Goldberg: That's one of the things of why we like vacations. You actually get a chance to go and do things. Matt Baysinger: Right. Joel Goldberg: Not everything needs to be Disney World and waiting in the lines and all that and people may like certain things. We actually took our kids last year to Disney and Universal and all that for the first time ever. They're now 16 and 14, so they were 15 and 13 at that point. And they'll remember that forever. Matt Baysinger: Absolutely. Joel Goldberg: It might not be a specific ride. It might be just walking around and the Harry Potter stuff. Who knows? It is something that they will and we will remember forever those moments. Matt Baysinger: Absolutely. I'm a KU grade. I'm a big Jayhawks fan. Even to go to 2014 and 2015 with the Royals, I've been to a whole lot of baseball games over the years. Those are fun, but you're generally watching other people do things. One of the reasons I think Allen Fieldhouse is such a special environment is because as a fan you feel like you're part of it. You're shredding newspaper. You're tossing it in the air. There's these little things you do with your hands. You are a part of your own entertainment experience. Matt Baysinger: In 2014, that Wild Card Game I think I gave 700 high fives. Everyone who was there that's going to be a special memory because we got to be part of it to a degree. Joel Goldberg: There is a reason why people have these crazy superstitions, and they ramp up, and it's not just in Kansas City. It's in every single city. Matt Baysinger: Sure. Joel Goldberg: How many people do you know that say, "We had to sit in this spot for this game," and if you came in and you weren't there before, you were kicked out. There were actually families that weren't watching the game together because that became their involvement and their experience. Right? Matt Baysinger: Yeah, absolutely. Joel Goldberg: As crazy and silly as those things are, they're fun because you're involved. Matt Baysinger: They make it more memorable. Joel Goldberg: You feel like you're a part of it even if you're wearing the same underwear for... Yeah. Matt Baysinger: Make sure you wear your same shirt, your flannel shirt, every time you come to Breakout or Blade & Timber. It'll be your lucky shirt to get bulls eyes. Joel Goldberg: Whatever it takes. I do want to ask you in a little bit about what's next. Before we get into the baseball theme questions, I'm curious now where you're at. You and I are in a group together, so I've had the chance to watch you operate a little bit. I haven't probably shown up as much as others or I should. Maybe you have. I don't know. What I've been though is I've just been really impressed with just your thirst for knowledge, your thirst to become better I think as a leader. I don't know if that's something you ever thought about getting into. I don't know that you could've envisioned any of the way this all went other than the fact that you seem to be to me a guy that's always thinking and driven and wanting to come up with new ideas. Joel Goldberg: But now you're running companies all around the country. And I know you have to have a culture in the way you want things done, and that could be a little bit unnerving to say, "Wait a minute. How are things going in Hawaii? I'm sitting here in Kansas City." Matt Baysinger: Right. Joel Goldberg: What have you learned? Matt Baysinger: We were talking before the podcast started is all we can do is tell our story. I look back at, my undergrad was sociology. Then I worked in athletics for a while, and I got a master's in education administration. I worked as a high school guidance counselor. I worked as a barista. I started a soda shop. I have a film company. None of it makes sense. But I think when you take a step back a little bit more, all of it makes sense. Matt Baysinger: One, as you iterated, the people, the relationships that you build along the way matter. I think more than that we went through recently, and we talked about what it is that we actually look for in employees. It was kind of tucked in the back of my head, but we finally spit it out and said, "We want people who are eager to learn. We want people who are coachable." I had the opportunity to run track at the University of Kansas, and I got there because I was fast. Without being overly pretentious, I was a fast runner. I got a lot faster because I had a great coach. Matt Baysinger: I think sometimes when you get to the metaphorical big leagues of running your own company it's easy to think that you know it all. I think the more that I have realized that our business while it is strange, it's not unlike other businesses. There are things that apply to just about every business on earth, and the more that we've realized that... At first, I was kind of upset about it like, "Oh, I thought we were doing something special. I thought we were venturing out into the world," but I've realized no. A lot of the problems that we face are the same problems that other people have faced, and what that means is there's wisdom in finding the answers they found so that we can skip those painful steps and get to better solutions without having to reinvent the wheel ourselves. Matt Baysinger: The startup community, the small business community in Kansas City, is unlike anything I've encountered. We've been able to travel a lot. There are a special group of folks here who are invested in making the cream rise to the top. If I can be a part of that, man, I'll take that opportunity any day. Joel Goldberg: Yeah, that's pretty powerful. Before we get to the baseball theme questions, so how many stores or properties total around the country right now? We talked about the different cities. Matt Baysinger: Yeah, we had 11. One of our stores just burned down two weeks ago, which was a huge bummer. So technically we're at 10. We'll be at 12 by quarter two of 2020. Joel Goldberg: This is Blade & Timber and escape rooms? Matt Baysinger: Yes, that's correct. We hope to launch our next concept in April-ish of 2020. That'll depend on our construction contracts and whatnot. But we have something new coming to Kansas City. Joel Goldberg: Which I'm sure you can't tell me. Matt Baysinger: Nope. Joel Goldberg: But it'll be I'm guessing something as ground breaking or original as an escape room was in 2014 and as original as axe throwing was a few years back. Matt Baysinger: We have found that fun maybe looks different in other countries or other regions. Joel Goldberg: There's a hint. Matt Baysinger: But that doesn't make it any less fun. I think oftentimes it's simply that we don't realize the opportunity that there is to do this really fun thing. Joel Goldberg: Put it this way. I'm not trying to get it... I live in this world where with baseball and athletes where you just know you're not going to get the answer, so that's fine. But when this thing comes out, will it initially be something saying, "Wait? Really? Never thought about that before"? Matt Baysinger: I think you're going to chuckle at its simplicity. Joel Goldberg: Okay. Matt Baysinger: Yep. Joel Goldberg: All right, fair enough. Baseball themed questions. What would you say professionally is the biggest home run you've hit? Matt Baysinger: That first risk of Breakout KC. That was the launching pad for sure. Honestly, as I say it though, I think the biggest home run that we hit was Breakout Waikiki, our second location. The reason I say that is we had to open a location 3,800 miles from here, 15 hours of travel at best. We had to set it up in a way that it could run without me being there, which is a hard transition for an entrepreneur to build process and to build functions that can exist without you being the one to do it. Matt Baysinger: It was successful. That's why I'm calling it a home run, but I think more so it forced us to take a step back and think about how to grow well. Since that point, every other location we've done since then has been closer, but we've been able to grow 10 locations in four years. We've been able to increase our sales by 55% a year for four years now, and that's because we had to work out a lot of those kinks early on with Breakout Waikiki. Joel Goldberg: What's the swing and miss? You've talked a lot about learning. Matt Baysinger: Sure. Joel Goldberg: What's a big swing and miss, and what did you learn from it? Matt Baysinger: We did this project called Epic Aloha in Hawaii as well. This was a 6,000 square foot walkable Instagramable museum. Again, it checked the boxes. Shared experiences? Absolutely. Bring people together. Amazing concepts. All of those things. Honestly, from an installation standpoint it might've been the best thing we've every built. It went out of business in 10 months. Granted, it was a 12 month lease. We went to the wrong space. Not to oversimplify it, but what was bizarre about that concept, we became the seventh highest rated attraction in all of Hawaii. You're talking Pearl Harbor and then Waikiki Beach and then a handful of others, and then Epic Aloha. Matt Baysinger: We had this insane problem that everyone loved us but nobody knew about us. We just couldn't overcome that. Unfortunately, we closed that one a little bit early. We took a bath on it in many ways, but also we realized what we were capable of. I'm the eternal optimist, so we're always going to find the positives, but from a numbers standpoint, golly, that was bad. From a learning standpoint, we know what a fast ball looks like now. We know what a curve ball looks like, and I think we know how to handle those a little bit better moving forward. Joel Goldberg: That's good. Small ball. How would you define small ball to Swell Spark or to any of your entities in terms of the little things? Matt Baysinger: You know, I wouldn't call myself a futurist, but I think our world is changing a lot. I think one of the things that differentiates us from just about anybody else is our emphasis on customer service. I believe it's all about the relationships, I really do. The thing can be cool, but if you do a cool thing with terrible people, you're not going to enjoy it. We focus on our people first, and I think when our people are feeling loved, when they're feeling supported as employees, it allows them to do that with customers as well. Matt Baysinger: Our blocking and tackling or our small ball is we got to make sure that the people are even better than the experience that we offer. Joel Goldberg: Four final questions that I ask every guest. These will vary by guest. Four final questions as we round the bases. Do you have a favorite story or scene that you've done over the years? Matt Baysinger: Halloween is a big deal for my wife and I. This isn't going to be the answer that you asked for. Joel Goldberg: That's okay. Matt Baysinger: Forrest Gump is my favorite movie. It's an amazing movie. When you talk about how I got into all this, my junior year of college I grew my hair out just so I could shave it down to look like Forrest Gump. I sat on a bench on KU's campus and I passed out chocolates for four hours and told stories. I think that probably as much as anything iterates who I am and what we stand for, which is, man, we like to have fun. We love to do that through Halloween as well. I think from a company standpoint I told you about the gals walking, and that's been a pivotal moment for us. Matt Baysinger: I just love when I get to see reviews... I love on a regular basis is people will say, "This is the best thing I've done this year," or "This is the best birthday party I've ever had." As cheesy as it may sound, that is all of the motivation or story that I need to know that we're doing something positive. Joel Goldberg: All right. The second question, which has to do with storytelling or perhaps in this case, fake storytelling. You know where I'm going. I didn't know you that well, and I'm still getting to know you. But when this whole thing popped up, and it was written about... It was one of those just epic... Back in the day we used to call it a burn, I guess. You know? Matt Baysinger: Sure. Yeah, sick burn. Joel Goldberg: Sick burn. Yeah. This was back in July. I just remember reading this, and I had goosebumps because basically you dealt with what I'm sure a lot of very proud, hardworking business owners deal with. And we live in a world... We're all guilty of it. I try to remind myself all the time that just because it's on Yelp doesn't mean it's true. Matt Baysinger: Sure. Joel Goldberg: In the case, somebody basically accused one of your employees of Blade & Timber of some racist stuff. Your reply was beautiful. I'll just read a little bit of it because you responded to him, and you said, "The best part of this is that you tried to paint a picture of my man, Jordan, as rude and racist. This is the exact same Jordan whose own mother immigrated to the US from Mexico. You have the audacity to call out a staff member by name, yet you have to make up a story and hide behind a fake Yelp alias to try to stir the pot. If one of our staff members was actually being racist, I can assure you that we would take action, but in this scenario you're just using a fake name to tell a fake story to try and paint a fake picture about a real and honest person that's just trying to do his job. I can't let that fly here. If I could give you a Yelp rating, you would earn zero stars." Joel Goldberg: It got a lot of attention as it should have. Matt Baysinger: It did. Yeah. Joel Goldberg: That's just some of it. But I can only imagine the fire that burned in you when this happened, and then being the storyteller, the chance for you to tell that story. Matt Baysinger: The first revision of my response was a little bit punchier. Joel Goldberg: This was pretty punchy. Matt Baysinger: Yeah. Jessie, our Director of Communications, asked me to tone it down a little bit. But, you know, this was... It's a weird world online. Right? Joel Goldberg: Yeah, it is. Matt Baysinger: People can say things unchecked. And we had this situation where we threw some kids out for underage drinking. This was the way that they decided to retaliate against us. We're smart enough to... I mean, we have audio and video of everything that happens in our store. Honestly, I read the review, and I was first fired up that one of our staff members had done something stupid. I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that Jordan was racist." These are the things flying through my head. Matt Baysinger: I dive in, and I get the real story. Then my level of anger went through the roof. We ask a lot of our employees. It's not easy to have great customer service and to love and serve people well especially when they suck. In this situation, we reviewed the tapes. It was pretty clear that Jordan had done exactly what we had asked him to do in the situation. There wasn't a racist bone in his body in this situation. It just felt like the right opportunity and the right thing to do to stand up for him. Matt Baysinger: Whenever you talk about things like racism online, you set yourself up for potential windfall. So we were nervous about that quite frankly, but the response was amazing in that I think anyone who understood the character of our company and understood what we really stand for, they then had the opportunity to choose which story to believe. I think pretty much universally folks realize that ours was the right one. And I think people were... I think they were glad to see a small business like us stand up to the review machine that has taken down so many other businesses and so many other people. Joel Goldberg: Just a follow up before we move on, I'm curious if, one, you ever heard from that kid or anyone associated with him? And, two, what did you hear from people like Jordan and your employees? Matt Baysinger: Our employees were extravagant. Extravagant? No, they were excited that we did something. I think in some ways it would've been really easy for us to ignore it or maybe try to get the review taken down or something like that. The gentleman who posted did it under a fake name. Joel Goldberg: Of course. Matt Baysinger: We know his real name. We know his real address. We know where he goes to school. We know his friends' names. We didn't call him out publicly. We didn't put his real name out there for obvious reasons. He's a kid, right? We don't want one stupid decision to define somebody. If he ever wants to come throw axes, we'd love to have him back. He's just got to use his real name. Joel Goldberg: Right, and not be drinking underage. Matt Baysinger: Absolutely, absolutely. He's got to do it the way that we ask him to do it. But we're quick to forgive as well. We'd be honored to have him back. Joel Goldberg: You guys handled it the right way. Matt Baysinger: I appreciate it. Joel Goldberg: You all did. I've grown up too to realize that people will take shots at me on Twitter. You know what? Most of it is just not worth replying to. If it gets personal and there's some kind of danger to my family, then we can block them. Matt Baysinger: Sure. Joel Goldberg: Otherwise, mute them. It doesn't matter. I realized one night somebody was walking by our set, and they yell out. It's a group of six or seven people after the game. They were walking through the outfield. The guy yells, "Hey, Goldberg, you suck." Fine. Yeah, maybe. Not everybody's going to like my broadcast style. I totally get that. I just kind of looked at them, and I waved. As he saw me turn, I said, "Hey, what's going on? Thanks for watching." He just kind of turned and hid, and he wouldn't look back. Matt Baysinger: Yep. Joel Goldberg: I said, "Come on, I'd love to shake your hand." He just kept on moving. Matt Baysinger: Sure. Joel Goldberg: And that right there was Twitter in person. Matt Baysinger: Absolutely. Joel Goldberg: That was Yelp in person. Matt Baysinger: Yep. Joel Goldberg: Which by the way, there's plenty of positive on there too. It's just so easy, we know this, to hide behind something. Matt Baysinger: It is. Joel Goldberg: Okay, third question. What then would be the scouting report of Matt Baysinger, the track athlete, back in the day? Matt Baysinger: I was a giant 800 meter runner. I probably outweighed both my competitors by 200 pounds, which made it real fun for some of the relay races in particular. I had a pretty decent career. I was seven time all big 12. Got to run on our four by four all four years. For being a walk on at KU, I feel really good. I got to hang out with my old Coach Redwine this weekend. They did this amazing event at KU where they brought in elementary age kids, and so my kindergartner was able to come and learn how to do hurdles and stuff like that. But, KU Redwine's he's one of the best people I ever met in my life, and he gave me an incredible opportunity and taught me well. Joel Goldberg: All right, final question. The walk off question because we already talked about in general terms at least what is next. So we'll walk off with this. What kind of axe thrower are you? Matt Baysinger: I'm good enough to beat you. Joel Goldberg: Okay. You haven't seen me throw yet, but you're probably right. Matt Baysinger: And I'm willing to find out. There's a lot of folks in this building who would handle me pretty well with an axe, but I can hold my own. I can stick it to the board just about every time. I'm known to lots of fours, just not a lot of bulls eyes. I'd be a good fit for the Royals. I'm not going to hit your home runs, but I'm going to get on the bases. Joel Goldberg: Lay down a bunt every now and then. Good singles hitter. Opposite field. Matt Baysinger: Blocking and tackling, you know, do the small things. Joel Goldberg: Well, the small things are working. They certainly are turning into big things with many more big things to come. Can't wait to find out what this new venture is. I'm pretty sure we'll all hear about it. Matt Baysinger: We'll invite you out. Joel Goldberg: Yes, please. So that is when? Matt Baysinger: We're hoping for quarter one, quarter two of 2020. Joel Goldberg: Okay. So not too far off. Matt Baysinger: Nope. Joel Goldberg: Matt, congratulations on all the success to all of you and I know a lot more good things to come. I appreciate you doing this. Matt Baysinger: I sure appreciate it. Joel Goldberg: All right. That is Matt Baysinger. Hope to catch you next time on Rounding the Bases. You can reach me on my website at joelgoldbergmedia.com. Thanks, everyone, for listening.
Zach speaks with Lionel Lee, Zillow Group's Head of Diversity Engagement, and they discuss his unique personal career journey up to this point. Lionel details what influence and coalition-building look like in his position, and he also shares some of the things that he's been able to do at Zillow that he believes have helped to improve the sense of belonging and inclusiveness for black and brown folks in the workplace.Connect with Lionel on LinkedIn!TRANSCRIPTSheneisha: Hey, y'all. Sheneisha here with Living Corporate. As you know, we're about having real talk in a corporate world. With that in mind, before we get into this amazing discussion with Lionel Lee, we want to let you know this content makes mention of violence, which may be upsetting, so if you're listening with some little ones, discretion is advised. Zach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with the Living Corporate podcast, and of course you know what we do. We have interviews, conversations, right, that serve to amplify the voices of black and brown folks at work. And what do I mean by that? I mean we typically have black and brown folks, leaders, executives, creatives, entrepreneurs, you name it, on the show, having real conversations about real topics, and today is no different. We actually have with us today a very special guest. I'm very excited to speak with this person. I've been in contact with him for a little while, and I'm excited just to, like, get him on the show, 'cause, like, we've been texting, and then we talk on LinkedIn, and then, you know, we've been trying to coordinate. Even today we were coordinating back and forth. Lionel Lee. Lionel Lee is the head of diversity engagement at Zillow Group. He provides career development support to underrepresented employees and works with executives to develop equity and belonging policies to improve employee experiences. He also serves as a connecter between employees and community organizations. Prior to joining Zillow Group, he worked in talent acquisition, sourcing candidates across technology and banking industries. Okay, so really quick y'all, all of that to say he's by the people, for the people, you see what I'm saying? Okay. Helping communities has always been a constant throughout his life. Lionel has created and developed community groups that promote health and wellness. He's worked with HIV/AIDS education groups, substance abuse/addiction organizations, as well as health groups for youth. Lionel immigrated to the United States from Korea at age 5. His experiences growing up in south-central Los Angeles and later in the projects of Honolulu, Hawaii--I'm gonna ask a question about that in a little bit--helped nurture his passion for community building. With all that being said, Lionel, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Lionel: I'm doing well, man. Thank you. Appreciate it.Zach: Now, look, you know, of course I've got all of these questions for you and everything, but the first thing I gotta ask - you talked about the projects of Honolulu. Hawaii has projects?Lionel: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Honolulu has projects, and growing up there in the '70s and partial '80s, yeah, it was kind of rough, 'cause most people don't know about that, 'cause what they see about Honolulu and hear about Honolulu is it's just a paradise, but it's not really a paradise for all. You know, the level of poverty there, still to this day, is [amazing?], but back then it was like--where I grew up, in Kalihi--Kalihi is a town right outside of Waikiki, and it's--the projects are called Kuhio Park Terrace. We call it KPT, or Killer Park Terrace. Kill People Today. That's what it was, and I lived on the 16th floor, and I had to actually walk up the stairs to get to my apartment because there was a young lady that got her head cut off in the elevator, so the parents and kids, you know, catch the elevator. And then, you know, you have the same stuff that you have in a lot of different projects. You know, you have a lot of drug abuse, and, you know, you have people defecating in the stairwells. So that was the smell you walked into every single day. The crazy thing is that the dude that cut off the woman's head lived two doors down from me. And he kept it. Kept the head. Zach: What?!?!!!!!!????????????Lionel: He kept the head. But, um...Zach: Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm sorry. Wait, wait, wait. You said he kept the head?Lionel: He kept the head. He was--he was a Cambodian dude, and he was just mentally disturbed, you know? He just had some serious stuff going on, and he kept the head, and we found out, like, you know, two weeks after it had happened, you know? That was--it was a very different kind of place. Very violent. You can still look up--actually, you can go on YouTube and look up videos from Kuhio Park Terrace, and they'll show you videos of what it's like at KPT to this day.Zach: To this day. That is--that is--wow, that is shocking. I'ma tell you, you know, Lionel, in your short 3 minutes of being on the Living Corporate podcast, you have given us the most gangsta introduction we've ever had. And I'm not making light of anything. I'm just taken--I'm very taken aback by this. Wow.Lionel: Yeah, I don't have the typical--you know, I don't have the pedigree of someone that's in my position, definitely. I'm not--you know, I just wasn't raised like that. I wasn't--you know, I didn't think I was gonna go to college. I didn't go to college. I didn't get a degree. You know, I had to work and do all of that kind of stuff. It's just I was given certain opportunities and took advantage of every single one, you know? Made the very best that I could, and I've always had a tremendous work ethic, you know? Just, you know, been out of my house since I was 17 years old. I've lived in my car for, like, three days, just so I can be out here, you know, just doing my thing. You know, just doing my thing and just trying to keep it moving.Zach: Wow. Well, kind of to start there, let's talk a little bit about that. So you've started on that path, but kind of talk to us about your journey from Hawaii to the head of diversity and engagement at Zillow. What did that look like?Lionel: I was a gogo dancer at one time. That was pretty weird. I've done everything, man. Like, I can do stuff around my house--like, right now I'm remodeling my house, and my kids will be like, "Where'd you learn how to do that?" And I'm like, "Man, it wasn't nothing about learning. I just had to survive." Zach: Wait, wait, wait. So let's take a step back. You said you were--you were a what dancer?Lionel: I was a gogo dancer for a little bit. [Zach laughs] Yeah, when I was, like, young, you know, and that kind of stuff. So I was raised extremely religious. My grandfather is a Baptist minister, and I was raised in the church, so we didn't go out and do that kind of stuff a lot, you know? And I went to, like, school dances every once in a while, and I always liked to dance, so as soon as I got out of my house and, you know, I didn't have nobody telling me what I could and could not do, you know, I got caught up in the dance club scene for a while, and I was going there a lot, and the dude that owned the club, you know, he asked me one day if, you know, I'd want to just come in and, you know, get paid for it, right? But it was like--I don't know if you remember. I don't know how old you are, but--Zach: 29.Lionel: There was this one dance that I was really good at. It was The Prep. I don't know if you remember what The Prep is.Zach: Nah, what's The Prep?Lionel: It's just a dance that, you know, like, a lot of black folks did, you know, back then. You know, I'd have to show it to you in order for you to know what it was, but people around my age group, they know what that dance is, and I was really good at it. You can be extremely creative with it, you know? So the dude just kind of, you know--and I didn't paid, like, a lot. It was--like, that was my part-time gig. My full-time gig was, you know, managing the Church's Fried Chicken, which was down the street from the club, right? So after work at Church's Fried Chicken I would shoot over there, and back then they would throw some, you know, neon sweater or some shit on me, and then I'd get on there and, you know, do my thing. [both laugh] So yeah, that's a snippet of my background, but the way that I got into where I'm at now is--the funny thing is I met a dude on a basketball court, right, like, when I was in my late twenties, and it was one of those stereotypical things, you know? I got into a fight with this dude on the basketball court, you know? Like, you know, you get into a fight on the basketball court, they find out you can fight, and then all of a sudden everybody wants to be your friend, right? So dude wanted to be my friend. He was a white dude, and I had never had too much interaction with white people honestly, and definitely not on a personal, you know, like, friendship level. That just wasn't the way I was raised. So I was kind of cautious, and at that time I worked for an organization called Street Outreach Services, and it was an HIV/AIDS prevention organization. It was led by this amazing sister from Brooklyn. Her name was Amani Wood. She recently passed, like, a couple years ago, and I consider her one of the strongest individuals I've ever met and was lucky enough to have her as a mentor for a very large portion of my life. But anyway, she and I were working together, and then I came up with this crazy idea that what we should be doing is we should be documenting, you know, crack addicts and crack dealers under the age of 18, 'cause that's a group that we were not capturing. So the city of Seattle liked the idea. My organization liked the idea. So I ended up doing that for about 2.5 years. So I was going into crack houses and stuff, like, you know, at 3:00 a.m., you know, 4:00 a.m., and dealing with a whole bunch of kids, and I dealt with the kids--I mean, I had one sister, her name was Beautiful, literally, and she was 13 years old, you know? She was 13 years old with a baby and she was a crack addict, and she was a crack dealer. So, you know, I had to deal with that, and that kind of stuff is emotionally extremely taxing, and the--I just couldn't do it as--I couldn't put as much of myself into it as I was, so I was starting to get burnt out, and dude--you know, he was a recruiter, this white dude that I had met, right? He was like, "Hey, you ever thought about, like, recruiting?" And I was like, "I don't even know what that is, man." And he brought me up to his office to show me what he did, and, like, a lot of young black men and young black women and kids that come from, you know, lesser economic areas, you know, when I saw a computer I thought, "Nah, I can't do that," you know? 'Cause, you know, "Computers are magic, right?" They're not meant for me. They're meant for, like, geniuses, right? You know, "Black kids can't do math." You know, "Black kids can't do this kind of stuff," and I bought into a lot of that. I bought into a lot of that kind of stuff. But I had a two-year-old child, so I had to do something, you know? 'Cause I wasn't making enough money, and I wanted him to have a better lifestyle than I did growing up. So I took him up on it, and, you know, I shot across the bridge over into Bellevue from Seattle, and then--I don't know if you know Seattle, but in Seattle you have east side and west side, and when you go across that bridge, man, it's completely different. Extremely affluent. Very, very white. You know, as a brother back in the, you know, '90s, you couldn't be on that side if you weren't an athlete, right, or somebody else, you know, that they recognized, because if you were a black person that they didn't recognize, the cops would give you a hard time. Like, literally. They would follow you around and stuff, right? But I went over there and I interviewed, and I interviewed with, like, nine blonde-haired, blue-eyed women, man, sitting around the table. I was like, "Man, I don't know if I want to do this," and they offered me the job, you know? And I was like, "Whoa, what do I do now?" And at that same time I was actually interviewing with the fire department, and walking out of that office--I drove, like, this beat up 1984 Volvo, you know? And when I say it was beat up, I mean it was *beat up*. There was 100 and something thousand miles on it. The paint was peeling, you know? That kind of stuff, you know? I put on the best clothes that I had at that time.Zach: That was a bucket.Lionel: It was a bucket. Man, it was a buck-et. And I'm walking out, and every car in the parking lot was like Mercedes, Audis, BMWs, you know, that kind of stuff, and I was like, "I don't know, maybe I can do this." And so I accepted and started there, and struggled, man--I struggled a lot. I mean, I struggled so bad the first three months. There's a very large organization. It's called EDP Contract Services. Now I think they're called TAC Worldwide, and it's one of the largest recruiting organizations in the world. At that time, I forget exactly how many people they had, but I know that at one time I was ranked, like, something like 2000th or something out of the company of recruiters, and by the time--I had to make a decision at one point because--you know, because I was basically told that I could be pretty successful in this if I got the street out of my voice, right? So I started [?]--you know, I went home and was, like, frustrated over it, you know? And my girl at that time, she was pretty hood too, so she was like, "[BLEEP] them. You know, we can sue them. Blah, blah, blah, blah," you know? But I went to bed with my two-year-old son, you know, and I was like, "Man, I've got to do something." So I made up my mind. You know, I made up my mind that okay, well, this is what I'm gonna do, and I walked into the office the next day--I got there at 6:00 in the morning. Nobody was there. And I didn't leave until, like, 8:00 at night, and then I did that for, like, a whole year, and I became #2 in the company, and my income went up something like 300% in a year. Zach: Goodness gracious.Lionel: Mm-hmm. And so I figured out that yeah, I can do this. And then I went to--excuse me, sorry. I went to San Francisco right after that. I got recruited by a staffing firm there. I didn't like them too much, so I started my own staffing firm. We did $2.5 million in our second year of business, and that was just, like, you know, three of us, right? And then we added some people on and that kind of stuff. Then I came back to Seattle and, again, you know, got recruited by another company and became the manager for recruiting for a startup during the dot-com era. I was killing it there, then the dot-com bubble burst, and then I went to Washington Mutual as their diverse executive recruiter, and that was probably one of the worst work experiences I've ever had, 'cause what happened--what happened was they wanted this person, but one of the head people in this department didn't want this person. They didn't feel the need for a diversity executive recruiter. So they waited for her to go on maternity leave and then, behind her back, hired me, right? So my first day of work I'm walking down the hall and this woman walks up to me and she goes, "Who are you?" And I said, "Oh, I'm Lionel Lee." And she goes, "Well, what do you do?" And I said, "Well, you know, I run diversity executive recruitment here," and she just looked at me, and I got this, like--it was chilling. Like, this look was crazy, and then the next thing I know, man, like, seven months later or eight months later, you know, maybe close to a year later, you know, the whole group was disbanded and we all had to leave and, you know, go do our own thing. And it was kind of crazy too. The way that they told you was, you know, they asked you to come in for an early morning meeting. I went in for an early morning meeting and they had HR there, and they said it's disbanded.Zach: So where does Zillow come into play?Lionel: 2007 hit, man. 2007, 2008, 2009, you know, and I went through all of my money, and I had to get back to work, you know? So I joined a really small recruiting firm that was, you know, bullshit. They didn't know what they were doing. [both laugh] But then there was this other recruiting firm that I really wanted and I went and joined them, and they were amazing, and--that's one of the crazy things too, the dude that hired me--he's, like, this really young--comparatively. I think he's, like, you know, close to 40 now--Republican white dude, right? And he hired me on to the company, and I go in there and I'm on the phone the first day, and he said "Hey, Lionel, can I [?] you for a second?" And I was like, "Yeah, what's up?" And he goes, "Man, who the hell is that on the phone?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" He goes, "Do you know you sound white?" And I was like, "What?" He goes, "Yeah. When you talk to me normally, you know, we're fine, but whenever you get on the phone you sound white," and it's because of what I learned in the earlier part of my career.Zach: Code switching, man. Yeah.Lionel: I was code switching. And I told him, "Well, you know, that's how--" And he goes, "Nah, man. I don't think that's why you're successful. I would really love to see you be you. I got enough white dudes in my office. That's why I hired you." [Zach laughs] And I was like, "Oh, okay," and then I started really, like, trying to understand what just happened, and the reason I ended up here at Zillow Group--I stayed there for, like, five years, six years, right? And I ended up killing it there. I was always either #1 or #2. And the reason I ended up here is that the person who had hired me on at Washington Mutual, she became the vice president of talent acquisition here at Zillow, and she--I started my own company after a while, again, right, and she was one of my clients, and she asked me to come in, and she said, "Lionel," you know--this was, like, 2016. "Lionel, we're really trying to do this diversity thing, man, but we don't know what we're doing." You know, "Would you want to help us?" And I said, "Well, I can put something together." You know, I talked about it with them a little bit. They wanted me to do it. I couldn't dedicate time to it 'cause I had my own staffing firm at that time and my staffing firm was doing extremely well, but what happened was that it kind of grabbed a part of me that I didn't know really existed. My experience in tech as a black man was horrible. I mean, it was horrible, so I decided that, you know, by doing this I would be given an opportunity to better the experiences of other people that are underrepresented in the tech space, right? 'Cause when I was starting out, you know, there was no other. You know, there was me. There was me, and I was probably the only one that I knew with the exception of, like, one or two that worked in other agencies. But it was me, right? And it was horrible. I hated it. I mean, I couldn't--there was no way that I could tell somebody that "Yeah, this is a good day." I woke up every single day begrudging going to work, and eventually I was able to push down to the point where I didn't realize that, you know, there was a part of me that was always anxious, right? And that's when I got a chance to change, you know, within this organization, and then what I'm hoping for is that this organization will be--you know, will be, like, a beacon for others to take a look at, right? Like, "What did they do to make a difference?" Right? 'Cause we did. We changed how we are as a company. We've changed the way that we're perceived. You know, people want to come to work here, you know? That kind of thing, and, you know, the brown and black folks here are much happier now than they were. We know that because I'm very data-driven, and we took some surveys and things like that that let us know that the things we're doing are working. But that's how I ended up in this position. And I was a consultant at first, and they--you know, we talked about 20 hours a week. 20 became 40. It became 60. It became an obsession, you know? Because I--you know, I was like, "Ooh, I get a chance to--"Zach: Really move the needle in some way, yeah.Lionel: Yeah. Not just move the needle, but, you know, just--you know, we talk a lot in those kind of terms, right? Like, "move the needle," you know, that kind of stuff, and the way that I looked at it was never really like that, you know? The way that I was looking at it was, you know, "Improve the day-to-day experience of the underrepresented worker going into the tech space." That was my--that's my driver, right? The way that I describe what I do is that my job is to make sure that everybody that comes to work is happy and feels like they belong. That's my job. That is my job, and I--I don't like to say I love my job, because I don't think in that way, but I'm extremely proud of what we've done here at Zillow Group. I'm extremely proud, and I'm hoping to continue on this path and, you know, continue to make us an employer of choice.Zach: [applause sfx] I mean, what can I say? I mean, I hear you. This is incredible. Look, I have another question, but I want to get into this really quick though. You talked about some of the things that y'all are doing here and, like, they've been serving well. What are some of those things that you've been able to do at Zillow that you believe have helped to improve the sense of belonging and inclusiveness for black and brown folks? Lionel: Well, that was the thing, right? 'Cause one of the things that they had asked me to do was go out and find best practices, and the crazy thing is that there were no best practices 'cause nobody was really killing it. Nobody's numbers said that they were killing it, right? So I had to come up with my own stuff, but what that gave me was green fields. So I could do a couple things. So one of the first things that I did is I was walking through the office one day--and we had this wall of speakers, right? And the speakers--I looked at that wall, and it's a pretty big wall of all of these, you know, headshots of all of these speakers that we've had come into the office, and I was like, "Damn, every single person on there is white." Like, literally. Like, every single person on there is white except for one brother that we had, and of course he was a football player, right?Zach: Of course. Of course.Lionel: Right? And I was like, "Come on, man." You know? So I changed that immediately. That was one of my goals, to change that, and I did that. You know, we brought in people like Van Jones. We brought in people that were from the Islamic community. We brought in people from the Latinx community. Totally changed that whole landscape, right? And then we started talking about, like, just simple things like events, you know? Because that's one of the things that tech companies are known for, right? We have these crazy-ass parties where everybody has a good time, but not everybody gets down like that, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't grow up that way, you know? I don't go out and--you know, I'm not one of those people that like to [imbibe?] in that way and that's how I party. That's not how I do. I like the music. I like to dance. I like that kind of stuff, you know? And I'm not saying that we're all the same, but there are certain foundational pieces that make us a little bit the same. [?], right? And so we started throwing, like, parties, but I would tell the dudes that came in--I started going out and creating relationships with external organizations that were representative of underrepresented groups within our company. So we had professional organizations that I went and made agreements with, and then they would come in and they would throw the parties. And they asked me, they said, "Well, how black do you want this to be?" [both laugh] And I was like, "I want it to be as black as you want to make it."Zach: Right. It needs to be black black, with a Q.Lionel: It needs to be, 'cause you have people here from, you know, predominantly black areas, right? You've got a kid that grew up in a predominantly black area. He goes to an HBCU, you know, does really well there, and then all of a sudden he's thrown into this, right, where he's one of--I think we're at, like, 9% or something like that, right? We're still improving in that area, right? And then he's just got to, like, hang out and do what these guys do? You know, why don't we give him some of what he had back home? You know, why don't we create a sense of community for him, you know what I mean? And we did that, and then we started taking a look at some of the things--and it's all from my own experience, right? One of the things that really bothered me is, like, when all of the brothers was getting shot, you know, I felt completely alone in the office, and I had nobody to talk to about it, right? And what we did is we started--we created a forum here where people can--when things like that happen, for example when the El Paso shooting happened recently, you know, we had a forum here inside the office where people from the Latinx community could get together, along with people that were not from that community but allies that were in positions of power and strength here at the company, we all got together and we had a conversation, and we, you know, basically video-taped everybody in from all the other offices, and we had this, you know, straight up conversation about what this feels like, and that made a difference in people's experience, right? And then we talked about "How do we do our recruiting?" We started taking a look at--I started taking a look at how we do the recruiting in the first place, right? Many of our people that come on board come on from internships, so how do we effect that? Well, we start creating more relationships with organizations that are representative of us. So we started a relationship with NSBE, the National Society of Black Engineers. We started a relationship with SHPE, Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, right? And then we put into practice talking to the CTO, the chief technology officer, who is just--you know, he's cool, he's just really cool, and I gave him an a-ha moment when I took him to AfroTech, like, two years ago.Zach: Oh, yeah. Shout-out AfroTech. Shout-out Blavity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Lionel: Yeah, by Blavity, right? And I took him--he was one of the only white dudes there, and I was like, "Look, you know, I'm gonna introduce you to some people. You're gonna have some good conversations, and then we're gonna talk about it afterwards," and he was like, "Cool," but he walks in and there's THOUSANDS of black people, man. Where people were telling him, "Oh," we can't be found, which is bullshit. Zach: It is, man. No, it is. It is so annoying, Lionel. Well, it's annoying and it's insulting and it's racist, right? So you said, "Well, we can't find this talent"--like, we're all over, and, like, look, AfroTech is an obvious one, but man, there are also, like, a lot of, like, local, like, groups, right? Like, there's all--if you go to any major city, there's some grassroots coding group that is black and brown, right? And honestly, even if you just take the time and look in the PWIs that you're recruiting, if you just look one more time, they're there too. Like, we're here. Lionel: Right, right. So what we did--he saw that, and we came back and he was like, "What do we do?" And I said, "Well, let's figure out some strategies," and what we started doing is we started making--'cause Boeing has doing been this forever, but Boeing's been going to NSBE and making offers on the spot, right? And so it was like, "Okay, well, let's do that," and we started doing that, and we started increasing our numbers because of that, right? And then those kids that were coming in as interns, we started converting them to full-time, and then on top of it their experience as workers here is real cool because, like, I'll walk by, you know, and I'll talk to 'em and be like, "Hey, what's happening, brother?" You know? "How you doing?" And they'll look at me like--Zach: Even that alone, which is small, right? It's huge to them.Lionel: It's small. It's really, really small, but it's so important, right? People gotta feel like they feel belong. People gotta feel like they're appreciated, right? That's what has to happen, and that's what we started doing. That's one of the things. I could go on and on, man. We've done--when I say I'm proud of the work that we've done here, I'm extremely proud of the work that we've done here.Zach: Rightfully so.Lionel: Yeah. The executives have been fully on board. You know, we also do this other thing where we understand the C-level, the C-Suite, has to be on board. So we do a thing called the MB Learning Series, which is twice a month. You know, we get together, myself, the senior VP of community and culture, and some other key individuals that are well-versed in this space. We'll get together with a bunch of people from the C-Suite, and we'll sit down and we'll talk for about an hour, an hour and a half, about whatever it is, right? It could be a current event that has impacted an underrepresented group, or it could be about something that they've encountered themselves, right, that they want to know more about, right? So we work with them, and they get to learn, they get to learn what's happening, and it changes their perspective and it changes the way that they go out and approach things and make decisions, right? We have our CEO--our CEO is, like, one of the only CEOs where, you know, in his signature file, you know, he has his pronouns, right? Because that's important, you know, to understand that not everybody identifies in that way. Understanding that people identify differently is extremely important, 'cause it puts you in a different place in your learning, in your journey, and that's how we got here. I mean, there's--you know, I could go on and on, but that would take up your whole segment.Zach: No, no, no. This is great, and look, Lionel, we'll just have you back. It's not a problem, man. We'll just have you--[both laugh] You'll just come on back. But it's interesting, really quickly, about the pronoun point, right? So, you know, some research that Living Corporate has been doing, you know what I'm saying, on our whitepaper--if you check us out on the website, you know, you'll see us on there, and we talk about the fact that, you know, 14% of millennials identify as trans or non-binary, right? So it's a real statistic.Lionel: Oh, it's a real statistic. It's real. And, you know, there's so many different groups of other people that do not feel like they belong. You know, they just--you know, especially with the current climate in our country today. That kind of stuff, the divisiveness of our country today, and, you know, we just--we want to make sure, in our company--and we've been voted, like, one of the best places to work forever, right? ["ow" sfx] Forever. But what was not being considered was that not everybody felt that way. It was not the best place to work for everyone. We found that out through our data, you know? We pulled some data that showed us that. So our goal is to make this the best place to work for everyone, and we don't--I mean, we look at everyone and make sure that they're taken care of. And we started our ERGs here two years ago. We dedicated a lot of resources to it. It has its own program manager that manages everything. That's his full-time gig. That's what he does to make sure that, you know, they're good. You know, we have all of the infrastructure in place for that. They're fully capitalized. Yeah. We do--you know, we do a lot of stuff here that a lot of companies don't do, and I think a lot of it just has to do with the fact that we've been following best practices. 'Cause, like I said, we didn't find any, so we had to create our own.Zach: No, that's incredible, and you're absolutely--this is the thing. It's so interesting because as commercialized and, I'm gonna say it, colonized as diversity and inclusion has become, right, like, as a space, when it comes to actually delivering and doing the work, we're still very much so in our infancy, right? Like, there's not a blueprint for anything.Lionel: No. No, there isn't, and that's--yeah, I would agree with you that there is a lot of stuff in our space that, you know, I kind of, like, look at three or four times too, you know? Like, "Really? That's what we're gonna do now?" [Zach laughs] But that's the thing, you know? Let's be creative, you know? Let's figure it out, and for me it was very personal, you know? That's why, you know, a lot of the stuff that we did here was me imagining me, you know, sitting there at work. You know, what would I want? You know, when I first started in this stuff, what would I want? I'd want to be able to come into work and feel like I can be the best me possible, right? But I don't have to, like, play by nobody else's rules about how I talk, how I walk, and all of those kinds of things. I don't believe that people should or can bring their whole selves to work. I don't believe in that. I think that, you know, there's some shit you need to leave at home, right? [both laugh] I don't believe--you know, like, my grandmother used to tell me, you know, "Tell some. Keep a lot." You know what I mean? You don't need people knowing everything, right?Zach: Yeah, keep going.Lionel: You should be able to be comfortable when you go to work. You shouldn't have to code switch as much. You shouldn't, you know, have to wonder about your place there as much, you know what I mean?Zach: I do. You're 100% right, yeah. Lionel: Yeah, that's what we did. Zach: You said, "Share a little bit. Keep a lot." But you're right though, and some of that, Lionel, is cultural, right? So, like, I would say black and brown folks--and I'll just speak for my experience. Like, I was raised, you know, you keep your business to yourself, right? Like, there's certain things, where as then, you know, there's stereotypes that white folks love to just tell everything they got going on. They'll talk about the medication they're taking, if they're depressed, you know? They'll share everything. But you're right, like, I'm not tripping on--I don't necessarily--my quote-unquote "whole self," like, I don't have to do that, but I should feel comfortable--right, I should not feel uncomfortable and dread going to work or feel like, man, just so otherized to the point where I can't even function.Lionel: Exactly, and being othered is real, and it's difficult for people to see that, you know? Like, "Oh, we're paying you," you know? "I don't know why you don't feel appreciated," you know? It's that kind of stuff, and it's like, "Man." You know, if I'm coming into work and I can't wait to get home--not because, you know, I just don't want to be at work for whatever reason, but just because I don't feel comfortable and when I get home is when I feel comfortable? Or I'm dreading going to a company event because I don't feel comfortable? You know, that's a problem. That's a problem. That's why there's more brothers and sisters that are consultants than full-time employees in the tech space.Zach: Man... listen. Oh, my goodness. So look, Lionel, you gonna have to come back, because I've got, like, four more topics we can talk about, [laughs] but you're 100% right, right? Like, you think about, like, it's these temporary, transient roles, right, that give you space, but then also, like--they give you space to kind of move around and not get too uncomfortable in these environments. Man, not to mention the pattern where I'm seeing a lot of black and brown folks are in these, like, non-client-facing positions. Like, they'll typically in, like, the security tech roles, but let me not even--let me not step on too many toes today. Let's keep going though. I want to respect your time. Let's get into how you and I connected. So of course, you know, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm active active on there, but I seen you on there, and you sent me a link about a project you're working on, which really got my attention, and I'd love to--I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that as well as--and just kind of your passion and interest as to why you're doing the work that you're doing on it.Lionel: Yeah. I think you're referring to the microaggressions survey that we sent out.Zach: That's right. Lionel: So Rebekah Bastian is the VP of Community and Culture here. She's my boss, right? I have a direct line to her and then a [?] line to the chief people officer. She and I sit right next to each other. It's an open kind of space. And she's a contributing writer for Forbes. So she was writing this thing on microaggressions, and I was like, "Let me read that," and I read it, and it talked about microaggressions towards women, right, and more microaggressions towards women, and I was like, "Man, that's crazy," you know? Because we suffer from microaggressions. And she was like, "You do, I know that." And I was like, "Yeah, I know you know that, but, you know, there's no data around it. Why don't we do our own survey?" You know, 'cause we couldn't find no data, right? We did the research and whatever, and she was like, "Yeah, I would love to write something on that, but, you know, I can't find any data," and I said, "Well, let's create our own data, you know?" So she put a survey together, and I sent it out to my network, which is pretty broad, and then many of my--that's one thing I want to thank everybody for, including yourself, you know? Many of them sent them out to their networks too. Like, "Hey, you know, this is happening. Let's talk about this." Right? And yeah, I came back and--I think we're gonna try and do this, like, yearly, and try to go even deeper, 'cause I think that it was a great introduction, but I think that we could have covered a couple areas that, you know, people really don't want to cover. But it's important, right? 'Cause I know that I suffer for them still today on a daily basis. I have to check somebody in a meeting or, you know, I also have to be mindful about certain things, right, you know, that they don't have to, you know? When I say them, I mean, like, white folks that are in my same position or at the same level that I'm at, right? And yeah, we still go through it, and it's difficult. You know, it's difficult, and we had to put that information together ourselves 'cause we couldn't find any.Zach: Well, to that point though, why do you think that I&D programs--so I have a bevy of my own theories, right, but why do you think, when we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, we don't zoom in on black male or brown male experiences specifically?Lionel: I don't think people really want that wake-up call yet, you know what I mean? I think that people want to imagine that "Hey," you know, they got to this particular spot in their career, you know, they're making this particular amount of money, you know, they should be happy, right? But they don't know that for a lot of us--I mean a lot of us, man, a lot of us--you know, we have to deal with [BLEEP] on a daily basis that they never have to deal with, they never have to deal with. But nobody really wants to put light on that, you know? 'Cause then that would mean that we have to do some more work, and I think people don't want to do that, you know? I think that, you know, people try and find the easiest and fastest way to get to a certain point, right? But when we're talking about something that's this complicated and this nuanced, it's gonna take some work. It's gonna take some serious work, and--what is it--the implicit bias trainings and all of those kinds of things, you know, that's, like, the tip of the iceberg. Nobody wants to.Zach: No, they don't. And it's aggravating too, because even--so I've talked to--so in my current job, and then at previous jobs too, but, like, I have mentors here, and I've [?]--you know, what I find frustrating about us always running into implicit bias is that it makes the presumption that all bias is accidental or unconscious, right? And it's like, "No." Some of y'all actively don't want black and brown people here. Like, come on. It is 20--it is the age of our Beyonce, 2019. We know the deal. [both laugh] We know where people align politically. Like, more than ever we have direct insight into political idealogies, beliefs, and points of view on race, gender, sex, religion, sexuality. Like, we know all these things, so, like, let's not act like everything is "Oh, I stumbled across this racist thing." Like, come on. That's not the reality. So let me ask you this as we kind of wrap up. What are some of the challenges that you've come across as a black executive leader within an I&D space? 'Cause you're the second person. You're only the second person in one of these positions that I've met that is a black man. So you're in this position, right? Typically I see folks in this position are white women and maybe even white women who identiy as LGBTQ, right? As a black man, what does influence and coalition-building look like in your position?Lionel: Influence and coalition-building in my position? Well, one is--you know, one, you've got to have allies. I don't believe that we're in a position right now, that we have the power right now, to be able to make the change that we need to make without powerful allies, right? But at the same time, those powerful allies are working with biases themselves, so you need to make sure that you're training them up, mentoring up with them, to make sure that when they are supporting you that they're supporting you effectively and they know where it's coming from. I agree with you in many ways that, yeah, I don't necessarily think--well, let me change that. I don't believe that bias is a strong enough word for one thing. Two, I don't believe that it is all implicit. I do think that some people are just that way, and they just believe, you know, all of the propaganda and rhetoric that has been going on in the United States forever about us, right? And coalition-building really means getting rid of some of that, you know? Doing the, you know, behavioral change and thought change is important, you know? That kind of thing has to happen before people can really try to support you, because they have to understand that they are being affected, and their actions are being affected, by things that they've been taught for most of their lives in the United States, you know? The United States, man, we're--this is a country built on racism. This is a country that's, you know, built on the backs of us, you know? Whether you're Asian, Latino, Native-American, you know, that's what this country is built on. [to this day sfx]Zach: Straight up.Lionel: To this day.Zach: To this day!Lionel: To this day, right? To this day, and we have to get to a place where we recognize that. We have to get to a place where we're not okay with it. It is something that we're ashamed of, but it's something that we're gonna admit, right? That this is what's going on with us, and we need to move forward from here. That's coalition-building, you know? Getting people to really understand the mistakes that were made. Fess up to them. Own up to them. Make some changes, right? [?]Zach: [Flex bomb sfx] Man, I love it. And, you know, this is the thing--you're the first person who I've had a conversation with who talks about the fact that coalition-building is not only bringing things in but also pushing things away, right? It's both. I love that. I love that. Well, look, let's do this. If you had three points of advice for any leader seeking to specifically recruit and engage black men, what would they be?Lionel: Make sure that what you want to invite them to is welcoming of black men. Do that, right? I mean, don't ask me to come to your house if your house is falling apart. Don't do that. Like, make sure your outline's right first, right? Make sure that you work with recruiting to help them to understand that, yes, they are out there, you're just gonna have to work a little bit harder. Make sure that you work with your executive staff to make sure that they're on board with whatever programs that you put in place so that you can make sure that you keep people once they get there. Zach: I love it. Just like that. And listen, y'all, you heard Lionel's advice, so we looking at you now. So you're gonna come around trying to invite black and brown men to your organizations, and we're looking back at you like [haha sfx]. Look, don't play yourself. Pay attention. This has been great, Lionel. Before we get out of here, any parting words or shout-outs?Lionel: No, man. Thank you for having me. You know, we've got a lot of work to do. You know, we're nowhere near where we could be, and a lot of this is about the economic divide, the wealth gap, and it's just gonna get wider and wider and wider. We've got to get on, you know, our bikes, man. We've got to get to work, you know, 'cause--we've got to get to work. We've got to get to work.Zach: Well, they're projecting that the median wealth of black families from a household perspective will be zero dollars, like, by 2050 or so, so you're absolutely right. We gotta--man, Lionel, this has been--like, no shade to everybody else, y'all, this has been top two dopest conversations we've had on Living Corporate. Thank you so much for being a guest. We very much so want to have you back. We'll talk about that offline. Until next time, y'all, this has been Zach. You've been listening to Lionel Lee at the Zillow Group. Make sure you check out all of his information. Links in the show notes. Catch y'all next time. Peace.
Josh concludes his interview with Jojo Ruba, former staff member of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform and Executive Director of Faith Beyond Belief. After talking about the mission of Faith Beyond Belief, Josh asks a follow-up question from the previous episode, where Jojo made a comment about pro-lifers needing to be "more offensive." Josh asks, "How can you tell whether you should be more offensive or less offensive when talking to pro-choice people?" Afterwards Jojo and Josh answer a listener mail question from Mark in Hawaii: "I'm a new listener, and I'm trying to figure out exactly what your views are regarding human development and when a person comes into being and should be granted human rights. Most importantly and perhaps most difficult, when do you believe God endues a body/soul carrier with a soul in human fetal development and what are your reasons for that?" The episode includes a discussion of the Equal Rights Argument that Josh and the Justice For All team have been using lately, and what Jojo and Josh think about animal rights.
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