Podcasts about reluctant businessman

Send us a textSummary: Victor and I talk all about urban manufacturing and creativity in Raleigh. This interview was recorded on September 5th, 2024, before Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina.________________________________________________________Sponsor: This show is supported by the Top Five Newsletter. If you want a simple and to-the-point update on Raleigh commercial development you can subscribe to the Top Five. It's free if you want it to be!________________________________________________________Big Take Aways:- How constraints breed creativity.- How when you start a business young, you have everything to lose.- The importance of understanding “enough”.________________________________________________________About Victor: Victor Lytvinenko and Sarah Yarborough started Raleigh Denim Workshop in 2007 in their hometown of Raleigh, NC and were inducted to the CFDA(Council of Fashion Designers of America) in 2013. The husband-wife team learned the techniques of traditional American jeansmaking through seeking out a series of informal apprenticeships with factory workers, patternmakers, and mechanics throughout the state. Raleigh Denim Workshop's products are all produced with a focus on design, process, material, and craft. The brand has been featured in numerous publications including New York Times, Vogue, and Wallpaper Magazine and sold worldwide at high-end boutiques across the country, London, Amsterdam and Tokyo. Sarah and Victor have collaborated on projects with OMA, Patagonia, Kate Spade, John Patrick Organic, Pilsner Urquell – exhibited at Art Basil Miami, and has been designing furniture and upholstery with Bernhardt Design for many years. Connect with Victor: Website | LinkedIn | Instagram Mentioned in the show:Council of Fashion Designers of America[Book] The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living [Book] Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business[Book] Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman [Book] The Braindead Megaphone Other interviews with Victor:Clever PodcastNice Work Podcast________________________________________________________Sponsor: This show is supported by the Top Five Newsletter. If you want a simple and to-the-point update on Raleigh commercial development you can subscribe to the Top Five. It's free if you want it to be!Show Notes: Welcome to Dirt NC where we talk all about the places and spaces of North Carolina and the people who make them awesome, I am your host Jed Byrne.Throughout my career in engineering, construction, finance, and development, I have covered just about all sides of the land use ecosystem. This show creates an opportunity for me to share what I have learned with you as well as i

G2 is a growth stage VC investor with $1B in assets under management and 30 portfolio companies. They invest $15-50M into companies at inflection points generating at least $10M in revenue. Their focus is the nexus of sustainable technology and traditional industries. Brook has over two decades of experience as an entrepreneur, executive, and investor. Before G2, he spent ten years at Kleiner Perkins where he co-managed the $1B Green Growth Fund as a Senior Partner. In this episode, you'll learn these four important takeaways and much more. What his top two picks are for gaps in the climate venture funding lifecycle How they build long-term relationships before investing Why companies often die of indigestion not starvation What L-theanine can do for sleep and dreams

Chapter 1 Dissect the inner meaning of Let My People Go SurfingLet My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman is a book written by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of outdoor clothing and gear company, Patagonia. The book provides an inside look into Chouinard's journey of building a successful business while staying true to his values of environmental sustainability and social responsibility. It discusses his early days as a climber and the origins of Patagonia, the company's commitment to quality and environmental consciousness, and its unique philosophy of work and life balance. Chouinard also shares lessons learned from his experiences and offers insights into his approach to leadership and innovative business practices.Overall, Let My People Go Surfing offers a compelling narrative of how a small, environmentally-focused company grew into a global brand without compromising its core values, and encourages readers to rethink their own approach to business and sustainability.Chapter 2 Does Let My People Go Surfing A Good Book deserve a Read?Yes, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard is widely regarded as a good book. It is considered inspiring and insightful, offering lessons on business, leadership, and environmental activism. Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, shares his personal journey and the philosophy behind the success and sustainability of his company. Many readers appreciate the book's emphasis on how to create a responsible business that aligns with one's values. However, it ultimately depends on your own interests and preferences.Chapter 3 Synopsis of Let My People Go Surfing "Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman" is a memoir written by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the outdoor clothing company, Patagonia. The book provides insights into Chouinard's journey as an entrepreneur and his commitment to building a sustainable business.Chouinard starts by sharing his love for nature and how it led him to pursue activities like climbing and surfing. He then details his early ventures into business, such as selling climbing gear out of the back of his car. These experiences set the foundation for Patagonia, a company built on a passion for outdoor sports and a focus on environmental responsibility.The book also delves into Chouinard's unique management philosophy, which emphasizes trust, freedom, and employee empowerment. He believes in letting his employees have the freedom to pursue outdoor activities and take breaks when necessary, as he believes this ultimately boosts productivity and happiness.Furthermore, Chouinard discusses some of the challenges Patagonia has faced, including the need to balance business growth with environmental conservation. He shares stories of the company's initiatives to reduce waste, use sustainable materials, and advocate for environmental causes.Throughout the book, Chouinard emphasizes the importance of taking action to protect the planet. He calls on individuals and businesses to make environmentally conscious choices and to be accountable for their impact on the environment."Let My People Go Surfing" serves as both a business memoir and a manifesto for environmental activism. Chouinard's story is one of passion, innovation, and a commitment to doing business the right way – with respect for the planet and its people.Chapter 4 Biography of Let My People Go Surfing's Author The book "Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman" was written by Yvon...

Brought to you by Productroadmap.ai—AI to connect your roadmaps to revenue | Eppo—Run reliable, impactful experiments | OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster—Tim Holley is VP of Product at Etsy where he leads the Etsy buyer experience. With a tenure spanning more than a decade, Tim has seen the company through many transitions (both in culture, in leadership, and in growth), and his team's product changes have had a significant impact on buyer retention, conversion, and global expansion. In this episode, we discuss:• Lessons from navigating corporate culture shifts• How Etsy capitalized on the explosive growth of e-commerce during the pandemic• Marketplace learnings: when to focus on supply vs. demand, optimizing conversion, and more• How Etsy solves the “graduation problem”• Tips for hiring product managers—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/inside-etsys-product-growth-and-marketplace-evolution-tim-holley-vp-of-product/#transcript—Where to find Tim Holley:• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timholley/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Tim's background(04:23) Tim's time away at SoulCycle and what led him back to Etsy(06:34) Lessons from the 2017 culture shift at Etsy(12:15) Etsy's guiding principles (13:32) How Etsy adapted to increased demand during the early days of mask mandates(16:38) What Tim learned about managing stress with his team during the pandemic(18:46) Lessons from building a thriving marketplace(21:47) Prioritization at Etsy(24:37) Supply constraint vs. demand constraint (28:43) Conversion wins(33:27) Experimentation at Etsy(37:58) Acquisition and top-of-funnel tactics(39:44) The seller referral program(40:33) Etsy's habit loop framework(44:11) How they set themselves apart from other marketplaces(51:23) Retaining sellers (53:23) The defunct Etsy studio(55:18) Running the product team(57:20) Who the decision maker is (1:01:20) What Tim looks for when hiring PMs (1:03:03) A reflection exercise Tim does with his teams(1:05:08) Lightning round—Referenced:• Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/• SoulCycle: https://www.soul-cycle.com/• Inside the Revolution at Etsy: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silverman.html• Ronny Kohavi on Lenny's Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-ab-testing-ronny-kohavi-airbnb-microsoft-amazon/• How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business – Part 3: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-kickstart-and-scale-a-marketplace-911• Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World: https://www.amazon.com/Team-Teams-Rules-Engagement-Complex/dp/1591847486• Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman: https://www.amazon.com/Let-People-Surfing-Education-Businessman-Including/dp/0143109677• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Broker-Robert-Moses-Fall/dp/0394720245• Yellowstone on Paramount+: https://www.paramountnetwork.com/shows/yellowstone• Nara Baby app: https://naraorganics.com/nara-baby-tracker• Huckleberry app: https://huckleberrycare.com/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

W tym odcinku rozmawiam z Agą Biedalak z amsterdamskiego biura Space&Matter na temat ekonomii obwarzanka w architekturze. Aga nie jest typową projektantką, bo nie projektuje i nie kreśli, ale doradza, konsultuje i obmyśla strategie związane z procesem projektowym. Promuje i implementuje rozwiązania odpowiedzialne środowiskowo i społecznie. Dodatkowo zajmuje się alternatywnymi modelami własności, finansowania i zarządzania budynkami i gruntami. Jej praca jest mocno powiązana z procesem współprojektowania i partycypacji. Czym zajmuje się "Research and Innovation Lead"? Jak wprowadzać innowacyjne rozwiązania w architekturze i budownictwie? Czym jest ekonomia obwarzanka i w jaki sposób Amsterdam wdraża tę strategię? Czym jest projektowanie odpowiedzialne środowiskowo i społecznie? Jakie są konsekwencje miejskich eksperymentów? Skąd czerpać obwarzankową wiedze i ekologiczne inspiracje? Linki do wspomnianych projektów, publikacji i inicjatyw: Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL): https://doughnuteconomics.org/ Amsterdam Donut Coalitie: https://amsterdamdonutcoalitie.nl/ European Community Land Trust Network: https://www.spaceandmatter.nl/work/european-community-land-trust-network https://www.clteurope.org/ Amsterdam Policy: Circular economy: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/policy/sustainability/circular-economy/ The Doughnut for Urban Development: https://www.home.earth/doughnut De Ceuvel Circularity Playground, Amsterdam: https://deceuvel.nl/en/ https://www.spaceandmatter.nl/work/de-ceuvel https://www.metabolic.nl/projects/de-ceuvel/ Leyla Acaroglu: https://www.leylaacaroglu.com/writing-by-leyla//tools-for-systems-thinkers-the-6-fundamental-concepts-of-systems-thinking Książki: Ekonomia Obwarzanka. Siedem sposobów myślenia o ekonomii XXI wieku; Kate Raworth, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej Obwarzanek po polsku; praca zbiorcza, Wydawnictwo Krytyki Politycznej Let My People Go Surfing. The Education of a Reluctant Businessman; Yvon Chouinard, Penguin USA Wsparcie dla podcastu: https://patronite.pl/architekturapowinna Moi Drodzy, miłego słuchania i czytania o obwarzanku! Klaudia Lachcik

Do you love designing every part of a home but the kitchen? It can be really challenging from a technical point of view. If you're getting requests to design kitchens, how can you work around these challenges? Here's a solution: collaborate with a kitchen and bath expert like today's guest, Lesa Taylor! As a Certified Kitchen and Bath Designer (CKBD) from the National Kitchen and Bath Association, Lesa solves the most difficult kitchen and bath challenges, by providing personalized and completely custom one-of-a-kind kitchen and bath solutions for clients' unique needs, desires, and lifestyle. She is intensely thorough and invests in every project as if it was a design for her own home. Her kitchen and bath designs have been featured on HGTV 100 Day Dream Home! ***

What I learned from reading Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words.This episode is brought to you by Tiny: Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Tiny provides quick and straightforward exits for Founders.  ----This episode is brought to you by Meter: Meter is the easiest way for your business to get fast, secure, and reliable internet and WiFi in any commercial space. Go to meter.com/founders ----Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best and listen to episode 293 David Senra: Passion and Pain ----[3:48] He gave an extraordinary amount of thought to how best to use our fleeting time.[4:24] He imagined what reality lacked and set out to remedy it.[7:27] Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview Video and My Notes.[10:02] Edwin Land episodes:Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264)Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid(Founders #40)[13:23] Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.[14:10] One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock. (Founders #260)[15:42] Read Jeff Bezos's shareholder letters in book form: Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos or for free online: Amazon Investor Relations(Founders #282)[19:45] If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. (Founders #297)[30:47] How important product is based on how much time you spend with it: People are going to be spending two, three hours a day interacting with these machines—longer than they spend in the car.[39:02] Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs and the Creation of Appleby Michael Moritz. (Founders #76)[40:32] The real big thing is: if you're going to make something, it doesn't take any more energy—and rarely does it take more money—to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time. And a willingness to do so, a willingness to persevere until it's really great.[45:07] Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull [45:31] Steve's enthusiasm kept him writing check after check to Pixar, ultimately investing some $60 million.[47:47] It is better to have fewer people even if it means doing less. Let's build our company slowly and carefully.[53:36] I'm not so dominant that I can't listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don't listen, don't survive long. — Driven From Within by Michael Jordan (Founders #213)[54:40] You never achieve what you want without falling on your face a few times in the process of getting there.[1:00:11] There wasn't a hierarchy of ideas that mapped onto the hierarchy of the organization.[1:03:33] Don't be a career. The enemy of most dreams and intuitions, and one of the most dangerous and stifling concepts ever invented by humans, is the “Career.” A career is a concept for how one is supposed to progress through stages during the training for and practicing of your working life. There are some big problems here. First and foremost is the notion that your work is different and separate from the rest of your life. If you are passionate about your life and your work, this can't be so. They will become more or less one. This is a much better way to live one's life.[1:05:11] Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.[1:05:58] Think of your life as a rainbow arcing across the horizon of this world. You appear, have a chance to blaze in the sky, then you disappear.[1:09:27] In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208)[1:10:52] Much of it is also drive and passion—hard work makes up for a lot.[1:13:28] A risk-taking creative environment on the product side required a fiscally conservative environment on the business side.[1:13:57] You've got to choose what you put your love into really carefully.[1:14:38] A remarkably consistent set of values that Steve held dear: Life is short; don't waste it. Tell the truth. Technology should enhance human creativity. Process matters. Beauty matters. Details matter. The world we know is a human creation—and we can push it forward.[1:19:24] Steve Jobs speaking to Apple employees (Video) [1:29:48] Apple is the world's premier bridge builder between mere mortals and the exploding world of high technology.[1:30:14] Steve's favorite quote: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle[1:32:29] The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley by Leslie Berlin. (Founders #166)[1:42:27] That's been the most important lesson I've learned in business: that the dynamic range of people dramatically exceeds things you encounter in the rest of our normal lives—and to try to find those really great people who really love what they do. [1:43:00] Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Productsby Leander Kahney. (Founders #178)[1:47:27] It's a circus world, and you never know what's around the next corner.[1:53:40] Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever. (Founders #219)[2:01:00] All glory is fleeting.----Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can ask me questions directly and listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes.----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----I use Readwise to organize and remember everything I read. You can try Readwise for 60 days for free here.  ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from having lunch with Sam Zell and reading Zeckendorf: The Autobiography of The man Who Played a Real-Life Game of Monopoly and Won the Largest Real Estate Empire in History by William Zeckendorf. This episode is brought to you by Meter: Meter is the easiest way for your business to get fast, secure, and reliable internet and WiFi in any commercial space. ----This episode is brought to you by Tiny: Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Tiny provides quick and straightforward exits for Founders.  ----[27:31] Start of episode on Zeckendorf's autobiography[27:44] 26 years of work was now moving down the chute.[28:36] The secret of any great project is to keep it moving, keep it from losing momentum.[34:55] If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. — Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. (Founders #297)[36:21] Zeckendorf: Revisiting the legacy of a master builder[45:08] This ruthless industry has created far more bankruptcies than it has billionaires. — Risk Game: Self Portrait of an Entrepreneur by Francis Greenburger. (Founders #243)[48:49] If you want to know whether you are destined to be a success or a failure in life, you can easily find out. The test is simple and it is infallible: Are you able to save money? If not, drop out. You will lose. You may think not, but you will lose as sure as you live. The seed of success is not in you. — James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest by Michael P. Malone.[53:20] I brought energy and drive. I became the chief enthusiast.[1:08:42] I was also deeply in debt. Never, except for rare moments, have I ever had my head very far above the financial water and never have I Iet this trouble me.[1:10:51] The importance to me of being on the heights was that in an hour I could achieve what previously would've taken a year or more of effort to perform.[1:11:13] One way to succeed is by aiding and supporting the position of others through new or ingenious ideas or projects. This usefulness to others is in large part the reason for my own success.[1:14:44] Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel by Sam Zell. (Founders #269)[1:15:04] The Invisible Billionaire: Daniel Ludwig by Jerry Shields. (Founders #292)[1:21:28] The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw [1:25:52] More businesses die from indigestion than starvation. — The HP Way: How Bill Hewlett and I Built Our Company by David Packard. (Founders #291)[1:29:23] Wisdom is prevention. –Charlie Munger + Be hard to kill. —Paul Graham (Founders #275)Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can ask me questions directly and listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes.----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----I use Readwise to organize and remember everything I read. You can try Readwise for 60 days for free here.  ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

What I learned from rereading Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard.This episode is brought to you by: Tiny: Tiny is the easiest way to sell your business. Tiny provides quick and straightforward exits for Founders.  ----This episode is brought to you by Hampton: Hampton is a highly vetted membership community for entrepreneurs, founders and CEOs. Join the private network for high-growth founders.----Follow one of my favorite podcasts Invest Like The Best !----[3:45] One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is: If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing.”[4:32] The original intent for writing Let My People Go Surfing was for it to be a philosophical manual for the employees of Patagonia. We have always considered Patagonia an experiment in doing business in unconventional ways.[7:48] MeatEater Podcast #188 Yvon Chouinard on Belonging to Nature[7:55] The first part of our mission statement, “Make the best product,” is the cornerstone of our business philosophy. “Make the best” is a difficult goal. It doesn't mean “among the best” or the “best at a particular price point.” It means “make the best,” period.[9:58] When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I'll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can't be sold on its merits. I'd be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. I'd much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition.[14:32] We were like a wild species living on the edge of an ecosystem: adaptable, resilient, and tough.[14:49] I believe the way towards mastery of any endeavor is to work towards simplicity. The more you know, the less you need.[15:49] The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry[17:59] Complexity is often a sure sign that the functional needs have not been solved. Take the difference between the Ferrari and the Cadillac of the 1960s. The Ferrari's clean lines suites its high-performance aims. The Cadillac really didn't have any functional aims. It didn't have steering, suspension, aerodynamics, or brakes appropriate to its immense horsepower. All it had to do was convey the idea of power, creature comfort, of a living room floating down the highway to the golf course. So, to a basically ugly shape were added all manner of useless chrome: fins at the back, breasts at the front. Once you lose the discipline of functionality as a design guidepost, the imagination runs amok. Once you design a monster, it tends to look like one too.[21:29] Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight. (Founders #186)[28:02] Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys by Joe Coulombe. (Founders #188)[28:55] There are different ways to address a new idea or project. If you take the conservative scientific route, you study the problem in your head or on paper until you are sure there is no chance of failure. However, you have taken so long that the competition has already beaten you to market. The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process.[31:33] Can a company that wants to make the best-quality outdoor clothing in the world be the size of Nike? Can a ten-table, three-star French restaurant retain its third star when it adds fifty tables? The question haunted me throughout the 1980s as Patagonia evolved.[35:47] I was still wondering why I was really in business.[38:17] We had to begin to make all of our decisions as though we would be in business for a hundred years.[39:02] Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony by Akio Morita. (Founders #102)[39:13] Jeff Bezos on what he learned from Akio Morita and how it influenced the building of Amazon:"Right after World War II, Akio Morita, the guy who founded Sony, made the mission for Sony that they were going to make Japan known for quality.And you have to remember, this was a time when Japan was known for cheap, copycat products. And Morita didn't say we're going to make Sony known for quality. He said we're going to make Japan known for quality. He chose a mission for Sony that was bigger than Sony.And when we talk about earth's most customer-centric company, we have a similar idea in mind. We want other companies to look at Amazon and see us as a standard-bearer for obsessive focus on the customer as opposed to obsessive focus on the competitor."[42:13] Keep your company in Yarak: Super alert, hungry but not weak, and ready to hunt.[42:45] Against The Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson (Founders #200)[44:02] Jay Z: What am I here for? To be second best? I don't think so.[44:13] The more you know, the less you need.[51:33] Teach, inform, and inspire. Do so relentlessly and the sales will follow.[53:04] I was taught by some wise people that if you manage the top line of your company-your customers, your products, your strategy-then the bottom line will follow. But if you manage the bottom line of the company and forget about the rest, you'll eventually hit the wall because you'll take your eyes off the prize. — Steve JobsIn the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World by Rama Dev Jager and Rafael Ortiz. (Founders #208)[56:03] Quality, not price, has the highest correlation with business success. Whenever we are faced with a serious business decision, the answer almost always is to increase quality.[56:59] Huberman Lab Podcast[57:19]  I cannot imagine any company that wants to make the best product of its kind being staffed by people who do not care passionately about the product.[57:39] One of my all time favorite quotes:A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.[58:56] You should not see change as a threat, rather as an opportunity to grow and evolve to a higher level.Subscribe to listen to Founders Premium — Subscribers can ask me questions directly and listen to Ask Me Anything (AMA) episodes.----Join my free email newsletter to get my top 10 highlights from every book----I use Readwise to organize and remember everything I read. You can try Readwise for 60 days for free here.  ----“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

In this episode, Nick chats with Ash Chapman, CEO at Inlumi, the rapidly growing consultancy focused on large-scale, technology enabled transformation for the Office of the CFO. Ash has had a hugely successful and diverse career and one which shows that you don't have to follow a set path to achieve success. Having started out working for a software vendor, Ash moved on to join boutique consultancy, Paragon Consulting, where he spent eight successful years before they were acquired by PwC. That jump from small to big gave Ash exposure to a whole world of opportunity and mentorship that helped him accelerate his career. Something we go into detail on in today's conversation. After almost a decade at PWC, Ash started thinking about his next challenge, and called on his extensive network to test the waters. Before long, the opportunity to set up Inlumi's UK business came up. This was the challenge Ash had been looking for and he set off to help them launch. Fast forward and Ash is now the CEO of Inlumi, a business with over 250 employees spanning Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In this conversation, Ash and Nick talk through the various stages of his career and how they combined to put him at exactly the right place, at the right time, and with the right skills and experience to enable him to make the jump to CEO. They cover: The key differences between boutique consultancies and big firms, and why both have a lot to offer. Why when it comes to consulting careers, one size doesn't fit all, and like Ash, you don't have to follow a set path to success. How to harness the power of your network and Ash's advice if you're thinking of making a career move. And the Inlumi journey so far, the challenges of starting a business from scratch and the value they've seen of investing in building the right culture from the start. If you're at a career crossroads and looking at which road to take next, Ash's advice is going to really help you. We hope you enjoy it! Reach out to Ash - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmanash/ Find out more about Inlumi - https://www.Inlumi.com/ Specific Things Discussed in the Episodes: Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard https://www.amazon.co.uk/Let-People-Surfing-Education-Businessman-Including/dp/0143109677/ref=sr_1_1?crid=25Q8TIR0L7ID&keywords=Let+my+people+go+surfing&qid=1668775871&sprefix=let+my+people+go+surfing%2Caps%2C80&sr=8-1 Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life by Rory Sutherland https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alchemy-Curious-Science-Creating-Business/dp/0062388428/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3MSZUJXU2HR7T&keywords=alchemy+by+Rory+Sutherland.&qid=1668776021&sprefix=alchemy+by+rory+sutherland.%2Caps%2C53&sr=8-2 The Art of Resilience: Strategies for an Unbreakable Mine and Body by Ross Edgley https://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Resilience-Ross-Edgley/dp/0008356955/ref=sr_1_2?crid=KHPTK1YKQ4A7&keywords=The+Art+of+resilience+ross+edgley+paperback&qid=1668776131&sprefix=the+art+of+resilience+ross+edgley+paperback%2Caps%2C67&sr=8-2

My guest today is Paul Orfalea. Paul founded Kinkos, the popular copy chain, in 1970. He started with a single photocopy shop in California and grew the business into a $2 billion multinational operation over the course of his 30 years in charge. Paul is a non-traditional leader in the best sense and we discuss his philosophy of business building, from why your subordinates should frustrate you, why you shouldn't love your business and tips he learned on hiring well. Please enjoy this conversation with Paul Orfalea.    Founders podcast on Paul Orfalea.   For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.   -----   This episode is brought to you by Tegus. Tegus streamlines the investment research process so you can get up to speed and find answers to critical questions on companies faster and more efficiently. The Tegus platform surfaces the hard-to-get qualitative insights, gives instant access to critical public financial data through BamSEC, and helps you set up customized expert calls. It's all done on a single, modern SaaS platform that offers 360-degree insight into any public or private company. I've been so impressed by the platform that my firm, Positive Sum, recently made an investment in Tegus. We did so because we feel that Tegus will be the gold standard platform for investing research for decades to come. As a listener, you can take Tegus for a free test drive by visiting tegus.co/patrick.    -----   Today's episode is brought to you by Brex. Brex is the integrated financial platform trusted by the world's most innovative entrepreneurs and fastest-growing companies. With Brex, you can move money fast for instant impact with high-limit corporate cards, payments, venture debt, and spend management software all in one place. Ready to accelerate your business? Learn more at brex.com/best.   -----   Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.    Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.   Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus   Show Notes [00:02:58] - [First question] - What it was like to be a very bad student in highschool [00:04:22] - When he first realized he was unemployable [00:05:02] - The origin story of the very first Kinko's [00:06:13] - What the ideal progression of an entrepreneur is in his mind  [00:06:57] - Recognizing real customer problems and what he enjoys most about sales [00:07:53] - Finding what has worked well in each Kinko's and coaching managers [00:08:54] - Something he found that a manager was doing that blew him away [00:10:22] - Getting messages from his brain to everyone else in the Kinko's network  [00:11:45] - The difference of working on and not in the business [00:13:22] - What he got better at when it came to managing people  [00:13:57] - Why a good salesperson will sell you broke   [00:14:41] - Disagreeableness as a positive characteristic for people in business [00:15:08] - Whether or not candor is different from disagreeableness [00:15:36] - Why he teaches, what he teaches, and his teaching style [00:18:31] - Explaining the Federal Reserve in two minutes   [00:19:47] - What students most commonly want from him   [00:20:06] - Whether or not making yourself inaccessible as a leader is good for promoting a self-starter attitude amongst team members  [00:21:39] - The story about tearing down a sign that was antagonistic to a customer [00:21:58] - The role of anger in his career and something he's worked on over time [00:22:31] - Where Kinko's falls on the spectrum of bad to great businesses [00:24:09] - Characteristics he'd look for in founders to back a business early [00:25:08] - Qualities of a business he'd cultivate more or less if he could start over [00:26:18] - Lessons learned about using the word employee [00:26:42] - His strategy for where to go next once he had his original concept [00:27:21] - The most clever marketing strategy he ever deployed or designed [00:27:45] - Learning to spread the glory instead of the money   [00:28:30] - The state of entrepreneurship today compared to when he started  [00:29:50] - How he instilled frugality and the saving mentality in the business  [00:30:42] - What motivated him across his career [00:31:35] - Why being in it for the money seems odd in today's lens [00:32:34] - Who he most admired or most admires today  [00:32:51] - Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman [00:33:08] - Preserving the alignment of integrity and action  [00:33:42] - What it felt like to sell a business he'd worked so hard on  [00:34:57] - How good he is naturally with numbers and math being dyslexic  [00:37:17] - Defining success as having your adult children want to hang out with you and what stood out about his parents to him  [00:38:05] - His parents' impression of him while he was building Kinko's  [00:38:34] - What has his interest and keeps his interest most  [00:39:56] - The most interesting person he's ever worked with at Kinko's [00:40:48] - What he would have done differently if he started from scratch [00:41:24] - Something that is most underappreciated about the United States  [00:43:00] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him  [00:43:57] - A big lesson he's earned in a deeper way that he wishes he could share with others

Positivity motivates us in so many ways. We all have such potential to be positive beings but sometimes we have to see it through the lives of the simplest people for it to resonate within us.In this episode, Danny Giovale, CEO and founder of Kahtoola talks all about the story of their company. He shares how he came up with the development of their unique products and what inspires them to keep their commitment to being for the people.Listen up and learn more.Episode 14 at a glance…Danny Giovale and KahtoolaDanny's start of his relationship with the outdoorsDanny's educationWhat lead Danny to create Kahtoola and his researchThe development of Kahtoola's first productThe vision and mission of KahtoolaKahtoola for the peopleWhat Danny envisions for Kahtoola in the next 3 yearsKahtoola's commitment to sustainabilityUntil the next episode!Recommended Book:Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinardhttps://www.amazon.com/Let-People-Surfing-Education-Businessman/dp/0143037838 Today's Guest:Danny Giovale is the founder and CEO of Kahtoola.Kahtoola is an outdoor and sporting goods company that produces gears that adds security and performance to lightweight flexible footwear.Connect and know more about  Kahtoola here:Website:  https://www.kahtoola.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kahtoola Kahtoola Uphill: https://ww.kahtoola.com/about/events/kahtoola-uphill/ About the host:Briana Sullivan is the Community Manager of Keep Nature Wild. Her passions for writing, trail running, and community building sparked and fires up the value that she brings to creating compelling and exciting content and campaign ideas.LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briana-sullivan-31602224/More about Keep Nature Wild:At Keep Nature Wild, we like to have fun outside. We share stories around the campfire. We look up at the stars. We dream big. We laugh—loudly. We bring that light-hearted spirit to every item we make and every outdoor cleanup we host.Our products are crazy cozy, super soft, and exceptionally comfy. We design outdoor apparel and accessories to bring a smile to your face, to brighten your day, to enable your next adventure, to spark connections, to build community, and to make our planet a better place.Website: https://keepnaturewild.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/keepnaturewild/

We're all pre-diabetic; we're all pre-hearing loss, right? At some point, if you live long enough, that stuff begins to stop working in the body but you get to choose on the spectrum when that happens. Do you want that to happen when you're 100 or when you're 50? When you have ketones and protein in your system at the same time, it helps muscle protein synthesis happen quicker. Ketones and the ketogenic diet actually have the ability to rescue the brain function in Alzheimer's patients and reverse it. - Michael Brandt Are You Stressed Out Lately? Take a deep breath with the M21™ wellness guide: a simple yet powerful 21 minute morning system that melts stress and gives you more energy through 6 science-backed practices and breathwork. Click HERE to download for free. Is Your Energy Low? Get more superfoods to improve your energy, digestion, gut health plus also reduce inflammation and blood sugar. Click HERE to try Paleovalley's Apple Cider Vinegar Complex + Save 15% with the code 'JOSH' *Review The WF Podcast & WIN $150 in wellness prizes! *Join The Facebook Group Wellness + Wisdom Episode 459 CEO and Co-Founder of H.V.M.N., Michael Brandt, shares how their product, Ketone-IQ™, provides a healthy source of energy from the inside out, explains how the ancient fuel of ketones reverses aging, unpacks the pre-diabetic impact + looks at how our modern world has impacted our natural ability to create ketones on its own. How do we do it all? How do we get sharp cognition + energy without having to take stimulants all the time? Whether you're a busy parent, an entrepreneur, or just have a busy schedule that makes you feel burnt out - exogenous ketone supplements are one of the most powerful biohacks that can help your body + brain function better. Meet H.V.M.N.'s Ketone-IQ™ Save 10% on your Ketone-IQ™ order with the code "JOSH"   Get Your Fuel From Ketones Looking for a cleaner brain fuel? Just one daily serving of Ketone-IQ™️ will help you feel sharper, more focused, and ready to take on the day Ketones are nature's superfuel, proven to support energy, focus, endurance, and more. Developed alongside the U.S. military and top universities, Ketone-IQ™ delivers all those benefits in one drink. No caffeine, no sugar—just clean, on-demand energy for superior physical and cognitive performance. Optimal Blood Ketone Levels for 4 Hours Did you know that ketones provide the most benefits at a certain range? With Ketone-IQ™, you can stay at these levels for up to 4 hours — much longer than other drinkable ketones. Fueling with ketones takes you to a place where everything flows — a gentle, clean boost of energy without the jitters or racing heart. Built to support endurance and recovery, Ketone-IQ™️ is used by high performers of all types, from Navy SEALs and Tour de France cyclists to athletes in every major sport in the U.S. Save 10% on your Ketone-IQ™ order with the code "JOSH" Listen To Episode 459 As Michael Brandt Uncovers: [1:30] Hacking Our Body's Ancient Systems + The Truth About Ketones H.V.M.N. - Get 10% off with code 'JOSH' Michael Brandt KetoCon Austin 2022 How Michael's team has hacked the body's ancient systems with their H.V.M.N. products. Unpacking why ketones and the keto diet are having a big moment in the health and wellness industries. The fact that the human body has always been producing ketones on its own but our modern world has been making this harder for us to do. Why we're still struggling to help people be aware of how toxic processed sugars and other ingredients are on our health. Exploring why not all calories are the same and the direct impact of these hazardous processed ingredients. Why a shot of ketones like H.V.M.N.'s formula is a great way to get extra energy because it doesn't create oxidative stress like carbohydrates do. [16:00] The Optimized Max Benefits of Ketones Neurohacker All of the research they have done at H.V.M.N. from nootropics to now the Ketone-IQ™ to learn how to optimize the human body. Breaking down the science of ketones and why it's not just something a person can easily buy at the store like a supplement for example. How oxidative stress impacts our metabolism and how our energy and even behavior is wired. The 6 million contract that they made with the U.S. Department of Defense. How much money actually goes into training just one. US Navy S.E.A.L. Digging deep into how metabolism impacts us now and in both the short and long-term future. Why we should care more about our metabolic health. Explaining how Ketone-IQ™ is a much better afternoon pick-me-up than what you're probably drinking or eating. [28:24] The Key to Improving Metabolic Health What happens to the body when we don't give it proper fuel and our metabolic health goes downhill. Why understanding your insulin resistance is so key for your wellbeing. How insulin works and why it can't do it's job properly if we keep spiking our glucose levels and need more and more insulin. Why we're all essentially pre-diabetic and how we treat our bodies with nutrition matters so much. The fact that anyone can benefit from ketones as they use it as a sustainable fuel source. Comparing ketones and the energy that fats, proteins, and carbohydrates give us. The fact that the human body simply metabolizes ketones where there is too much of them and you don't need insulin to help with that process. Why we can consider Alzheimer's to be Type 3 Diabetes because it is mainly has to do with metabolic dysfunction of the neurons due to insulting resistance. Stephen Cunnane - Can Ketones Slow Down Alzheimer's? Research that is being done on reversing Alzheimer's with a ketogenic diet. [35:50] How to Best Consume Ketones Best practices for consuming ketones and if you can pair Ketone-IQ™ with other foods. How most people consume Ketone-IQ™ and when during their day. Why you don't need to have Ketone-IQ™ with other foods necessarily. How athletes take Ketone-IQ™ strategically after their workouts. Why ketones are most present when you're in endurance mode. 432 Barton Scott Exploring whether or not we can become dependent on ketones. Is it best to eat meat right away after it's cooked or is okay later too? Modern foods like margarine, oat milks and why they're not great for us or the environment. Following the middle path and how Ketone-IQ™ applies to it. [48:20] Priming Other Good Behaviors with Ketone-IQ™ How Ketone-IQ™ and other health products will help prime you for other good behaviors throughout the day. Tips to help you stay out of an all day carbohydrate cycle. The history of Kellogg Cereal and why they were focusing on mass population control and lowering their libidos by encouraging people to eat a lot of carbohydrates. Where companies should be putting all of their focus to help people thrive and live life well. Michael's mission with H.V.M.N. and why it goes so much farther beyond than just science. He and Josh's experience running marathons. Why metabolic health plays the ultimate role in keeping the body in homeostasis. How Michael conquered his marathon and was able to have a time below 3 hours by finding ways to make it easier for him. What you can do to get to a place of better flow and be relaxed when you run. His advice for all runners and those who would like to get into the sport. [1:05:00] The Seasons of Life & Achieving a Flow State Why Josh doesn't agree with David Goggins and smashing the gas pedal 24/7. Exploring the different seasons of life when sometimes we're busier, need to be more still, and eventually come back to the middle. The difference between being in a smooth flow state and upping the ante to the point that you exhaust yourself. Why it does more harm than good to overestimate how much you're going to do in a day or in a week even. How Michael prepared himself to be able to do a marathon in less than 3 hours by showing up every day and being consistent without pushing too hard. Brian Tracy [1:13:00] The Cognitive Mental Benefits of Ketones Breaking down the mental benefits of ketones like Ketone-IQ™. The connection between mental disorders and metabolic dysfunction. Why it's incredible and strange that we need to intellectualize spirituality in our Western society. The power of tuning in and knowing that we feel good in our bodies on our own. World-class manifestation of our unique and individual gifts with examples of Kobe Bryant and Maya Angelou. How we can express our unique orbs and abilities to be in greater alignment with our purpose. [1:25:50] Optimizing The Human Experience with Financial Intelligence Unpacking financial intelligence and how it comes into play in the Wellness Pentagon. Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard How the CEO of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, used his glowing orb of being an environmentalist and used that to create a greater impact with Mother Earth and how we see clothing. Why you can't see money as something bad if you're trying to make a dent whether that's in your own personal life or for the world. Breaking down what money really is: spiritual energy to fuel our mission(s) in life. How both Josh and Michael's stories and thoughts of money have shifted over time. 1:35:00 H.V.M.N.'s Production of Ketone-IQ™ The growth of H.V.M.N. and where the company is now at compared to at the beginning. Their first launch with a nootropic, Nootrabox, and where they went from in the human performance development space from there. The experience they had on Shark Tank and why they purposely said $40 million valuation for $2 million which is more than any other company ever has on the show. Nootrabox on Shark Tank Their experience launching the first ketone drink (Save 10% with code "JOSH") and the Department of Defense was their first customer. The decision to take Version 1 of their product completely off the market while they worked on Version 2 and the impact that had on their business. Why the moment to start something new like launching a podcast or a business idea is now. How Michael would define wellbeing and wellness in his life. Power Quotes From The Show Understanding our Metabolic Health "One of the key things to look at for metabolic health is insulin resistance and when that happens, you feel more tired because you don't have the fuel to keep you going. A lot of people think that the answer is to keep eating even more but they can become addicted to it and as that insulin resistance is still happening - then people become diabetic. One of the big misnomers about diabetes is that we pathologize it until this disease state of either you have it or you don't but just like hearing loss we are all somewhere on the spectrum and we are all pre-diabetic." - Michael Brandt How to Bend Your Reality to Live a More Meaningful Life "What is a meaningful life? Take the signals that you think are good in the world and amplify them as much as possible as much as you can. Bend your reality and create more of what you want to see in the world by controlling your thoughts on a day-to-day basis, how you think about things, and how you manifest what is going on around you happen at a larger scale. You can be the least spiritual person but even just writing down your goals every day, breathing them in, and thinking about them - with all of the time you spend on it, you will manifest that reality." - Michael Brandt Ancient Fuel That Reverses Aging "Why are special operators like the Department of Defense interested in our Ketone-IQ™️ product? They're really interested in our ketone drink as a metabolic superfuel because ketones are efficient and they can turn into ATP cell energy. Think of your metabolism like an engine and if you're fueling it with dirty fuel you're going to have more gunk build up. Other types of fuel won't cause a gunk build-up and might even clean out the gunk. Why do some people seem older and more worn down than others? It's due to a lot of things like attitude and mobility but if we zoom in on metabolism, how much oxidative stress are you creating in that area over decades of your life?" - Michael Brandt Links From Today's Show  KetoCon Austin 2022 Neurohacker Stephen Cunnane - Can Ketones Slow Down Alzheimer's? 432 Barton Scott Brian Tracy Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard Nootrabox on Shark Tank Shop the Wellness Force Store breathwork.io Paleovalley – Save 15% on your ACV Complex with the code ‘JOSH' Seeking Health - Save 10% with the code 'JOSH' Organifi – Special 20% off to our listeners with the code ‘WELLNESSFORCE' Drink LMNT – Zero Sugar Hydration: Get your free LMNT Sample Pack, you only cover the cost of shipping Botanic Tonics – Save 40% when you use the code ‘WELLNESS40' Essential Oil Wizardry: Save 10% with the code 'WELLNESSFORCE' Cured Nutrition – Get 15% off of your order when you visit wellnessforce.com/cured + use the code ‘WELLNESSFORCE' M21 Wellness Guide Wellness Force Community Leave Wellness Force a review on iTunes H.V.M.N. - Get 10% off with code 'JOSH' Facebook Instagram YouTube Twitter Michael Brandt Instagram About Michael Brandt Michael Brandt is the CEO and co-founder of Health Via Modern Nutrition (H.V.M.N.). He's an avid triathlete and marathoner (2:42 PR). Prior to starting H.V.M.N., he received his BS in Computer Science & Design at Stanford, was a Product Manager at Google, and Adjunct Professor at the Academy of Art in SF. He has always been a leader, and lifelong student, of designing products around new technologies and emerging needs.  

Alors que même les pionniers de la tech comme Elon Musk font revenir leurs effectifs à 100% au bureau, mon invité du jour lève 140 millions de dollars alors qu'il n'en a jamais eu. Pionnier du télétravail bien avant le Covid, Frédéric Plais a créé Platform.sh, la plateforme de développeurs 100 % à distance qui automatise tout l'hébergement de ses 5000 clients dans le monde. Nous parlons des outils, du travail en asynchrone, des avantages que cela apporte (comme suivre son fils parti à Los Angeles pour ses études avec toute la famille). Nous évoquons la différence entre les grosses entreprises d'il y a 20 ans et une startup aussi innovante que Platform.sh. Passé par l'Oréal, SFR et Vodafone, il vit depuis 6 ans aux Etats-Unis où il chapote son équipe et prône, comme exception qui confirme la règle, l'importance de se voir vraiment. Il nous explique notamment son usage raisonné de Slack et du travail en asynchrone depuis plus de 5 ans. Cet épisode de GDIY pendant une escale parisienne de Frédéric vous offre 3 heures d'échanges pour aller de la crise de la bulle internet à la culture d'entreprise à distance, en passant par la valeur des Sales, jusqu'à l'importance des services apportés au client. Un épisode inspirant et utile, riche de bon sens et très loin des clichés ! TIMELINE : 00:04:30 : Les raisons de son départ aux Etats-Unis 00:10:30 : Tout sur Platform.sh et la souveraineté des données 00:58:00 : La crise du début des années 2000 jusqu'au management remote des années 2020 02:22:00 : Les clients de Platform.sh et la valeur des Sales 02:52:14 : Licorne ou pas licorne ? On a cité avec Frédéric Plais plusieurs anciens épisodes de GDIY : #28 - Pierre Valade - SUNRISE - Comment se faire racheter 100 millions par Microsoft ? #210 - David Gurlé - Symphony - Apprendre aux côtés de Bill Gates à son apogée, le succès fou et les apprentissages d'un entrepreneur méconnu #262 - Laurent de la Clergerie - Groupe LDLC - La semaine de 4 jours pour tous, arrêtons de cramer nos cerveaux Frédéric Plais vous recommande de lire : Let My People Go Surfing. The Education of a Reluctant Businessman de Yvon Chouinard (fondateur de Patagonia) Le blog de Bill Gates Avec Frédéric Plais, on a parlé de : Vodafone La semaine de 4 jours chez LDLC Stack Overflow Slack Le canari des mines de charbon Salesforce Podcast “The Daily” (New York Times) Podcast “Code Source” (Le Parisien) La musique du générique vous plaît ? C'est à Morgan Prudhomme que je la dois ! Contactez-le sur : https://studio-module.com. Vous souhaitez sponsoriser Génération Do It Yourself ou nous proposer un partenariat ? Contactez mon label Orso Media via ce formulaire. Pour contacter Frédéric : LinkedIn

Kate Fosson is the Co-Founder and “Brand Hunter” of Brand Pollinators whose mission is “Inspiring purpose-driven brands to achieve sustainable excellence through values-driven consulting, relevant resource sharing, and high-impact networking.” Her life as a military spouse includes moving to another part of the country about every two years and in some ways, entrepreneurship found her as a means to find continuity in her professional life through those geographic changes. I love the values that Brand Pollinators embodies, but I also really enjoyed the time we spent talking about community, balance in our lives, learning about ourselves, and how we each choose to spend our 24-hours per day – and really need to take the time myself for that exercise you'll hear us talk about. Where you can find Brand Pollinators:- Website: https://brandpollinators.com- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandpollinators/- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brandpollinators/- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp1wC6CgGQc-SL_wQ9AOPnw/playlistsMentions from the show:- SCORE: https://www.score.org- Natural Products Expo: https://www.naturalproductsexpo.com/- Edible utensils from Incredible Eats: https://incredibleeats.com- "Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman" by Yvon Chouinard, Founder of Patagonia: https://amzn.to/3uKIMfG- Brene Brown's latest book, "Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience:" https://amzn.to/38VkGGH- James Clear: https://jamesclear.com- "Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life" by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans: https://amzn.to/37PME63Stay in touch with People, Place, & Purpose on Instagram and stay tuned for a new episode every Monday!Links may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Show Notes: About the Texas Craft Brewers Guild: The Texas Craft Brewers Guild is a Board of Directors led organization that represents the interests of Texas craft brewers. The members of the board hail from craft breweries in all the major metropolitan regions of the state, as well as from different brewery types and sizes. Large craft breweries, small self-distributed craft breweries and brewpubs each have one or more advocates on the board, looking out for their interests.Formed in 2009 by a band of brewers, today, the Guild has over 300 brewery members throughout the state, including operating breweries, as well as those that are in the advanced planning stages. The Guild also welcomes Allied Trade members – our name for the myriad suppliers and service organizations in the craft beer industry that help make breweries run. For more information, visit the Texas Craft Brewers Guild website here. Josh's book recommendation: Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard

We're breaking down the golden standard manual of ethical entrepreneurship: Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. We read this month with Kathleen Sheppard, founder of sustainable swimwear and activewear line Tiller. We discuss fundraising (her two super successful Kickstarter campaigns!) and what we learned fromRead more The post 170: Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard | Book Club with Kathleen Sheppard, Tiller Swim appeared first on ECO CHIC.

Regan Howell, the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Monroe Energy, LLC, a refining, pipeline and terminal company headquartered near Philadelphia Pennsylvania, is the guest on this episode. Regan explains how every encounter we face each day is an chance to reinforce our organizational culture or to allow it to continue to deteriorate. Regan uses The Law of Entropy to illustrate that we must continually put energy into our organizations and our culture or they will naturally move from an organized to a disorganized state. Regan recommits to being more intentional about the way he reinforces his organizational culture as he displays one of the aspects of servant leadership, to model the way, and reminds us that focusing on serving to lead and focusing on the individuals or the ones is very important for every aspiring servant leader.  Regan is a chemical engineer who has spent nearly 30 years working for oil companies, large and small, around the world. He is a proven leader with over thirty years of business experience, primarily in refining and fuels manufacturing.  A ‘culture hawk' whose record demonstrates that value-based decisions lead to better business results.  Entrusted with increasing levels of responsibility and has continually demonstrated integrity; technical, business, interpersonal acumen; and teamwork skills. He feels he experiences his greatest success when part of a properly led, motivated, and rewarded team. He has a life-long fascination with leadership; both studies and practice. He is married to Jen and they have 5 children and 5 grandchildren Resources:  Dr. D. Brent Smith, Rice University https://onlinebusiness.rice.edu/mba/faculty/d-brent-smith/ Viktor E. Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36069536-man-s-search-for-meaning?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=rKFenqPivr&rank=7 Yvon Chouinard - Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22155.Let_My_People_Go_Surfing?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=TdsqDcalwl&rank=1

In this episode of Art of the Kickstart, we interviewed the MAÄT 1.0 Legging co-founders, Beth Godfrey and Fiona Devaney. The MAÄT 1.0 Legging is a yoga legging with built-in padding to protect your knees so that every yoga practice can be seamless and distraction-free. Designed with the fit and flexibility of wetsuit padding and the edgy aesthetic of motorcycle gear, the MAÄT 1.0 Legging provides comfort and is made to flatter. Learn how Beth and Fiona raised over $37,000 for their Kickstarter campaign with the support of over 220 backers. Topics Discussed and Key Crowdfunding Takeaways How Fiona's background inspired the design of the MAÄT 1.0 Legging The different ways Beth and Fiona drew inspiration during the design process How the MAÄT 1.0 Legging's Kickstarter campaign transpired Fiona's thoughts on pursuing entrepreneurship An inside look into the product design of the MAÄT 1.0 Legging Links MAÄT 1.0 Legging's Kickstarter Campaign MAÄT 1.0 Legging's Preorder Link Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Naomi Klein The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 20% off! Transcript View this episode's transcript Roy Morejon: Welcome entrepreneurs and startups to art of the kickstart, the podcast that every entrepreneur needs to listen to before you launch. Roy Morejon: I'm your host, Roy Morejon, president and founder of Enventys Partners. The world's only turnkey product launch company that has helped over 2000 innovations successfully raise over $400 million in capital since 2010. Each week I interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur or a business expert, in order to help you take your startup to the next level. This show would not be possible without our main sponsor ProductHype. A 300,000 member crowdfunding media site and newsletter, that's generated millions of dollars in sales for over a thousand top tier projects since 2017. Check out producthype.co to subscribe to the weekly newsletter. Now, let's get on with the show. Roy Morejon: Welcome to another edition of art of the kickstart. Today. I'm super excited because I am talking with co-founders Beth Godfrey and Fiona Devaney. They are the co-founders of MAAT Legging. This campaign actually just launched, so they're super stressed out, but super excited. So I'm really excited to have you guys on the show and talk about this amazing product. So Beth and Fiona, thank you so much for joining us today on the show. Fiona: Thank you for having us. Beth: Yeah, thanks for having us. Roy Morejon: All right. So like I said, you guys just click the button. So how does it feel? Fiona: Relief. I mean, it's exciting, but I feel relief because I mean, Beth is on the west coast, but she was working later. We both worked till really late, just double checking, triple checking, and then this morning got back at it. So it just feels good. I think I'm speaking for all of us. We feel like we did the best we could. We checked everything. We took our time. We did our research and it feels good for me. And I think it's the same for you, Beth? Beth: Yeah, I learned more than I ever thought I could about dimensional weight and international shipping and how that all works. So that's been great. Roy Morejon: Nice. Beth: [inaudible 00:02:13]. Roy Morejon: Let's jump in I guess a little bit and give our audience a little bit of background, right? We're getting ahead of ourselves because we're so excited about the launch, which is active right now on Kickstarter. But let's talk about the product.

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he appears to be doing both.” - Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman.What is work? What is play? What if people could live in a world where their play is their work, where their work is their play?Gaming may crystallize that future.Thanks in large part to advances in consumer social applications, we have entered the age of the Gamification of Everything. Companies and platforms are currently competing for everyone's attention. Because it's all about monetizing engagement.. But will that last in a world where the platform vs. participant relationship is being stressed? We explore different industries where gamification of everything is occurring. And it's going to create a future world where people want ownership - and monetize that ownership - within the games that they play. We start with Robinhood - the gamification of investing. When a meme coin (Doge) represents roughly 6% of Robinhood's first quarter revenue, it's clear that the stock market (and crypto market) is being gamified. We move to Netflix - the gamification of entertainment. Netflix announced last week that they are going to become a gaming publisher. This shifts Netflix from a lean back entertainment provider to a lean forward gaming publisher that engages consumers in a different way. Netflix has the chance to create a profound shift in their network - they go from a single-player experience of consuming content to an engaging multi-player network that enables them to unlock so many other experiences for their subscribers, from creating virtual worlds, to live-streaming gaming events, to creating a virtual currency within the Netflix ecosystem.We land on gaming platforms Sorare and Axie Infinity - the gamification of work. We've entered the next stage of the gamification of the internet. It's now become the gamification of work. With games like Axie, a Pokemon-like game built on the Ethereum blockchain where people breed, battle, and trade digital pets called Axies, users may be playing a game, but they might also be earning a living. There are countless people making more money breeding Axies than they are in their current jobs. Heck, many people in the Philippines and Vietnam have quit their jobs because they make a better living playing Axie. And tens of thousands of new players are joining the game each day, in large part because of the community and the Axie economy.We talk about the implications of people playing a game to earn a living. And those implications are profound. What does it means for the future of work? What does it mean for education? How do we prepare for a future where people can own their life - in a physical or virtual world?So, now, what's the distinction between work and play?

Diriger à 26 ans les 420 collaborateurs d’un hypermarché en région parisienne. Il n’y a pas de doute, Coline Burland c’est une sacrée nana ! Retenez son nom car dans peu de temps, j’en mets ma main à couper, vous entendrez parler d’elle ! Coline Burland se définit comme un produit de l’alimentaire et de la grande distribution. Oui mais voilà : choix disproportionné de produits, manque de transparence, mauvaise communication, absence de valorisation des producteurs. Après 10 ans dans la grande distribution, il est temps que ce modèle change. Pour Coline, si l’on souhaite consommer différemment, nous n’avons plus le choix.Comprendre les prix, la valeur du produit et le travail qui est derrière, c’est ça que doit acheter le consommateur. Avec Omie&Cie, Coline et ses associés permettent au consommateur de remonter la chaîne de production et de comprendre le prix. Coline Burland a un parcours atypique, inspirant et elle est d’une humilité déconcertante ! Cet échange c’est une bouffée d'air frais, croyez-moi, je vous ai déniché deux pépites : Coline et Omie, les pépites de la distribution !TIMELINE :00:03:17 : Grandir en Chine dans les années 9000:15:12 : Diriger un hypermarché de 420 collaborateurs à 26 ans00:29:57 : Permettre au consommateur de remonter la chaîne de production 00:57:16 : Aider le monde agricole01:45:10 : Impact positif et ambition02:12:15 : Un engagement pour l’équité féminineSHOW NOTES Pour du super café vous pouvez contacter Franck Ponceau de Comptoirs San Bao : san-bao@hotmail.frWhat MattersL’équipe d’Omie&Cie : Christian Jorge, Benoît del Basso, Joséphine Bournonville, Thibaud Chausset, Lita.coGaetan EkszterowiczJérémy GachetEstelle MonraisseLara Amoros, la guide qui forme ColineSon groupe instagram d'alpinismeOn a cité l’épisode de GDIY : #2 Céline Lazorthes – Leetchi #19 Christian Jorge – VESTIARE COLLECTIVE 1/2- 1ere boîte à la fac, 100 millions d’euros de levés plus tard il repart de zéro#20 Christian Jorge VESTIAIRE COLLECTIVE 2/2 – Passer de 0 à 100 millions d’Euros de CA puis partir#61 Shanty Baehrel - Shanty Biscuits - La BisQueen de provence qui régale les grands du luxe.#74 Romain Raffard – Bergamotte – Quand ton e-commerce sent bon la réussite (et la fleur)#110 Julie Chapon – Yuka – Faire bouger les géants de la food avec une petite startup#127 Paul Lê – La belle vie – De la résilience, de l’honnêteté et du travail pour réussir big time#151 Virginie Guyot – Patrouille de France – Débriefer pour atteindre l’excellence#163 Marie Ekeland - 2050 - La puissance de l’argent pour répondre aux enjeux de la planète# 172 Antoine Fine - Eutopia - De travaillomane à empathique, tout envoyer promener et revenir plus fort#178 - Kilian Jornet - Alpinisme et ultra-trail - Ne pense pas au résultat, l’objectif c’est de progresser#187 - Céline Lazorthes - Resilience - Utiliser la tech pour mieux soigner le cancerDes livres à lire : Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman de Yvon ChouinardReinventing organizations de Frédéric Laloux La musique du générique vous plaît ? Merci Morgan Prudhomme ! Contactez-le sur : https://studio-module.com. Vous pouvez suivre Coline sur LinkedIn ou Instagram.

Khủng hoảng môi trường và khí hậu đặt nhân loại trước thách thức chưa từng có. Giới khoa học cảnh báo, nếu không đủ biện pháp mạnh, chậm ít năm nữa, nhân loại khó lòng đối phó với hậu quả của các khủng hoảng này. Trong lúc bộ phận chủ yếu của nền kinh tế toàn cầu vẫn loay hoay với các phương thức sản xuất dựa trên việc khai thác tài nguyên quá mức, từ hàng chục năm nay, đã xuất hiện nhiều doanh nghiệp kiên trì triết lý vừa phát triển kinh tế, vừa bảo vệ môi trường. Phong trào doanh nghiệp « 1% vì Trái đất » là một ví dụ tiêu biểu. Tạp chí RFI tuần này xin giới thiệu phong trào doanh nghiệp quốc tế « 1% vì Trái đất » qua gương mặt của người sáng lập, tỉ phú Yvon Chouinard, đặc biệt nổi tiếng với các mặt hàng quần áo thể thao ngoài trời, với nhãn mác Patagonia. Tên gọi « 1% vì Trái đất » có nghĩa gì ? « 1% for the Planet » có nghĩa là tự nguyện trích ra số tiền ít nhất 1% doanh thu, để đầu tư cho các dự án bảo vệ môi trường. Đây là nguyên tắc chủ yếu mà các doanh nghiệp khi tham gia phong trào tuân thủ. Tình nguyện « nộp thuế cho Trái đất », để bảo vệ môi trường, phục vụ cho việc kinh doanh bền vững là triết lý của người sáng lập phong trào, tỉ phú Yvon Chouinard.  Từ nhà leo núi đến ông chủ mác thể thao « Patagonia » Tỉ phú Yvon Chouinard vốn là một người yêu môn thể thao leo núi. Ở tuổi xế chiều, nhìn lại cuộc đời mình, ông tâm sự : « Tôi có thói quen nằm ngủ trong các túi ngủ dã ngoại. Ít nhất là 250 ngày trong một năm. Tôi leo nhiều ngọn núi, ở tất cả các lục địa, trong đó có Nam Cực. Tôi đã du hành trên thế giới rất nhiều, đủ để hiểu được rằng Thiên nhiên đã bị hủy hoại như thế nào » (trích từ đoạn phim « Yvon Chouinard, de l'alpinisme à l'anti fast-fashion de Patagonia », giới thiệu về sự nghiệp kinh doanh vì môi trường của Yvon Chouinard, của mạng Loopsider). Trong một cuốn hồi ký, ông giải thích rõ hơn về động cơ nào đã thúc đẩy ông chọn đi theo một con đường kinh doanh rất khác với đa số những người đương thời : « tôi là một doanh nhân từ gần 60 năm nay. Nhưng tôi cảm thấy khó mà phát âm được cụm từ này, cứ như thể khi sử dụng từ này để nói về mình, tôi phải chấp nhận mình là một người nghiện rượu hay là một luật sư. Tôi không bao giờ tôn trọng nghề nghiệp này cả. Các doanh nghiệp đa số đáng bị lên án do các ứng xử thù địch với thiên nhiên của họ, do việc họ phá hủy nền văn hóa của các cư dân bản địa, do việc họ đã lấy của người nghèo để đem cho người giàu, và do việc họ đầu độc Trái đất với nước thải từ các nhà máy của họ » (Lời nói đầu cuốn « Let my people go surfing. The Education of a Reluctant Businessman  / Confessions d'un entrepreneur pas comme les autres », 2005 /2017). Tất cả bắt đầu vào năm 1957, ở Burbank, một vùng ngoại ô buồn tẻ của thành phố Los Angeles, California, trong sân nhà của gia đình Chouinard. Yvon, cậu con trai 19 tuổi, say mê môn leo núi, đã  học nghề rèn để chế tác các đinh khuy và vòng đai bảo hiểm leo núi. Đối với Yvon, các phương tiện được sử dụng vào thời điểm đó là không đủ chắc chắn, phương châm của cậu là « không gì tốt hơn là tự mình chế đồ cho mình ». Yvon có điều kiện để thực hiện giấc mơ này với sự hỗ trợ của cha cậu - một công nhân gốc vùng Québec, Canada, nói tiếng Pháp – đến California tìm vận may. Yvon Chouinard đã kiếm được chút tiền bằng việc bán các phương tiện leo núi mà cậu chế tạo. Dần dà chàng thanh niên Yvon đã dựng nên được doanh nghiệp của mình, mở một cửa hàng đầu tiên tại California vào năm 1965. Hàng hóa vừa tốt bền, vừa thân thiện môi trường   Yvon Chouinard tiếp tục đam mê leo núi cùng với công việc sản xuất và kinh doanh đồ leo núi. Năm 1968, doanh nhân Yvon Chouinard có một trải nghiệm lớn, khi cùng bốn người bạn chinh phục đỉnh Fitz Roy, thuộc Patagonia, vùng núi nổi tiếng ở cực nam châu Mỹ Latinh. Đỉnh núi cao 3.405 mét, nằm ở biên giới giữa Achentina và Chilê, là một ngọn núi nổi tiếng khó leo, chỉ những vận động viên lành nghề mới dám mạo hiểm (toàn bộ chuyến du hành được nhóm tự quay. Phim « Mountain of Storms » (1972) được coi là một sự kiện trong giới thám hiểm vào thời điểm đó). Những năm tháng sống gần với núi non hoang sơ, kỳ vĩ đã làm nảy nở ở Yvon Chouinard sự gắn bó và tình yêu sâu nặng với thiên nhiên. Nhiều triết lý căn bản về cuộc đời, về nghề kinh doanh của Yvon Chouinard đã được khẳng định chính trong giai đoạn này. Chuyến chinh phục đỉnh Fitz Roy để lại dấu ấn mãi mãi trong sự nghiệp của ông. Trong những năm 1970, công ty « Chouinard Equipment Ltd » của Yvon trở thành một doanh nghiệp hàng đầu trong lĩnh vực cung cấp đồ leo núi tại Mỹ. Năm 1972, công ty của Yvon Chouinard bắt đầu sản xuất thêm quần áo thể thao và các đồ dã ngoại. Năm 1973, doanh nghiệp mang tên Patagonia ra đời. Đỉnh Fitz Roy nằm trong dãy núi Patagonia trở thành logo của nhãn mác Patagonia. Hàng hóa thể thao với hai phương châm, tốt và bền, đã mang lại uy tín cho doanh nghiệp trẻ. Dù sản xuất đồ leo núi hay quần áo, bảo đảm chất lượng và độ bền vẫn là tôn chỉ của công ty. Yvon Chouinard giải thích : « Khi chúng tôi bắt đầu sản xuất quần áo, tôi đã không muốn hạ thấp các đòi hỏi về chất lượng sản phẩm. Như vậy, chúng tôi đã sản xuất ra các mặt hàng quần áo với chất lượng tương tự như phương tiện leo núi » (phim Loopsider). Hàng hóa tốt và bền, nhưng đồng thời ngày càng phải hướng đến sử dụng các vật liệu với tác hại cho môi trường ít nhất có thể, là lựa chọn của hãng Patagonia đầu những năm 1990. Năm 1992, công ty bắt đầu khởi động chương trình nghiên cứu tác động sinh thái của các sản phẩm hàng hóa. Giữa những năm 1990, doanh nghiệp quyết định từ bỏ chất liệu bông truyền thống (bị coi là quá tốn năng lượng và gây ô nhiễm quá nhiều), để chuyển sang sử dụng 100% « bông sinh thái » hoặc bông tái chế. Đây là điều mà nhiều người cho là quyết định rất mạo hiểm vào thời điểm đó.   Một « vật thể lạ » trong nền kinh tế tư bản  Không chỉ đích thân sản xuất ra các hàng hóa tốt bền, thân thiện với môi trường, ngay từ sớm hãng Patagonia đã quyết định trích một khoản tiền lớn trong doanh thu của hãng để đầu tư cho các hoạt động vì môi trường nói chung. Năm 1985, doanh nghiệp đã quyết định chi 10% số tiền lãi một năm, và sau đó 1% doanh thu một năm, cho các hiệp hội hoạt động trong lĩnh vực bảo vệ môi trường, từ thiện. Các hoạt động vì môi trường được Patagonia hỗ trợ trải rộng ra trên rất nhiều lĩnh vực, từ xây dựng công viên bảo tồn trên đất liền và trên biển, đến khôi phục chất lượng của nước sông, bảo vệ các giống loài động thực vật có nguy cơ diệt vong, thúc đẩy phát triển nông nghiệp bền vững. Kể từ năm 1985, hãng Patagonia duy trì đều đặn khoản đóng góp tài chính nói trên cho các hoạt động vì môi trường. Giải thích về lý do của khoản đóng góp kỳ lạ này, công ty cho biết : « Đối với chúng tôi, đây hoàn toàn không phải là một hoạt động nhân đạo hay từ thiện, mà đơn giản chỉ là chúng tôi đảm nhận trách nhiệm đối với những tổn hại do các hoạt động của doanh nghiệp gây ra. Cứ coi như là chúng tôi nộp thuế cho Trái đất ». Năm 2001, sau gần hai thập niên tình nguyện đóng thuế Trái đất, cùng Craig Mathews (nhà sáng lập công ty Blue Ribbon Flies), Yvon Chouinard lập ra câu lạc bộ « 1% vì Trái đất », để quy tụ các doanh nghiệp trên toàn thế giới theo đuổi cùng một tôn chỉ. Các doanh nghiệp sử dụng logo « 1% vì Trái đất » để khẳng định trước khách hàng, và công chúng, các cam kết vì môi trường, thúc đẩy việc tiêu thụ các sản phẩm tôn trọng môi trường. Tính cho đến nay, đã có khoảng 3.000 doanh nghiệp, tại hàng chục quốc gia, tham gia vào phong trào « 1% vì Trái đất », do ông Chouinard khởi xướng. Liên Hiệp Quốc vinh danh Từ chỗ kiên trì phương châm sản xuất các mặt hàng bền chắc, thân thiện môi trường, đến mở rộng lối kinh doanh này ra toàn cầu, cũng như thúc đẩy doanh nghiệp hỗ trợ các hoạt động xã hội dân sự vì môi trường. Triết lý hành động của công ty, mang nhãn mác dãy núi nổi tiếng vùng Nam Mỹ, đã lan tỏa khắp thế giới. Năm 2019, Chương trình Môi trường của Liên Hiệp Quốc (UNEP) vinh danh Patagonia là « nhà vô địch của Trái đất » trong mục giải thưởng cho doanh nghiệp. Giải thưởng « Các nhà vô địch của Trái đất » của UNEP là giải thưởng hàng năm cao quý nhất của Liên Hiệp Quốc trong lĩnh vực môi trường. Chương trình Môi trường của Liên Hiệp Quốc ghi nhận : « từ một doanh nghiệp nhỏ sản xuất đồ leo núi, Patagonia đã trở thành doanh nghiệp hàng đầu thế giới trong lĩnh vực phát triển bền vững. Quyết tâm của công ty trong việc bảo vệ các hệ sinh thái của hành tinh đã tác động đến toàn thể lĩnh vực, từ các sản phẩm được chế tạo, vật liệu được sử dụng, cho đến các khoản đóng góp vì môi trường. Gần 70% sản phẩm là sản xuất từ vật liệu tái chế… mục tiêu của hãng là 100% trước năm 2025 ». Giám đốc UNEP Inger Andersen khẳng định Patagonia « là một ví dụ hoàn hảo cho thấy khu vực kinh tế tư nhân có thể tham gia tích cực như thế nào vào cuộc chiến chống biến đổi khí hậu, đa dạng sinh thái bị hủy diệt và nhiều mối đe dọa khác đối với sức khỏe con người và hành tinh », và thành công của doanh nghiệp cho thấy « khát vọng của người tiêu thụ muốn các doanh nghiệp đóng vai trò hàng đầu » trong cuộc chiến vì môi trường. Người tiêu thụ có trách nhiệm: Nhân tố quyết định thành công Doanh nhân Yvon Chouinard hiểu rõ vai trò quyết định của người tiêu thụ đối với sứ mạng của doanh nghiệp. Patagonia có nhiều biện pháp để khuyến khích tinh thần tiêu thụ có trách nhiệm của khách hàng. Đối thủ của lối tiêu thụ có trách nhiệm là trào lưu khuyến khích mua sắm tràn lan, với biểu tượng là ngày « Thứ Sáu Đen » (Black Friday), được coi là thời điểm khởi đầu cho đợt mua sắm rầm rộ vào dịp Giáng Sinh. Đây là một truyền thống lâu năm tại Mỹ. Để chống lại lối tiêu thụ nguy hiểm cho hành tinh này, ngày 25/11/2011, tức ngày Thứ Sáu Đen, Patagonia mua một trang quảng cáo trên báo New York Times. Quảng cáo không phải để bán hàng, mà để lưu ý công chúng thận trọng trước quyết định mua hàng. Thông điệp của hãng gửi đến người tiêu thụ là « Don't buy this jacket » (Đừng mua chiếc áo vét tông này). Triết lý của Patagonia là hoàn toàn rõ ràng : « Đừng mua những gì không cần thiết, hãy tái sử dụng các đồ dùng đến mức tối đa, sửa chữa khi có thể, và tái chế khi không thể ».  Theo nhiều nhà quan sát, cho dù chỉ đăng tải có một ngày, và trên một tờ báo duy nhất, thông điệp của Patagonia đã được công chúng rộng rãi đón nhận như một triết lý sống, triết lý tiêu thụ hoàn toàn đối lập với trào lưu mua sắm thường xuyên được giới kinh doanh khuyến khích. Đơn cử một ví dụ về hành động cụ thể của Patagonia thực hiện triết lý này : hàng năm, kể từ năm 2014, hãng tổ chức Worn Wear Tour, một chuyến đi vòng quanh nhiều điểm trượt tuyết tại châu Âu, để cung cấp dịch vụ miễn phí sửa chữa quần áo thể thao không phân biệt nhãn mác. Patagonia cũng đưa ra hướng dẫn cụ thể về một số kỹ thuật căn bản, mà mỗi người có thể tự làm tại nhà (*).  Phong trào « 1% vì Trái đất » thu hút đông đảo doanh nghiệp tại Pháp. Hiện tại Pháp là quốc gia đứng thứ hai sau Hoa Kỳ về số lượng doanh nghiệp tham gia, với tổng số 850 doanh nghiệp vừa và nhỏ. Hơn 400 hiệp hội vì môi trường đồng hành với mạng lưới « 1% vì Trái đất - Pháp ». Nhờ hoạt động của mạng lưới các hiệp hội này mà không chỉ các hoạt động vì môi trường được trực tiếp thúc đẩy, mà luật pháp cũng được sửa đổi, để tạo điều kiện cho các hoạt động vì môi trường. Ghi chú  (*) Một số thống kê cho thấy, chi riêng tại Pháp, có đến 60% người sở hữu các quần áo không dùng đến bao giờ. Theo một số khảo sát, ngành dệt may, chế tạo mốt là « ngành công nghiệp gây ô nhiễm thứ hai », sau dầu mỏ (theo bài « Les vêtements invendus ne pourront bientôt plus être détruits », trang mạng của chính phủ Pháp). 

Top 3 Value Bombs: 1. Allow yourself to act intuitively 2. A 100% remote workforce is the new trend since the pandemic 3. Structure your validation process to ensure your success The Famous Five: 1. What's your favorite business book? Answer: "Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard" 2. Is there a CEO you're following or studying? Answer: "GitHub: Founders - Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, Scott Chacon, P. J. Hyett & CEO - Nat Friedman" 3. What's your favorite online tool for growing your business? Answer: "Confluence" 4. If you could give your 20 year old self a piece of advice, what would it be? Answer: "Trust your intuition." 5. How many hours of sleep do you get every night? Answer: "6-9 hours." Episode Information: https://www.takingyoutothetop.io/episodes/episode-60-teamway-co-founder-ceo-søren-nørgaard

Mark Baldino is a design industry expert with over 20 years in UX and Human-Centered Design. He's a co-founder of Fuzzy Math, an award-winning UX design and innovation consultancy located in Chicago with clients worldwide. Along with building and sustaining a 20-person design studio, he's helped build and train UX teams for some of the largest companies in the world. Fuzzy Math’s call to action “Do good work. Be good people” is embedded in all of Mark's work as he advocates for “goodness” in design: producing work we are proud of as designers and that positively impacts the lives of those who use digital products and services every day. Mark has led projects across complex and regulated industries including Allstate, Hyatt Hotels, Microsoft and GE Healthcare.   Questions   Your bio said that you're a UX and Human-Centered Design Organization, Fuzzy Math. But maybe give us some background behind why you decided to name the company that and just how you got into what you're doing today. Customer experience, user experience, user design, those words sometimes are used interchangeably in navigating different experiences for customers across different industries. Could you share with us what is so different about what you guys do that really helps to enhance the customer's experience? Let's say, for example, you're looking at your strategy for 2021 coming out of this year that we've all had, that has been extremely different from any other year we've all experienced. How would you demonstrate or justify the return on investment of focusing on UX? Why is it important? How is it really going to transform your business? Why should you give attention to it as you would give attention to any other budgeted item for your business plan? Could you share with us one or two things that a company should take into consideration in managing their digital spend in the age of COVID? Could you share with us how do you stay motivated every day? Can you share with our listeners what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Could you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you, maybe a book that you've read recently or a book you read a very long time ago, but it definitely had a great impact on you. Can you share with us what's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? It could be something that you're working on to develop yourself or something you're working on to develop your people. Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge, you’ll tend to revert to this quote, kind of helps to get you back on track or just keep you focused. Do you have one of those?   Highlights   Mark’s Journey   Mark stated that Fuzzy Math is a unique name, it served them well for the past 11 and a half years. The term Fuzzy Math, it does mean something in the real world, for them it speaks about the duality of the work that they do in the user experience and human centered design processes.   So kind of the fuzzy part is they're working with humans and they're trying to understand them and they are complicated and complex and sometimes they say one thing and do another. So it can be hard to design products and services to meet their needs. And the way they do that is kind of the math side, which is a little bit more of the robust process they follow sort of a thorough user center design process they lead their clients through.   It kind of makes sense of what humans are saying and doing and allows them to build products that better meet their needs. So it's kind of the analytics and process side, which is the math solving for the human psychology and fuzzy side, which is the humans.   What Fuzzy Math Does to Enhance the Customer’s Experience   Mark shared that their process is about putting customers or users at the center of everything they do. So, one of the reasons they use the term “User” is because it really focuses in on their use of a specific, in their case, they're designing a lot of web based applications or mobile applications.   Customer can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and so you thinking about customers from the brand perspective, from a marketing perspective, business perspective, and they try to get a little bit more narrow and think about who is this human sitting in front of a computer and what are they doing every day? And how do we make their experience more efficient and effective and satisfying for them?   And that doesn't always take into account the brand, for example, which again, brand and customer get aligned a lot. They try to break that out, they don't think in terms of brands, if they're working for a company that is a brand, they're really thinking about, what is this person's experience with your product and with your service and how can they architect it to better meet their needs?   And so, it's really about putting a user at the center of everything that they do and advocating for them and their needs. And that sometimes pushes against what might make the most sense from like a sales or a marketing perspective.   And that's okay, there can be a natural tension between those. But for their purposes, it's let's give users a voice at the table here and advocate for their needs, which might push against some other considerations of a business.   So it's a slightly narrow lens to focus it on and really say who is this human being that, again, is sitting in front of a computer, has to use this digital product and service and how can they make them happier people, while they're using these products.   The Importance of Using UX to Transform Your Business   Mark shared that he would think that the year that everyone's just had really, really gives them a sense of why they should be investing in digital. So you can take healthcare, for example. But you could say the same for some retail, that’s brick and mortar, maybe a higher education.   So healthcare and higher education, they have two things in common, which is they have these large, vast physical spaces that they've invested billions of dollars in. A hospital in 2020 looks nothing like a hospital did in 1980. They are gorgeous structures; they look more like hotels.   And so, the idea is when you step in, that experience that you get when you enter the atrium of a modern hospital is supposed to give you a sense of what's going to happen behind the scenes, behind the doors, is this amazing high tech, high touch. Again, it almost feels like you're stepping into a luxury hotel and that's how you want to be treated. Well, guess how many people were using those front doors during COVID? No one.   Hospitals were busy, but they were not coming through the front doors and stepping in and getting a sense of this is where I want to spend money, it was much more from an emergency perspective.   But instead, the digital front door of hospitals became the center point, and hospitals that had invested in 2019 and previously in their digital front door were much better positioned to handle kind of customer service, user experience, patient services, provide those in a much more effective and meaningful manner. And so, if you invested in 2019 or before, let's say that that dollar you spend in 2019 was worth ten times as much in 2020 and nothing to say it's not going to be just as valuable moving forward.   So the idea is that people are experiencing brands and products or services overall, they're experiencing digital first or have experienced digital first and a lot of people are digital, they live digitally, they think that that's a normal thing. But you have to think of these industries where there was a physical component to it and they had invested in that physical component.   And now, you're not taking a college tour and deciding on a college based on how fancy the building is, you're probably making that based on what the digital experience you're going to get and whether you can tell that they've actually invested in that in that digital experience.   So, even though he thinks we saw a lot of budgets get tightened in 2020, given uncertainty, what we've seen in this quarter and what we're expecting to continue to see in Q1 is that those budgets are getting reoriented towards kind of the digital experience. And so, he actually thinks it's kind of an easy sell, it's not one that he has to make. But he thinks for people internally is to say….. “If we haven't invested in our digital infrastructure, now is the time if we want this business to be sustainable, we can also have to shift maybe the organization overall towards spending more on these digital first experiences and not maybe spend as much in something like physical infrastructure.” Me: Agreed. Great. So that definitely will allow people to have greater justification for why they need to make this type of investment and, of course, how it will impact their business in the long term.   Managing Your Digital Spend in the Age of COVID    Me: Now, let's say, for example, we have a business and they're looking to go into this. What are maybe one or two ways that you think you could probably suggest to them that they could be able to better manage their digital spend in the age of COVID. Because a lot of people feel like they're in contracting mode. I've listened to many podcast interviews and I know a lot of organizations that would have done a year in planning in terms of what they're going to invest into, they're now doing short term plans like three months, six months, because they just don't know what to expect.   So, with that in mind, maybe could you share with us one or two things that a company should take into consideration in managing their digital spend in the age of COVID?   When asked to share what a company should take into consideration in managing their digital spend in the age of COVID, Mark shared that he thinks they need to think short and long term, if you're too narrow in your focus of this few months, he has heard that as well, “Hey, we have two months to make impact.”   You can only do so much in in two months. And so, they're helping a lot of their clients with is put roadmaps in place which allow for a strategic view, which is three years out, even if there's a large amount of uncertainty in said industry. But that has a really tactical, they're doing two to three month chunks of work. So what can they accomplish in a short term that's going to move the needles and some KPIs. But what is their vision for the longer term. And inside of that, something that they don't do a lot of crisis management for their clients, but all of their clients and frankly, all human beings went through a crisis this past year.   And he doesn't mean to say that we're going to experience another one, but there's nothing to say that this couldn't happen again in two years down the road. So, while you're thinking strategically long term, while you're solving stuff in the short term, you need to invest in an infrastructure that's going to allow you to pivot quickly during a point of crisis.   Again, he hates to go back to the healthcare example, but it's an easy one these days. A lot of websites and customer service teams were very unprepared for the deluge of visitors.   In some cases, he heard 3000% increase in web traffic. So that's the technical architecture going to support that but can we respond to that many requests? And so, this shouldn't be a poll that is a blip on the radar for 2020, people need to invest in crisis management and how they can respond and how their digital products and services respond during a crisis like this.   So, again, they're trying to map out what the long term improvements to customer experiences are over a 3-year period, they're trying to help their clients adjust and make some changes incrementally along the way that are going to move the needle in a two or three month time frame and start to think about what it looks like when a crisis hits again and how teams responds and how technology responds and how we can utilize technology to respond during those points of crisis.    How Mark Stays Motivated   Mark shared that fear is a big motivator, just to be quite honest, he thinks in 2020. It is this sense of fight or flight; you need to keep the business going. It's not a great long term motivator because it just wears you down a little bit. So, he tries to spend time away from his computer and that keeps him motivated to get back to the computer. He works a lot with his hands, crafts, furniture building, light construction, it's a lot less cerebral and it's a lot more physical.   And he finds it when he’s able to step away from the computer and start to work on physical products or physical projects, he yearns to be back in front of the computer because there's something about the amount of change you can influence or impact through the work that they do as designers. And that's really, really powerful. And it's not just about him and a closet he’s building or a piece of furniture, that's personally rewarding for him. And he enjoys that.   But a lot of the products they work on are with bigger businesses and thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people are using these tools every day. And there's a lot of power in being able to make those tools more satisfactory and joyful for humans. And so, this kind of this exponential push that they can make in people's lives through the tools that they redesign but sometimes when you're so focused on what's the next sale they're going to make? He does primarily sales at Fuzzy Math these days, he doesn't do a lot of design himself. You sort of miss that larger picture. So, to stay motivated, he gets away from the computer, he works in the in the physical world, and then that really pulls him back to the computer because he can get just a different perspective on what it is they do it Fuzzy Math and how they're helping people.   App, Website or Tool that Mark Absolutely Can’t Live Without in His Business   When asked about an online resource that he can’t live without in his business, Mark shared that it's going to sound standard, but email. He'd love to say Slack, but his team loves Slack as a digital tool, he thinks it's enabled the business to function better specifically remotely. But as many times as people try to remake email and make that experience better, there's a reason we all use it, it's very easy, it's quick to communicate with people. And so, it's a boring answer but it's where he’s at almost every minute of every day is in his inbox and he uses it as a way to manage tasks and to do’s, kind of a zero inbox person. He has a number of ways and filters to clean his inbox and make it an efficient mechanism for me.   But he has been using it since AOL, so early 90s. He has been using email for a while. He is very comfortable with it and he can be a creature of habit sometimes and it takes a while for him to shift into something else. As boring as it sounds, he feels like email is consistent and for him it's something he can always rely on as a tool to know what's coming into his business, what's going on in his business and what does he need to do every day. So, maybe not the most inspiring answer, but it's an honest one. If you ask him what he can't live without at this point, it’s email.   Me: Definitely, don't feel bad about sharing email because it's important. And it's an excellent communication tool and it does definitely allow for some level of accountability, paper trail you can go back in. I've pulled up emails that I've sent to people from three, four or five years ago just to make reference to maybe a conversation that was had that maybe you just need to bring back to the forefront based on what you're moving on with currently. So it really, really is an excellent resource. So I'm not going to negate your application.   Books That Have Had the Greatest Impact on Mark   Mark shared that there are two books that have probably had the biggest impact on him. The first is Managing Professional Service Firm by David Maister. It's an old book, the 90’s. It has been updated a number of times. It basically gave him all of the tools to build a professional services firm and how to think about his team and himself and leadership structure and consulting in general. A lot of consultants started as practitioners, he did. And they built consultancies because there's work out there. But running a business is very different from doing design work and so, Managing Professional Services Firm, he calls it his Bible in terms of if he has a question, he goes there first.   He spent a few months in Argentina last year during the winter to escape awful Chicago winters and he read Let My People Go Surfing, which is by the founder of Patagonia. And that's just a fantastic book, it's part bio, which is just great to understand how and why Patagonia was founded. But also there's a business component to it and how you can run kind of an ethical business and what you can look out for and how you can guide your company and he’s a firm believer in the ethos and values that Patagonia sort of imbues in its products and services.   But there's a real honesty to the book in terms of, in a perfect world, no one needed more clothes and Patagonia would go out of business and they don't hide from that fact, they sort of explain it.   And so, he just found it a really refreshing read and he thinks people that like that book, he thinks are people that he would kind of enjoy in the real world to talk to.   So it's been kind of a book that he keeps an eye or an ear out for if people have read it, because he thinks that if they read it and enjoyed it and found value in it, they probably have a similar set of values to him and those can be some of the best of friends, first of all, but kind of professional relationships when there's a bit of a value overlap.    What Mark is Really Excited About Now!   Mark shared that internally and it's about developing their people. They've started a (DEI) Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity initiative at Fuzzy Math, it's about 18 months old and that's by far been the most rewarding part of 2020, because they made a lot of progress there. The initiative was not started because they had a crisis of diversity, equity and inclusivity on the team, it was because people thought that there was room that they could grow as a firm, even as a team of 20.   And so, two employees came to them and said, “Hey, we think we should invest time and energy into this, that there's some room for growth here.” And Ben, is his business partner and him, “Okay, what's kind of what's the plan? Help us along here.” They eventually brought in a third party consultant who's been a tremendous resource for them.   And it's really reoriented how he thinks about growth at the company and proper growth and their role potentially in equity and inequality in the design industry, how they hire people and retain them, how they can maybe train people who don't have a formal background in what they do, how they can create apprentice and mentorship internship programs.   And they've been doing all of this, but they haven't done it with the lens of DEI and obviously this past year there's been worldwide attention specifically through Black Lives Matter and they started the process ahead of that but it really it dovetailed well as it there was a specific focus on it globally and certainly in the United States. And for them to have a forum for their team to communicate about their concerns and then be able to plan for what the future looks like.   So, they have a two-year roadmap for how they're going to improve DEI at Fuzzy Math and it's not just a one stop shop, they didn't just write a DEI statement and put it on their website. In fact, it's not on the website yet because they are taking a very thorough, kind of methodical approach to this.   And it's a long term change of the composition of the people at Fuzzy Math and their backgrounds. How you can have a voice at Fuzzy Math, what hiring, retention, growth and career paths. A lot of things he didn't put in the DEI bucket; his team did because they felt that they were important in terms of communication from the founders down to the team.   So it's been a tremendous learning experience for him, it's been great to see because it's been team led, his team has driven this and that's super rewarding as a business owner to see people care so much about but the company and more specifically about each other, to want to invest time and energy into DEI.   Me: Sounds good. Okay, so we will definitely be following that journey eventually when it becomes public. And you may serve as a benchmark for other organizations that may want to take on that same kind of initiative.   Where Can We Find Mark Online   Website – www.fuzzymath.com   Mark shared that if you go to the resources section on their website, there's a newsletter, encourage people to sign up for the newsletter. They don't spam you. They send out one new sort of newsletter every month, which includes a topic of their interest. Sometimes it's is very specific to design and designers.   Recently it's been about kind of the business value of design and the ROI of design. And then they include some links and articles that they have read in the past month that they enjoy. They have the benefit of living and breathing UX every single day, and not everyone has that, so they try to pull some resources together for people.   If people want to reach out to him, his email is mark@fuzzymath.com, he’s happy to answer emails, chat, schedule, some time to connect, whether it's about starting a career in design or whether you have a potential project.   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Mark Uses   Mark shared that he doesn't really have a quote, there's just sort of saying, he doesn't know where it's attributed to, it's around, do you have a strategic plan? Yes, it's called doing things. He thinks people sometimes worry too much about strategy and less about execution and has tried to make his career about kind of execution and doing and he considers himself a bit of a doer.   So, it helps him when he’s thinking about where Fuzzy Math’s going to be in 5 years or 10 years, people sometimes ask that question and he doesn't always have a clear picture, he just has to remind himself that they just have to continue doing what they've been doing for 11 ½ years, it's made them successful, bunch of happy clients and happy users along the way.   So, if you're ever concerned about what to do next, just do. Start creating, start building, don't spend too much time thinking or planning because execution is all that matters at the end of the day.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners   Links   Managing The Professional Service Firm by David H. Maister Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard    The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

In Episode 99, Quinn & Brian, with help from Inverse.com, ask: how are YOU feeling? Our guest is: Ali Pattillo, a health and science reporter at The Abstract (https://pod.link/1512027319) podcast. Supplements, metabolism boosters, miracle cures: Ali covers just about anything that can be put on or in your body and makes any health-based claims. In other words, she debunks all of the things that Brian buys online instead of reading books. There are few journalists who do a better job at not just reporting on science news but explaining it in a way that is digestible, understandable, and practical for idiots like the two of us. And this is a service that really can’t be undervalued. You don’t have to go very far on your timeline to find someone jumping to conclusions or misinterpreting facts — and that can have dire consequences when it comes to your health, especially in the virus-assisted end times that we’re living through. Our conversation focuses on the mental health side of things and how 2020 has catalyzed a staggering epidemic of depression, but on the bright side, magic mushrooms might be part of the solution. Have feedback or questions? Tweet us (http://www.twitter.com/importantnotimp), or send a message to funtalk@importantnotimportant.com Important Book Club:  "Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman" (https://bookshop.org/shop/importantnotimportant) by Yvon Chouinard Links: Read Ali’s work at Inverse.com (https://www.inverse.com/profile/ali-pattillo-19621088) Listen: The Abstract (https://pod.link/1512027319) Instagram: instagram.com/alipattillo (https://www.instagram.com/alipattillo/) Twitter: twitter.com/alipattillo (https://twitter.com/alipattillo) “Wildland Firefighters Are Burning Out” (https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/wildland-firefighters-are-burning-out) “Cold Comfort” (https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/goop-wim-hof-method-tested) (Wim Hof Method) “Cancer Patients Say Psilocybin Can Be Both Therapy And 'a Beautiful Experience'” (https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/cancer-patients-psilocybin-psychedelic-therapy) Alex's Lemonade Stand (https://www.alexslemonade.org/) Connect with us: Subscribe to our newsletter at ImportantNotImportant.com (http://importantnotimportant.com/)! Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/ImportantNotImp (http://twitter.com/ImportantNotImp) Follow Quinn: twitter.com/quinnemmett (http://twitter.com/quinnemmett) Follow Brian: twitter.com/briancolbertken (http://twitter.com/briancolbertken) Like and share us on Facebook: facebook.com/ImportantNotImportant (http://facebook.com/ImportantNotImportant) Intro/outro by Tim Blane: timblane.com (http://timblane.com/) Important, Not Important is produced by (http://crate.media/) Support this podcast

It's a great Friday here at ConvertKit. It's a little smokey in Portland, but other than that we're all looking forward to the weekend! We've got another great Q&A episode for you today, in which we answer questions about promoting courses and products to a small audience, why we reject job applicants, buildings a meaningful business, and more!Today's Questions I have a small 165 person email list and 850 subscribers on YouTube. I'm about to launch my first online video course, how would you go about promoting, pricing and pre-launching it?   Why don't you promote The Future Belongs to Creators to your newsletter list? What are the most unexpected/unusual reasons you've had to reject job applicants? If I decide to monetize my personal brand via content, will that change how I use my personal brand for freelance / consulting work? Should I keep two similar blogs or go down to one?  ​What one piece of literature has had a dramatic impact on how you think about commerce and/or building a meaningful business? Links Are You Making the Most Common Pricing Mistake? Nerd Fitness The Lessons Of History by Will and Ariel Durant Creators of the Day Trevor Noah: Afraid Of The Dark Will and Ariel Durant Resources of the Day I Was a U.S. Diplomat. Customs and Border Protection Only Cared That I Was Black Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices about Giving Back by William MacAskill  The Responsible Company: What We've Learned From Patagonia's First 40 Years by Yvon Chouinard and Vincent Stanley  Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc. by Gary Erickson and Lois Lorentzen  Conscious Capitalism, With a New Preface by the Authors: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business by John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia  Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace Start building your audience for freeWith ConvertKit landing pages, you can build a beautiful page for your project in just a few minutes. Choose colors, add photos, build a custom opt-in form, and add your copy. All without writing any code! Check out landingpages.new to get started.Stay in touch Apple Podcasts Spotify Twitter Facebook Instagram

Ethan Beute is Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, coauthor of Rehumanize Your Business: How Personal Videos Accelerate Sales and Improve Customer Experience, and host of The Customer Experience Podcast. Ethan has collected and shared video success stories in a variety of formats for a decade. He's even sent 10,000 videos himself. Prior to joining BombBomb, he spent a dozen years leading marketing teams inside local television stations in Chicago, Grand Rapids, and Colorado Springs. He holds an undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan and UCCS in communication, psychology and marketing.   Questions   Could you share with us a little bit about your journey of marketing and customer experience and how you landed at BombBomb. And of course, the book that you wrote, what inspired you to write the book and what impacts has it had on your clients and as well as non-clients? Could you explain to us by when you say humanize the connection with customers using video through the services that BombBomb provides, what does that look like in reality, if I was to apply that strategy in my business, what would that look like? We spoke about video and how video can definitely humanize the experience for our customers. One other thing that I'm really curious about Ethan is in the book, do you speak about how it is that you can build better relationships with your customers? Can you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website, or app that you absolutely can't live without in your business? Can you share with us maybe one or two books that have had the biggest impact on you? It could be a book that you read recently or maybe something that you read a very long time ago, but it still stays with you to this very day. Can you share with us one thing that's going on in your life right now, something that you're really excited about - either something that you are working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can listeners find you online? Do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps to keep you refocused kind of get you back on track. Do you have one of those?     Highlights   Ethan shared that his story of how he arrived at BombBomb. So, as you read in the bio there, he spent a dozen years in local television and that was kind of by accident. He was at the University of Michigan, he always liked school, he was good at it, he enjoyed learning and growing and he didn't really have any career direction.   And so, he ended up in the communication department there and wound up going back home to his hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan for the summer and got an internship in television and then ended up doing that for about a dozen years. But he was bored of it, he was tired of the work, it's highly repetitive. Television news is not a particularly interesting product after a certain amount of time. And so, he was doing all kinds of project work and he hopes some of the listeners can relate to this.   He wasn't quite sure; he had been doing about the same work, obviously with some nuance differences, for a long time. And so he was wondering what else would he be good at? What does he enjoy doing? What skills does he have that would be transferable to someplace else? And in television, you do a lot of writing and producing and editing, so he was very comfortable with video and he had met the two co founders of BombBomb socially when he moved out to Colorado Springs.   And they were building this company from nothing. And so, he did project work with those guys for a couple of years, he wrote some email campaigns, he made a couple of videos for them, he wrote some website copy and he just really liked them, he liked what they were about. He liked the mission that they were on, he liked the purpose behind the company, which is not just to generate revenue and be financially successful. There's a lot of purpose behind the work.   And so, he knew when they could make him a somewhat competitive offer to leave the television station that he would join them. And so he did that almost 9 years ago now. And as for the book, he was just really excited about what they were doing. He thinks he hit his sixth year full time at BombBomb.   And when he started, they maybe had 100 or 200 customers and now they have over 55,000 at the time, he thinks they had over 35,000 or 40,000, he was just really excited about how far they had come as a company and as a team and as a community of people who are being more personal and more human in their communication.   And maybe they can get into the nuance there, but just to tie it to the book; he just felt like, they're marketing the service, they have positive word of mouth, customers that like them, really, really like them and bring more customers to them which is all any business could really ask for, is that their customers are so satisfied that they bring new customers to you willingly for no compensation.   And so, he was just excited about the growth of the community and the movement. And he felt like a book, like a traditional book would be beyond their webinars and their blog posts and their social media and some of these other things and their customer base spreading the word. He felt like a mainstream business book about this opportunity to use casual conversational unscripted videos would get the message to more people.   He knows that they will be in a better world; it'll be a better place to live and work when more people are more personal more often in their business communication. And so, that was what motivated him to start writing. And he started writing it between 5 and 6 in the morning, on his own time and the better part of a Saturday or a Sunday, most weekends.   And then started talking about it with some of his team members, he wasn't sure A, how to write a full length book and B, how to get it to market. So he had to work on both of those at the same time and ended up going with a pretty traditional publisher called Wiley. He had read a lot of books that they had released and he liked them. And it was a fun journey.   To the last part of the question there, one of the things he did in preparing to write the book was he re-read books written by people he knew and then asked them if they would talk about the process of writing their book and all six people he reached out to said yes. And the one theme that was very consistent for them was releasing a book will open doors that you didn't know existed. And by that, you're not doing it to capitalize on a particular opportunity or to create a particular outcome. It's just that doing it will open up opportunities that you didn't know were opportunities.   And he would say that is come to be relatively true. He thinks it's one of the reasons they are talking today. They've sold a lot of copies of the book; people that he doesn't know are reaching out to him directly by email because he included his email in the book and reach out by LinkedIn and other networks. And it's just really neat to see the impact that it's having on people because again, you get to be yourself more often, it's just so wonderfully satisfying and then it builds human connection. And so, it's been delightful to have it out in the world.   Ethan stated that when he says video, he thinks a lot of people, when they think about video in a business context, they think about lights and scripts and budgets and drones and green screens and expensive equipment and all these other things. And that's all nice if you're using that style of video in YouTube or on your homepage or in social media or whatever, that's fantastic and you should continue doing that.   If you're not doing that, there's an opportunity that every business has, that every person has. And that is to replace some of your plain typed out text, this faceless digital communication, the same black text on the same white screen that doesn't differentiate you, it doesn't build trust and rapport, and it doesn't communicate nearly as well as when you jump on a video call or you jump on a Skype call or you get on the phone or you see people in person.   There are so many benefits to bringing to life your message and by using your webcam or your smartphone in a casual conversational, unscripted type of way; you can be more personal and more human more often. And so what BombBomb does, and they're not the only company that does it, they make it really, really easy to record these video messages and send them to people typically by email.   But you can also share them through Facebook Messenger or LinkedIn Messenger. You can text the videos to people, etc. And so, when you think about video the way they think about it, they call it relationships through video and to draw a line against marketing through video. And he doesn't mean against as in that's not a good thing you shouldn't do it as he already said, if you're doing marketing through video like budgets and scripts and things, good….keep doing it.   But this relationship through video piece, it's just about being a person instead of being a two or three paragraph block of text. And so you're wondering maybe when would I use this, we could talk used cases for the rest of our conversation here, but he'll just share a couple that get people's minds going.   One of the most important things that they can do for their customers and for their employees and for their partners and suppliers and vendors and other people in their business ecosystem is to say, thank you. And so if you only used video, if you took 5 minutes every morning and you thought of two or three people, and you just said, thank you. “Thank you so much for filling out that survey. Thank you so much for renewing your contract. Thank you so much for taking the time to have that phone call with me. Thank you so much for spending 2 years of your career with us. Congratulations, it's a 2 year anniversary of you being an employee on this team. You've grown so much. I appreciate you so much. And I look forward to what the next two years brings us.”   These kinds of things; Thank you. Good job. Congratulations. I've been thinking about you. I was excited to hear. I was sad to hear it. Doesn't all have to be positive, we can just be kind of honest in relationship building with people. And so there are just countless ways to use it, you can use it to get potential customers, to set more appointments and to actually show up for those appointments. If you are presenting a contract or a proposal, you can record a video to go along with it.   So you can talk about how you structure the contract, things that typically people have questions about, if you negotiated some aspect of it, you can be sure to explain away the fact that you accommodated whatever their need or interest was.    You can use video for on boarding new customers, you can use videos to ask for online reviews or testimonials or referrals or whatever, any message that your company is sending. Anytime you're clicking send is an opportunity to potentially add a video to bring the message to life and to get more people to say yes, because they feel more connected to you.   Me: That's brilliant. I don't think I've ever heard of that business model before. And you said you have competition in this space; there are other companies that offer the same type of service?   Ethan shared that they have a lot more competitors than they did maybe 3 or 4 years ago. The company was legally founded in 2006. He joined BombBomb full time in 2011. And so, they've really pioneered this space with and through and for their customers. And again, that's kind of that excitement was what motivated him to write a book when no one was asking for it.   And it's been interesting to see the growth of the movement, however, to your observation. It's still relatively small, they have 55,000 or 58,000 customers, but when you start thinking about how many people use email every day in a business context, it's tens, if not hundreds of millions of people and whether you're in sales or you're in customer service, or you're in marketing, or you’re in leadership and management, if you are in administration and talent management, all of these opportunities, we're all using email all the time.   And we could all save a little bit of time by talking instead of typing. And again, and we can be more clear because the message isn't just plain words on a screen, it's your face and your voice and your personality and your expertise and your sincerity and your enthusiasm and all those really rich, wonderful human qualities that just don't come through when we strip ourselves out of our messages.   Me: That's so true. That's brilliant. That's really a very unique approach. So let's say for example, you have a client who takes up your service and they decide to humanize their messages through these videos. After they've made the video, is it a case where your platform now modifies the video, because as you said, you started out by saying, some people think it's a great investment because you have to get a green screen and a professional camera and a teleprompter.   And all of that can be just so time consuming, especially if video editing and those things are not your primary core business. Let's say your primary core business is sanitation or selling fans, but now you have to be mastering a new skill in order to be able to refine this message in a video as you said, to humanize that experience, how is it that you guys transform it? Is it that we just send a video to you as a client and then you transform it based on your platform?   Ethan shared that they make it really easy to record these videos. So, they have a video recorder that you can access on your phone or on your laptop. They have their own web app that you can log into @bombbomb.com and do a variety of things. They work directly on your iPhone or on your Android phone, through a mobile app. They work directly inside the Gmail inbox. They have a Google Chrome extension that allows you to record from the top of your browser. They have integrations with a number of other services like Salesforce or Zendesk, and a variety of other platforms as well.   And so, for example, he uses Gmail every day, bombbomb.com is a Google apps domain. And so, he checks his BombBomb email in Gmail. And so, when someone sends him an email and he wants to explain something back or he wants to say thank you, or he wants to get clear, or he wants to maybe record himself and his screen to give an update on a particular project or a report.   He just hit the record button directly in the composer, the reply window, it opens up the BombBomb recorder, he clicks record, and it counts him down 3, 2, 1, he starts talking to the person or the people; you can send these to more than one person. And as soon as he’s done, he hits stop. And they host the video for you automatically and securely in the cloud. They take the first 3 seconds of your video and turn it into a little animated preview.   And so, when your recipient or your recipients get your video message, it's a little three-second animated loop that says, “Play 47 second video” but they can see you and they can see that you're moving or that you're talking or that you're sharing your screen or whatever else you might be doing in the beginning of that video.   And so, they take out all the steps that would be required to try to do this yourself. A lot of people wonder like, “Hey, can I just do this myself?” And he’s like, “Yeah, you can, but it's going to take a lot more steps.” One thing he always say they have about a thousand customers who sent 1000 or more videos themselves. He has sent more than 10,000, one of his team members has sent more than 17,000 videos, but he'll speak to the 1000 customers of theirs who've each sent a thousand or more videos.   You don't send your 1000th video, unless two things are true. One, it gets you better results than what you were doing before. You don't do something a thousand times because it's not helpful; you do it because it is helpful.   So, it's a more effective way to communicate in lots of instances. And then you don't do something a thousand times, if it's not fast and easy to do, if it's cumbersome, if it's slow, you're just not going to get there. And so, if you're going to try to make a habit of using some kind of a recorder on your own and uploading the video to YouTube, but then marking it to private because it's not for your channel, it's just for these three people. And then you're going to screenshot that video and put it in an email and link the screenshot over the YouTube video. You're never going to do that a thousand times, there's just too many steps.   And so, what they do for you is, they take all of the challenge away and put it in a nice little streamlined process so it's quick and easy to do. And then they also tell you your results, they can tell you who's opening your emails; they can tell you whose clicking your links, they can tell you who's watching your videos, they can tell you how long your videos are being watched on average and a number of other things as well.   Me: So you provide analytics as well in addition. Almost like an email marketing platform if you were to send out an email blast.   Ethan agreed and stated that in fact, that's kind of how they started when they started in selling the service in like 2009, 2010, at the time it was mostly essentially like a MailChimp or a Constant Contact, but designed around video with video being deeply integrated in the experience. So to your observation, which is a very smart one, they do allow you to drag and drop and make nice looking email designs. You can upload lists of people and send to some people or all of the people.   It is an email marketing platform, but where they really saw this transform people's businesses is in this kind of lighter weight, higher volume video messaging piece. And so, they spent a lot more of their time and energy focused on kind of the quicker, lighter weight use cases than say sending out a video newsletter every month, which a lot of their customers still do, it's very useful and they do it themselves.   Me: Very nice. Well, I think that is game changing. I don't think I'm seeing anybody in Jamaica and I'm speaking for my local market using video the way how you have just described it and how BombBomb offers it. I think that it's really, really good. What I see a lot of people doing, and I know video is a new buzzword for definitely for 2020, for sure, especially since the pandemic is on more social media platforms, especially LinkedIn video is a very big thing now.   Everybody is producing all of these videos; pretty much explainer video or marketing on sales videos telling you about what they do, or just free value in terms of content about sales and marketing or how you can offer better service experiences to your customers. Originally, when you said video, I wasn't clear, I wasn't sure if you were talking about what video from a social media marketing perspective or from an email marketing. So now that you've gone very granular and explained how the process works, this to me makes sense, because as you said, you really feel like the experience is more humanized when you can see and hear the person's voice, you see their facial expression it’s different than just writing an email and it's probably even quicker.   Ethan shared that it's just inherent in how they approach what they do. It's a deep part of their philosophy in addition to being part of the practice. The key to human connection is very obviously allowing other people to feel seen and heard and appreciated. This is one of our deepest needs as a human being is, “I just want to be seen and appreciated. I want to be recognized for who I am as a unique individual.”   And so, it would be difficult to write a book about the way they view business and the way that they see opportunities to take what you're doing every day and to make it more effective by making it more personal and not have a relationship basis. They have 5 core values at BombBomb, and they've had them since the company was founded in the first and foremost, that underpins everything that they do is relationships.   They think that in this environment, he'll cross over into customer experience here. In this environment that we're in, in 2020 and different markets are different, different industries are different, but in general, it is fair to say that competition is now hyper competition that product parody or service parody is a reality that if you innovate and you create this new feature of your product or service, it's not going to take very long for a competitor to knock that off and to make their own version of whatever this innovation is.   And so, the thing that makes you different is how you make your customers feel, it's in the relationship that you have with them. And obviously when they're a team of 135 people or so, and they have 55,000 customers, they don't know every single one of their customers personally, but they all take care to get to know as many of them as they can in the course of their work, by doing customer interviews, by reading their feedback, by sending them videos.   When he sees questions on social media, he will engage with those directly himself as well several of their team members. When he reads these, now he’s getting a little bit tactical here, so they use Slack at BombBomb and one of their channels inside Slack automatically ingests all of their NPS or net promoter score feedback. And of course, that's a 10 point scale.   And so you can see the scores, but he reads all of the comments that people leave, because on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to refer BombBomb to somebody else? And then what is the reason for that? And sometimes someone will just type a couple of words, sometimes people will type two or three paragraphs, and he reads all of those. And during any given week, he'll probably send 5 or 10 of those people a personal video just to address their problem or their question, or to say, thank you, these types of things.   And you can't do it for everybody, it doesn't perfectly scale, but the more attention we can pay to what our customers think and feel, and the more that we can make them feel seen and appreciated for who they are uniquely as human beings, the stronger the relationship, and therefore the stronger the company, like your company as you're listening to this as a listener. Your company only exists really for one primary reason, which is to attract, convert and retain customers.   And it's obviously an exchange of value as he already said; we all face more competition, no matter our business than ever before. And so the more we can take care to treat our customers and our employees for that matter by the way. A great customer experience is impossible without a great employee experience, we have to make our employees feel seen and heard and appreciated as well.   And so, we need to just take a little bit of time out of the day, and frankly, it's a very healthy way to live, to communicate more directly, more often with the people who are key to our individual and our collective success. He’s not sure if that answered the question, but he obviously feel very strongly about these things and he appreciate the opportunity to share that.   Me: Of course. And I mean, Ethan, you hit the nail on the head when you spoke about the fact that if you're going to have an amazing or a fantastic customer experience, it starts from within. I always tell my clients that there is a consistent feedback from customers about a bad experience, whether it is in product quality, or just how the employee deals with you or the long wait time that you have and nobody even takes the time to say, listen, “We're working on serving you. Could you give us a few moments?” just communicating and caring to say it to people so they know what is happening every step of the way. If you're having a consistently bad experience on the outside, we strongly believe that it's a symptom of something that's happening internally why the customers on the outside are feeling it.   Because the service experience starts from within, how you treat your employees, how responsive you are to their concerns, any challenges that they may be having, do you support them when they make their wins as much as you support them when things may not go well, because we're human and yes, we're humanizing the experience, but human beings make mistakes.   And I think how we handle and manage people making mistakes is so critical because it can either drive them into fear where they don't want to make a mistake again and so they won't take any risks to try and enhance the experience, or it can empower them and let them want to go above and beyond to try and serve the customer because they know that their team or their management will stand behind them when mistakes are made, once those decisions are being made in benefit of the customer.   Ethan shared that he really, really appreciate that and he agrees 100%. And he guesses the only thing he would add is that a lot of it is about managing expectations. Like being clearer, obviously with customers. Like disappointment is a function of expectation and so the more we can make clear what is a reasonable wait time?   He knows that when they were a much smaller business, they felt a lot of pressure to meet the standards of excellence. Their customer's expectations are being set by multibillion dollar companies like Amazon and Apple, and some of these other brand names that we all go to when we think about excellent experience. And so he just wants to empathize with the small business owners who are listening and saying, “Gosh, I only have 6 employees, I can't get back to everyone instantly.” That is perfectly okay. We just need to manage expectations.   And he thinks the more direct we are about who we are and what we're about and how we approach things, the more clear and honest you can be with people, he thinks the more grace you buy yourself. And then, the other important side of the expectation piece is what Yanique said about employees and making sure that they feel safe making mistakes, that they feel safe taking reasonable risks because that's what we have to do if we're going to stand out.   And the last thing he'll add is when someone, whether it's an employee or it's a customer is confused or disappointed or frustrated, we can start to feel bad about that but that's actually a really great opportunity to deepen the relationship, to make things right, to work our way through it, or to talk our way through it, or apologize if necessary and your relationship is going to be stronger on the other side of that.   The real threat to your business is the quiet customer or the quiet employee who's just sitting there a little bit confused, a little bit frustrated, not so frustrated or angry that they’re going to raise their voice about it and they're just going to silently disappear one day, they're going to stop buying, or they're going to start looking for another job and take another job. And you never know that they were confused or frustrated or disappointed or whatever the case may be.   And that's why we need to keep these communication channels open, make it really easy for people to share what they're thinking and feeling and to pay attention to that feedback. It's the worst thing you can do is to collect feedback and not pay any attention to it, because then the person feels doubly unheard, “You actually asked me for my feedback. I actually took the time to be thoughtful about my approach and you didn't respond, you didn't read it, you didn't use it. You'd made no change.” And so that's making a bad situation even worse. There are just a few cautions and thoughts around what Yanique shared there, and he really, really appreciates your valuing of internal service quality.   Me: It's definitely one of the things that I've picked up over the years as a customer service trainer. One thing I'd love to get your feedback on, I got this feedback, this question from a participant in a workshop I had last week online and she asked the question, if you work in an organization where you send an email and the email that you've sent is asking for, let's say an update or information that I will need in order to complete a particular task or activity to complete a project and it's time sensitive and all of that was outlined in the email, but nobody in the department even chooses to respond to say that they knowledge the email, they're working on gathering information or they don't have the information, no feedback is provided.   And so, it's almost like you have to be calling the department to find out if they got the email and then when you do call them, they say, “Oh yeah, we got the email.” And then that's it. There's no apology, there's no we're working on it. How do you adjust in an environment where people don't give feedback in an organization and what's the best protocol when you send an email to someone asking for something, should they respond or should they not respond?   Ethan shared that that sounds so frustrating. He'll go back to expectation management. As a team member, we need to model the behaviour we want to see, the culture is built one decision, one behaviour at a time, and everyone is responsible for building the culture. The culture is what is normal and acceptable around here.   And so, he doesn't think it's acceptable personally for a team member to be in need of something, to need something from one or more other people and they can't make any progress. And the other people don't respect them or the work enough to respond in a timely manner. So, he just thinks that's a bad situation, obviously.   And so, for example, a team member of theirs, he just got a new position within their company, he has a very important role. It's very important to a lot of the work that they're doing and he's looking to generate some strategies there going into the third quarter that they just entered. And he specifically asked for, “I want 15 ideas to move X to Y.” and he's asking that of everybody and then he's going to compile it. And then they're going to have a meeting and a discussion about it.   And he (Ethan) knew that that was going to require at least two hours of his time and he knew he got this email last Wednesday and he wanted the feedback by the end of the week. And so, he replied to him, he was like, “Rob, I think what you're doing is really, really important. I do not have two hours between now and the end of the week but here are four or five or six things that I'm thinking about as soon as I saw your questions, these are some things I thought about.”    So, he told him that he’s not going to honor his full request. He just can't do it, but here are some valuable thoughts. And he was very appreciative and thankful. And so as soon as he saw it, he thought, okay, maybe he'll look at this tomorrow and see if he can find two hours tomorrow. And then he got realistic with himself and he said, “I'm not going to have two hours tomorrow. I'm not going to have two hours this week.” And so again, managing those expectations and getting back to people right away.   The other thing he would say that he sees a lot of people miss on internally, and he could tell a story around this, but he won't. We need to use more than one channel very often and we do need to think about these types of requests as campaigns. So if you are reaching out to 5 or 10 other team members and you need something by the end of the following week, let's just say it's 7 business days away.   Well, you can't just send that one email and then just hope it happens 7 days later, you send an email that Wednesday, and then you send maybe another one on Friday or Monday, “Hey, just a quick reminder.” And then you send another one on Thursday, “Hey, just a reminder by tomorrow I need.” And for him, he would do it by email and he would probably do it by Slack as well. As you think about having multiple touches between now and the delivery of whatever's needed, he would use what other people are giving as a way to kind of create some awareness around it too.   So it'd be like, “Hey, just a reminder. If you're getting this email, I need X, Y, and Z by the end of the week. And here's something that Jennifer shared with me, here's something that Steve shared with me and I would love to know what you think too.”  So think of it as a little campaign, you can't just send one email and expect everyone to perform because we're all super, super busy. And so, think about using multiple communication channels and think about using some time spaced reminders to people as well.   Ethan shared that honestly, the Google Chrome extension that he uses every day from BombBomb and of course he’s a little bit biased, but again, he has tens of thousands of people who would agree with him. Just dramatically changes his relationship with his inbox, but more importantly, his relationship with the people who are in his inbox.   These messages aren't just messages, these messages are relationships through the foundation for the relationships that makes him successful as an individual and makes them successful as a marketing team at BombBomb and makes them successful as a company and more broadly makes them successful as a community. He also will use the Chrome extension to send videos to people via LinkedIn message.   So, instead of having all these anonymous connections that they make where they maybe look at their profile the day that they connect and maybe never communicate with them again. He has been taking care to record short personal videos for people to thank them, to introduce a couple things he likes to talk about and communicate about.   And the nature of the conversations that he’s enjoying with his new connections bring the network to life in such a more meaningful way than just this kind of collection of people who've clicked, he accepts. It just really closes the world down and people all over the world.   And so, it's really interesting and exciting. And not every relationship becomes amazing but it certainly increases the odds of it right out of the gate. And so, he thinks again, being himself and being accepted and engaged with for who he is as a person and as a professional is satisfying for him, but it also lets other people feel like they're being seen and heard as well. It's just really wonderful.   Me: Brilliant. It's funny you said you use it for LinkedIn because I recently connected with a gentleman from Trinidad and I remember when I accepted the invitation, he sent me a video, it was very personalized. “Hey Yanique, great to connect with you. Just wanted to hop on and find out how your Sunday's going.” And I was like, “Wow” it really wowed me because I've connected with lots of people on LinkedIn and most of them are very spammy.   Off the bat they start telling you about what they're and no interest in whether or not I'm even interested in their product or service but it wasn't about sales. And the fact that he sent it in the form of a video, it seemed like he just recorded it like on the front porch of his house, it was a Sunday morning, the street was like in his background. I thought it was really authentic and it was very human because he clearly would be doing that on a Sunday morning, it didn't seem like it was staged or it was put on, it was just very authentic and I was very impressed. It was very interesting. So, I think video for sure can definitely help to enhance those types of experiences.   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Ethan shared that these may be a little bit atypical, but the first book that comes to mind when you ask that question is a book called The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (Collins Business Essentials) by Paul Hawken. And he picked it up at a used bookstore sometime in the mid to late 90s. He was a very young person and it was very impactful on him. It's essentially about the intersection, obviously of the economy and ecology in general and some of the choices that we're making as customers, but also as businesses, how they affect the natural environment.   And it was impossible for him to read that book and see the world the same way. And he has read it several times now and it's just a fantastic read. And, so again, that's The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken.   The other one that comes to mind, well, two of them from Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. The first one is called Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard. And the thing that he really likes about that one, there's a section in there called philosophies where he talks about like breaks down the approach to various important aspects of a business, that is just a fantastic section of the book.   There's also some company history in there, but at a high level, one of the things he really, really enjoyed about it is that he didn't start the company intending to be, at this point, he got to imagine he's a multimillionaire, it's been such a successful brand, and it really lead the way in environmental stewardship in a lot of cases.   He was not trying to start a business, he was just trying to fund his hobby of rock climbing and surfing. So, he (Ethan) would imagine that all of the people that are listening to this conversation right now, that there are people that started the business that they're running because they just didn't know any other way. Like, this is just what I'm supposed to do. This is what I have to do. This is who I am. This is what I need to do. And he thinks a lot of people will find themselves, A, picking up some good ideas, particularly out of that philosophy section, but B, just identifying with this guy who through the natural, normal course of events, just found himself running a business based on his personal passion which is always inspiring.   Ethan shared that he’s constantly reading and listening to podcasts. And so, when he thinks about something really exciting, so he married, he has been married for many years. They have a teenage son who is starting to look at colleges and universities because he's entering his senior year of high school right now.   And so, it's just a really interesting phase of his life and their lives and it's just interesting to think about this person who not that long ago was a toddler, is now on the verge of really launching off into his own decisions and his own life and becoming a more fully realized person with more independence. And that whole process is just so challenging and exciting and scary and curious and joyful and nerve wracking. And so, we've been spending a lot of time on that.   Me: So, that's an exciting thing to be working through. I guess I'll be there with you in a few years. My daughter's 14 going on 15. So, I suppose in another year or two, I'll be where you are. I do look at her every day and I'm like, “I wonder, could I just get her back as a toddler just for like a day.” Because I miss her at that age.   When she was younger, people would said to me all the time, “Enjoy her because the time goes by so quickly.” And you take it for granted because you're in that moment and you're thinking, “Oh, the time is not going by quickly. She's doing this, she's doing that, she can’t stop moving up and down.” And it does go by quickly because she's now 14 going on 15 and I would give anything to have her back as a toddler, even just for a day.   Ethan agreed and shared that there's so much that we take for granted and that certainly is one of them. And it's interesting, everyone's going to give that caution, the same advice that you got was the same advice that they got as young parents. And so, everyone says it and he would just flip it now just to tie it back into the theme of the conversation here today is, it's really easy to look at your business as a set of numbers but those numbers are just the scoreboard, they're the outcome of the decisions that we're making every single day and the relationships that we're building every single day and the people that we're serving every single day.   And hopefully, depending on the nature of your business, you are transforming people's lives, in some cases it might be a very small transformation, but it brings a sense of ease or allows people to do something a little bit more quickly or resolves a particular pain point or frustration for them. And so, the work that you're doing really, really matters, and if you're serving meals to people as a restaurant or something else, there are people behind every number and no matter what you're looking at, there are people behind the numbers and the numbers are just collections and representations of the decisions that we're making every day and the people that we're serving every day. So we can't lose sight of that either.     Ethan shared listeners can find him at – Email – ethan@bombbomb.com LinkedIn - @ethanbeute www.bombbomb.com www.bombbomb.com/book www.bombbomb.com/podcast   When asked about a quote or saying that helps him refocus, Ethan shared that he doesn't but the one thing he'll offer is that, “You don't get what you don't ask for.” The worst you’re ever going to hear from anyone in any circumstance is no. The more comfortable you can get with that, the better. There is a humility often times required in asking for help or asking for a favor. And frankly, again, just to go to the relationship piece, people like to help other people. And he thinks to the degree that it's a reasonable ask, most people will say yes, most of the time. He has been shocked at how many times people have said yes.   And so, if you find yourself in this time of the pandemic, whether it's a personal feeling or whether it's a professional challenge, a business challenge or whatever, don't be afraid to reach out to people and ask for help even if it's just for a second opinion or a thought or a conversation, people want to help each other. And there's something very honest in humbling of you to make that ask of other people and to reveal that you do need or want some help. And he thinks it draws us closer together.   Me: That's very good point. It's funny you say that because it's one of the things that I encourage my daughter to do. Generally speaking, I find that in a learning environment you'll have people who may want to ask a question, or even in a business meeting, you may have a staff meeting and you can share with me if you think this is something that's common.   But people will sit down in a meeting and you'll get to the section of Q and A. And they'll say, guys, any questions and it's not until one person, brave person, courageous person raises their hand and asks a question. It's not that 5 or 10 other people didn't have the same question or similar, but nobody was brave enough to kind of take that first step to ask the question.   And so, even with my daughter, from she was younger, I always say to her, no question is stupid and you should always ask the question because somebody else in the class is going to benefit from you asking that question. And I've proven it time and time again with my own activities when I attend programs, or if I attend a meeting. I don't know why it prevents them, if they're fearful or what exactly, but you're right. You you'll never know unless you ask, you have to put yourself out there.   Ethan shared that he completely agrees. There is no bad question and really, especially if someone has presented information to ask a question, even if it feels to you like a dumb question, like you should have gotten the answer by listening, it gives the person another chance to double down on what they obviously are excited about and have invested a lot of time and energy.   And if someone is presenting information or a short presentation or whatever, people love questions about the work that they do, and it shows that you have a level of interest in addition to whatever else you learn, it shows some respect and it puts the presenter or the person answering the questions in a position that they generally like to be in.     Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners     Links   Rehumanize Your Business: How Personal Videos Accelerate Sales and Improve Customer Experience by Ethan Beute The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability (Collins Business Essentials by Paul Hawken Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard     Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC’s of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

The Insane Clown Posse and the ‘slippery slope' | The Raison D'être of Patagonia | Profit comes after the mission for Patagonia | These are Clips taken from our chat about Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard. This was the favourite book we read last year and for good reason. Yvon Chouinard tells his captivating and wholesome life story alongside founding the great company Patagonia. The deep education, founding and running a business completely different to anyone else at the time, and still being able to go rock climbing or surfing are at the forefront of this awesome story. Show notes, books mentioned and all episodes can be found at: http://abstractable.co/ We hope you enjoy. --- Subscribe to receive new episodes weekly. Watch video of episodes on our YouTube channel - Abstractable.

This was the favourite book we read last year and for good reason. Yvon Chouinard tells his captivating and wholesome life story alongside founding the great company Patagonia. The deep education, founding and running a business completely different to anyone else at the time, and still being able to go rock climbing or surfing are at the forefront of this awesome story. Today's episode is inspired by book Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard. As with each episode, we pluck out what most resonated from the book and how we would like to bring it into our lives. Show notes, books mentioned and all episodes can be found at: http://abstractable.co/ We hope you enjoy. --- Subscribe to receive new episodes weekly. Watch video of episodes on our YouTube channel - Abstractable.

For an unconventional approach on building your own business, you will love today's episode as Fiona interviews Marawa Ibrahim - a hula hoop master, author, teacher and business owner of Paradise, a brand for consciously sourced and manufactured activewear and active-centric accessories. Listen as Marawa shares her journey as she started her career in performing to starting her own business creating hula hoops and apparel for people who want to ‘move'. Fiona also asks Marawa for tips on managing brand collaborations, mentorship, hiring staff and dealing with big companies ripping off her original ideas. This episode is perfect for business owners who want to create their own path for business success!Topics discussed in this episode: IntroductionBusiness and Work During The Pandemic [6:15]How Marawa Started [12:11]Educational Background [16:48]Parents' Support [17:28]Moving To New York For Work [18:39]Moving Away From Australia [28:01]Starting A Business [29:34]@bruised.zine [37:21]Brand Collaboration [38:42]When Big Brands Ripoff Your IdeasSeeking Advice or MentorshipOn Hiring Other People [53:42]Marawa's Own MantraHer Own Legacy [57:40]Connecting With Marawa [1:01:03]Resources mentioned in this episode:The Majorettes [3:22]Paradise [3:38]The Girl Guide [4:05]Quality Novelty [9:58]@bruised.zine [37:29]Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard [48:47]Alice Edgeley [49:24]For a full transcript please visit mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/10 I would love to know what you took from this interview. So please send me a DM or tag me on Instagram - at @mydailybusinesscoach.And if you'd like to connect with Marawa, you can do that via her main website, which is marawa.online. You can also find her on Instagram just @marawa or hit her off thru email. You can find her email via her main website, marawa.online. You can also find all the shownotes and a full transcript of today's interview over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/10As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you could leave a review on iTunes, which really helps this podcast get found by other small business owners, and hopefully they can take away things from it as well.  If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram - @mydailybusinesscoach.  

In the premiere episode of Rosie & BJ Save the World, comedian and podcaster, Rosie Tran, alongside social media marketing expert, and best selling author, BJ Mendelson, share their views on ending the war on drugs. Get ready listeners, BJ and Rosie are here to save the day. Rosie is in favor of decriminalizing drug use as a means to end drug addiction. She cites Portugal's "use rooms" as an example of state-sanctioned drug use that actually decreases usage and helps those suffering from addiction to seek rehabilitation. Resources for Saving the World

    Born and raised in San Diego, Shaney Jo Darden's first experience with the desert was traveling to visit her grandparents who lived in Palm Desert. About ten years ago, Shaney Jo started coming to the hi-desert to visit a friend, who owned Rimrock Ranch in Pioneertown. Rimrock became a place for Shaney Jo to bring her staff for annual employee retreats: learning about new programs, receiving training and enjoying some off-site downtime hiking, taking in a sound bath at the Integratron or having a social night out together at Pappy & Harriet’s.   After a number of trips to the hi-desert, spending more and more time here and meeting the community, Shaney Jo began to realize this was a special place for her. Having spent nearly 10 years in Los Angeles, Shaney Jo was ready for a change and recognized moving to the desert would not only change her surroundings, but would also be the place to fulfill one of her big dreams: to build a wellness center for cancer survivors.   Shaney Jo is the Founder and Global CCO of Keep A Breast . The organization empowers young people around the world with breast health education and support and sparks conversation around prevention, early detection and self-checks for young women. This includes art and education programs as well as programs for survivors. In this episode, Shaney Jo takes us through the formation of the organization, from it's humble beginnings as a fund-raising art show, to the international organization it is today, celebrating 20 years of good works (2020).   Last year, Keep A Breast was part of the annual local Highway 62 Art Tours, breast casting nearly a dozen local women whose casts were painted by local hi-desert artists and available for viewing during the third weekend of the tours.   With their new headquarters completed and staffed in Yucca Valley, Shaney Jo is looking to offer the KAB lounge space for a cancer survivors group to form and is now turning her attention to the development of the wellness center of her dreams. Actively in the planning stages on property in the Rimrock area, this achievement will bring Shaney Jo’s desert journey full circle.   As Keep A Breast began to rapidly grow and change, Shaney Jo found herself looking for help to responsibly guide the organization. She found it in the form of a book titled, ‘Let My People go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman‘ by Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia and one of the founders of 1% for the Planet. Shaney Jo recommends this book to anyone running a business or non-profit who is looking for a better way to lead their organization and take care of its staff.   Prior to founding Keep A Breast, Shaney Jo worked in the apparel industry - another lifelong dream realized - with designers like Tommy Hilfiger in NYC, before returning to the west coast to work in the surf/skate apparel industries – Shaney Jo’s fabric of choice is denim.   Check out all the links and, if you're inspired, make a donation to this worthwhile organization.   https://www.keep-a-breast.org/   https://www.nontoxicrevolution.org/   https://www.fit4prevention.org/

Full #ReadEnsemble Review & Write-Up: https://growensemble.com/let-my-people-go-surfing/ Better World Weekly Newsletter:  https://growensemble.com/bww When the waves are good, surf. When there’s powder on the mountains, ski. Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard didn’t set out to be a businessperson. As he mentions in this very book, Let My People Go Surfing, he grew up wanting to be a fur trapper.  Despite, or perhaps because of this fact, he’s responsible for starting what would ultimately become one of the most successful and well-regarded outdoor clothing brands in existence.  In this book, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, he shares the history of his life, early days of Patagonia, and coming to terms with his “profession” as a person in business. #ReadEnsemble Rating:  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Read More on Amazon Read More on Better World Books With a summary, key quotes, and lessons learned, let’s dive in to this #ReadEnsemble write-up.

02:00 Cashflow and investments, differences between a product-based business and a service-based business.07:00 When it comes to promoting the business, no one's going to promote it as well as the founder.08:30 Why Tammy launched her podcast, Plastics Revolution12:30 Challenges and opportunities for businesses to take part in the sustainability movement. Design with sustainability in mind16:00 Advice to mission-driven entrepreneur: consider the whole life-cycle20:30 Dreams for The Refoundry: create a demand for recycled plastics23:00 Dreams with The Refoundry: I want us to be a good example and a champion for being good stewards of our resources.===========================NUGGETS:Product-based business requires higher investment upfront compared to service-based businessThe founder of a business is always the best promoter of the productSustainability starts with the designConsider the entire life-cycle of the product: material sourcing, logistics, packaging, disposal...etcAt each step, try to be intentional and strategic in order to reduce the environmental footprint===========================CONNECT with Tammy:To find out more about Tammy Ven Dange: https://tvendange.com/To find out more about The Refoundry: https://refoundry.com.au/Tammy’s podcast: Plastics RevolutionConnect with Tammy on socials @tvendange Books mentioned:“Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman” by Yvon Chouinard“Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike” by Phil Knighthttps://themindfulfounder.com/

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN: How trust and integrity was the foundation in choosing a chief best friend Knowing when to take the opportunity to start a business Getting clear on each other’s commitment level How all founders need to sit down and set up a vesting schedule to remain accountable Learning how to lean into each other’s strengths Seeing business partnership like a marriage; through thick and thin How emotions play a role at work where it empowers rather than hinders Knowing when to draw the line and understanding what is enough Developing your team culture with intention RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE: Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvonne Chouinard Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change by Ellen Pao Something Borrowed Shirt SAY HI, CONNECT WITH ADAY! Shop on ADAY (get $15 off with the code: CHIEFBESTFRIENDS; valid from 1 May 2019 to 8 June 2019 — yay!) Visit the ADAY Showroom for in-person styling appointments (or video if you’re outside the US) ADAY on Instagram Meg He on Instagram Nina Faulhaber on Instagram ENJOYED THIS EPISODE? Leave a review and help others find us @chiefbestfriends on Instagram

Growing up in a big family in the North-East USA, Nate Checketts always knew he wanted to create something innovative, but back then there wasn't even a word being used for he wanted to do. He first thought he might be an inventor, but it was clear from pushing around his red-cart lemonade stand from an early age, that he also loved to sell. He'd sell anything if he could. It was inevitable he'd soon be walking the path of entrepreneurship. He tinkered around with a few failing ideas on the side of his full time job running sponsorship strategies for the NFL. One day his regular practice of journaling shed some deep understanding of what he had to do in life. While not feeling fulfilled in his role, he wrote;   “I want to lead a company that really matters, side note - that doesn't necessarily mean I have to cure cancer”   At the same time, a Lululemon christmas present from mom - for all the family, triggered an idea; men are at a point of identity crisis right now, when it comes wearing clothes that make you feel good. This same kind of approach that was working predominantly in female branding, could be marketed at guys too. He and a few family members (having received a gift they weren't too thrilled about) spotted the gap in the market for great quality activewear specifically for men. And NOT just a brand that is targeted purely at the athletic type, but one that could speak to every normal guy out there. The concept became even deeper when they decided to target men who want to achieve more, dads wishing to be better parents, guys open to self growth, men wishing to find purpose and work harder. Not just how good you are crossfit or how many miles you could run. They crafted something that was missing, clothes that are as comfortable as sweatpants but smart enough to wear on Wall Street.   “Everyone should feel tall, proud, and inspired, that's when we decided to innovate, educate and inform our community that we was building. We needed to speak to the individual, other brands just weren't”   Story telling became a big part of their business startup using instagram and other social media platforms, NOT the little things like logo, name and email address, all these things that didn't really mean much. They stood by a unique ethos; If all your clothes in the closet are clean, which ones are you picking out first - They wanted to be that brand!   Here's what we get into on this episode. Taking the risk of dropping out of your full time job for something that is uncertain Not waiting on the idea or product being perfect before starting How two near fatal incidents nearly put the breaks on Rhone Turning what could have been a disaster into 100% commitment. The importance of focus Viewing yourself as unemployable Hiring people as crazy as yourself Getting comfortable with chaos The differences between seed investment and bootstrapping Being proud of what you do and letting the world see it   “To be successful you need have a succession of great years, To have great years you have to think about how you can have great days, you can do that with the 5-minute journal” Hope you enjoyed this week's episode with Nate Checketts , you can find out more about him here: Rhone.com Twitter Linked in Instagram   Find books and resources mentioned here: 4-Hour Work Week - Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss Let My People Go Surfing - The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard Convertible Note  - Wikipedia description Produced by Jason Sanderson - Podcast Tech Full show notes: https://www.ikonns.com/podcast/episode18

Education needs to change to enable the next generations to become ready to take up the challenges they are going to face in their adult lives. Adam Lindstrom, the educator from New Jersey shares his approach to changing the education and empowering it through technology to make his school ready for the future. Important links "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho "Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?" by Seth Godin "Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman" by Yvon Chouinard The Learning Lab 20% Time project Marlboro Marketplace project Future Ready Schools website

For this week’s episode, we sat down with Hannah Puckett: digital strategist, ocean advocate, citizen scientist, and everything in between. Growing up, Hannah was drawn to the outdoors. She spent her summers camping with her family and road tripping across the country. With a passion for writing and research, she studied advertising at the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a masters degree in strategic business communications. After some self reflection, at age 25, she decided to trade in her spreadsheets for a rubber rain suit, cubicle for the Alaskan Wilderness, thus embarking on a journey to explore her unusual passion for oysters. Hannah's Resources: Woofing Program: World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms Wwoof costs $40/year to join and allows you to connect with more than 2,000 farms across the USA. Of those 2,000 , Hannah was able to find one oyster farm. And that is how she met Dave. Find out more at wwoofusa.org Oyster Eating: Hannah jokes that the number of "oyster celebrities" can probably be counted on one hand. But blogger and self-proclaimed oyster sommelier, Julie Qui would be included. Link to blog: Rowan Jacobsen's Rules of Oyster Eating (and Julie Qiu's In a Half Shell Blog) Books: Lastly, Hannah shared some good reads that were important to her journey. Below are her reflections. OYSTER 101 : Meet Paris Oyster: A Love Affair with the Perfect Food by Mireille Guiliano, 2014 "Bite sized and delighful from start to finish; when reading Paris Oyster, it's as if you're at the table with Guiliano sipping on Muscudet and Belons as she tells you everything you'd want to know about how to enjoy oysters like the French... a wonderful gift for oyster lovers, both novice and expert." A Geography of Oysters: The Connoisseur's Guide to Oyster Eating in North America by Rowan Jacobsen, 2008 "The unofficial American Oyster Eater's Field Guide, as told by a guy who literally went there and tried that. It's a comprehensive index of oyster varieties unique to North America's East, West, and Gulf Coasts, and an almanac of noteworthy farms and oyster bars that serve them. Jacobsen is inspirational to me personally as a curious person who has turned interests into income... who also dabbles at the intersections of food, cultures, and the environment." The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell by Mark Kurlansky, 2007 "Oyster culture is more intertwined to the story of The United States than I ever knew. For history nerds, this book is as informative as it is a blast to read, all about the growth of New York City as told via the rise and fall of it's once bountiful, world-famous oyster beds." Inspiration for Living Non-Traditionally: Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel by Rolf Potts, 2003 "Living Your Best Life Out of a Bag 101: This book is choke full of resources, tips, and words of wisdom from fellow slow travelers, and how to enjoy and sustain a life on the move." Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard, 2006 "Chouinard's memoir is, first and foremost, a very cool story, but it was inspirational to read his reflections on how running a business based on values takes guts, community, and time. And encouraged me not to rush the journey... the dude is 79 years old and is still playing outside, doing awesome work for the world." The Kon Tiki Expedition: Across the Pacific by Raft by Thor Heyerdahl, 1948 "In 1947, five Norwegian dudes sailed a wooden raft across the Pacific to prove the plausibility that cultures of the South Pacific may be descendants of South America. The academic community said it was impossible, that they were insane, to even try was a death wish... and with the help of SO MANY PEOPLE (private loans by fellow 1920's explorers, South American authorities, the US Army)... they did it. Kon Tiki is Heyerdahl's memoir of that expedition." More Good Reads: Self Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841 "Emerson argues the imperative and importance of thinking for one's self, of questioning accepted dogma, and resisting hoard mentality, and living true to the intrinsic truth of the individual. Read it in chunks over the course of several days. It's dense, but each line packs a philosophical punch." Women Who Did: Stories by Men and Women 1890-1914 by various authors, edited by Angelique Richardson, 2006 "One of my favorite reads of 2017. A collection of stories told by women and men from a time when the limits of what it means to be 'woman' were bursting at the seams. Each author paints their unique gaze of what it was like to be or to witness a modern woman becoming herself at the turn of the 20th century."

What I learned from reading Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard.I had always avoided thinking of myself as a businessman. I was a climber, a surfer, a kayaker, a skier, and a blacksmith. We simply enjoyed making good tools and functional clothes. [0:01] One day it dawned on me that I was a businessman and would probably be one for a long time. I knew that I would never be happy playing by the normal rules of business; I wanted to distance myself as far as possible from this pasty-faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I had to be a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms. [0:32] One of my favorite sayings about entrepreneurship is: If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, “This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing. [1:00]Work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis. [1:18]I've always thought of myself as an 80 percent. I like to throw myself passionately into an activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession and degree of specialization that doesn't appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different. [4:05]Tom Brokaw on Yvon: It's been helpful to me to be Yvon's friend. He makes me think about things in new ways. [5:36] Can a company that wants to make the best-quality outdoor clothing in the world be the size of Nike? Can a ten-table, three-star French restaurant retain its third star when it adds fifty tables? The question haunted me throughout the 1980s as Patagonia evolved. [7:35]I continued to practice my MBA theory of management, management by absence, while I wear-tested our clothing and equipment in the most extreme conditions of the Himalayas and South America. [10:13] Throughout the book he's has a really beautiful idea of comparing business and organizing human labor, to nature. Part of this idea is he intentionally puts Patagonia through a lot of stress because he feels you need stress to grow. [11:42] Doing risk sports had taught me another important lesson: Never exceed your limits. You push the envelope, but you don't go over. You have to be true to yourself; you have to know your strengths and limitations and live within your means. The same is true for business. The sooner a company tries to be what it is not, the sooner it tries to have it all, the sooner it will die. [18:05] I did not yet know what we would do to get our company out of the mess it was in. But I did know we had to look to the Iroquois and their seven-generation planning, and not to corporate America, as models of stewardship and sustainability. As part of their decision process, the Iroquois had a person who represented the seventh generation in the future. If Patagonia could survive this crisis we had to begin to make all our decisions as though we would be in business for a hundred years. [19:12] The first part of our mission statement, “Make the best product,” is the cornerstone of our business philosophy. “Make the best” is a difficult goal. It doesn't mean “among the best” or the “best at a particular price point.” It means “make the best,” period. [24:05]The functionality driven design is usually minimalist. Or as Dieter Rams maintains, “Good design is as little design as possible.” Complexity is often a sure sign that the functional needs have not been solved. Take the difference between the Ferrari and the Cadillac of the 1960s. The Ferrari's clean lines suites its high-performance aims. The Cadillac really didn't have any functional aims. It didn't have steering, suspension, aerodynamics, or brakes appropriate to its immense horsepower. All it had to do was convey the idea of power, creature comfort, of a living room floating down the highway to the golf course. So, to a basically ugly shape were added all manner of useless chrome: fins at the back, breasts at the front. Once you lose the discipline of functionality as a design guidepost, the imagination runs amok. Once you design a monster, it tends to look like one too. [25:53]When I die and go to hell, the devil is going to make me the marketing director for a cola company. I'll be in charge of trying to sell a product that no one needs, is identical to its competition, and can't be sold on its merits. I'd be competing head-on in the cola wars, on price, distribution, advertising, and promotion, which would indeed be hell for me. I'd much rather design and sell products so good and unique that they have no competition. [27:15]There are different ways to address a new idea or project. If you take the conservative scientific route, you study the problem in your head or on paper until you are sure there is no chance of failure. However, you have taken so long that the competition has already beaten you to market. The entrepreneurial way is to immediately take a forward step and if that feels good, take another, if not, step back. Learn by doing, it is a faster process. [32:40]Nonfiction marketing. Our branding efforts are simple: tell people who we are. We don't have to create a fictional character. Writing fiction is so much more difficult than nonfiction. Fiction requires creativity and imagination. Nonfiction deals with simple truths. [34:00]It's okay to be eccentric, as long as you are rich; otherwise, you're just crazy. [36:19]Quality, not price, has the highest correlation with business success. Whenever we are faced with a serious business decision, the answer almost always is to increase quality. [37:37]We never wanted to be a big company. We want to be the best company, and it's easier to try to be the best small company than the best big company. [40:20]We don't hire the kind of people you can order around. We don't want drones who will simply follow directions. We want the kind of employees who will question the wisdom of something they regard as a bad decision. We do want people who, once they but into a decision and believe in what they are doing, will work like demons to produce something of the highest possible quality. [43:57] Systems in nature appear to us to be chaotic but in reality are very structured, just not in a top-down centralized way. A top-down centralized system like a dictatorship takes an enormous amount of force and work to keep the hierarchy in power. All top-down systems eventually collapse, leaving the system in chaos. A familial company like ours runs on trust rather than on authoritarian rule. [44:52] The lesson to be learned is that evolution (change) doesn't happen without stress, and it can happen quickly. Just as doing risks sports will create stresses that lead to a bettering of one's self, so should a company constantly stress itself in order to grow. [50:29] I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work towards simplicity. The more you know, the less you need. [56:01] —“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

What I learned from reading Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard.If you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will get access to every full episode. These episodes are available nowhere else.As a bonus you will also get lifetime access to my notebook that contains key insights from over 285 podcasts and lectures on entrepreneurship.The Misfit Feed has no ads, no intro music, no interviews, no fluff. Just ideas from some of the greatest entrepreneurial minds in history. Upgrade now.

Rear Admiral Kerry Metz (USN, Ret.) started his career as a Navy SEAL, and eventually served as the first commander of Special Operations Command North. In this discussion, Kerry talked about career success, career setbacks, and how “you can’t be a shiny penny without a few wire brushings!” Kerry shares his 5 H’s when it comes to leadership: honor, honesty, humility, humor, and happiness. He discusses the differences and similarities between the military, sports teams, business, and the shared commonality regarding leadership. Listen in to gain insights from a modern-day, intellectual warrior. Key Takeaways [3:01] Kerry progressed as a SEAL from the tactical area, through operational roles, and then to the strategic level as an admiral. The Special Forces, SEALs, and Rangers are tests for the human body and mind to do 10 times more than they think they can.  [5:48] A good team requires a common purpose or mission. Next, comes a shared experience or sacrifice. Everyone contributes to the best of their ability. These are the ingredients for a high-performing team. [7:33] Kerry talks about sacrifice in a startup. Employees sacrifice high salary for shares. Founders are often on the road more than most executives, for a later payoff. Sacrificing now gives you future options. [9:25] Kerry discusses how Naval officers achieve rank. Evaluations are not only for what they have done, but also their potential. Leadership is developing the leaders behind you. If something happens to you, the one behind you has to step up and take your place. [13:29] Kerry talks about his advancement. He was passed over for Lieutenant Commander once, but not the second time. When he was up for Commander, it also took two times. But he made One Star Admiral before his contemporaries. Kerry follows five ‘H’s: Honor, Honesty, Humility, Humor, and Happiness.  [21:13] Military groups fight in a mission to win or lose; sports teams play a game to win; but business can be a long slog. He cites Admiral Jim Stavridis, who said to be open, honest, and collegial, and Admiral Michael Mullen, who said to listen, learn, and lead. Leaders who apply these principles will lead well. [25:49] Competition among peers is healthy if it is balanced with cooperation. Leaders should lead people the way they need to be led. Some need a push, some need a pat on the back. Tell the contributors how they are doing, and what they need to do to be on the mark. [29:44] In 1989, Kerry tells a hard leadership lesson he learned as the Team Commander of SEAL Team One when they deployed to the Philippines.  [37:27] Put people in the right spot for them, nurture them, and empower them, and they will surpass your expectations and surprise you with their achievements.  [41:42] No one starts at the top. He would like to help others have a smoother ride, go further, and go faster. The world needs leaders to handle complexity.   LinkedIn: Kerry M. Metz Navy Bio:  Navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio_ret.asp?bioID=655 Interview: Defensemedianetwork.com/stories/interview-with-rear-admiral-kerry-m-metz-us-navy Hall of Valor: Valor.militarytimes.com/recipient.php?recipientid=315229   Quotable Quotes Whatever you can do, think 10 times that. You are capable of it. Don’t let someone else determine where you’re going. You determine where you’re going. Stay on that path. You’re going to get through that obstacle. You’ve just got to keep trying. A high-performing team has a common purpose, a shared sacrifice, and everyone contributing to their best ability. “A good leader can get the most of his personnel even that aren’t going all the way to the top.” The bottom line is sustained superior performance. If something happens to you, the one behind you has to take your place. If they’re not ready, then that’s your fault. “If you’re doing something that you absolutely hate, my suggestion is, do something [about it].” “You can’t be a shiny penny without a few wire brushings, and I got more than my share.” The simplest solution is not always the best if there are unknown factors. Always listen to input.   Bio Rear Adm. Kerry Metz holds a Bachelor of Science in Business from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Denver. He completed courses at the Air Command and Staff College, the Armed Forces Staff College and the Defense Language Institute. Commissioned via the Aviation Officer Candidate School in October 1984 and after a very brief time in aviation, he was assigned to the surface fleet where he served on USS Enhance (MSO 437). Transferring to Naval Special Warfare, he completed Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training with Class 149 in April 1988. He served in both Naval Special Warfare and Joint Special Operations assignments. Previous commands include a Naval Special Warfare Task Unit, a Joint Task Force, Naval Special Warfare Group 11, and six Naval Special Warfare Reserve Units. His service overseas includes multiple deployments to Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. Metz served as the first commander of Special Operations Command North, a subordinate unified command of U.S. Special Operations Command under the operational control of U.S. Northern Command. Promoted to rear admiral in October 2011, he served first as the deputy commander and then as interim commander of Special Operations Command Central from September 2011 to July 2013. Books mentioned in this episode Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value, by Bill George The Littlest Green Beret: On Self-Reliant Leadership, by Jan Rutherford Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, by J. D. Vance Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice, by Adam Makos When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World, by William H. McRaven Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, by Yvon Chouinard The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, by Thomas M. Nichols Letters from a Stoic, by Lucius Annaeus Seneca Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, by Joshua Foer Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by General Stanley McChrystal and Tantum Collins Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, by Simon Sinek The Secret Knowledge of Water: Discovering the Essence of the American Desert, by Craig Childs Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy — Until You’re 80 and Beyond, by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge  

We’re back with another exciting episode this week! We spoke with Andrew Capener and Drew Hollenback about their Kickstarter project for the Seasons blanket. Tune in to hear more about what they’ve learned from running multiple campaigns, where to put in the most effort to make sure your project is successful and much more! Seasons Blanket. Waterproof. Comfortable. Built to Last. Key Crowdfunding Takeaways Why it’s important to partner with the right people for your Kickstarter campaign How cross promotions can help you raise more money How to become an influencer in your Kickstarter category Why “putting in the work” is key to a successful campaign How to build a community around your product Where to focus your pre-campaign efforts Links Seasons on Kickstarter https://seasonsmfg.com/ Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOK20 for 20% off! Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit. BackerKit makes software that crowdfunding project creators use to survey backers, organize data, raise additional funds with add-ons and manage orders for fulfillment, saving creators hundreds of hours. To learn more and get started, click here. Transcript

This week's guest is Dave McCoy, owner of Emerald Water Anglers. Headquartered out of their premier fly-fishing retail shop in West Seattle, Dave and his staff offer high-quality and knowledgable fly-fishing guides, are passionate about fishing, preservation and they really know the water and fishing around the Northwest. Topics & Ideas Discussed in This Episode: Dave is involved in many aspects of the fly-fishing industry - He is a true entrepreneur: with a photography business, writer, traveler, fishing guide, social media manager for his shop and Patagonia Fly Fish (as well as a "Patagonia Ambassador"), and helps develop products for companies he believes in. Seattle is a pretty small city for being a big city. The fly-fishing community is pretty tight - Dave's friend (and my dad) Tim Harris' fly-fishing site Their biggest challenge when first starting business - moving from CO, to WA and being new to the area... he had to go from just knowing trout in one mt. lake to having to know so many different fish species and hundreds of bodies of water. Their biggest challenge now - local retail spaces having to compete with online retailers | resource management pressures in WA State | Getting in front of a lot of fly-anglers, who are older and not necessarily online and so have never heard of their store. Steelhead (the WA State fish) are endangered in a lot of the local rivers, creating closures of some great rivers. Just launched new woman's fly-fishing guide program - Welcome Karli Roland (official announcement on Facebook) What set's them apart from other in their industry - Super selective in hiring... leading to unbeatable customer service, superior staff with extensive knowledge and experience. Their greatest strength - "great salesman"... focuses on the relationship and what the customer needs and what's best for them vs. pushing for "closing the sale". They wish they had the habit of... - not always saying what comes to his mind; having a better filter. They are passionate about - educating fellow fly-fishers about the current state of the states fishers and resources and incoming them on what they can do to be good steward of our fisheries. The best advice they have ever received - "Jump in with both feet and give 100% of yourself to it, unconditionally" A personal habit that contribute to their success - A sense of humor Parting Guidance from our guest - "If you make a lot of money and your unhappy, change it". Figure out something you really want to do and through yourself at it... you only have one life to live, so life it! Episode Links & Resources: www.emeraldwateranglers.com Business Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/EmeraldWaterAnglers Business Twitter Page: https://twitter.com/EmrldWtrAnglers Get involved in local organizations that work to preserve our fisheries and be a good steward of the resources. www.pugetsoundkeeper.org - Working to keep Puget Sound waters clean & watchdog for superfund sites. www.wildsteelheadcoalition.org - Working specifically on policy for managing our state fish, the wild Steelhead. www.wildfishconservancy.org - Help facilitate courts making judgments in favor of good and sustainable policies as well as do a good deal of science to backup why they take the stances they do in court. www.tu.org - Does great work on habitat restoration in entire region. www.wildsalmon.org - Working hard in regaining Salmon populations. Jim Collins book - Good To Great Skate The Fly Podcast (Dave McCoy & Dylan Rose video podcast on Vimeo) The Tim Ferris Podcast - "Drunk Dialing - Ladies Night" episode Favorite podcast(s) - Anchored Podcast with April Vokey - Not just entertaining but also informative, as she asks the right question of the more informed and involved people in the industry. Book recommendation - "Let My People Go Surfing - The Education of a Reluctant Businessman" by Yvon Chouinard (By the Founder of Patagonia and how it came to be.) Learn more about Christian, other projects he's working on and his business at: www.Sea-Town.com Ways to Subscribe to The Sea-Town Podcast: "Like" the Sea-Town Podcast FaceBook Page HERE Click here to subscribe on iTunes Click here to subscribe on Google Play Click here to subscribe on TuneIn Click here to subscribe on Stitcher Help Us Spread The Word - Reviews Help a Ton! Thanks for joining me again this week. If you have any tips, suggestions, or comments about this episode, please be sure to leave them in the comment section below. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post. Thank you! And finally, please leave an honest review for The Sea-Town Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show and I read each and every one of them. Tags: Seattle, West Seattle, Sea Town, Sea-Town, Business, Entrepreneur, Community, Neighborhood,  Small Businesses, Local, Christian Harris, Fly Fishing, Angeler, Casting, Emeral Water Anglers, Patagonia, Photography, Karli Roland, Fishing, Rivers, Dave McCoy

src="https://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/4431268/height/90/width/500/theme/custom/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/autoplay/no/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/forward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/88AA3C/" height="90" width="500"   My guest today is Afif Ghannoum, the founder of NapkinToShelf.com. He is a formerly frustrated lawyer that has launched over ten products that have sold in 27,081 stores that include retailers like Walmart, Target & CVS. Afif also has two patents, licensed technology to a large pharma company for a product sold in tens of thousands of stores in multiple countries, and has raised $8,914,067.75 (and Counting) in venture funding.   Bestselfco., Make Success a Habit! Use the Self Journal to organize and align tactical day to day tasks with larger life goals.   In this episode you will learn: The amazing journey that brought Afif and his family to the United States What steps people can take to know and predict if the product that they want to create will sell Afif's Red Ocean,  Blue Ocean and Pink Ocean Strategies How people can develop a name for a product that will grab consumer's attention within the space or niche Strategies and tactics on how you can create amazing packaging that increases sales of the physical products Promotional strategies to sell physical products Logistical insights to help you overcome the obstacles The distribution approach that will give your product the best chance at success How to raise capital from investors   Interview Links: Napkintoshelf.com The Ultimate Guide to Launching a Product: 391 Resources For Creating, Branding and Launching an Amazing Product How Corey Cole uses Instagram to sell 10,000's of products per month   Recommended Books: The Pampered Chef: The Story of One of America's Most Beloved Companies by Doris Christopher  Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose Paperback by Tony Hsieh L.L. Bean: The Making of an American Icon Hardcover by Leon Gorman Longaberger: An American Success Story by Dave Longaberger Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc. by Gary Erickson Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman by Yvon Chouinard The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Paperback by Brad Stone Sam Walton: Made In America Mass Market Paperback by Sam Walton   Recommended Resources: Contestdomination.com Boomerang Taskrabit 99designs.com Fiverr.com Thedieline.com  Bulkapothecary.com     Show Sponsors: Audible, download any audio book for free when you try audible for 30 days. Leadpages,  is offering a free marketing automation course that includes:12 video modules with step-by-step strategies to leverage what's working in your business. Thrive15.com, get a free month of access at www.thrive15.com/cashflow   Show Transcript    Enter the Launch Give away contest to win a $500.00 Visa Gift Card! During the first two months of our podcast we are giving away a $500.00 dollar Visa gift card. To enter into the drawing, go to www.cashflowninja.com/Itunes and rate, review and subscribe to our podcast. Have some feedback you'd like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below and please share it using the social media buttons you see at the bottom of the post! If you enjoyed this episode of our podcast, please leave an honest review for The Cashflow Ninja Podcast on iTunes. Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read each and every one of them. John Lee Dumas of EOfire.com made a video explaining how to leave a review you can watch here. You can also access step by step instructions how to subscribe, rate and review on Itunes from Apple here. Thank you for supporting our podcast and sharing it with friends and family! Live a Life of passion and purpose on your terms, M.C Laubscher