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NWA Founders is a Northwest Arkansas business podcast hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer. The goal is to inspire entrepreneurship in Northwest Arkansas by highlighting the founders, owners and builders driving growth here.
Every other Tuesday, Cameron and Nick sit down on location with the people building companies here: founders, owners and operators from Fayetteville, Rogers, Bentonville, Springdale and across the region. Guests have built coffee roasters, construction firms, software companies, staffing agencies, restaurants, retail brands and family businesses handed down through generations. The conversations run long, usually around 90 minutes, and cover the parts most interviews skip: the early money, the first hire, the year it nearly ended, and what they would do differently.
Every episode, with full transcripts and a searchable archive of every conversation, is at nwafounders.com.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
NWA Founders - Andy Murray Full Audio
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Andy Murray: [00:00:00] Bigger ideas are easier than smaller ideas. When you got a small idea and you're trying to execute that, it usually takes still resources and effort, right? But when you get a big idea that moves hearts and minds, people will come out and help you, right? And there's more energy there, so more team wanting to come in and help you.
And I learned this from Tom Muccio, who's a great mentor of mine, was the president of the Walmart team, but when I was down there I would come into his office and I'd say, "Tom, you know, I've got, got this idea I'd like us to do between P&G and Walmart." And he would ask, uh, "Is that the biggest idea that P&G and Walmart should be working on?"
And I would moonwalk backwards out of his office and say, "No, not really." If that outcome is clear, I mean, Martin Luther King didn't say, "I have a three-year objective." Uh, he said, "I have a dream," right? And, and that outcome, crafting that to shape hearts and minds, that people wanna help you, that it's really gonna make a difference, um, that's how you get a team inside a big company to come out of the woodwork and help if they believe that outcome is gonna move hearts and minds[00:01:00]
Cameron Clark: We wanna give a special thanks to our presenting sponsor, Greenwood Gearhart. Starting with my parents, for years they've helped my family feel at peace by having a team we can trust build our finances for the future. One thing I love about Greenwood Gearhart is how directly involved the team is in the holistic planning of our finances.
We can regularly check in with our advisor and know that they see the full picture of our family, even between generations. I know they're adding immense value to so many lives here in Northwest Arkansas. And to learn more about Greenwood Gearhart and their suite of services, you can visit their website at greenwoodgearhart.com or hit the link in the show description.
The Northwest Arkansas Founders Podcast is supported by Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners. Sage is a full-service commercial real estate firm helping companies, investors, and developers grow across Arkansas. I've personally seen them add immense value to so many business owners across the Northwest Arkansas market.
From office and industrial to retail and land, Sage helps businesses find the right space to grow in the state's most dynamic market. Learn more at sagepartners.com
Andy, thanks for coming on this morning. Really, uh, [00:02:00] uh, we had our call kind of prepping for this, and yeah, I've been really excited looking forward to this episode, especially just 'cause you've seen so many different seasons.
Um, you know, being from Cincinnati, Procter & Gamble stint, DaySpring, and then kind of your small business entrepreneurship story that shot up and then into Walmart, and so, um, and I'm sure we're gonna dive into a lot of different things today. Um, one of the things I wanted to chime on first, though, was, you know, how do you eval- evaluate now entrepreneurship in a small business versus entrepreneurship in a large corporation?
Andy Murray: Well, first, thanks for having me. Uh, I've watched your podcast and really impressed. I know a lot of the people that, uh, you guys have been interviewing. They've been a key, uh, player in my, uh, experience and, and good fortune and luck in this market is through a lot of the people that, uh, you've already had on your show.
So, uh, well done. Thank you for inviting me. I feel very privileged. Uh, you know, I, I, I've probably spent half my career as an entrepreneur in its own right [00:03:00] as a true entrepreneur, and then, uh, half in the corporate world, uh, trying to bring entrepreneurship into the corporate environment, and, uh, I can tell you with certainly s- with certainty, it's not a direct translation.
Uh, it's very, very different type of entrepreneurship in the corporate environment, uh, eh, for a couple of different reasons. Um, you know, entrepreneurs think differently. They think, you know, about the problem today and then where am I going next, and then moving it forward. Uh, trying to do entrepreneurship in big companies is like, well, tell me how, what the ROI is gonna be in three years before we get started, right?
And, you know, there's a lot of discovery that has to happen in an entrepreneur's world that they think about the day, and then pivots- Sure ... that you move through. But when you're going for corporate funds and you've got to convince a CFO to invest, uh, you've got to have some more pieces put together for it to work than just raw entrepreneurship.
So I kind of chuckle when I hear someone say, after being, you know, an SVP at Walmart and [00:04:00] years at Procter, just be more entrepreneurial, uh, in the corp- to corporate people. Uh, that's probably the worst advice you could get because, um, the, the, the mind shift is so different. And talk about selling the team in that environment.
Um, well, you have to, you have to, in a corporate environment, you have to be clear about certain things. And, and the first thing is, and, and this is where I, what I, what I've really learned is there's basically five simple things, five questions you need to solve before you launch into, uh, innovation and entrepreneurship type style work in a corporate environment.
The first thing is you've got to be really clear on what's the problem I'm trying to solve, and is it a customer problem we're solving? Mm-hmm. And I sit on a lot of VC, uh, calls and boards, and if as an entrepreneur comes in and presents a, uh, a pitch deck for investment, and if that, on page one isn't, slide one isn't, "Here's the problem I'm trying to solve," it's kind of, that's over, right?
It, that, [00:05:00] because that's where you start. A lot of big companies, they start with, you know, "Here's a three-year objective we're trying to hit or a measurement." Mm-hmm. And so just getting real clarity on here's the problem I'm trying to solve, and then here's the outcome is the second big question. Here's the outcome that I wanna have.
And that outcome's gotta be big enough to move hearts and minds. And one of the things I learned when I worked at P&G on the Walmart team here is that, uh Bigger pr- bigger ideas are easier than smaller ideas. Why? And, well, because when you got a small idea and you're trying to execute that, it usually takes still resources and effort, right?
But when you get a big idea y- that moves hearts and minds, people will come out and help you, right? And there's more energy there, so more team wanting to come in and help you. And I learned this from Tom Muccio, who's a great mentor of mine, was the president of the Walmart team. And when I was down there, I would come into his office and I'd say, "Tom, you know, I've got, got this idea I'd like us to do between P&G and Walmart."
And he would ask, uh, "Is that the biggest idea that [00:06:00] P&G and Walmart should be working on?" Mm.
And I would moonwalk backwards out of his office- ... and
say,
uh, "
No, not really." But, but I learned from him, he'd say, "Big likes big." And you're in a market, you know, where big ideas are easier because... And I can give you several examples, uh, where if that outcome is clear.
I mean, Martin Luther King didn't say, "I have a three-year objective." Uh, he said, "I have a dream," right? And, and that outcome, crafting that to shape hearts and minds, that people wanna help you, that it's really gonna make a difference, um, that's how you get a team inside a big company to come out of the woodwork and help, if they believe that outcome- Mm
is gonna move hearts and minds and, and have a real difference in the world, right? Mm. And so, uh, that, uh... Daniel, uh, Cable wrote a book called Alive at Work, and inside it he talks about all of us have the seeking system to take on a quest to do something adventurous. Most of the projects in big corporations don't really have that flavor.
They're more tactical, operational, or continuous improvement. But [00:07:00] when one comes along that says, "Hey, we can really make a change," all of a sudden, uh, and the outcome's clear, then, then you can go for it and get people to help you.
People latch on.
Andy Murray: People latch on. And then I think the third thing you have to get really clear on is, what's the biggest barrier that I'm gonna have to overcome?
And, and study that first and really try to understand that because in big companies, um, a lot of things are constraints, and constraints is where creativity comes in. I don't have enough team. Uh, I don't have enough talent, I don't have enough budget, right? Yeah. Well, those are just constraints. Those aren't really barriers.
Yeah. And so when you start looking at that, great creativity comes when there are constraints- Mm ... and when you don't have enough. You know, Larry and Sergey, when they built Google, they, uh, they were really good at back end, but they didn't have any real front end, uh, ca- uh, design- Sure ... you know, kinda, kinda skills.
So all they had was the search bar and the logo.
Yeah.
Andy Murray: That constraint was brilliant. Yeah. You know, that's allowed that to really come to life. And so what we see as a constraint is often the, the, the [00:08:00] seed of where great creative ideas come from. And then the fourth thing is you've got to c- decide how you're gonna measure success.
And in corporations, bigger companies, they'll typically pick a KPI or an incentive that is more... may not actually move that outcome at all. And so you've got to... You know, what's more important, number of likes or number of shares, right? Mm. So if you don't pick the, the, how you're gonna measure success, someone's gonna pick it for you.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: That isn't really true in an entrepreneurial environment where you're building from scratch, you're growing, and- Mm-hmm ... you know, cash is king, and you're trying to get off the ground. Um, you know, you don't think about defining that measurement as clearly. And then lastly is you've got to de- define what is motivation gonna look like.
How are you gonna motivate people? Uh, how are you gonna tell stories? How are you gonna get them to be part of the story, invite them in- Internally ... to co- internally to co-create? Mm-hmm. And so way more important than, than one might assume is getting, uh, people recognition- Mm ... built in early, in the early [00:09:00] milestones so that they feel part of the story, and then all of a sudden, you know, they're there helping you sweat it through, even if it's something that's not directly related to them.
Mm-hmm. And so I can... I guess I can give you several examples where that worked. The, those five questions worked in the corporate environment, uh, that, um, you wouldn't think of it. One is, um, we were, uh, getting ready... I was SVP of marketing at Walmart. I was asked to do a, uh, Veterans Day ad, right? Yeah.
Simple 30-second Veterans Day ad for November 11th. So it just says, "Walmart celebrates our veterans," right? Mm-hmm. So I went to the agency that was helping us at the time, and I asked them the question, "What is the biggest problem that veterans feel needs solved for them that we could help solve," right?
And they did some research, and they came back and some insights and talked to veterans, and they, they don't feel seen. They don't feel seen out of uniform. Here, they're not in uniform. Hmm. And we started to dig into that, and we found that, you know, part of their world is [00:10:00] that when they're in deployment, um, there's a green light on base.
Yeah. And the green light means home. It's a safety thing. And so we brainstormed this idea that said, you know, "If we really wanna solve something big here, what if we put a green light on the porch of every home in America that tells veterans we see them?" Hmm. And put that out as a call to action. Uh, and so I thought, "Man, that's great.
Like, I love this idea. That's a big... I understand the outcome. I understand how that outcome is, is emotional for veterans and could really move them than just doing a 30-second ad." So the agency came in and pitched it, and we went in, uh, to the CMO at the time, Steven Quinn, great guy. Uh, and it, and he was like- Listen, then he's like, "Andy, can I see you in my office?"
I'm like, "Uh-oh." And he's like, "Andy, Andy, Andy." It was this like three, three-word Andy. He's like, "All I wanted was a 30-second ad." Yeah. "What you're talking about here is gonna be a lot of work, a lot of work." Mm-hmm. "And, you [00:11:00] know, it's g- and what if Home Depot sells more green light bulbs? You know, there's a lot of risk here, and where are you gonna get the resources to really amplify this socially?"
And, and he was right in his points because he wasn't saying, "Don't do it." He was just wanting to make sure I understood when you go out on something big, you gotta, you gotta commit to it, right? And are you ready to be committed, or would you rather just do this 30-second ad, go home, hug your wife, walk the dog, play with the kids?
You know- Yeah ... th- your life will change doing that. So I was like, "So you're saying I can't do it." He's like, "Nope. It's your decision, but just know what you're getting into." And I'm like, "Okay." So I left his office, called the agency, said, "We got a green light. Let's go." And, uh, people were coming out of the woodwork to help, the social team, uh, and it launched with great enthusiasm.
There, at one point, 7 million associates at Walmart. There were tons of veterans that came out. And, uh, we put the green light on the capitol buildings and Razorback Stadium and all over were green lights, and it turned into a movement that went [00:12:00] for three, four years we ran that, and then it got bigger than Walmart and, and you can still find, uh, remnants of Green Light a Vet there.
But it came from one thing, and that was, you know, asking the question, what's the biggest problem we're gonna... we need to solve for, for veterans that we could work on? Uh, so that's one example where that entrepreneurial mindset coupled with some other things, like framing that outcome in real clear ways and allowing people to be part of that story to participate, uh, went from something that would've been just a 30-second ad to a movement.
Nick Beyer: How do you get people to think bigger? I mean, how, how do you... Is that something you're just born with? Is it something that you feel like you can inspire in people? I mean, h- how do you get people to actually think bigger, what's... whether it's in a big corporation, a founder, an entrepreneur? I mean, how do you do that?
Andy Murray: Um, well, I think you've gotta ask first, uh, the answer usually resides in the question you're asking, right? So ask better questions. Uh, a- and starting with really interrogating, uh, what is the biggest problems we're solving [00:13:00] here, right? And, and then once you get into that and div- dive in and can clarify that question, then you start saying, "Well, what kind of outcome could we get?"
Uh, and then when, if I'm talking to someone that, like coaching them through a, a project like that, I'll say, "Well, what could we do? What, what could we 10X with that outcome," right? And ask them to 10X it. And all of a sudden it's like, well, then it, it gets really, really big. And, and I think that is one way to get people to think bigger about it and, and really understand that.
A lot of people don't. It's not wa- it's not for everyone, right? Because they wanna take the safe route. But if they understood how other people can come alongside and help you with an outcome that moves hearts and minds, that really makes a difference, then, then you just lock in there, and then all of a sudden the answers start to reveal themselves as you work on the problem.
And if you start with, "Well, I've gotta see my way all the way to the end on this, and I've gotta have all the answers," you'll never get off the ground. I mean, uh, you know, Einstein said, "If I had a problem to solve, I would spend the [00:14:00] first 55 minutes trying to understand the question before I started working on the ideas."
And so valuing the power of asking great questions, uh, is the starting point to getting to bigger ideas. Ideas are easy. Um, ideas are everywhere. It's not the idea is the challenge, it's that you've gotta ask the better question of does this make a difference and what will make a difference to really understand the problem.
Nick Beyer: But then how do you balance that with like, you know, some of the great entrepreneurs, some of the great founders have just run. Like- Mm-hmm ... maybe they didn't spend the, the 55 minutes on that. They spent the 55 minutes running, making progress, iterating. There's obviously probably a miss in those 55 minutes that comes with it.
But like how do you balance the speed, speed to do something versus like the research and intellectual curiosity to actually do it?
Andy Murray: Well, I think in chasing down the problem, you know, as I said, when I'm looking at pitch decks for, uh, investment The [00:15:00] very first slide has to be a real clear articulation of the problem you're trying to solve.
If that's not clear, if you see an entrepreneur that says, "I just wanna be an entrepreneur," right? I'm just passionate about that, and they're diving in, they're running, and they don't have that problem clearly defined that really keeps them up at night that they're trying to solve, they, they- we, we just know they're not, it's not, it's not gonna work.
It's not gonna be successful. You've got to have that problem. Uh, you don't need to have the answer to the problem, but then it's in that chasing of the problem and trying to solve it is where the ideas reveal themselves, and then the pivots and the... I mean, you take Jack Dorsey, how Twitter was invented.
All of these things never started with that, like, exact problem defined the way it was. He was trying to solve a communication problem when he built Twitter through, uh, dispatch and better dispatch with ambulances in cities like that. But in solving that problem, he was clear on the problem he started on.
But it pivoted as he started to get revelation about a bigger idea as he started in on it. So I think you've gotta run. You've gotta run hard. You've gotta push hard and [00:16:00] get going. But if you haven't gotten clarity on the problem you're trying to solve, you could be running in the wrong direction for a long time.
That's good. Hmm. So let's, let's get some of your story. Yeah. Um, so from Cincinnati-
Andy Murray: Mm-hmm ...
start there and kinda m- you know, from how you grew up to the first, the first, uh, job here at P&G.
Andy Murray: Sure. Yeah. Um, well, I grew up, uh, my dad was an entrepreneur, uh, i- in the sense that he started a plumbing company from scratch, and as a little kid, I would ride around in the truck with him, going to different jobs, four, five years old.
I just loved that. I would go, love to do that than anything else, where he's meeting with architects, his men, you know, building out a shop, and, uh, he grew it from basically nothing to, uh, the second largest, uh, plumbing contractor in Cincinnati. And so I got to experience that growth and the culture of that and, and really, you know, as soon as he could put me to work, it was probably illegal.
You know, I'm, I'm- Yeah ... 11 and 12 years old in the [00:17:00] back, counting fittings in the shop- Yeah ... uh, loving every minute of it. But, you know, I, I got that kinda in the DNA that someday I wanted to build a great company, and, um, d- because I f- I knew what, how he treated his men, how he brought them together every Monday, and the things he did culturally was really cool, and it, and just like I r- I really wanna do that.
So he was a huge influence on, on me. Um, and, uh W- in high school, uh, I wanted to build a company, sh- start something. You know, I didn't know what it was gonna be. But I saw, um, through Indian Hill... Indian Hill's an area around Cincinnati. It's got literally rich people, big huge lots, five, five-acre lots, older place, and these big houses.
And there's a lot of widows with really long driveways that were blacktop that needed to be sealed.
Yeah.
Andy Murray: And that's a hot, sweaty, hard job, and I was 16. And, uh, Dad had an old dump truck in the back, and, uh, just had this idea. I grabbed a friend, said, "Hey, let's go seal these driveways and see if we can't get some of these widows to invest in.
They'll... You know, [00:18:00] we'll do it s- dirt cheap. We could cut, undercut everybody. It's a hot job. Nobody wants to do it. Their driveways need sealed." So I'd show up on Monday in my Sunday best, knock on doors, and say, "Hey," you know. Um, I'd already premeasured their driveway. I kinda knew how much sealant was required.
Yeah. And, uh, and I'd say, "Hey, I... Let me, uh... I'll seal your driveway." And they're looking at me real funny like, "You, this little, this small guy in a, in a suit, you know, trying to sell me this." And I said, "Look, you know what? You know, pay me at the end, and if you don't like it, then that's fine." But I gave them a price that was cheaper than they were gonna get anywhere else.
Uh, my dad co-signed on the sealing plant where you buy sealer- Yeah ... and he let me rent the, an old dump truck that he had in his, in the lot that wasn't getting used, could barely run. It was a Sanford and Son style, you know, old dump truck, uh, for those that know that reference. And me and my buddy went out, and I'd knock on doors on Monday and Tuesday.
Then Wednesday, I'd show up with a dump truck full of sealer and bi- 50 gallon drums, and we'd seal their driveway, uh, and started making some good money. Then my friend quit because it [00:19:00] was hot, and you get that stain on you, and it, it's like... And I had sold these jobs, and I'm like, "How am I gonna do this?
This is gonna be hard as one guy." And so, uh, given I had worked in the shop and plumbing and all that, I figured I could turn those barrels on their side, uh, and put some welding braces on it, and then put a, a piping system across the tailgate of that dump truck, and just raise the bed a little bit. And that old dump truck is, like, a 1963 whatever.
Put it in low, low- point it down the driveway, jump out the back, open up the valve, and it would pour almost a perfect, you know, driveway seal, uh, down the... And I with a big squeegee would follow behind the truck as it's grunting along, uh, to do it myself. Uh, and then turn the valves off, jump in, and, you know, before the truck ran out in the road, uh, on these long, long things.
So as I was able to innovate a way to, to get that, uh, to work. Uh, and so I just kept going and doing it and- Wow ... that story is interesting because later when I graduated and, uh, I got recruited by P&G to come in for a day visit, uh, um, [00:20:00] and I, I'll tell you how it relates to that later. But, uh, it, uh, it turned out to be what got me hired at P&G.
And it's like I don't know how that connected, but it, as you'll find, everything connects. Mm-hmm. Over time these things all connect. But, um, g- went, went to high school and got really interested in computers. We put our first computer lab was put in in 1980. Uh, these Commodore 64s. Uh, all you could do was Basic.
Mm-hmm. Uh, my dream was to be an architect and kind of, 'cause I thought those were the coolest people dad would visit- Interact
Cameron Clark: with, yeah ...
Andy Murray: interact with that I could do. So, okay, like I wanna be an architect. So I went to, uh, Mr. Chaney's, uh, Drafting 101, which is kind of an entry point for that, and, uh, got a C minus.
Ter- terrible. I couldn't draw a straight line. Uh, and, but the lab was going, you know, and I would come to that computer lab when no one was in there, and I would just start programming, and fell in love with Basic and- Wow ... and doing that. So I signed back up for Mr. Chaney's, uh, Drafting 102- Mm ... and he pulled me aside and said, "Andy, you barely got [00:21:00] through the first round.
You're not gonna-" "But my dream's to be an architect." He's like, "You, just not for you." Yeah. I said, "Okay. Well, what if, um, you give me the assignments on the course, and I go in and code that and give you answers back through code of how these shapes could come to life through, uh, writing Basic?" And he's like That sounds odd, but okay, let's do that.
And so he created a course, allowed me to do it. I was the only one in my class, but, and I just, you know, lived in that lab learning to code. And, um, that is what led me to, um, Ohio Institute of Technology and getting a computer science degree to EDS, and then from EDS to P&G, uh, was that they had a, a high school teacher that was willing to break the rules and try something different.
Um- Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that was really cool. But, uh, so went into, found the only school that I could find that could teach computer science when I graduated in Columbus. I went there. Uh, in the middle of, um, [00:22:00] college, got married, uh- Okay ... young. Yeah. And I, everything I've done has kinda been pretty fast clip of jumping in.
So I'm, I'm okay with the running fast thing. Yeah. Uh, and worked two jobs to get through college at Purol- Purolator Courier at the time, which was bought by FedEx, of midnight to 4:00 AM, load trucks out on the airport, driving a tug. Yeah. Uh, and then 6:00 AM to noon, work at Sears distribution center, two jobs, and then go take classes from 1:00 to 5:00, uh, and run that cycle again and again and again, you know, to get through college, uh, because of that.
Then EDS called, and I interviewed with them, uh, and got on at EDS in, uh, as a systems engineer in- Mm ... uh, Columbus, Ohio. Uh, and that job lasted about six months. I hated it. Uh- And I get asked a lot is like, "Well, how do you get the perfect job? You know, how do you... Should you take a job you're passionate about?"
And I'm like, "I don't really worry about the first job because you're gonna learn so much about things, you know?" Yeah. And I don't look back at that and regret it. I think it [00:23:00] was important to go through that discipline and the process. I mean, I worked the first three months. His rule was, you know, "We need you on site."
It's, it was a major systems deployment, the Bank One building, and I was a field engineer, and it was like working 24/7. Yeah. Uh, and I went and complained and I said, "Look, I, I need a break, man. It's been three months and I haven't been home once." And he's like, "Well, nowhere in your contract does it say you work less than seven days a week."
And I'm like, "Okay, that's pretty rough." On a Sunday I'd have a suit on, 'cause they made you wear suits, right? And no one's in the building, and I'm pulling cables in a data center, and boss comes in and says, you know, "Hey, your jacket's off. We're EDS. Put it back on." I'm like, "But there's nobody in the building."
And like, who am I trying, trying to impress?
Yeah.
Andy Murray: But that was the culture of discipline that was- Yeah ... just there, uh, that they had. So, uh, got a cold call from P&G that said, "Hey, uh, we'd like for you to come down for a day visit." And I'm like, "Really? Okay." I'd given up on that. You know, I'd applied, but- Mm
they didn't recruit my school. I go down to P&G and I meet this guy named Mike Grain, who's the day, [00:24:00] my day host, who- Mm ... Mike is a legend here in town. Um, he was my day host. Huge hulking guy. I thought they sent- Yeah ... the bodyguard to meet me. But, uh, but we go in and we s- takes me through all these interviews, and I get to the last interview with the VP, and he's like, "Ah, I don't wanna interview him.
He's not been recruited properly. He's not been recruited from one of our schools." Uh, and Mike had to sit me in the lobby, and they walked through, kept going, trying to get this guy to give me a chance, just give this, that interview. So he did. He, he, he wouldn't stop until, uh, Chet decided, uh, to give me the interview.
And he walks in and I walk into his office, and it's a big office, and the first question that he asked me, he's... You could tell he was annoyed, but he's like, "Tell me something innovative you've done." And that was the first question. Uh, and I'm like, "Okay, well, should I tell him about the dump truck? That doesn't seem very P&G-ish to me."
Cameron Clark: That's
Nick Beyer: what I
Andy Murray: got. That's what... I'm like, "That's [00:25:00] all I got." That's all I got. You know? So I unwind that story- Yeah ... of what I did at high school on, you know, uh, configuring a dump truck so that I could pour s- sealer and make money. And, and after I told the story, he's just sitting there looking at me, and I'm thinking, "I better come up with something else."
Um, and I noticed in his... He had a Cezanne on the wall, and, uh, just so it didn't look like I was a total hillbilly, I'm like, "Hey, I love your Cezanne." It was a print, of course, you know. Mm. Great. And then he realized, oh, he recognized art.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: And then what I didn't know what he was thinking, but he was thinking, and he said That's the best story I've ever heard on innovation, and got a same-day offer, uh, and started working.
So doing that is what actually landed me at P&G, and I never would have thought that kind of story was what they were looking for, and I ended up working at P&G about nine years. Um, few years of it was, or four years of it was in Jackson, Tennessee, uh, in the manufacturing plant where they make all the Pringles, and that was a time of starting the first data center that was distributed computing.
Okay. Uh, [00:26:00] and that was a total startup, uh, uh, that I got a chance to go do. Hmm. And I remember when I was g- talking about going to Jackson to my colleagues, they're like, "Don't go there. You'll never get promoted. You need to stay in Cincinnati and be seen going up and down the elevator to the 11th floor because that's where the execs are."
Hmm. And I was like, "No, like, I, this is, the fringe is where the ideas are," right? You can get away from the center and really do innovative things. Hmm. And so we started the first data center, uh, inside of a manufacturing plant that would do processing of information, which had a lot to do with transportation, trucking, routing- Sure
kind of stuff.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: Which then you could see where that's going, right? I go back to Cincinnati and they say, "Well, you know, they thought about going to Fayetteville, Arkansas." And I'm like, "Where's that? Why is that? What's going on down there?" And, and I also heard that they had this really amazing team leader that you'll learn a lot, uh, Tom Muccio, is a great teacher.
And I said, "Okay, I'll go just for that reason alone. You know, I wanna sit under Tom's leadership and be on his team." So I came in 1990 to Fa- Fayetteville. Uh, outside our window on [00:27:00] Millsap was a, a... I watched a, a cowboy come in and herd cattle. Yeah. Uh, rope the cattle back in 1990. That's the way it was.
There wasn't a lot here in 1990. Hmm. Worked on the team for two years, and that was a very pioneering time because P&G set up that first customer team relationship. The, the supplier-retailer story, that P&G-Walmart story, was still in its early formative stage. And so being part of that ecosystem and learning- That time
that, that was so good. Yeah. I... And great guys like Mike Grant I worked for, and Tom Muccio, uh, they a lot... They, they're the ones that kinda helped me understand big likes big, and- Mm-hmm ... spend your time working on big ideas, and there's just no... It's not worth it to spend your time on the small stuff.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. We're trying to move the needle.
Andy Murray: Yeah. What's gonna really move the needle, and what's gonna make a difference? And, and so I learned a lot about, you know, walking toward hard problems, all that kind of stuff, uh, that you have to solve every day through Tom, and, and I still see him as a mentor. [00:28:00]
Cameron Clark: Did you like northwest Arkansas then?
Did you, did you fall in love with it then? Um- Or was it still, "I was tolerating this"?
Andy Murray: Well, I'd been to Jackson, Tennessee, uh- ... for four years. Yeah. And so it was better than that. Yeah. Uh, smaller. Yeah. Um, my wife and I more, you know, uh, I wouldn't say rural, uh, but yeah, I did. I did like the area. Uh, I, I liked the topography, loved being outside.
Mm-hmm. Seemed like a great place to raise kids. Um, there wasn't a lot of places to eat.
Nick Beyer: Yeah.
Andy Murray: So you only had a few place, few restaurants, but, um, yeah, I did, and I loved the people. I mean, we got involved in a great community, a great church we became part of, great group of friends, and, uh, you know, pretty quickly.
And so we never thought about leaving after about 1991, you know? Mm-hmm. And, uh, I'd seen what was happening, uh, over at Dayspring, and they, uh, James Barnett, which, uh, Dan Brockie, those guys were doing some amazing stuff, and got to know James, and, uh, James said, "Can you come over and, uh, run [00:29:00] our creative and marketing?"
And I'm like, "Well, that's a big shift." So I went back to the P&G office, and I started looking at, you know, I really do wanna get more to the marketing creative side. Being in I- N, you know, management systems technology is not a path to anywhere upward. And at Proctor, you have to go all the way down to the bottom if you wanna switch lanes and be a brand manager.
Okay. You gotta start over. Mm-hmm. Right? It's promote from within. And after 10 years, I didn't, like, "Nah, no, I'm not doing that." And so I, I made the big leap. I remember telling my dad, "I'm gonna leave P&G and go to this Dayspring and in this role," and he's like, "Son, what's wrong with you?" Like, "That, like P&G, you work there forever, and you're good."
Yeah. Right? Yeah. You're just staying. You're set. You're set. And, uh, and I got a lot of criticism for that because if you leave P&G, you should go up with your resume. You only get one shot at that, and then if you, going down, it's gonna be, you know, hard, and that was seen as a downward move. But for me, it was, uh, a chance to learn about the creative process and work with some great talent [00:30:00] and, you know, really cut my teeth on brand building and things- Mm-hmm
like that from within a, a safer environment. Uh, so it was well worth it and stayed there three years.
Nick Beyer: That, I mean, that just feels like a bit... I mean, you were in IT-
Andy Murray: Yes ...
Nick Beyer: at the time. Right. I mean, computer science major- Right,
Andy Murray: right ...
Nick Beyer: and respectfully, I mean, they looked at you and said, "Hey, we want this guy to run our marketing."
Why, why do you think they did that?
Andy Murray: Um, that's a great question. I, I, I think the... You, you, you learn something about brands no matter what role you're in at Procter, right? And you're working with brands, you're working with teams. Uh, also, you know, it wasn't IT like I was fixing computers. I was building end-to-end workflows- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm
for brand marketing and in that space, and so you learn quite a bit about brand and that kind of thing. And I think they were looking for, you know, a level of thinking about problems, a level of that, and so there was some trust that I would pick the rest up. Mm-hmm. Uh, and so it's, that's the only... And I, and I never really talked about the IT side of it because then, then everybody like, "Can you fix [00:31:00] my phone?"
And it was like, so that, that became very dormant. It was very uncool, uh, in the marketing space for so many years, but now it's like, "Oh, oh, you know something about..." Yeah. "Yeah, you can code." Come over here. Like I... Yeah, yeah. Come on. Yeah. Bring it. Yeah. But, but then it wasn't seemed as cool, so I didn't talk about that.
I just talked about what I had learned about brand-building from being next to brand managers every day, and it was like, "That's close enough." And so, you know, put me to work doing that. And, uh, we had, we had a lot of success there, uh, in that time period over those three years. Moved to Siloam Springs, uh, to do that.
And, you know, the, the thing that I did is, like, there's core principles about how to solve problems, right? And try to understand those problems. And so one of the first things I did was went out to stores, and I talked to store managers and bookstores that carried the cards, and I'd say, "You know, let's, let's sit down and put piles together.
Like, here's the pile of cards that don't sell well at all." Mm. "Here are some that sell pretty good, and here are some that sell great." And then just looking at it and trying to diagnose why are they not... Like, what am I learning here? What can I see here? [00:32:00] And what I found is that, you know, there were cards that had great art, so the art department must be pretty good.
There were a lot of great s- cards on both ends that, um, had great copy. So it wasn't the copy is a delineator. A lot of them had great processes, tip-ins, embossing, debossing, all that. And it's like, hmm, the best cards put it all together on the same card- Yeah ... at the right price. Sure. But, uh, one would have great copy, but the art didn't seem to match.
Mm-hmm. So that told you, you know, you ship your organization, and it, it basically showed me that, um, we had an integration problem to solve versus, uh, a quality of talent, a technical thing. So I went back after being on the road and created a new department called Concept Design, and the concept designer would then take and make sure those were integrated versus siloed, uh- Yeah
departments- Sure ... that just were stuff getting thrown over the wall. Mm-hmm. That concept, uh, development idea, uh, took the cost of a card from $2,700 a card to, like, $1,700 a card in development [00:33:00] cost, uh, because the integration was so much more efficient. Wow. And, you know, that's, that's how you learn on the job, by getting down to those first principle questions about what is really going on here, and how much do I really understand the problem, uh, that we're trying to solve?
Nick Beyer: Do you remember the growth run, kind of where y'all were at when you started and where, where you guys-
Andy Murray: Uh, boy. No. I mean, we were g- the business was growing. It's kind of pre-internet, so you know, I'm sure there was a lot of downs to go through that and pre-Hallmark sale. Mm-hmm. And so, but, uh, I would say we were growing probably 10, 11% a year.
It was a good growth period. Yeah, this is in a '93 to '96 time period, '97.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. Yeah, so you're there three years-ish, and, uh, and then decided to officially go out on your own- Yes ... and do your own thing.
Andy Murray: Yes.
Cameron Clark: Talk about, talk about that transition, and then I'm also curious, like, were your... How, was your, was your wife on board on, like, you know, the move to Fayetteville, move to Siloam, and then the, and, uh- Well-
starting your own [00:34:00] business or, or was, uh, you know, I, I don't know. Was that, was it- She- ... you had to sell her too?
Andy Murray: Of course.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: Uh. Yeah. Uh, of course, but she's always been supportive. Uh, I mean, it w- it wasn't for her, it would, none of this would've happened. I mean, she's a very unique person, uh, that, well, you know, I met her in high school, and so, uh, we had a mutual trust and respect, and, um, and when, uh, I decided to sell or to, uh, start, start a company for sure on my own with, with, uh, what became Brandworks, um, I remember, you know, having that conversation with her, and it was kind of like, "Well, you know, we've got a 401."
She immediately started going to problem-solving. It's like, "Okay, well, how can, how long... Well, how much runway do we have here," right? Yeah. "If we cash in our 401, we can do this." And she's like Okay. In four weeks, you know, this better start showing some results or we're gonna be under a bridge, and we had two kids.
Uh, so you've got... I, I'm with you, even if we lose everything [00:35:00] we have, but, you know, there's gotta be a time bound here before, to show some signs or, you know, w- we, we don't wanna be homeless, right? That was the main concern, not being homeless. And so we sold the house. Uh, and I remember telling my sons, you know, both of them, and, you know, uh, and that was a like, "Dad, what are we doing?"
You know, I didn't want them to feel an insecurity. I think the oldest child was, like, 10 maybe. Uh, yeah, I remember we climbed a tree together, and I thought I'd tell them, you know, "Dad's gonna start something new. It's gonna be kinda crazy. I don't know, don't know what it means." And he was like, "Hmm, no problem, Dad.
I'll, I'll pay you to wash my go-kart, and maybe you can... Out of my allowance." You know, it was, "I'll help." It was that kind of a conversation, and which was very cute and charming. But, um, and so, uh, we sold the house, sold the furniture, would've sold the kids, but the wife said no. Uh, No, I never would've sold the kids.
That's a joke. Uh, but, but we started, and, um, I remember the very first day in the kitchen table in a little rental house, um, you know, I just wrote on this three-by-five card, "My [00:36:00] dream is to build a great company." And on that card it also said five things a great company needs to have. You know, it has to have great people.
It needs to have a great culture. It needs to be great in the community. It needs to have great financials, and it has to do great work or go great clients. In the end, that, those, those are the five things it has to have. And, uh, put that on the refrigerator and, um- First day I open up the paper and, you know, that's when they had newspapers, right?
Uh, this is like 1998. And I, and I read this article where, um, the Walton family had given the College of Business like 30, $40 million grant, and, um, it kept referring to it as the college that got the gift. And I ended up, uh, cold calling Dr. Doyle Williams and asking, who was the dean at the time, and said, "Hey, you don't know me.
My name's Andy Murray. Um, and congratulations on getting the gift. But now's your moment, and, and now's the time where you can [00:37:00] become like the Kelley School or, you know, to really kind of use that money to, like, bring that identity up, and I can help you do that." And it was my first time. You know, I'm like, "Hmm."
And he's like, "Who are you again?" I said... And so I, you know, came down and I got an appointment and, uh, and got a contract, uh, to brand the Walton... Go through a branding process for the Walton College of Business, um, uh, you know, pretty early on and within the first, you know, week of that. Wow. So that started the cash flow to work.
But then I saw where Don Soderquist was starting, uh, he was the vice chairman at Walmart, and he was starting the Soderquist Center for Leadership and Ethics, and Tom Muccia introduced me to him, and I got to talk to Don. He's like, "What are you doing, Andy?" "Well, I brand universities." Uh, the S was a bit of a stretch, but
But, and I picked up Marketplace Grill and some other, you know, just hustle, right? Yeah. Just hustle. And did that, and we were growing it and, and starting to go, you know, pretty well. Uh, and then I got a call from P&G, [00:38:00] and Uh, that they had a new marketing director come into town, and they'd like for me to have lunch with her to maybe network, because I'd been here now a while.
Mm-hmm.
Andy Murray: And so, uh, her name was Dina Howell. And so I met with Dina, and we had lunch. And, uh, I would talk to her and try to introduce to all the people I'd gotten to know, uh, as I saw the market. And, uh, at the end I would say, "Hey, Dina, why don't you give me a project?" I had a team of, like, seven, eight people at that point I'd hired.
Uh, and she's like, "No, you're too small. Um, I've got... I'm using this big New York agency to do the work I need done. Uh, you're too small." And I said, "I'll do it for free. Just throw me a bone." "No." "Okay, fine. We'll meet next month." And, uh, six months, take her to lunch- Wow ... talk through, and at the end I would say, "Hey, why don't you give me a project?
And, you know, I can do it, and I'll show you I can do it, and I'll do it for free and whatever." And she's like, "No. Too small." I guess the same answer for six months. Uh, and then, and then what happened was [00:39:00] interesting, that changed the game for me, was, uh, Kmart had branded, uh, had, had done a big project, it was in a trade brag, that they had taken their baby department and worked with a children's television workshop and did Sesame Street, Big Bird, and really made the whole department bring together to bring a baby statement.
Nick Beyer: Hmm.
Andy Murray: The baby buyer saw it at Walmart, and she's like, "I want one of those. Um, you know, I'm gonna get asked on this." Yeah. And back then, Kmart was a bigger, you know, concern. And, uh, she calls Procter, their biggest supplier, and, and gets to Dina and says, "Hey, you know, can you design a whole department for us, uh, and a marketing plan and such?
And, and for the baby, look what Kroger's just done, and I gotta have something to show my boss, and can you bring it back in 10 days?" And, uh, they were... She's like, "Okay," and got really excited. First time P&G had gotten a big project from Walmart- Hmm ... that was in the marketing space. So she calls her New York agency, and they're like, "We don't even know what this is.
You know, six weeks maybe. We- we'll give it a shot." [00:40:00] Um, and so then she calls me and says, "Andy, uh, come over, see me, will you? I want my free project." I'm like, "Okay." So I come over and she explains the brief, and, you know, "Here's what it is. I need a marketing plan, a, uh, the whole how you'd lay out the store, the signage, and all that kind of stuff, and you got six days."
'Cause she wanted time... She told the buyer 10, but I mean- Yeah ... she didn't have time to revise it.
Yes.
Andy Murray: Not a lot of confidence that we'd probably get it- Yeah ... right the first time. And so, so, you know, we brought in cots and, you know, the team just worked almost 20, you know, round the clock. Uh, because I'd worked at Dayspring, I had a Rolodex of freelancers to call, right?
Oh,
Cameron Clark: wow.
Andy Murray: Yeah. All these pieces began to come together, and we put together this 3D presentation of what the space could be. The very first thing I did was go to Barnes & Noble, get every parenting magazine. We called them to j- talk to the editorial department and understand what's the consumer Uh, what are you talking about editorially every month, right?
Mm. And from that, because they were all pretty much the same thing. You know, September, they're coming back indoors, so childproof your home. Yeah. July, they're talking about [00:41:00] strollers, going outside, right? And so to start with, what's the insight that we can have? Knowing P&G, you need to have an insight, but I didn't have a department to go get insights.
But magazines are talking to consumers every day, right? Yeah. So that was a good starting point as a hack to, you know, just get something down and dirty that had some sense of what's the real insight there. Mm. Uh, we delivered it. Uh, I called my client, said, "Hey, I'm, I'm going a new direction here. I'm kinda done," all that kinda stuff.
I didn't hear anything for three months. Uh, I'm calling the clients back saying, "I don't know. Is the cold medicine-
Cameron Clark: Your, your current clients, you're, you were telling them, "Hey, I'm gonna-"
Andy Murray: I'm gonna go a different direction. I'm gonna... Yeah. You probably need to find somebody else to help you. Yes. And, uh, I was that confident.
Cameron Clark: That that's, that this was
Andy Murray: your- That this was it ...
Cameron Clark: segue of business.
Andy Murray: Yeah. Yeah, this is an all-in moment. I'm, I'm doing this. This is a big chance. We're gonna nail it, and it's gonna grow. And, and I didn't hear anything for three months. Wow. And again, I'm cash flowing, barely scratching through, right?
Self-funded. And, um- Call, calling him back saying, I think it was the cold [00:42:00] medicine. I don't know what happened, but calling him back. Yeah. And it's like, and so what I didn't know was happening is P&G took it to Walmart, and they loved it, and they wanted to like, "Let's do this in three or four stores, maybe expand it to other categories."
They, P&G had called their New York agency. They was like, "We don't know what this is." Uh, Dina didn't have a budget. She went out and got some money, uh, from corporate 'cause this is a big opportunity for P&G to, you know, get, get in with. So she calls me three months later and says, "Andy, can you come back and see me?"
And I'm like, "No. You know, you nearly bankrupt me." I'm like, "I went all in." And she's like, "No, no, no, you wanna come." And, uh, I went over and sat down with her, and she said... She told me what happened. They loved it. They wanna build it out. They, P&G thought about it. They got some budget. And she said, "I've got a check here for you for $200,000.
If you wanna build this together, a competency to do what you did, I can't find anybody that does it. Um, we'll invest in, in this together. Spend it on [00:43:00] my business. Keep track of it on a napkin. When you need more money, call me. I'll get you some more money. I know you're self-funded. And, uh, here's..." You're like, "No, this doesn't happen."
Wow. Like, this doesn't happen. "And so if you wanna do this with me, and, you know, and here's a check for 200,000 to get started, right?" Wow. "Spend it on my business." And I'm like, that was a nanosecond decision. It was like, "Yeah, I'm in. All in." "I'm all in." And so we, uh, spent that in building, um, on her business.
Mm-hmm. Um, probably went through about 2 million in that kind of arrangement- Mm ... of hiring right away, putting projects together, getting- Mm-hmm ... you know, uh, POs and just, you know, starting to go crazy, uh- Wow ... to get it going. And that, uh, was the beginning of shopper marketing, as we now call it, uh, of the industry, where nobody was really doing that, where they were trying to use a real insight and take that insight through how the store, uh, how they shop a store- Mm-hmm
and then get clarity on that and create unique programming to do that.
Nick Beyer: Could you give an example for someone who's not familiar with that term, other than the example you just gave of like, and even if it wasn't executed [00:44:00] by you, here's a really clear picture of what the insight was, how the stores transformed, and what it led to?
Andy Murray: Um, yeah. I mean, like, gosh, w- if we, uh, l- l- let's say, uh, Proctor's, when they launched Prilosec, right? New, new product. Um, it's gonna go in the store probably six months before they-- it to get on shelves before they turn the advertising on. Here you got something brand new that this whole new formulation like that, right?
So how do you tell shoppers what that is? And how do you get it to move so there's some sales developing before they see commercials? And you can't just put a package shot up there because it doesn't explain, you know, something brand new. And most big brands when they launch, they're gonna get as much distribution as they can before they turn, you know, television investments on so the people can find the product.
Mm-hmm. Uh, so then studying that, we would look at it and say, "Well, what kind of claims are gonna make sense for someone in store that hasn't seen a TV ad? And how do you tell that story at [00:45:00] shelf in a way that, uh, is more than just putting a logo up there and, and praying that someone's gonna understand it?"
So that's where-- And you get-- This is pre-internet, and so we, we do the, uh, the study of what that ca- Where is it gonna go in the category? How's it gonna fit? You know, what should we talk about? Is it one pill, 24 hours, zero heartburn, or do you start with zero heartburn and then as the real benefit, right?
So understanding what claim is gonna work the best to get that shopper to respond, and then building out a way to say it's new, but then also educating the department managers at store level, so there's associate communication that might be needed, right? No one was thinking about that. You know, how do you get it through there?
What kind of sh- display should be built? Most of the displays that were going in stores at that time were just Corgan with a brand logo. No-- and no real thought into what if no one's seen this before, how do you explain it in a way that would be at, at a, a brand agency level that they would expect from a quality perspective.
So I don't know if that helps- [00:46:00] Yeah ... but yeah, we, we put that whole program together.
Cameron Clark: So talk about, so team size, the, it was a, I guess, two, two-year run before you merged and formed Thompson-Murray, is that correct?
Andy Murray: Uh- Yeah ... I'd say it's probably, uh, about a year, year and a half. Okay. Uh, it was, it was- Quick
shorter than that. Very quick. It was quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, we had been working on this baby project for a couple months in, and I was realizing that, um, we were overwhelmed. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, I had eight or nine people, but it was more design and strategy kind of people, and this was, like, building things, physical things.
Mm-hmm. Uh, and I'd known Mike Thompson for some time, great guy. Uh, he had ... Running an agency called Thompson Earnhart. Mike and I had breakfast and talked about what was happening in our world, and, and, and he was telling the kind of people he had, and, and we put that... Jim Smith put that deal together-
Nick Beyer: Okay
Andy Murray: uh, almost overnight. So within a month or so, we had doubled the size- Wow ... uh, and called it Thompson Earnhart, and we picked up production [00:47:00] capabilities, media capabilities- Yeah ... uh, some creative capabilities we didn't have, and that allowed us to scale up to probably, you know, 25, 30 people. But within, within six months, we were up to the 90 people, you know?
And, and- Wow ... dealing with all of that growth, bringing people into this market, you know, doing something new. This discipline didn't really- Exist in the ca- in the KDS Education
Cameron Clark: internally, externally
Andy Murray: Oh, yeah Just every angle Every angle Yeah Every angle was education. And, and not only that, when you're growing, we were growing pretty fast, you don't have, um
You know, cash flow's king.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Andy Murray: And, you know, we talk about bootstrap versus VC funding in terms of entrepreneurship here. Yeah. They're more similar than you think because, um, no bank wants to ... You know, you've got a service business, you don't have assets, right?
Cameron Clark: Yep.
Andy Murray: So how are you gonna finance this growth?
Even though the PO and you're profitable, the cash intake and need to hire people, get them there, it's two or three months before they're productive.
Cameron Clark: Yep.
Andy Murray: And so you've got to think through that. And so fortunately, one of the things I [00:48:00] did very early on was formed a board, and an outside board. People said, "Why do you need an outside board?
You're only 20 people or 30 people." Like, right. But Randy Laney, uh, was, uh, from Makari, but he had been an, um, uh, like chief treasurer or something like that at Walmart with Sam through the growth t- periods. Uh, Jim Smith, which you guys interviewed, who's an attorney, he joined the board. We asked these guys to be board members and put this board together outside with real stake in the game.
Uh, and, and Randy, the other thing he says, like, "You- Andy, you're a good marketer, but I know how to scale. And what this market can teach you is how to scale." Chuck Brown, he brought in Chuck Browning as a CFO. Chuck was Alice Walton's CFO. Uh, he had great relationships with Arvest Bank and all this kind of stuff.
Mm-hmm. And so these external people came around that knew how to grow scale, 'cause this market is all about scale.
Mm-hmm.
Andy Murray: And I knew what I was doing this, but I didn't know how to scale really. And so that outside board was super helpful in figuring this out, putting together proper governance, uh, proper board [00:49:00] meetings.
I mean, we were doing all this stuff when we were really small.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: Um, to just get that discipline there, 'cause I was thinking we're gonna scale this thing. Mm-hmm. So let's, you know, when do you start? When do you have formal board meetings? When do you start that process? We're like, "Why not now?" Yeah. Even though it looks like extra burden.
Uh, but, but those guys did it, and Chuck was able to work with, uh, Gary Head at Arvest Bank, a signature maybe at that time, to factor our receivables. And so we get a PO from P&G, they would, it would go straight to the lockbox at the bank. They would take their vig and give me the rest until, you know, uh, I finished the job.
Like, factoring receivables off of- Wow ... POs was not a common thing. Yeah. And you'd have to have a lot of trust- Mm ... uh, in the banking system and in the bankers and relationships. I mean, it took all of that for that to happen. And, you know- I think people oversell this idea of being bootstrapped as if it all comes from the cash you're generating.
And no, it, it, in my experience, it wasn't. It was just as hard as probably a VC in terms of you really have to have trust that that [00:50:00] banker's gonna be there because they don't have enough... My house was mortgaged three times over. Like, everything was on the line. Yeah. If we didn't make payroll, I lost my home.
Uh, that might be the difference between a VC guy that now than then- Mm ... but there was, that created quite a bit of motivation- Yeah. ... to not be on the street. Yeah. And, you know, we were running a $2 million line of credit, and- Mm ... it was all way over-leveraged in order to, uh, to be able to secure that line of credit.
But they were using the purchase orders 'cause they believed in the P&G business and Walmart.
Nick Beyer: Would you do it the same way again?
Andy Murray: Um Probably. I think so. Um, I think so. Uh, I ... The opportunities weren't available to me then in terms of a VC culture, so, but I probably, uh ... It, it ... If I, if I, if I really think about it, I'd probably go the VC route, but I don't know, you know?
I mean, I, I think the VC route would've been a lot easier to get there faster. If I knew it was all gonna turn out okay, [00:51:00] I would do it the same way, but I think if it was available to me back then, I probably would've taken VC money, and, you know, worked through the issues of the cap table, and what does that mean, and all that, um, at that time.
Would it have been easier? I don't think it'd been easier, because getting an investment from a VC firm is still a lot of work. Yeah. It still takes trust. It's not- Yeah ... this thing, hey, you show up with a pitch deck, you're gonna get a check. Yeah. That's not how it works. Yeah. And so to me, it, it, I ... From being on the side of an investor on a VC side, I mean, I feel for the entrepreneurs.
It's a lot of work. It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of confidence. You've got a lot of selling of your idea to a lot of people, and, and that's where it was bootstrapped, too, because I still had to sell banks that, to invest in, in ways of risk for them that wasn't really secured that well, uh, with any kind of asset.
Cameron Clark: Hmm.
Andy Murray: It's a great question.
Cameron Clark: Yeah. That's good. Um, so a- at the time, hyper-focused on P&G's business. Mm-hmm. Was there ... Did you have other shopper [00:52:00] marketing clients outside of P&G and Walmart, or was it really you were just very deep in it?
Andy Murray: Well, at that be- at, at the very, very beginning for a few months, uh, it wasn't long, 'cause once, once word got out that P&G was doing these programs, uh, other big companies were like, "Well, if P&G's doing it, the, the
Like, it's gotta be good, right?" Yeah. "And so let's go." And so, but there was a lot of education still required, so we picked up Coca-Cola pretty quickly. Mm. Uh, picked up General Mills, picked up ... So I started to diversify. The problem was, though, as I picked up that, P&G was still scaling us, 'cause they were taking us to more and more categories, sucking up all the resources.
Yep. I knew I desperately needed to get to different-
Cameron Clark: Yeah, kind of
Andy Murray: clients outside of
Cameron Clark: them ... to diversify. Yeah.
Andy Murray: But, but when that, your core is growing, and then you, you got these others wanting it, you know, the race for talent was on, and we went to, you know, like 150 people in this market- Wow ... uh, from like 30 pretty quickly.
And one of the things I did to help scale that is to get talent in. So I hired Tom Addington and Steve [00:53:00] Graves to come in- Mm ... and write me a three-month onboarding program- Mm ... out of scratch, you know, using our IP, but their ability to teach and educate.
Cameron Clark: Yep.
Andy Murray: And that was a big expense for a small, you know, bootstrapped company- Mm-hmm
to pay that. Of course, they probably thought they were underpaid, but- Yeah. ... but, but it was big for me. Yeah. And, and they, um, you know, they got us through that. Uh, and so it all became how do you upscale talent? And then there still was a lot of uncertainty as was this whole discipline even gonna survive?
Like, who said this was gonna make it?
Cameron Clark: Yeah. You're creating industry standard. You're creating- Right ... what's, what's pricing industry standard, what's the, what's the service like? That's
Andy Murray: right ...
Cameron Clark: everything, yeah.
Andy Murray: And, and, and because it wasn't just a creative agency, I mean, there, there's some fundamentals that we built in the very beginning.
I knew for this to work you had to have execution, uh, the creativity, and strategy. Mm. All three of those pillars had to work as a three-legged stool and be ba- And they had to grow at the same rate. Mm. If you grow, gr- you know, if... We talk about this growth. I had to grow those three for this- Yeah ... to be stable because creative without a good [00:54:00] strategy is not gonna work, and you gotta have execution.
And, you know, those were real challenging. And, uh, those disciplines aren't normally found in one agency. Yeah. You typically see a good strategy firm over here, a design firm over there, or just a creative shop over here. But now you're trying to culturally build that into one thing and get people communicating.
And once we get to 30 people- As an entrepreneur, it's, it's harder because you can't- Yeah ... get your fingers on all the pieces in order to do that, and I fin- I find this a lot with entrepreneurs, is they, with, that are growing, is they, there's a point where they can't do it. Like, by themselves they can't see everything.
You know, how are you gonna do that? And, um, we were still maturing and having work processes. Yeah. And so, uh, one of the things I saw... Uh, we had this guy work- He's still there, uh, Scott Allen. He was head of production. Scott would always say, "You can be good, it can be fast, it can be cheap. Pick two of the three.
You can't have all three." I'm like, "Okay, but they want all three." And he says, "Well, doesn't work that way." I'm like, "Okay." So I, uh, saw, uh, uh, an article where [00:55:00] Dr. David Jackson, uh, who's a pediatrician in town, um, who's our kids' pediatrician- Yeah ... um, got, like, the People's Choice Award for, like, Best Pediatrician, and I, and I knew him, and I'm look- I knew how many patients he saw a day, and I'm like, "That's impossible."
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: Like, how can you serve that many and have that kind of service where people love you that much, you know? So I asked to come talk to him, if I could talk to him about his approach, his model, his operating model. Mm. And I learned from him, you know, how the nurses prepped him with, uh, going into, from patient to patient, and he would use a Dictaphone right in front of the patient and dictate everything versus doing it at night, you know, after hours, right?
Yeah. He really had thought through every part of the process. Wow. And he didn't walk in that room until everything was perfect and ready, and then his time could click and go, right? Mm-hmm. And I realized that our problem was our, our doctor was the creative that had to do the work- Yeah ... and they were getting full...
Like, they couldn't s- They'd get a job to get started, they're spending half their time looking for the assets. You know, where, where's the, what's the latest pack shot? Where does this go? So we had to build a traffic [00:56:00] system that allowed, it mirrored what happened in the pediatrician's office in order to, uh, make sure that the doctor got the job folder completely right, ready to go at the beginning, and when they touched it, they could fly.
Cameron Clark: That's crazy.
Andy Murray: Yeah. And so the, it was like looking outside our industry to find those answers. Um, you know, I would look at how, uh, how, you know, the fire department, when they get a job done, you know, they don't just come back and drop their hoses and leave their boots all over the, you know, the garage, right?
Yeah. They put things back for the next job, right? For the next run. Mm-hmm. And those are practices that needed to happen in the agency, too. When you finish that job, you know, have you cataloged all the files rightly? Yeah. Have you put all the pieces back so that the next job is ready- Ready to go ... versus just rushing to the next thing, and now you, now you're in a world of hurt and a mess.
And so it was building those operating systems early on with some principles that came outside our industry, I think- Mm ... allowed us to, to get that hypergrowth that we were able to get.
Cameron Clark: And man, I'm just like, [00:57:00] there's my head's spinning with all these different things. It's amazing. So the, from there to Saatchi and Saatchi X- Yep
the, when was the cue to... So you've had several transitions up to this point, and like-
Andy Murray: Yeah ...
Cameron Clark: I think one of the things as we were prepping for this, I was just thinking, h- how do you know when the time is to flip the switch for the next thing, whether it be a move, acquisition, sale, new job?
Andy Murray: Yeah.
Cameron Clark: What are the indicators that you, maybe you've seen over the years in yourself?
Andy Murray: Well, uh, uh, this one I can answer pretty, pretty easily. Uh, this came externally. Um, and I was pushed into an intersection whether I wanted to or not. So what happened was we were about 150 people, and this is in 2000, end of 2000, beginning of 2004. And, um, we were probably 65% Proctor, and we'd grown some others around it.
Mm-hmm. Like I said, about 150 people. And, um- I had not thought about selling. I'd not thought of any of that stuff. And I got a phone call from the [00:58:00] CMO, and at this point by- P&G ... P&G. Mm-hmm. And Jim Stengel. And they had gr- and, and others were picking up what was going on. So I started that in 1998, '99, we started doing this work, and by 2003 it had caught on, and other big agencies were starting to say, putting out shingles, "We do this too.
We do this too," right? And P&G decided, "We wanna do this globally, and do this on all markets with all of our big retailers in, like, 10 different markets." And, and so he called and he said, "Andy, um, we're gonna RFP, uh, a, an agency to do all this. Mm-hmm. And you may keep that, because no one can do it as good as you can, uh, or you might lose it.
And I know you don't have the scale to get to 10 markets off of this at the speed we would need it, right? So, uh, if you want, you we get... You've got a couple of options. One, pitch for just the Walmart business, and you could probably win it, win it. Just keep going. You're fine. [00:59:00] Uh, or potentially lose that.
Uh, but if that happens, you know, I'm willing to introduce you to holding company CEOs that they do all of them, because you would be a gem in their portfolio, and they would give you the scale and the capital required to then, and the infrastructure to take it global." So that was like, "Wow, okay. That call I did not see coming."
And one of the first things I did is I picked up the phone, I called Steve Graves, and I said, "Steve, I need, I need some coaching through this." This wasn't a question I was ready to answer at that time. It seemed early to me.
Cameron Clark: This is five years in or whatever?
Andy Murray: Yeah, two, that's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Four or five years in.
And, um, and so I said, "Steve, I'd like to go speak to, uh, five to 10 CEOs, whereas half of them had sold their company and half of them had kept their company, and I wanna understand their thought process and their logic. Could you arrange a tour of, of with your network, and let's go, let's get on the road and go talk to some people that have walked through this intersection before?"
And he did a marvelous job. He created this environment [01:00:00] this week. We went out and met with all these people, some that had kept their company, some that had made the decision to sell. I wanna understand were they happy, what would they have done different, all that kind of stuff. It was great. Steve was great at that.
And I came back and I was talking to my wife, and she's like, "Honey, what'd you learn?" I says, "Well, you know, they were all happy with their decision." She's like, "That's it? You spent a week and that's all you got? Come on." And I'm like, "Well, no. I mean, here's what I learned." I said, "There are two... Well, all I can tell you is there are two types of people in the world, I think.
There are builders and there are owners." And the builders that chose to sell and keep building were happy. The owners that kept, they kept their business and took that path, they, they defined themselves builder, they were happy. So it comes down to what do you wanna be, a builder or an owner? And, uh, she disappeared, uh, came back, uh, to the kitchen, and she had kept that card that I put on the refrigerator day one.
And she said, "Here's, let's, let's [01:01:00] read this together." Said, "I'll do whatever. I'll do whatever." Said, "You, but you said my dream is to build a great company, not own one And that was it. I was like, "You're right." You know? It's ... My dream, I was a builder, not an ow- not ... I couldn't be an owner. Yeah. But, but- Your DNA is a builder
the DNA was to be a builder. Yeah, yeah. And, and I could be, I could keep building with that infrastructure. Yeah. So ended up, uh, meeting with all the holding companies. Kevin Roberts, a great guy, uh, had the inspiration, the dream, the, the right, the chemistry. Worked out a deal where, um, Jim Smith did, did all that, papered it up, and helped, helped me through it.
But we did it, an earn out str- structure, a four-year earn out. Mm-hmm. I was on a five-year, uh, uh, employment agreement-
Nick Beyer: Okay ...
Andy Murray: uh, to stay, but a four-year earn out. And in that earn out, um, Saatchi had 80 offices around the world. They would give me a office space and some back office support in every one of those markets, and count any revenue I got toward my earn out, uh, that I went into those markets over that- [01:02:00] Okay
four-year period. So, uh, Kevin came down. Uh, we shook hands, did the deal. We called it Saatchi X only because, uh, it was Thompson-Murray at the time, but I was pulling the luggage out of his bags, and the XNA, the NA was torn off the bag, and it just said X. And it's like, what do we call this thing? And this is a 30-minute drive, and we look at the, at the bag and said, "Let's just call it X.
Let's call it Saatchi X." Everybody thought it has meaning to it, and it's like, it didn't mean anything. It was just like- ... it's Saatchi X. So okay, that's great. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go on to the next topic, right?
Nick Beyer: Yeah.
Andy Murray: And, uh, negotiated the deal and, and when the collect- ch- the ... Finally the check clears the bank and I see the bank, then I pick up the phone, I call Kevin.
I said, "Hey, Kevin, I haven't had a boss in 10 years. I don't know what, you know ... Like, you're, you're the boss." Yeah. "Like, tell me how to do this. How do you wanna do this?" And he's like, "Never call me a boss again. Um, look at it this way. I'm your big brother. You're my little brother. Let's go change the world."
And that was it. And it's like, okay, that's perfect. You know, as for an entrepreneur to hear that- Yeah ... that's exactly what I needed, was that kind of inspirational help- Mm ... to stay at it. He couldn't have said it a more perfect same to me. Kept you
Cameron Clark: [01:03:00] motivated, kept
Andy Murray: you locked in. Kept me motivated. Yeah. But, and then in the next, you know, three, four years, uh, we opened up 22 offices in 10 countries.
Sheesh. And I was on the road. Uh, I mean, I opened offices in, uh, Guangzhou, uh, they call it Walmart China. Mm-hmm. Uh, Sao Paulo, uh, Mech- uh, gosh, uh, Ar- Argentina, uh, Buenos Aires in Argentina. Uh, opened offices in Mexico City, uh, and in France. Had an office in France, and, uh, UK of course, 120 people in the UK.
So, you know, by the time we had, you know, kind of fully matured, there was probably about 600 in, in all those different markets, uh, doing this- Wow ... um, kind of work. And that was hard because Now you're bringing it to a new market and you're starting over, and so I had a great operations head, uh, Brittany Duke, uh, who's at Walmart now.
Her dad was CEO, if you remember. Mm-hmm. But, uh, but Brittany would go in and build an operating model on how do you teach this? How do you teach-
Cameron Clark: Okay ...
Andy Murray: to do this work? Different
Cameron Clark: cultures, different, different, yeah,
Andy Murray: anything.
Cameron Clark: Different, yeah,
Andy Murray: yeah. You- it's like, you know, you gotta... It's a huge [01:04:00] learning curve. And so we, I would say we were almost an education company as much as anything because you had to teach so many people how to do this work.
Yeah. And, and you get good at learning how do you teach creativity, you know? How do you teach someone to come up with great ideas? Those all became part of the secret sauce for this to work.
Cameron Clark: Jeez.
Andy Murray: Yeah, so, so... And then, and then after that, um, finished my five years and I was pretty exhausted, and I was like, I helped recruit in Dina Howe, who became...
She was a client. She then came over and became the CEO. Okay. And, uh, I went to a non-executive chairman role and took a breather for a bit. Got into helping them with M&A space- Mm ... uh, and then left and, and just like, "I'm done now," because the building part was done, and, uh, and started another agency called Mercury XI.
So it just didn't last long, uh, the retirement.
Cameron Clark: Would you have structured that deal any differently looking back?
Andy Murray: Oh my gosh, I'm so lucky. Uh, I was able to structure it, give Jim a credit, uh, the way it is, uh, because, uh, [01:05:00] no, not at all. Because all I had to have was a profit margin minimum to hit. Mm. And I was, uh, so the minimum EBITDA, uh, marker, and then the sales upside, uh-
Cameron Clark: Okay
Andy Murray: uh, internationally. So it, it, it worked. It, I couldn't have gotten a, a better deal. Matter of fact, they were more worried about protecting the deal that they were, uh... That it was gonna fail, so they were trying to protect their downside.
Cameron Clark: Okay.
Andy Murray: And, and they left the upside unprotected-
Cameron Clark: Yeah ...
Andy Murray: because they just didn't believe it was gonna be a big thing.
This was like, "Let's keep P&G happy. Let's, you know, make sure we get this gem in our thing. We're not really confident it's gonna... So we don't, we're not gonna cap it for him."
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: And so, you know-
Cameron Clark: Great opportunity for you ...
Andy Murray: then, then it's like great, you know. Then it, it became an opportunity for me, and I, I, I think they would've done the deal differently.
They probably wouldn't have given me the international sales to the earn-out- Yeah ... uh, if they would've. But for them it was like whatever. And so, so it ended up being a lot bigger deal than, than what we originally thought it would be.
Nick Beyer: How do you know when you're a builder versus an owner? Like, [01:06:00] how, how now when you see people and you're talking to them, younger entrepreneurs or founders, like, how do you help them identify that?
Obviously, you identified it in yourself- Yeah ... but how do you help others identify that?
Andy Murray: How would I help someone else? That is a really good question, how do you help someone define whether they're a builder or they're an owner? I mean, I, I think it starts with, you know, what do you dream about? And, you know, what do you...
If it's... I- always in my language it was my dream was to build. And I di- it was subconscious, you know? Mm-hmm. But if, uh... You can tell if they're an owner more than an... If, if they see it as a lifestyle project. Um, and so some will say, "I wanna get to 30 and no more." And going past that gives them, breaks them out in hives.
Uh, and they really are prioritizing perhaps just a lifestyle approach, or they're prioritizing something different. And you can tell in their priorities, uh, of where they spend their time and how they think about it, um, whether they're a builder or an owner.
Nick Beyer: That's good. [01:07:00] And then when you were doing the deal with Saatchi, w- uh, Mike Thompson-
Andy Murray: Mm-hmm
Nick Beyer: did, how did that conversation go with him? Was he your partner at the time-
Andy Murray: No ... or you had
Nick Beyer: acquired-
Andy Murray: Yeah, no ... or- Mike had le- yeah, I- Okay ... yeah, Mike had left probably, I'll, I'll get this right, maybe 2001- Okay ... the early part 2001. So he'd been gone probably three years or so by the time we got to that point, uh, and pursued a different path, and has done quite well with that.
Cameron Clark: Mm, cool. So Mercury XI.
Andy Murray: Yeah.
Cameron Clark: Was, was that a, was that a in-between stage for you or was it... W- w- what, what, what became of that? What started that?
Andy Murray: Yeah.
Cameron Clark: What... Yeah. I, I- 'Cause it was short. Uh, that's, that's why
Andy Murray: I asked ... it, it was, it was relatively short. Expensive, uh- Yeah. ... and short. And, and here's what I was doing.
So by the time I was a non-executive chairman, uh, at Saatchi X, uh, I spent a lot of time in New York. We had a flat in New York and I was helping, uh, the Saatchi agency [01:08:00] do M&A work because I'd been an entrepreneur- Okay ... gone through that pro- They wanted to get acquisition in.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: So I took over M&A work and started meeting with different founders, different places trying to buy companies and all that- Mm-hmm
that might fit the portfolio. Mm-hmm. And what I saw happen was, um, the... unless that company was doing 30 million in revenue, it was too much paperwork to even bother with, right?
Nick Beyer: Okay. Yeah.
Andy Murray: And all the innovation was happening in the younger spots, and I saw there was plenty of capital available and there were plenty of ideas to solve.
The, the, the missing piece was entrepreneurs. And so my dream on Mercury XI was let me get 11 people, uh, as entrepreneurs that had en- entrepreneurial ambition.
Mm-hmm.
Andy Murray: And then help them become, through those stages of entrepreneur, being an entrepreneur while we built something to take to market. Oh, wow.
And that, you know, was the core idea. And what we were building, uh, at the time I saw an opportunity with Facebook in that... And, and you gotta go back, 'cause this is 2011. Facebook pages were everywhere. And, and if you think about, um- A grocer, a [01:09:00] regional retailer, whatever, with like 30, 40 stores, right? That's 30, 40 local pages, and no i- no app way to sit on top of those pages and distribute content and manage that content.
Mm-hmm.
Andy Murray: Each page needed their own management of that. Yeah. And it was, you know, that wasn't an easy thing. So we built a SaaS-based model, uh, hired a couple guys, uh, Chance Chapman, Troy Gulve done well. Uh, Animesh is the CTO. And we started building, and we built an app, uh, in a SaaS-based model platform that allows someone to, say, you know, push out onto each of the pages, uh, content, apps.
They could build self-build apps, and it was meant to be a pro- 100% product play that they just buy, they buy a seat, and then their marketing team, they can manage 1,000 different, uh, Facebook pages through- Sure ... one, one front-end portal.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: They could push it out, which is a brilliant concept, except, uh, it didn't work, uh, for a couple reasons.
Um, I mean, [01:10:00] what would happen is they would say, "We got it built," right? And it was working. Mm-hmm. And then two things happened. One, um, the people we take it to to do it, they would like, "We love this. Uh, can you do it for me?" And I'm like, "Well, that's a service model." Yeah. Service models don't scale. I- I'm selling a product here, not a service.
Yeah. Right? And so- I'm trying to get
Cameron Clark: out of that
Andy Murray: business. I'm trying to g- Yeah, yeah ... I don't wanna go there again. Yeah, yeah. Man, it gives me hives. And so, but I couldn't. Like, I, they just, too many of them said, "Well, you could do it for me. You know, I'll do it with you."
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: You know, so it was a lot of, "I'll do it with you" kind of stuff.
It was like half and half, but again, that's not an investable business as much. Yeah. Right? It's, it's too-
Cameron Clark: You're thinking scale, scale,
Andy Murray: scale at this point. Scale. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that. And so we were fighting through that, and then Facebook, uh, depreciated some of the importance of the apps. Mm-hmm. And so, like, that's another big lesson is, you know, building a company on another software-
company's platform that you can't control is dangerous territory. Yeah. And that's the piece I didn't see coming, that, you know, [01:11:00] Facebook would change their approach, and, and everybody got hurt with that- Yeah ... where, you know, you build up this audience, but now you gotta pay to reach that same audience.
That doesn't make any sense. And so- Yeah ... you know, we had built into that model that the audience would be there, and we could reach them. Yeah. And so that hurt, but, but we were still going pretty good. I mean, we were breaking even. We had spent a lot of money with, uh, teams in India, engineering teams to, uh, build out the software, and it was up and running.
We had about, you know, 10 or 11 people. What happened was, um- Yeah, but I could see the handwriting on the wall that this is going to be a service play.
Yeah.
Andy Murray: And, um, the Walton College had this big conference I had been a part of for 10 years on the Center for Retailing Excellence and Future Commerce, kind of Future Retailing Conference, and I'd helped them build that conference up over many, many years.
But I hadn't been involved since, you know, maybe a couple years I haven't been involved in it. I'm doing this SaaS cloud-based thing. I get a call from Claudia Mobley, who was the director of that [01:12:00] program and the whole Center for Retailing Excellence, and she said, "Andy, uh, the conference is... The big conference is in two days.
There'll be 1,000 people there. Uh, the keynote speaker got sick. Can you come keynote this?" And I'm, like, 48 hours advance, I'm like, "Claudia, I, I've not been in the supplier community doing anything. I've been doing cloud-based, you know, technology work." Yeah. Like, this is not And I'm like, "Okay, I'll do it."
'Cause it's her. How do you say no to somebody that's that persistent and a friend and- Yeah ... you know? So I wrote out 10 note cards of 10 things that you should know what's happening in the cloud. Now, you just gotta take your mind back to 2012, that 13-ish, that what was happening then, you know, you had crowdsourcing happening was big in the cloud.
Mm-hmm. Uh, crowdsourcing scientists to do, solve problems. Um, you know, it w- it's not the same as it is today, but it had real implications for retail and all this kinda stuff. The future. And very few people understood it, right?
Nick Beyer: Yeah.
Andy Murray: So I just said 10 things that a salesperson or a marketer should know about what's [01:13:00] really happening in the cloud.
Mm-hmm. And I broke it down for him in that way. And what I didn't know was that the CMO of Walmart was in the front row. He called me two days later, and he said, "Andy, uh, let's have coffee." Went and had coffee. He says, "Could you come to Walmart? And I know you're an entrepreneur, but you've just spent two years, and help, you know, take what you've learned into the marketing organization at Walmart, uh, from that talk."
And- Mm ... I'm like, "Wow. Uh, uh, this is out of the blue." Um, just like the Jim Stengel call was out of the blue. Yeah. Uh, and so I basically said, um, "I gotta sell this... I gotta do right by this team I've got, right?" Yeah. "I gotta, you know, deal with that. So if I can deal with that, then okay." I, and so I called up Charlie Anderson, who had, was working with me at Saatchi & Saatchi a long time ago, but he became CEO of s- a company called Shoptology, uh, in this area, doing a lot of the shopper marketing stuff, and he was owned by a big company.
And, uh, we did a, we did a deal where they bought, uh, Mercury11 and [01:14:00] the whole software and platform, and, and all the employees transferred. Within three months we put that deal together. Oh my
Cameron Clark: gosh.
Andy Murray: And didn't lose an employee. Mm-hmm. Uh, and, you know, I didn't make any money selling it because you, that's the price you pay-
Cameron Clark: Yeah
Andy Murray: for that. Um, but it was more of a, for them it was a talent, a, a, acqui- a talent hire, you know, kind of acquisition for them. Uh, which I was very happy with. I felt very- Yeah ... you know, comfortable that they had, they had landed well. Sure. Um, and then went into Walmart, and, you know, did that. It was supposed to be a two-year assignment, ended up being a four-year assignment.
Uh, and then I got a call to say, "Hey, uh, would you like to maybe go to the UK and run ASDA's, uh, marketing organization, chief customer officer?" And that was another one where the wife was like, "Okay, how would you, honey, how'd you like to go to the UK? I'm 50 years old now, and, you know, we're pretty established here."
Yeah. She's like, "Yes, let's do it. I'm up for it." And we did. And we didn't have any grandkids when we left. We got back, we had like s- five. And so, like a lot happened in [01:15:00] those four years and COVID- Yeah ... hit. But, uh, and those were great, great years, great learning, uh, great entrepreneurial environment inside of the company.
Um, and we did a lot of entrepreneurial things. And like the Greenlight event we did in the US. Yeah. We did the same play... I'll tell you a quick story. When I got to the UK, um, you know, I was trying to d- s- understand my scope, like what's in my remit.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: And chief customer officer had a ton of stuff that no one else wanted, I think.
Uh, they had the core things of marketing and all that, but I also picked up corporate affairs, PR, and all the national charities- Okay ... that we spent in. Yeah. I was like... So, so I'm, I'm meeting with all these people the first time, and I meet with the national charities that we had, uh, Trussell Trust and, and, uh, FareShare.
Now, one of them, FareShare, did distribution of food to food banks, and then Trussell Trust worked with the food banks. We'd given them a couple million pounds a year. Mm-hmm. Uh, and they wanted to come in and talk about the budget, meet the new guy.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: Make sure this American doesn't, you know, kill anything.
Pull the funding, yeah. Pull the funding, right? [01:16:00] And so we had this meeting and, and we talk, and they were hoping to get out of that with maybe a 1% budget increase or just flat, you know, 'cause it was still a tough time. And I asked them the question, "What's the biggest thing we could do to solve food insecurity in the UK?"
And they were like, "What? You asking us that?" That's like a really different question than they were expecting. They said, "Can we get back to you on that?" I said, "Sure." So they came back about three or four weeks later, and they said, "We've thought about it together, and the biggest problem we have in food insecurity is that there's no refrigeration in the supply chain of food.
So if we picked up fresh, we can't keep it refrigerated in the depots and get it out to the, to the s- to the, to the, uh, food banks." And I said, "Well, how much would that cost for us to, to do that?" And they said, "That would be 22 million pounds, and we... all we need is six depots. We could get 97% of the UK covered with fresh meals if we had six, uh, depots with refrigeration in it."
[01:17:00] And And it, and it's 22 million, it'd probably take us three years. That's the biggest thing we think we c- Mm ... we could come up with." And I said, "Okay, let's go do that." And they're like, "Well, there's a lot of particularly between here and there." I was like, "Where are we gonna get the money?" And like, "That's a huge project."
And I said, "I'll, we'll, we'll work that out. You know, like, let's, let's take that as our ambition." Mm. And we agreed, and we worked out a plan on how we'd start doing it, and one of the first things that, um, kinda happened our way, some might call it luck, others call it providence, is the UK government put in a tax on plastic bags, single-use plastic bags- Yeah
that you had to pay to... If you're gonna use one, you got charged, like, 1p for that, right? And any money that came from that had to go to a charity. And so this is all new law that just comes in, like, right at the same timing as going on, this is going on, right? And we start calculating how much would that be, and it was, like, nine million pounds of new money was gonna be coming in that we had to distribute to a, a non-profit charity thing.
Yeah. And so like, I think I got the money thing sorted, right? Yeah. Like, we can, we can make [01:18:00] this work. Took it to the board. I, I was on the board. The board, the CEO at the time really was, uh, pessimistic, say it that way, that this was a good idea. Because, you know, Tesco could just say, "Hey, you know, Christmas dinner, you buy a turkey, we'll give a turkey."
And there's a lot of, they're like, "How do you get the PR credit for- Mm. All the work ... this if you're doing all this- Yeah ... work to happen? It's gonna be in refrigeration. No one's gonna see it." Yeah. "Like, how does that really help our brand?" And he wasn't wrong. He wasn't wrong, but that's where then we had to go back to the drawing board and get Fareshare and Trussell Trust to agree to promote the goodness of the...
and talk about us in a way, instead of us talking about us, they would talk about us and put those PR plans together. But it was probably a year of going to the board and saying, "Can we get this done, and can we get this plan approved?" Before finally at the last board meeting where the CEO, before he left and we got a new CEO, I called for a vote.
He recused himself 'cause he still didn't believe in it. Everyone else said yes. Mm. Uh, and we did it. [01:19:00] And we insta- and then we put in the program. Over three years, we had all the refrigeration done, and they will tell you, I've got video clips from the CEOs of those charities saying, "This is the biggest thing to happen to food insecurity since when they put in the national lottery."
And it's, it was a massive change- Mm ... on w- how many millions of meals we created for fresh from that food depot. But the point of this is, it started with the question, what's the single biggest thing we can do together? And then try to look at that outcome of millions of fresh meals. Who doesn't wanna be a part of that?
Mm. And we did get the resources and things to, to go do that, and that's being an entrepreneur in a corporate environment, I think. But too many times it's easy just to say, "Well, I'll give you the check of the basics." And- Yeah ... I think that opportunity to say, "How can I drive big change?" is, is around us everywhere.
I mean, we have that opportunity in all these jobs. They're not hard to find, um, to do that.
Cameron Clark: Why don't people do it more often, then?
Andy Murray: Uh, well, you gotta learn to eat problems for breakfast. I mean, as soon as you set out to do that, you are gonna be eating problems for breakfast. Uh, [01:20:00] and that's just... That's gotta be in your DNA to say, "Okay, I'll solve that.
Bring it. Let me, let me..." You know, Steve Graves calls it walk toward the barking dog is his phrase. Like, you gotta learn to get good at that and not... And see problems is where your creativity's gonna come from, and that's the genesis of innovation, not problems are there to kill you, you know, kind of stuff.
Yeah. And so it's just a lot easier. It's cr- Like, you get older in your career, it's, like, too much risk and you're on the back nine, and, like, I don't wanna start learning a new swing at this stage. I just wanna get to the clubhouse. Yeah. And there's a lot of guys that just wanna get to the clubhouse and- Yeah
in, in more senior roles. Yeah. So you got that factor to deal with. Um, yeah, and I, and I think more people don't do it because they haven't really framed that outcome in ways that moves hearts and minds that really attract people to volunteer and just jump in. And if you have to pull your people to get to do it...
Like, I didn't have any problem helping on the... People, our, our procurement team went and helped the food banks with how do you buy work boots for the depots and/or whatever, you know? I mean, they all wanted to [01:21:00] be a part of it, and I think that you've gotta frame it in a way that people wanna be a part of.
Nick Beyer: Why... I mean, you've had a firsthand seat at Walmart. Mm-hmm. You were on the leadership team. Why do you think Walmart's been so successful over the past 10, 15 years?
Andy Murray: Well, they've got a great business model on EDLC, and they understand that, and I think the management there is really good, um, and they know what they're doing.
And, and I think the biggest thing for me personally on why that was such a good time for me, uh, when I went in, I was mentored by a guy named Bob Con- Connelly, Connelly, um, who was the chief merchant at the time, and, um, I got to know him. And when I went in, he said, "Andy, pay attention to the questions you get asked."
So Walmart leads and develops their leaders through the questions they ask, not necessarily what's on your job description. And pay attention to the questions Doug's asking in the officer meeting, right? And they teach through questions. And, you know, that is, like, one of the most powerful ways to do, to lead, and to build a company, I [01:22:00] think, is by not...
Because we, we kind of, me asking a question, I even may know the answer, most of them did, but by asking the question, it made me work out the answer, right? And be able to l- learn it as... So the art of asking great questions to gr- drive growth is really, I think, what's the secret, one of the big secrets of Walmart.
I mean, you'll, you'll get questions on, "Is this big enough?" You know, "Why can't we... What would it take for us to double this?" You know, "How could we go do this?" You know, "Why not?" And it's the questions you get asked that ends up determining the direction you take, and, uh, they're just really good at that.
Cameron Clark: So what was your off-boarding at Walmart?
When did that happen? When did, when did you know it was time to-
Andy Murray: Well, it was- ... leave that ... a contractual agreement as an expat. Okay. And so the, I had contracted to do two years. Uh, they ended up wanting to sell ASDA at that time, uh, and so they asked me to stay another couple years. Mm-hmm. And my wife and I talked about it, and was like, "Okay, we'll do that, but then if I stay two more, can I get a clean exit and an exit package so that I'm [01:23:00] not wondering what to do next?
'Cause that's enough for me." I was kind of like- Yeah ... "I'll stay the other two if you do that." And they, they agreed. Okay. And so I was contractually coming back April, uh, 1st of 2020, no matter what. Yeah. I mean, we agreed. They had extended it. Um, and we loved the four years there. Got to travel, got to do all kinds of fun things, and just a great experience with the people.
Um- But, you know, COVID hit in March 22nd. You know, we were s- gonna fly back around April 1st. All of a sudden, that wasn't gonna be an option. It was clear the country was shutting down.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: And so, like, on March 21st, uh, Walmart got us two international flights. We got on them as fast as we can with just our luggage.
Like, the 22nd, they shut down the country, and we had an, a flat there with all of our furniture and everything that sat there for three months, you know, barely getting out before COVID hit- Yeah ... and shut everything down. And so yeah, that was, that was quite a ordeal.
Cameron Clark: Crazy. And, uh, so you got back.
Andy Murray: Yeah.
Cameron Clark: What are you, what are you working for [01:24:00] now?
What's-
Andy Murray: Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, so I took the time... When I was at ASDA, one of the things we did was create a customer-centric innovation fund.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm.
Andy Murray: And trying to drive more customer innovation using those same five questions. I... And we set this fund up to get innovation and, and I briefed it wrong at the beginning.
I said, "Okay, I work with the CFO. We put, like, three million pounds in it," and said, "Bring us ideas that we can do." After the first year, we had nothing. Mm. Uh, and we would write you quick checks and all that. It didn't work. And we changed the brief to be, "Bring a problem that you see as a customer problem we're solving, and we'll put some money behind it and get you started with no strings atta- like, let's just go."
Cameron Clark: Hmm.
Andy Murray: And boy, we got flooded with it because people can bring you problems they can see a lot easier than they can bring you the ideas, and when you're solving that problem, the idea will show up anyway.
Cameron Clark: Yeah.
Andy Murray: It comes, it manifests through chasing the problem. So that was a big learning, and I started Big Quest as just, you know, the five big questions you should be asking and just talking to people about it.
And sat down with Matt [01:25:00] Waller as soon as I got back. We had lunch and, uh, talked about, you know- customer centricity and really driving innovation. The university doesn't really have that. There's a great marketing program. There's a lot of silos, but how do you build this? And he... And we sat there and talked to him.
He was like, "Well, let's create the customer-centric innovation, uh, in- uh, innovation thing and a center." And that was on a Tuesday. By Friday, we had a website up, uh, with the university, and- Mm ... I'm the executive founding chairman of it, and, you know, he's got a board put together of faculty advisors. Like, he, he moves so fast.
Yeah. It's like, "We gotta go do this thing," and we started doing that. And so I spent a lot of time with the university building up the practice and principles, uh, working with exec ed on doing teaching with- Mm ... UAMS on how do you take these five principles and put, uh, five questions and get to innovation that's gonna work faster, uh, in a simple way.
And so that's been my passion, and I've been doing that for some time with the university, with university students. Mm. Uh, [01:26:00] I got a call as soon as I got back from Coca-Cola asking me to figure out how retailers could work differently in innovation space across global. So that was, like, an 18-month assignment.
And I got really involved into, um, helping entrepreneurs with just those same five questions, uh, as a strategic advisor on... I've been a strategic advisor on several VC firms and, uh, with their entrepreneurs, um, to just help clarify that. You know, get that, get that innovation plan and how they're gonna grow clarified, and I find it hugely rewarding.
And, and I'm also trying to retire, and so it's, um- Trying ... it's not always easy. I'm trying. Trying, but you're building. I'm doing my best. I'm probably getting a- Yeah ... a B-minus on that one. But, um... And the president of our association, a condo association in Florida, which is, uh, not something you really want on your bucket list, but- Yeah.
if you've ever experienced with an HOA, you know what I'm talking about.
Cameron Clark: That's funny. That's awesome. Um, well, did you have anything else you were gonna say? No. I'm gonna wrap us up here now. This has been incredible. Uh, so last few questions. Mm-hmm. Um, [01:27:00] number one, why build a business here in Northwest Arkansas?
Andy Murray: Well, I ... This is the best place I think you can build a business because of all of the, uh, for me, the reasons are it's such a, because of the family businesses that are here, there's a help one another kind of a model here for entrepreneurs. And again, I did it maybe the hard way on the bootstrap side, but couldn't have done it without Northwest Arkansas people that, the Jim Smiths, the Gary Heads, the you name it, that comes alongside you, uh, and wanna help you.
People that work at Tyson or, uh, Sim- Todd Simmons will give me advice. You know, you know, the grow- so it's a growth mindset culture here that comes in so many flavors that it's, it's a great place to build, and the investment that's going into it for building is, is great. I mean, it was really hard recu- recruiting top talent to this market, you know, when I started here building because, you know, they had to drive past all the cattle and the, you know, it was just not the same place.
And so now it's like we could have lived [01:28:00] anywhere coming back from the UK, and we said, "We're staying here." Yeah. Um, it's just a, I can't say good enough about it. It's, and it's not just the, the bike trails and the, uh, what's happening with medical care and all of those kind of good things. It's more fundamental than that.
It is, uh, the, uh, the Jim Smiths you'll meet, the, the people that have real, uh, passion for you to succeed and willing to give you that mentorship. Uh, you don't, I just don't think it's easy to find that.
Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. And how do you define
Andy Murray: success? Uh, boy, that's a big question. Um- You know, in, in the... To me, I've, I, I define it as there's success and successful.
Uh, and they're... Successful is something that what it looks like at the end of your life when you're, you know, surrounded by loved ones hopefully, and you're, you're finishing up that last hour, you wanna be successful, uh, full of that success. And to me, I see it as striving to, uh, live [01:29:00] a true, good, and beautiful life.
Um, a quick story on that, um, that, that what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful is the most foundational questions you can ask. And back in, uh, the 1500s, uh, Rome had, had been just devastated by the Huns and the barbarians. They lived there for decades and lost their culture, and they needed to get all that back.
And so the Medici family in Florence, uh, put this, what were became known as standing on a soapbox. They would have a box out in the middle of the Piazza del Duomo, and you'd have government, and you'd have education, you would have marketplace, like surrounds the, the town square. And in the town square, people would stand up and they'd debate what they thought life's three most important questions were: What is true?
What is good? And what is beautiful? Using Socratic dialogue, they would ask those three questions, and because of that, that's how they restored their culture. It began the beginning of the Renaissance period. You had 500-year ideas, Martin Luther. You, you had Michelangelo. [01:30:00] Like a period of creativity we've never seen before by asking those three questions.
And, and I still use those three questions as a guide on how I'm living my life. So for me, my purpose is striving to be, uh, to live a true, good, and beautiful life, and I think that's success is days I wake up and I've been able to do that, um, that is the definition of success for me, is that I've lived a true, good, and beautiful life, uh, through that day.
And then at the end, successful is at the end, surrounded by love, and there's no regrets, and you can live in rest and peace, then you've been successful. It's two different things.
Cameron Clark: Thanks, Andy.
Nick Beyer: That's good. Um, I have a random last question before- Sure ... I get to the end, but h- I-- Just the whole string of our conversation, you've named these people who are now CEOs or CMOs or, I mean, had a ton of success at these organiz- organizations.
Some of them worked for you, some [01:31:00] of them worked with you.
Andy Murray: Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Do you feel like there's a link in identifying talent? Like, it seems like you did that at a really high level as your business scaled- Mm-hmm ... really quickly. And then you've also had a first, first-hand seat to watch-
Andy Murray: Yes ...
Nick Beyer: these big companies identify talent.
Like-
Andy Murray: Yeah ...
Nick Beyer: are there any similarities or commonalities between... Like, how do you identify talent?
Andy Murray: That's a great question, and I've had to, you know, do a lot of hiring, too, through that process, right? And to me, one of the big things to look at is are they curious and what kind of questions they ask you. You wouldn't believe how many people would come in for a final interview, and I would, uh, ask them, you know, "Do you have any questions for me?"
And they would say, "No, I'm good. Your team briefed me well." And like, okay, no. Like, what about, like, what's the prob- biggest problem you're trying to solve, right? That curiosity of asking questions is really, really important, and that's a huge identifier. When I was in the UK, um, I had to, um... I needed a director of strategy, and I had three candidates [01:32:00] left to interview, uh, and I was the final interview on the three.
And I asked all three of them the same question. I asked them, "How would you market a fork in China?" And I knew that was an absurd question, right? This is for the director of strategy, and it would... They, they never would've thought I was gonna ask that, right? And so the first one was, like, kinda stunned, and was like, "That's the only question you're gonna ask me?"
And I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "Well, I'd look at the product, and I would look at, uh, the features and benefits of that, you know, traditional marketing type." And I was like, "That's a good answer. Thank you." Asked this next candidate the same question, and she came back with more of, "I'd go into homes, and I'd look for a consumer insight of being in a home, of where that advantage could be, and how we could connect to that insight."
Which is like, okay, that's a really good answer, too. Both of them are very good. When I asked the last candidate the question, uh, I'll never forget it, uh, I asked her, you know, "How would you market a fork in China?" And she looked at me and she said, "Why in the world would I wanna do that?" She got the job.[01:33:00]
And that's the differ- And she was brilliant at it because she... And she- that's a common trait of being able to understand why sh- would I want to do that? Why... And, and it was a great question, and she wasn't being sarcastic. It was, it was the right question, 'cause I had 10 ideas a day to go do, and I needed a strategy person that would get to why do I want to do that and, and not be afraid to ask the question.
And being fearless. Not being afraid to ask the question. And too many stu- That's one thing I tell students, college students in interviews is, "Don't be afraid to ask great questions. People want that." And I think that's a defining element of all the friends that I have in the market, and they're willing to ask me hard questions, and you can tell they are vulnerable enough to be able to admit they don't know the answer, and there's a vulnerability in all that, all those great people that, um, it's...
You can see it. You can read it in their eyes.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. That's really good. So one of the things we do at the end of every episode is we walk through the, the three biggest things- Okay ... that stand out about you that founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, [01:34:00] people in the business community are gonna learn when they're listening to this, and I think it links really well to the first one I wrote down, but you love to learn.
Mm. And it's insatiable. I mean, you could tell through the people that you've mentioned, the books that you've read, the people that you've really studied and are fascinated with. Like, you love to learn. Yeah. And then you can see that kind of play out through your career. Like- Yeah ... you've made all these transitions because you really love to learn.
Right. Like, you're... All of them have been pretty different.
Andy Murray: Yeah.
Nick Beyer: Pretty different. Yeah. So, um, I think that's something that- Agreed ... is just amazing. Agreed. And you've just highlighted it in some of the most talented people that you've been around. Mm-hmm. Like, they love to learn. Yeah. So super good. I think the last, the second one is being thoughtful.
Um- Mm ... I loved... The story that comes to mind in this conversation is when you were approached, um- Mm-hmm ... for Saatchi, and you went on the CEO tour, and you- Mm ... I mean, you sat with 10 different CEOs- Yeah ... 10 different business owners that- Um, had sold their business or hadn't sold their business, and you [01:35:00] really, you took all that information in to try to figure out what would be best for you- Right
and your family and your future. And there's an, an element of thoughtfulness that I, I think we all need and we all should aspire to. Um, and I thought that story just really stuck out. Yeah. And then the last one's creative, which is obviously- Mm ... I, I don't think anybody listening to this will be surprised, but I think the most powerful story that you told that as I think about my business as a business owner is you went outside your industry.
Yes. So the Dr. Jackson story was-
Andy Murray: Right ...
Nick Beyer: very fascinating to me. A, a marketing guy running a marketing agency is, is going to study as a pediatrician.
Andy Murray: Yeah.
Nick Beyer: And that's uncommon and unusual- Right ... but it also led to uncommon and unu- unusual outcomes.
Andy Murray: Yes.
Nick Beyer: So I think, Andy, thank you for your time. Th- A- anyone who listens to this is gonna learn a ton, and so we're just super thankful that you'd sit down with us, um, and share what you've learned and your story.
Andy Murray: Yeah. Well, I appreciate all the hard work you guys are doing. You're doing an amazing thing with these different interviews. I'm learning something every time I see one of them and get really encouraged, so [01:36:00] hopefully today will be encouraging to others. And, uh, thank you for inviting me. I really do appreciate it.
You guys are great.
Nick Beyer: Yeah. Thanks.
Andy Murray: Thanks, Andy.