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REMIX: Album 4 Track 11 – Employee Supremacy, The Fabric of Org Success w/ Andy Alsop, CEO, The Receptionist
Hey Brand Nerds! We are back with another guest who has major experience in the BYTES industry. Andy brings grit, passion for people, humility, and gems of knowledge from his serial entrepreneurial career journey to our virtual building.
Interesting people, insightful points of view and incredible stories on what’s popping and not popping in marketing, tech, and culture you can use to win immediately. Brands, Beats and Bytes boldly stands at the intersection of brand, tech and culture. DC and Larry are fascinated with stories and people behind some of the best marketing in the business. No matter how dope your product, if your marketing sucks your company may suck too. #dontsuck
DC: Brand Nerds! Back at you with another Brands, Beats and Bytes podcast. And it is said that your brand is only as good as your customer experience or as bad as your customer experience. And sometimes we in the in the brand field, in the tech field, we forget this very simple fact. But today, today LT, we have someone in the building who I am going to call a customer zealot. Okay, I'm going to call him that he is really all about the customer and the customer can take many shapes and forms including employees.
So with that LT, who do we have matriculating in the Brands, Beats, and Bytes virtual building on this auspicious occasion.
LT: Well, look at you with that Detroit public school vocabulary. That sounds really good D, I love that intro, the pre-intro.
DC: Well, you know, you, you know, I, I, I still words from, from you and other people sometimes Larry. Okay. I still a few words, here.
LT: Oh, right. D so we have another CEO, a tech CEO in the house today, with such a great background. So DC, we had Andy Alsop in the house today. Welcome, Andy!
Andy Alsop: Thank you for having me! Glad to be here.
LT: All right. So we're so thrilled to have you, so, so D, check this out. Andy, is that kid growing up who was always business savvy. He's the kid, he had the paper route. He starts a lawn mowing business. You know, we, we know that kid, so really industrious. Right. So he was set that way from the get go. Right? So in the summer he worked at a mail order catalog. And so for college, he goes to West Virginia University, like Go Mountaineers, right?
Where...
DC: Go Mountaineers!
LT: Yeah. Right. Where he earns a degree in business management. And after college, Andy jumps into tech, where he eventually runs a web development company called Web Art Publishing, and he eventually engineer's a merger with Web Art Publishing and two other companies into a merged company called Panorama Point Corporation. And Andy eventually leads a successful exit when Panorama Point is bought by a search engine optimization company. So Andy's next gig is as a Director of Businesses Assistance for Technology Ventures Corporation, TVC, where he consults with more than 30 tech startups on business direction, go to marketing strategies, and more. His work with a team of entrepreneurs there leads to the formation of something called Packet Analytics Corporation, which is a network forensic search engine that allows security analysts in large network environments to search through terabytes of network data in real time and Andy becomes the CEO. And that goes really well. After a couple of other tech BizDev spots Andy finds his way to become partner and leading BizDev of UC Charting Solutions, which is a startup that has a unique electronic health record solution called Promentum, which enables doctors to chart the patient visit faster than what they call the Electronic Health Records. EHR for short, that any other EHR solution on an active stylist based tablet. Now I think that's key there. Is it's a tablet-based operation there. So at UC Charting Solutions, Andy leads BizDev, which includes partnerships, marketing, and key account sales. So D, as we all know, with the mosaic of all of our careers, this stepping stones tend to reveal themselves and I could be wrong here, but from UC Charting Solutions, working on a tablet-based HR product, Andy then joins The Receptionist, which has been around just a couple of years. It's the burgeoning tech startup and this...
DC: Love the name!
LT: It's great. It's great named Andy.
And this company is behind the original iPad based visitor management system for all, any of us who have done any visiting or you know, meetings at different companies we've interacted with, with this system, The Receptionist which is what is the brand and product called offers an iPad based visitor management solution that consistently receives a five-star rating from its customers at well-known companies, such as Yahoo, TripAdvisor, ADP, Home Finder among.
They are now in over 4,500 locations, in 36 countries and growing. So in summary Brand Nerds, we have a super successful serial tech entrepreneur in the house today who is rethinking leadership strategy in a manner that should help all key constituents, including customers, shareholders, and employees, which we're really going to get into.
So welcome to Brands, Beats and Bytes, Andy Alsop.
Andy Alsop: Well thank you for having me and as you go through that, man, there are so many things in so many memories that come up, and so many lessons that come up, we could go on for hours about all that background, but thank you for having me. Great introduction.
DC: As Larry often says, Andy, the introductions are only as good as the people whom they represent and it all happens to be factual. So this is you brother and Andy, Larry does a phenomenal job every time, every time. Getting your flowers.
LT: My job's easy because, because like you said, we have, we have Andy in the house. So he's he's got such great stuff to talk about
DC: Truly does.
Andy Alsop: And I just got to say that a lot of times, those introductions just two minutes of a little bit of fluff, but that was that was a great story. I really appreciate that. You're welcome.
DC: Well done, LT, well done. Andy in our Get Comfy section, which is where we're going now. We will typically just have one area of Get Comfy. But for you, my brother, we're going to have two, and I'm going to pick up exactly where you were when Larry got done.
You talked about the lessons and things that you've learned. Through all of the different experiences that you've been afforded, but there's one thing here in your background about the consultation that you have done with 30 or more tech startups and businesses on their on their business direction. And so I like to know for those that are listening now, the Brand Nerds that are listening, either those who are in tech, or maybe not in tech, they're in brand or some other fields, if you were giving them the top three pieces of advice from Andy's brain on what they need to be thinking about to either build a successful company or build a successful career, Andy would tell them what?
Andy Alsop: Well, let me just give you a little bit of background behind that, because in that, that was what TVC was called. And what I was doing was actually working at the Los Alamos national laboratory, where there were scientists who had developed something and the laboratories wanted to give them the opportunity to see if they could take that out into the marketplace. And a lot of times it's what they had created in the labs and it was their technology transfer.
So it was interesting because I'm not, you're not talking to, you know, traditional entrepreneurs. These are scientists who think very scientifically. So I would say that we had to really start at like the brass tacks of what they were trying to do. And almost always, what we had to do is to start talking about market because a lot of the technologies were sort of something that was incredibly niche, highly scientific, very difficult to understand. It might require licensing agreements. It might require all of these things. So it always came down in my opinion, to start out with, if we're going to talk about this, what is the market for it? Who's going to buy it. Who are you going to target with it? And then the next thing comes up and this always came up as, "team," "who," you know, in Good to Great I think their quote was you want to start with who, not what, right. Always had to be who, and, and, and I've got to say in a lot of these situations, these were scientists. They weren't people who really knew how to run a business. That wasn't their first thing. So I found that really interesting and really exciting.
A lot of times to talk about that, like, who are you going to get on the bus with you, that's going to be able to get you to, to roll down the road. And then once you had that, then it came down to financing because now you've got this market and maybe it's this massive market. Who are you going to get on the bus with you? And then how much money is it going to take to get this thing to the market? Because these weren't just like simple ideas, like a iPad based visitor management system you put in an office, these were like, you know, really intense things. What ended up coming out of that actually was that packet analytics that when you read about, which was taking this forensic data that two guys were, were working on in the security lab, where they had to, they had that basically answer to the CIA. And the CIA was saying like, has this server actually tried to attack the labs? And we were taking that out and said, okay, how can we commercialize that? Boy, it was tough. So those are the three things we focused on.
DC: Sorry, sorry to interrupt. Can you just tell the Brand Nerds, what CIA is an acronym for?
Andy Alsop: The Central Intelligence Agency.
DC: Got it.
Andy Alsop: The, you know, the U S like the FBI, FBI was the other, so, you know, Federal Bureau of Investigation. So yeah, the big agencies were coming to them and saying, we need to know some seriously important information. So
LT: That's got some security behind it, too.
DC: So I'm just going to repeat the three first is always start with the market and my understanding of what you were saying and just correct me if I'm a, if I'm off. You were trying to help these scientists understand the size of the prize. How big of an opportunity are they really talking about here? Is it niche or can it be scaled? And the second is the team or who. Start with the "who," not the "what." Taken from Mr. Collins, great, Good to Great, or let me say fantastic, Good to Great, a book. So who are the folks that are going to be on the squad? You've probably, well, Larry and I talked about this, but you may not have heard this before.
We have, we have heard from VCs and private equity folks and angel investors, a phrase of "bet on the jockey, not the horse." So these, this goes to your point of who. And then finally the financing. How are you going to get the bread, the 'scrilla, the dough, in order to operate this thing. Okay, great. Good. Very good brother. Very good. Now we're going to... larry anything on that before we got to the next section?
LT: One quick thing. I'd love it because Richard White, just our previous guests really almost earmarked eerily the same thing about the market being first, where a lot of, a lot of tech folks go to the product first and Richard did that earlier. Right. And then you really have to, you really have to look at the market first and then the team just like just, just like Andy's talking about.
Andy Alsop: Yeah. And if I could just like throw in real quick on that, one of the things, and that's something I've had to learn over my career as well is you sort of get starry-eyed about what, like what this thing can do and it's going to be amazing and it's going to be whatever. What I've found is product market fit is kind of be the most important thing in a startup and like getting that first customer and making that first, you know, actually leveraging that first customer and the customer number 2, 3, 4, 5.
That is the hardest thing I feel like. And that's where actually I had a really tough time where I kind of, you know, would get these companies started, but we couldn't get it to that next phase. The thing that I did with the receptionist was, and I don't know if I'm jumping forward is that this was, I bought that company, and that my predecessors had only just gotten started, but they had already, you know, a hundred or so locations using the software. I was able to actually talk to the customers and say, does this actually help you? And they said, yeah, this is really helpful. I was walking out of those meetings realizing I don't have to go get customer number one through 100.
They've already done that work, I just need to build this. And that, that just opened up a whole land of opportunity for me. So.
DC: Hm. Andy you said you bought the company and then you went to go talk to their customers that you acquired through buying the company and you asked a question that I don't know how many CEOs will actually ask. It was a question that I believe represents humility and that was, does this actually work? I think most in your seat, they would presume it's true. Well, you god damn right it works, because I just bought this shit, okay. Better be working. And you have the humility to ask that question and then have open ears to the answer.
And then you are then gifted with something that says to you. Ah, I thought I had to go get 1, 2, 3, and up to a hundred, but now I see it's here. That's wonderful.
Andy Alsop: Yeah. And I've just got to turn it right around a little bit, because I actually that's the question I asked before I bought it. I missed about spoke because I wanted to go touch and say, if I'm going to go and put my money down and buy this thing, I want to make sure it works.
Part of my due diligence was I went and interviewed customers and then that's what they said, Hey, it works. And then I'm like, hell yeah, I'm going to buy this because it works, now I just got to scale it.
DC: I got it. Okay. Thank you. Nevertheless, still a hell of a question. Still hell of a question. All right, we'll go to the next Get Comfy question.
Larry. I think Andy may be the first of our entire slate of podcast guests, wonderful guests that we've asked two Get Comfy questions.
LT: I know, I love it though.
DC: Here we come to the second one coming to second one. Alright, Andy, I really love movies that make me think. I love movies that I can't quite anticipate what's going to happen next. And I try to really figure out, where is this movie going? I love those kinds of movies. I hate movies where I can, they're predictable, I can pick them out, and where they jump the shark. Those movies I don't like. I don't finish those movies, but one such movie and franchise for me with the exception of one movie in the franchise are, is the Bourne franchise.
So this is Matt Damon, spy. I call him like, new spy. Yeah. So Jason Bourne. All right. And one of the one of the movies in the franchise, which is my favorite is called the Bourne Supremacy. So the Bourne Supremacy, and I love this movie because I thought, oh, he is really like showing the full repertoire of his skills and what, and what he can do.
Now, what I believe happened in that movie, and the franchise, is they did not treat Jason Bourne as a customer. They did not treat him as a customer. They treated him like a tool. We're going to point you in this direction and you're going to do this. Once he figured out how he was being leveraged and Brand Nerds, if you've not seen any of the movies of the franchise. I highly recommend it. You'll understand where I'm going here.
LT: The book's great too, by the way.
DC: What was that now?
LT: The book that it is based off is great too.
DC: Oh, the book. Oh, your book. I haven't read the book, but the uh, thank you. Thank you, Larry.
Just the movies, but so anyway, once he figured out what he was, what he was being used for as a tool and decided no, no, no, I've got some thoughts about what I want to do. He rained down holy hell on the agencies. And one of them being a faux CIA or FBI. The point here is that Jason Bourne became supreme. And that's why I love that movie, that particular movie, the Bourne Supremacy. You got something you call the Employee Supremacy. And so just in the name alone, I'm thinking what's that? Do tell Andy.
Andy Alsop: Oh man, and there's an intentionality behind it. But I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story. This comes from, you know, the if you follow Simon Sinek at all, I don't know if you do, but it's, you know, he wrote the book, The Infinite Game. And in Infinite Game he talks about a just cause, and our just cause is specifically, and I'll tell you this, this is what our company has come to. This was a soul searching effort. This was all of our leadership team coming together, disclosing what their own personal "whys" were, where they were going. Was to build a world where a company's profits fuel the mission to be in service to its employees and the community.
Now we adopted that and I'll just, I'll repeat it again. Cause sometimes you hear the words, you don't really hear it. You don't hear it. But to build a world, right, build a world where a company's profits fuel the mission to be in service to its employees and the community. So what we want to do is we want to build a world, and it was not built a world where everybody's using a visitor management system.
It's really a build a world about, you know, really bringing what the company does to the employees and the community. So then shortly after this, we came up with that in the first, second quarter of last year. And all of a sudden I'm thinking to myself, because I've listened to this Inc.com interview where Simon Sinek has been, is talking about the fact that there's shareholder supremacy. And shareholder supremacy basically says that every decision that the leaders of a company make, have to be in the benefit of the shareholders, right? So that's what they have to do and that's, that's what we've all grown up with. And, and it came from basically Milton Friedman doctrine in the seventies of like, this is the way a company needs to be run. It has so many ill effects, so many negative and unintended consequences that have caused pain in the lives of employees. And so what I, I was actually walking along, taking a hike one day and I'm sitting there going, employee supremacy. Employee supremacy is where a company's leaders, the leadership team, the CEO, the managers, are all their decision-making is not focused on what's best for the shareholders, but it's actually what's best for the employees and the community that surrounds the company. The community around our company is very important, as well. That's all your contractors, it's the environment you live in and your employees. So it means that instead of taking the perspective that everything you do and the company does is for the shareholders, you're actually saying it's for the employees and the community. And when you take that perspective, it is a shift in perception and a shift in thinking where every decision you're making is now impacted by that. Now let's take them forward and say that you actually make those decisions for the employees. Your employees, and this is something that Simon Sinek talks about is you have to have trusting teams in a company.
LT: Right.
Andy Alsop: You know, you run on shareholder supremacy and you're doing everything for the shareholders. What you're ending up doing is making decisions that make them want to, you know, fake and lie and hide because they're not being treated like trusted individuals, right? That are there to, that. You should be honoring the fact that your employees are doing something for you.
Not that they're just robots that are going to just do the work necessary. So the shareholders can benefit. So you see these amazing things that change all of a sudden where in, in our company and the other companies that are starting to do this as well, you're starting to see decisions being made at the employee level, the manager level, at the leadership level, where I, as the CEO, don't have to be sitting there saying everybody needs to do it because I'm scared that they're not going to be doing the things that are necessary to benefit the shareholders. They're benefiting each other. They're doing things where they're creating trusting teams among themselves. And then they're actually creating, trusting relationships with our customers because they're not being told, go and sell that customer cause we need to get that next deal. They're actually selling the customer because they're bringing them something that they believe can actually help them and improve their lives. So that's what employee supremacy about is all about.
LT: This is so deep, D.
DC: Heavy.
LT: And Andy, you did a great job explaining it. You mentioned second quarter last year is where I love this, you're on a hike, and for those Brands Nerds out there, Andy you're in Denver, right, in the Denver area?
Andy Alsop: That's the funniest story is I'm actually living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe. But yeah, the company is based in Denver, a bought it from a Boulder based startup. So I go back and forth.
LT: You go back and forth. Well, either one of, either one of those places, if you've had the good fortune of being there, there's great hiking in both those places. So you're on this hike, and this is, this is really, almost like a lightning bolt to you that we've got to shift consciousness here.
So can you talk to us about how you then communicated that, at The Receptionist and how that has been imbued at The Receptionist and if you can talk about what the reception, pardon the pun, has been within the company and, and if it, if in fact it has also, if it's too early to see results from it.
Andy Alsop: So starting off with how we introduced it first, we came up with our just cause and then we introduced what our just cause was to the company. And it was incredibly well received because what happens is people come into a company like this with job trauma and we have heard, and we've created a safe space for our employees to talk about their job trauma, for them to be able to disclose what it's like. You know, one person has said that, you know, he was actually I'll just say, it's our Director of Sales. He was told by the owner of the company he was working for before, "I need to go buy a $2 million home. I don't have enough money. I need you to sell more." Right. And so he was put under this intense pressure to go to the sales team.
DC: Oh, hold on, Andy. This is what the, the, the former owner and CEO of the company actually said to an employee?
Andy Alsop: This is what you in another company, that is exactly what was said was I'd sat him down and said, I need to buy this home. I don't have enough money. I need you to sell more.
LT: Oh my God. And that's supposed to get him juiced up to go sell more, right?
Andy Alsop: Yeah. It's it's is that shareholder supremacy? He's the shareholder of the company, right?
He's saying, I am the one who benefits here now. What do you think that experience was for the other salespeople? As my port, he's just one of the most loving people in the world has to go to the team and say, we have to sell harder. You got to work harder because we've got to do this. It's just, that's like one of a zillion stories I've heard about job trauma.
And so when we bring this up, people are a little bit like, are you serious? Are you really serious? You know, about like, is this actually what you're saying? And then they're a little bit like prove it. Right. And we've been proving it all along. Cause I've had this very long history. You've heard about it. I've always been very centric about employees, but the problem has been, I've also had the influence of two incredibly successful brothers, and it's always been about shareholder supremacy and that's where you're going to make your decision. So I've always lived in conflict, until I got to this point where I said, I don't have to feel the pressure shareholder supremacy any longer cause I'm declaring to the world and I'm not doing it anymore.
So I'm doing employee supremacy. So, you know, let's talk a little bit about impacts. Let's say for instance, during the pandemic we had employees, young employees, at the company who had left their families to, to move to Denver so that they could either work for our company or they had transitioned into our job.
Well, they didn't have a connection back during the pandemic because it couldn't get on an airplane. Right. So we started the COVID family travel fund. Which you want to go back here to be at your family. We're going to pay for the hotel rooms are going to pay for a rental car. We're going to pay for your gas.
If you take your own car and then go work at your, at your home. So you can be with your family. And so you can feel that sense of bond and connection. During the pandemic, we were going through our benefits review. You know, you can do this annually with your, your benefits to determine, and we're talking to the, that we work with, what's called a professional employer organization or a PEO, and we're going through our benefits review. And they're like, well, what should we do in terms of our benefits? And I said, well, I want to increase our benefits. And they're like, wait, it's COVID, I've never heard a customer saying that they want to increase their benefits. We're like, yeah, we're going to actually take our employee premiums from 90% where the company pays 90% of the premiums to a hundred percent.
And then we're going to increase the family benefit from 50 to 60. And it's not huge, but you know, that was enough, people like, wow, you're actually increasing our benefits. We introduced another one, which was the the vacation fund because we have an unlimited vacation policy, but to get employee of saying, but I don't have enough money to be able to pay for a vacation. Now we give all of our employees $1,500 a year so that they can pay for vacation. We have one that just came back from two weeks vacation in Europe, and she paid for all of her plane tickets and a bunch of her hotels. So she could travel and get to get that time away that she needed. So those are some of the impacts. And then it goes to the impacts of the employee. I mean, to the customers, I don't have to tell our employees, this is how you talk to your customers. They go out and they know the company trust them. They know their employees, other employees trust them as well. And they go out there and let's say they come back and say, I did this thing for the customer. Hope it was okay. And it's something like the customer will just walk away like, you did that's incredible. So I dunno. That's just like the impacts that come from.
LT: Wow. I'm blown away by this, D.
DC: So am I, so am I. I have a question though Larry, but did you have anything to ask? All right, so I'll do mine. You do yours, and then we'll go to the next section.
LT: Yup.
DC: Andy, there's a saying that one of my old bosses shared with me and it was, "What problem an unintended, possibly unanticipated problem, might this wonderful solution of yours beget?" So he used to say this to me from time to time. So let's go to Milton Friedman's original seventies view of shareholders and then Simon Sinek's more current day version of it, shareholder supremacy. I'm certain that when Milton thought about shareholders being at the top of the totem pole, He thought this is a very good thing, and obviously quite a few other people agreed because we took that on and it's only later that we began to see what that prism on the world means for employees, but that wasn't seen at first. At first it was like, oh, this is great.
So you are now in the world of employee supremacy and it all sounds good, Andy. It sounds good. But my question to you, my brother is what unintended or possibly unanticipated problems might this wonderful solution called employee supremacy beget?
LT: Great question.
DC: Yup.
Andy Alsop: That is a great question, that's a great question, because I've seen, you know, I've seen so many benefits from it and have been overwhelmed by the benefits. In contrast to shareholder supremacy that I'm sitting here kind of racking my brain and I don't want it to be all like roses. And I'm trying to, I'm trying to figure out like we, we definitely have had the, I guess maybe the unintended, I don't know if it's even an unintended consequence, but the only thing I can really think is there's a shift in thinking that comes from it and you have to be able to overcome that. And a lot of times it comes from the employees and it comes from incoming employees. They will frequently, we now are sought out as a company to go work for because of this. Right. And we're in a day and age where it's not easy to get employees. That's right. So we are, and, and we, we do not just take the first employee. So we just hired a Director of Customer Experience. It took us three months and 700 applications before we finally got to the one person who we brought in. Almost every case during the interview, the employees or the candidates are saying, I've read about this. I've, you know, I've seen this, I don't believe it. And they're asking the other employees during interviews, you know, what do you think? And then some employees say, look, I've actually had several employees in interviews, say, this company has changed my life. And so when they, then they come in, when they actually come in as a candidate, and now they're an employee they're sitting there going, when is the other shoe going to drop? And so it just takes a while. And I don't, I don't know if that specifically answers your question, but it takes a while for them to be, okay, I can trust this. This is actually happening. This is the way it's going to be. And the more more employees you have coming in, and the more people are saying this, the shorter timeframe, you know, the timeframe for people to accept that.
But, you know, I I've found nothing, but like, oh man, I, I just live in, I said it before. I just lived in so much conflict before when I was running my company. Cause I was like, I want to do what's best for the employees, but I got to do what's best for the shareholders. And they, in many cases are in complete conflict.
And then you can't, I can't honestly was not sleeping well at night because I could not figure out how to resolve the conflict. This doesn't feel right to do this to this employee, but I have to, this is shareholder supremacy. This is I have to do what's in the best interest. And it's like, I don't have that anymore.
I live a very, a much more peaceful entrepreneurial life as a result..
DC: And this is just an example, and then I'm just going to give it to you. I don't want you to delve into it. I just want to place it in front of you, let it cogitate, and then we're going to go to Larry because Larry wants to say something, then we're going to go to the next section, but we'll come back to it, but I'll give you an example. When a person is driving a Ford Fiesta, but they, no no disrespect to Ford Fiestas. Okay. No disrespect.
LT: That means you're going to disrespect Ford Fiestas.
DC: That means I'm going to disrespect them. And then they, and then they end up getting call it a Lexus. They no longer think very highly of Ford Fiesta because they're in the Lexus. And then when they're in the Lexus, they kind of look around and, oh, there's a Bentley. Oh, maybe I get a Bentley. And they, and then the person gets the Bentley. They're not thinking that highly of the Lexus. This is the way the human species is wired. So let me give you an example based on that principle. Wow. Andy, this company is great. I was able to go to Europe to travel and pay for flights and, and hotel rooms with this $1,500, I'm going to call it a stipend. You all may call it something much better than that $1,500 stipend. But, you know that was just me and I was I was 30 at the time and now I'm 42 and I have a family. And if we're really about employee supremacy and we know families, that $1,500 is not going to go very far with with a family, there Andy. So we think the no stipend should be five racks, $5,000. What I'm saying here, Andy, is that at some point. Will this notion of employee supremacy become intoxicating to employees, such that what they want at some point becomes counter to what is, to what is feasible to run a responsible P&L and Balance Sheet.
So that's, that's, that's all I'm going to say. I'm just going to lay that at you, lay that at your feet. Let you just cogitate on that. No need to comment now, but Larry.
LT: Well, it's all a perfect segue for my question, because with this whole new way of thinking has this, and you mentioned the Director of Customer Experience, it took you a long time to find this person, has this impacted the way you recruit and who you're actually looking for to get on the bus? Because let's face it, there are certain people in life that just want to be told what to do, and they're not comfortable with thinking for themselves. So you guys are going to have huge appeal to a lot of folks, but others they're not necessarily going to thrive in your environment.
So, so understanding who were the right people to get on the bus is really important I would imagine.
Andy Alsop: It is absolutely critical that you get the right people on the bus. So the way we do that, we also run before we discovered The infinite Game. We discovered Traction by Gino Wickman, the entrepreneurial operating system and all that.
And what traction tells you to do is to start with your core values. And in terms of your, if you want to build your company and you want to build what they called, the Virtual Traction Organizer, that VTO, which is a two page document outlining exactly what you're doing, like what you're, what you're doing at your company, what your niche is, whatever else, and it starts with your core values. Our core values are FABRIC, which are Fun, Authentic, Bold, Respectful, Innovative, and Collaborative.
DC: Ooh. Okay.
Andy Alsop: Yeah, problem. That's FABRIC and it's Fun, Authentic, Bold, Respectful, Innovative, and Collaborative. And we live it. We seriously live it. We don't just put them on the walls.
And then, you know, six months later say, what are, what are our core values? We actually have FABRIC nominations. Somebody just on the team won the FABRIC nomination for April for Bold, we were doing Bold. And that was just announced to the team and stuff. Why, why I bring that up is that we actually are hiring, we work with this awesome organization called Scalability Solutions, run by this wonderful woman lineup Loughner.
And she does all of our recruiting from the point at which we scope a job all the way to the point where they've been hired and onboarded, and she helps us with all that. As part of her process, she does a filtration and we actually put FABRIC in and we have one question. What is your favorite value in FABRIC?
It requires them to go find the values and it requires them to just write up a little bit about it. And I'll tell you, 50% of people will come up and they'll talk about my favorite value is family values or something. And they didn't even like, go look at it. Those people are automatically weeded out of the process.
We know that at least they have come up and they said, so I want somebody who will come, and if anybody who is listening to this podcast will get a little tip if you said, okay, my favorite value is authentic and you, and the other question is why they say, well, authenticity is really important because if authenticity doesn't come up in the, in the workplace, it means that you're not sure if you can really trust what's going on.
And then we're like, okay, there's somebody who actually holds one of our values really strongly. So this is how we make sure that we get people on the, on the bus, is first, they got to, they've got to believe in our core values. So we've got to believe there are good cultural fit. And then we can start looking at like, what was their background and what's their everything else.
So we, we, what we have now as a group of people who really do share our core values and what you said is so true, people just want to get like the job done. So you can't be in an environment where it's like, it's, you know, the wild west, whatever happens, man, do whatever you want. Right? You still have to create structure.
You still have to have processes. You still have to have procedures. You still have to say, this is the way we do things, but they get an opportunity to have an impact on that. If they feel like, you know, what about if we did it this way, if they're innovative and they come up with an innovative idea that gets, that is heard and listened to.
And that's, what's really important. They are not treated as these robots that are to be told exactly what to say upon a script to a customer. They're actually said, this is the way we talk to our customers. This is what we do. This is how we do it. We have an incredibly extensive onboarding process. So they understand that.
But if they say, man, I don't really like how we're doing this. I just had it. I've had five customer conversations in a row where that, that didn't land with a customer. Could we do it? Yeah. Let's listen to it. Let's figure out how to do it better because they feel trusted. They feel like they can bring it up. So that ends up, you know, and I, I don't know. So DC, I gotta, just like, you know, I have some thoughts about what you brought up and like, what you just said was, was amazing in terms of like, man, I've got a family, like what's $1,500 bucks going to do. We actually, we do have, we have a lot of families in the. We don't have, we have everything. I'm the, I'm the oldest guy. I'm the old guy in the company. I am the oldest guy, but we do have, you know, families of you know, two and three. And for them, they, they say, you know, yeah, I have a family and it's going to take me some, you know, some money to get across. If I'm going to go to Europe or take a trip.
But they, they, they look at this as so funny. They look at this, this vacation, we call it a vacation fund. We were calling a stipend, they didn't like that word, but we looked at that vacation fund and they look at that vacation fund is this little sort of rice bowl that they have, like, maybe it's not going to pay for their whole vacation, but it's this thing that is to help them, you know, it's this fund.
It's like this thing that is theirs and you have to work for the company for a year before you get it. So like the first year's get it, and they have like stars in their eyes, and are like, alrighty. You know, my, Our Accounts Receivable Specialist just past his one year anniversary, What about if I went to, you know, you know, Mexico, I hope I hope he doesn't mind. I don't think he'd mind. Fantastic individual. It's like, I'm going to go, you know, like maybe live for a week or two in Mexico, and then I'm going to take like a week off because we say you can't use your vacation fund to go work somewhere else. Right. We want you to have fun, to explore things, to go out, like, go vacation, the computer's off, no slack notifications, nothing.
Right. You can't, you've actually had someone like, oh, I'm going to work a little bit. No, if you're going to work, you can't use the vacation fund. We've been very strict about it. Yeah. Because that's what it's about. It's about detaching, you know? And you know, the woman who went to Europe, she still hadn't taken a vacation in a while. And then she works so damn hard. She was refreshed when she got that back. In fact, I'm going to be talking to her later this afternoon. So anyhow, I'm going elsewhere. That's where it comes in.
DC: Tell her we talked about her on the podcast. So Andy, Andy, we're going to have to get to the next section now, brother, but any, any final comments before we make this transition?
Andy Alsop: No, let's make the transition. Let's do it.
DC: Here we go. That was fantastic. We're in the five questions. Now, five questions, I ask one, Larry asks one, we go back and forth until we reached the magic number of five. I get to lead off and I'm really curious about your answer here, given the, the the resonance that you have around humanity.
So what was your first branding experience that swept you off your feet? That captivated your attention that you love, like you may have loved the first crush.
Andy Alsop: So this one I hope it doesn't sound too trite, but so my mom got me, I had had a Commodore 64 and I'm not a coder guy. Right. I am definitely a business guy, but I consider myself a highly technical business guy. I'm an Apple, I got the Apple first. What I got was a Timex Sinclair. Then I got the Commodore 64. And then I got the Apple IIE my mom bought that for me, for like Christmas or something. Larry is scary. I don't know if you know about the Apple IIE, but they actually had instructions that not everything's settled correctly when they shipped it. So they actually told you to take it out of the box and drop it once on the desk to get it to settle. And so I had that that's all line commands and everything else. And then they came out with the first Macintosh and I was like, I sat for hours in front of that Macintosh. A little apple, you know, a little apple with the colored stripes through it and everything else. That was the one that I just, I would dream about it.
I would think about it. I was like, this is amazing.
DC: What, what was it about this, this device that captivated you?
Andy Alsop: Well I had done everything that I had done so far, whether it was on the Commodore or whether it's the Apple IIE. For me, it was the fact that there was the graphical user interface.
The fact that you could like drag things around, move them, click them, bring them up all of that captivated, my imagination for where things could go.
DC: Beautiful. Beautiful brother LT.
LT: No, I love that. What's go to the next question.
DC: All right, let's do it.
LT: So Andy, who has had, or is having the most influence on your career?
Andy Alsop: Let's see, this is, this is one of, of thought a lot about, so the, um, I'd say it's, you know, it's my two brothers. Um, So I come, I have four brothers and a sister, so I'm the youngest of six. So I'm going to be able to shout out, please give him a shot. Yeah. All, all of them. Yeah. Well, all of them have been influenced in my life and, you know, and actually gone back to my dad.
I mean, I mean, sadly, my dad passed when I was seven, but he was a well-known journalist. And then I just remember growing up with all these, like people in our house and stuff with all these names. And I was like, starry-eyed not knowing about who they were and stuff, but but my oldest brother, Joe is uh, founded a company called Progress Software and he founded it in as a tiny little, he started in a dentist office in Billerica, Massachusetts. And I just remember going into that office and they had IBM's everywhere. That's it's it was basically a database company. And he got, you know, he grew it from the point where I remember being in this dentist office, where there are five people to the point where I visited him in his corporate offices. And there were 2000 employees publicly traded on the NASDAQ. Took $10 million from New Enterprise Associates, a big fund. And at that time, this is pre, you know, before all of these, you know, a hundred million and $500 million fundings, you know, you were, you get 10 or 15 million and you'd make it work on that. And he, he made that into, you know, when he left a three point, what was it, $3.2 billion market cap or something like that. So that just like being there that was like visceral for me to be in the dentist's office and things like that. And the other one is my, my brother Stuart Alsop, who is a, he's a well-known venture capitalist in San Francisco. And and just seeing all the companies he worked with. In fact, he funded talking about Richard White. He funded Justin.tv, that Richard was talking about, you know, he was doing life casting, you know where there were strap on a computer or the back and putting a camera. And he, he did that and that ended up, you know, I followed that all the way through to. Um, And so both of these people were really influential individuals on my life and very entrepreneurial. Every one of my siblings, we don't work for anybody. We are all working for ourselves. So like, that's what ended up happening. So when I say that those are the two people is Joe and Stuart are the two people that have had the biggest impact.
And I'll just tell you this one story with this company, when I bought it, and Stewart and Joe made both invested a little bit of money in it to help me kind of get it going. But Stuart looked at me and said, I don't think you need to get boatloads of venture capital for this company. I think that you can run this off of cashflow. And that was, that released me from the chains of feeling like I had to go the VC route does that have already gotten VC in previous and I was like, I don't want to do that again. And so we're bootstrapped and we're probably the only bootstrapped in, in the iPad based visitor management, know, industry, but having that influence was that was really like, that was like, yeah, Andy, you know, you kind of, you almost have permission to go without having to take venture capital. That's a venture capitalist telling me this too.
LT: I was just going to say, who would know better than Stuart and Joe.
D, you want to take the next question?
DC: I do. I do given that you are a serial entrepreneur and you've had many different experiences, many different companies that you've either worked at or for and or founded. You've had some successes, but there's no doubt you've had some failures and we'd like you to share what you consider to be the singular biggest F-Up and what you've learned from.
Andy Alsop: Yeah, this is funny. I think every one of your guests probably says the same thing as a lot of them. So you've got to come up with one, right? Yes. Yes. So as you know, as you and your introduction, you talked about the fact that lawnmowing business and, you know paper, route and all that stuff. I got into college at West Virginia University, and I decided with my buddy to start a restaurant, actually start a bar, you know, just want to start a bar or whatever. Right. And I had received this small inheritance when my uncle died and I'm like, I'm taking it and we're going to turn it into a bar. And then after that was, that went along and was a difficult experience. And I ended up having to get out of that. I then said, I'm going to make this into a restaurant. And so I ran that for two and a half years and the lesson was, and the biggest F-Up was I lost all the money. I went into it, thinking that I've eaten in restaurants. I've never worked in one before. I know how I've never been a bartender, but I've gone to bars before.
So I know how to, I know it's, it's just mixing drinks and making food. That's all there is to a restaurant.
LT: What could be hard about this?
Andy Alsop: Exactly. And it was, oh man, that took years off my life. It was a good learning experience. I actually dropped out of college to do it and went back, but it was the biggest F-Up because I came out of that with no money. And I went into it thinking I don't need any experience. I can figure it out. And I learned that the secret of experience, right. Not the secret, but how important having experience is.
DC: Ah, well, Andy that's sounds a lot like marketing, actually because we are consumers, we think we know how to make marketing. Larry, next question brother.
LT: Okay. That, that, I love that story. So, okay. And the next question is what, and you're perfect for this. So regarding technology marketing, you have a great perspective because of your many different views. Can you tell us where you think marketers should lean in or best leverage tech versus areas that they should be leery?
Andy Alsop: I think this comes down to really asking the question of what's the value you're going to receive from the technology. What is the cost of implementing the technology? Because I think that a lot of times we have a tendency to say, Hey, that's the latest technology I've got to implement it. And how is that actually going to benefit what I'm trying to work on, what I'm trying to achieve.
And I think so many times too, way too many times, people jump quickly to implement technology. It costs them a bunch of money. It's time is your most valuable asset and it can take an inordinate amount of time. So that's what I would say. That's how I think the thought process needs to be. There's so many technology solutions out there for marketers as well, you know? And it's just depending, like where are you going to get it in? And then you can't do it all. That's the other thing I've noticed is everybody tries and that's something we constantly are doing is like making a list of all the things we're doing because that list always gets longer. And then you're saying to yourself, why is it we're doing all these things and you need to reduce the list down again and say like, we've got to cut up. These things aren't working.
LT: That's awesome. D, anything to add?
DC: No. Well actually just very briefly. We all get the same number of hours and minutes and seconds in the day. We don't all, unfortunately, have the same level of skill in how to make the most of them. And so what Andy is pointing to is what do we, how do we use technology to allow us to make the most of the time that we have?
So I, I love that. All right. Final question on the five. Brother Andy, what are you most proud of?
Andy Alsop: Well um, a lot of times I've know I've heard this before, well, I'm going to just put it this way. Somebody was asking, Sir Richard Branson in an interview, like, what is it, you know, like, what are you most proud of and, and how was it you became so successful? And he said, don't look at me and what I've done and you know what I've done in business and anything. He said success comes from my children and being able to put out good people out into the world, who are going to make an impact and help. So I am most successful, I've got three kids. I'm very proud of them. You can't predict the way they're going to go, but you know, we've tried really hard to make them into good people. And I hope that they will be the thing that I'm most proud of at the end of my day is I guess.
LT: That's awesome. Can you shout out the names please?
Andy Alsop: Yeah. All right. We got Alex in LA. We got Sydney in New York at NYU. We have Collin who is going to be going off to Puget Sound, the University of Puget Sound in the fall.
LT: Awesome. You know, what's funny. We Andy, our son, Jake, goes um, T uh, Pacific university of Forest Grove and we, he had gotten into University of Puget Sound to that school.
Look, that's a beautiful, great place.
Andy Alsop: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's tough, man. This is really still from all my kids. Cause that's the first really big decision you have to make is what school you go to and where you apply to. And that was, that was a lot of, you know, to determine whether here's the setting between Utah and Puget Sound and he chose Puget Sound.
And I'm really proud of him because it was a hard decision. He thought about it. He kind of just finally laid it down and said, this is what I'm going to do.
LT: That's kid supremacy. Right.
DC: That's good.
LT: We ready to move to the next section, D.
DC: Let's do it!
LT: What is popping, D? What's popping?
DC: What's Poppin?
LT: So Andy, this is our chance to shout out, shout down, or simply air something happening in and around marketing today, we think is good fodder for discussion.
So D, you want to go first or shall I?
DC: Well, let me go first brother, and I'm going to connect it to a recent trip. I returned on Monday from Tampa, Florida, and Andy Larry knows this. I was staying at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel, in Tampa, Florida. Don't know if you've ever stayed at this hotel, but it is a casino and a hotel. And I don't typically stay in hotels that have a casino connected to them unless I'm in Vegas.
But in this case I happened to be in a casino hotel. We were celebrating the birthday of a very good friend of our uh, uh, mine. And we did a cabana, so we had a cabana there about eight of us Andy, and so I've not spent that much time in a Hard Rock Hotel. So I was thinking music because of Hard Rock Hotel. So as I'm walking through the hotel, I see Elvis's piano, it's like a million dollar piano, so I'm told. I see different costumes or outfits by famous people, Lady Gaga, Sir John McCartney, Beyonce, et cetera. So all of that was on brand for me, the ropes where you would go to check in, instead of just poles, it had guitars, everything was on brand. Loved all of that.
So now I'm thinking about the service, like how, what kind of service happens in this place? So we went to cabana and there's a young man by the name of Brandon, who was looking after us at the, at the cabana. This young man smile was wattage and lit up a room and there are eight of us and we know we are not the only cabana that he is handling.
We've got this brother running uh, Andy and Larry. He is going to get this and that and coming back and forth. And at no point, does he give any indication that any of this bothers him? He is happy and we feel his joy. And one of the folks that were part of our party, Andy and Larry, commented on his smile. And after the experience we had such a good time that I talked with his manager and I do this when and, and only two occasions. And I say it like this, I say, I have been blessed. I have traveled the world. And I only say something and ask for a manager in one of two occasions, either the service was exceptionally good or exceptionally bad.
And typically when you're talking to a manager, they think it's the latter, right? I say, this is an exceptionally good. And I said, this is what I look for. This is what brings me joy in an experience like this. Number one. Is the person knowledgeable. Are they knowledgeable about the menu? Are they knowledgeable about what's going on around me?
That they can share that knowledge with me? Are they knowledgeable about the wine or the cigars? That's one. Number two. Are they expedient to your earlier point? Andy, do they treat my time with preciousness? Are they there when we need them and not there when we don't need them? Are they quick to help us get what we need, but not too quick.
So expedient with time. And the third is a welcoming disposition. Do they make me and my guests feel like they're happy to be there and they're happy we are there. Or conversely, do they treat us as if we would rather be anywhere in the world right now than in front of you taking whatever your order happens to me. When I find these three things, these, these elevate my experience.
And I just said, I want to acknowledge Brandon for doing such and for you as a manager for creating this. So of course managers are shocked by this most of the time. The point is that I now have a higher view of the Hard Rock Cafe, I mean, Hard Rock Hotel brand because Brandon elevated the experience as an employee who shown a light on my experience and the experience of others. So that's, what's popping for me.
LT: So Andy, you want to have a reaction?
Andy Alsop: Well, I think that's a, I think that's a great story and, and it was reminding me, so I just went out. I go to this place right near here, right near me in Santa Fe called Del Charro. And it's just, it's like this corner place it's been there forever.
It's actually a restaurant that's part of the hotel and stuff, and I'm sitting there and I'm having just a, I'm having a margarita and, and some wings, they have the best wings and tap and I'm sitting there with Chris. Yeah. And they are good too. They have a chipotle sauce on it. So, you know, you're not standard wing. So I I'm there with Chris, the bartender and this guy is moving shaking. I mean, he has to cover the whole restaurant and all the drinks and everything has got two ends of the bar. He's doing the whole thing, but he knows at every instant what I need when it's coming, I was like, I need to get a car to go order for my.
He comes over to me at the perfect time, says, okay, let's order it now because you'll have it right. Because I'm watching the Golden State game. And so, you know, he orders it. Burger comes right as time expires. Just like a great experience. And so I think what you're saying is exactly, you know, and that comes down to everything. And that's why I want our customers to have that experience as well. So I want them to go away and tell people I had this great experience because they took care of me, but I love that story. That's a great story.
DC: Thank you.
LT: I'm struck you guys both told great stories, right. And what happens is the face of the brand's become truly your personal experience, right? Yes. Your personal interaction or the face of those brands in your case Andy, with your local establishment, which is awesome because that, that incredible bartender. And D, not only has Brandon elevated the brand for you, but because I know you, I think of Hard Rock in incredibly different way.
And all of our Brand Nerds are going to be thinking of it differently, right? The exponential nature of that. And that's where you go the risk reward of having a Brandon or having somebody who quite frankly sucks. You know, you can't literally, and figuratively can't afford to have the non-Brandon and you need to have Brandons and by the way, to go to full circle. You need to make sure that the Brandons of the world are treated with employee supremacy, right? Yes. If you don't do that, it sort of corporate wide, you better treat your best people that way.
Andy Alsop: Yeah, I agree. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a personal experience is that it is your, is your brand. I mean, I'm sure we all have stories of the companies we've dealt with, which we don't want to mention their name or whatever. And it's always, not as American Airlines, I'll throw that out, mine's American Airlines.
LT: This is a good segue, actually in many ways to my what's popping. So my what's popping is Andy, quite honestly, Brand Nerds, full transparency, we always have a pre pre show meeting with our guests and Andy was was enlightening us with the concept of employee supremacy. And it really got me to thinking about my what's popping. And I thought about. There's a great corollary to sports. And as the Brand Nerds know, Andy, we use sports examples a lot cause DC and I are not only sports fans, but have been embedded professionally with a lot of things these are the sports. So if you think about the most successful teams, they actually practice employee supremacy. So I'm going to use my, again, my wonderful Golden State Warriors. They practice employee supremacy all the time. Steph Curry, Draymond Green and Clay Thompson for better or for worse. They're the ones that are the face of the Warriors and they are treated by Joe Lacob, as they should be, supremely. So I've got a really recent example of not practicing employee supremacy in sports. And there were, I'm going to use a local example again, or our San Francisco 49ers with Deebo Samuel. Now I'm a big Niners fan and this situation really bums me out. For those who aren't sports fans, just a quick, a backstory Deebo is one of the best young wide receivers in the NFL and the Niners innovative head coach, Kyle Shanahan, last season, also started using Deebo as what they called a wide back, which has half wide receiver and half running back. The problem is running backs, get beat up more than receivers and make less money than receivers in the 2022 version of the NFL.
So if Deebo continues to play as a wide back, his career length will invariably be shorter. So Debos contract is up the end of next season, end of the 2022 season and the way the NFL rules stipulate, he can have a contract extension now. So all good players have these talks. So the Niners under Jed York's ownership, if they were practicing employee supremacy, they would pay Debo. Like he's one of the best receivers in the NFL. And actually even more because he's playing this dual position, which has almost like two guys in one, right? So guess what they've done. They've taken a hardball negotiation stance with him. And about a few weeks ago here, we're sitting in early May. Deebo said, I want to be traded. He's asked to be traded. And it was huge news in the NFL because he's one of the best young wide outs in the league. So my point is highly unlikely, previous grade owners, who've talked about here all the time. Well, such as Eddie DeBartolo, who used to run the Niners, he practiced employee supremacy way back in the day, and by the way, he had five rings to show for it. He never let this happen. And I would also suggest that the Warriors who have someone who I think is very similar, Jordan Poole is burgeoning young star. Jordan is going to be up for an extension this summer. I guarantee you, you won't hear Jordan asking for a trade.
So I just wanted to put that out there to you guys. What do you think about what I've talked about
DC: Andy?
Andy Alsop: Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of examples of that as well. I mean the Rooney family over in Pittsburgh, that's another one, you know, I think they are. Now I came from Washington, DC, Daniel Snyder is running shareholder supremacy all day long. It is the decisions and look at the sec, look at that success, you know? And so I totally, I mean, that makes a ton of sense. And you sit in an interesting, because what you're saying is you can correlate essentially employee supremacy, if you run your team that way, you're going to have success. If you run into shareholder supremacy, it's all going to be about the dollars, the franchise money. You can get that, you know, the, the, the sale that, that portion of all of the apparel sales and other stuff. And that's what you're thinking about. And that's where your team's going to go to. It's not going to actually be successful. Love it.
DC: Great example, Larry. I'll quickly say this, once Shanahan, that's the coach out in San Francisco. I think it's Kyle Shanahan. Is that the gentleman's name? Correct? Yeah. Once Kyle Shanahan who fancies himself and others, I think would agree that he's an offensive design genius. Once he designed a way to leverage Deebo's skills, they were quite proud of themselves, and to your point about shareholder supremacy, when they saw the winds coming in and their record increasing, they thought we're going to keep leveraging this kid right here, because it's resulting in things that helps the company or the organization.
LT: Yep.
DC: I am willing to bet that if Kyle or Lynch, John Lynch, I thinks the GM over there, or the owner or anyone had gone to Deebo and said, listen, Deebo we know we are using you in a way that no other receivers being used in the league. So we're going to take care of you.
LT: Exactly.
DC: We're going to make sure you're taken care of. I bet he wouldn't say a peep. He'd already be signed.
LT: Exactly right, D.
DC: Then he'd already be signed. So anyway, that's my response.
Good one. Good one.
LT: Yup.
So man, Andy, this has been incredible. We're at, at the next segment here to the show close, and that's where we share our learning. So D, should you want to share your learnings first or shall I?
DC: Would you do the honors, initially, my brother?
LT: I will, I will do that. So this is going to bother our super producer, Jeff Shirley, but I have four, cause Jeff likes odd numbers.
DC: Oh, you bought to get here. You got to be edited, brother, Brand Nerds. He's saying four now you only going to hear three.
LT: So company leaders out there, number one company leaders out there, here's a challenge. Can you help infuse your company to be in service for its employees in your community? Like Andy is doing.
I believe that if we can actually start with what Andy's done and, and make this something that becomes worldwide, the world will be a lot of, a much better place. So that's number one. Number two, if you're looking for a job and you're really good at what you do, another challenge, can you find a company that shares your core values? In other words, do you know your core values and do they align with where you're going to work? So really I say that to having just finished the, the Hulu show on Theranos, which if you work there, this is the antithesis of that, right? So third, getting what any talked about starting with, if you're a startup, getting the first customer, is so difficult and then it's right there and difficulty behind it then to the second, third, and fourth is so hard. So understanding that when you go in is critical and really critical for success to make sure you have that view of of the world as you're, as you're getting started. And then the fourth one, I love Andy's story about his restaurant and bar. What really I get out of that is it's really important to have humility and understanding where you are in terms of your experience when you're embarking upon something new, that experience really does matter. So those are my four things.
DC: Thank you for those three things. Larry,
LT: We'll see what Jeff wants to cut.
DC: I know know actually we communicate Andy the time, how things are going in terms of time. So when Larry said he had four Jeff sends the very angry emoji with red. He's, he's very upset, but he'll be okay. He'll be okay. Those are great. Larry, I've got some overlap to you.
So Andy, you've heard, I know at least one podcast, so, you know, I, I will sometimes it, it will come upon me that this individual, that I happen to be on a podcast with, along with Larry and Jeff and Jade and and others, is more than the accomplishments that have been read at the top of the podcast. They are human beings and they have some special gifts that they can give to the world that only Andy, they can give to the world.
No one else can give these gifts to the world, but them. And so sometimes I'm able to connect into that. And so I'm going to make an attempt to do that with you today. So I've got three things, because that's what the producer says we got to have. And then I'm going to be fancy Larry and a bonus. I'm not going to add a bonus, a bonus..
The first one is digestible values, digestible values. Here's what I mean by that. Andy, you not only are about values. You were about presenting those values in a fashion that others can digest. So FABRIC: Fun, Authentic, Bold, Respectful. Is it Innovative? Is that, is that the, Innovative, and then Collaboration or Collaborative, right?
So these, these are things that they can remember, FABRIC, and then they can remember the acrostic and what each of the mean, so Brand Nerds take this from Andy, if you have some values, make them digestible. Second is supreme trust, not distrust, supreme trust you supremely trust your team. You supremely trust them.
You trust them so much that you do not feel the need to give them a script of say this, do this in order to make the employee. I mean, to make the customers happy. You supremely trust them to do that. And you have sort of a trifecta of this trust triangle. You referenced Simon Sinek, trusting relationship of the customer. So you, you trust them to do the right thing by the customer. Trusting relationship amongst the peers. So their employees, they trust one another, but then there's another trust that you did that you did not speak to, but is implied. They trust themselves to perform. They trust themselves to meet the high bar.
So supreme trust that's second. And third is kindness in service. Kindness in service.
You don't create a vacation fund unless you are kind in the service you're wanting to provide your team. You don't raise the percentage that you all are paying in medical coverage for your for your team from 90 to 100, unless there's a kindness about what you want to do in service.
Listening to your brothers and the way you talk about them, there's a kindness that I sense that you have. So when I, when I bring together that digestible values and the way you, the way you have crafted that here, and I'm certain other ways and the Supreme trust that you have in your team, not just now, but even before now and the kindness and service I am now reminded of your father with his unfortunate passing when you were seven. Seven's a very special number. Seven is a special number.
You said that he was a journalist and you have, you have said this word maybe more than any other word today. Second, it has to be trust. Third is values, but the word you said most often is story. Mm story. I like that story. I want to tell a story about that. This is storytelling. Story continued to come up.
This is from your father. Okay. Your father was a journalist. He told stories. You are his son. So you tell stories. So now let me bring all of this home. Let me bring all this home. Here is the reason why I think you were able to walk through, on a hike and go shareholder supremacy. There's a conflict here. Ah, employees, supremacy. How were you able to do that? You are able to decipher, decipher what's missing, in shareholder supremacy. You have been able to decipher, what's been missing for employees. You have been able to decipher in the very companies that you have purchased. What's missing. I know it's basic technology with iPad, decipher what's been missing.
It's why you would ask the question. Does this work? Because you are attempting to decipher. So what I believe is your gift is you are the Rosetta Stone of business. A Rosetta Stone was created to decipher hieroglyphics. And what you are, Andy is you are an actual Rosetta Stone living and breathing. We can put you in an area and you can decipher what's going on.
You can decipher what's missing. You can decipher what's needed. And then once you've made that determination, you can then fill the need. And I believe that is your gift to the world, brother. You're a Rosetta stone. A living, breathing, Rosetta Stone.
Andy Alsop: Wow. You just blew me away. Thank you. That was really like, but right to my heart, man. Thank you.
DC: Welcome, brother.
LT: D, has a way of putting, putting this together. That's really special. And, and everything he says, though, is, is dead on. It really is.
Andy Alsop: Yeah, that, that connection to stories. Like I've never heard that. I've been on this planet for however many years and never made that connection of how important the stories are to me.
And the fact that my dad was a journalist. That's like, wow, that's an amazing insight. Thank you.
LT: Yeah. That's, that's amazing. Hey, so, Andy, any, anything that you want to share, any learnings or any, anything that you want to posit that we discussed today that you'd like to talk to the Brand Nerds about?
Andy Alsop: And then the only thing I just say about, and I know I've talked a lot about this employee supremacy. So I bought this company in 2015, so seven years ago, we have only had one person leave the company since, since I started this company, one person leaves the company voluntarily. We have had to exit some employees. You have to do that as an entrepreneur. If you don't have good cultural fit, only one employee has actually left the company voluntarily. And I just wanted to bring that up because. Imagine I have people, I had people from seven years ago who had been with this company who, when they're talking to their customer, they're not saying I just learned about this and I'm trying to figure out how to tell you about it. They know all the way back to seven years. So anyhow, that that's one, that's another one of my, I guess, proud achievements, how much of an impact that can have.
DC: Wow. Wow.
LT: That's a great way to segue to the end D because you think about, does anything speak better to results than that? The continuity of that the best teams have continuity and, and that translates into real results. One and just one last point, how many, how many employees do you have, Andy?
Andy Alsop: We're at 20. So small team, but yeah.
LT: Wow. What a great show. We're so thrilled. To have had you, Andy, that we're going to go to the show close. Brand Nerds, thanks for listening to the Brands, Beats and Bytes recorded virtually on zoom and a production of KZSU Stanford, 90.1 FM radio worldwide at kzsu.org. The executive producers are Jeff Shirley, Darryl "DC" Cobbin, myself, Larry Taman, Joseph Anderson, Jade Tate, Hailey Cobbin, and Tom Dioro.
DC: The Podfather.
LT: And if you are listening to us via podcast, it would be great if you can please rate and review us. Additionally, if you do like the show, please subscribe and share. We hope you enjoyed this podcast. And we look forward to next time where we will have more insightful and enlightening talk about marketing with another great business leader as our guest.