Good Life Project - Emily Heyward: On Building Brands That Shake the World

Episode Date: May 11, 2016

Today, I’m excited to be talking to Emily Heyward, co-founder of white-hot, Brooklyn-based branding phenomenon, Red Antler.While attending Harvard, Emily took a deep dive into the study of pop culture, ethical philosophy, and what drives people at the core. After college, she entered the advertising world where her career began to take off.After realizing she loved being in control, Emily decided to enter the world of entrepreneurship, co-founding the groundbreaking branding agency, Red Antler, which quickly exploded into one of the hottest shops, with a unique business-model. They serve early-stage ventures, often becoming involved on a level that goes way beyond traditional brand-building. Or in their words, they "build brands for startups that are changing how the world works."I invited Emily to the Good Life Project to explore her life and her influences. She shares her thoughts about creating something of your own, as well as helping other visionaries build something that becomes a global brand and makes a huge impact on the world.Don’t miss this behind-the-scenes look into the life of a successful entrepreneur and an incredible human being, Emily Heyward. In This Episode You’ll Learn:Emily Heyward growing up.The impetus behind starting her own business.One of the greatest lessons Emily learned - the power of delegating.What it takes to produce a podcast like Serial and why there are not many copy-cats.Emily’s take on the power of storytelling.What made her want to leave the advertising industry.Why Emily and her team valued reputation much more than paying rent early on in their business.The shocking statistics about the success rate of entrepreneurs with day jobs vs. ones who go all in.How Red Antler came to be.Why Emily credits their success to launching during a recession.Her authentic thoughts on the idea of work-life balance.Mentioned In This Episode:Connect with Emily: RED ANTLER | LinkedInSerialThis American LifeGimlet Media www.Duarte.comThe Confidence Game by Maria KonnikovaGive and Take by Adam GrantBehance Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today's guest, Emily Hayward, was a self-described rebel as a kid. She always performed really well and landed in Harvard where she took a major deep dive into human psychology and why we do what we do and then vaulted herself into the advertising world where she quickly gained a lot of traction. And after about six years, realized that she kind of had to be in control. So she started her own branding agency with a friend called Red Antler, which has exploded into this one of the hottest shops probably in the world. And what's really fascinating too, is that they focus specifically on serving early stage and startup companies and very often with a really powerful mission-driven orientation. So it was a lot of fun sitting down with her to explore her life, her influences, her lens on building something, and then helping other people build something that hopefully becomes a global brand and makes a really big difference. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. So you came onto my radar,

we were talking before we came on the air, partly through a friend of mine and a client, and I guess probably a friend of yours now also. I'd like to think so. Derek at Greatest.com, who's an awesome human being. Shout out to Derek and Greatest. And you guys were doing some really powerful work with him. And then I got really interested in the firm that you created, Red Antler. And then in you as an individual.

So it's funny, as I was doing a little bit of background on you, as the human, all these sort of points of coincidence popped up. So you grew up in Hastings. I did. We almost moved there, actually. Oh, it's such a great town. It seems beautiful. But the reason we almost moved there, I think, is even funnier because, so I grew up in Port Washington. Oh, my wife grew up in Port Washington. And so I found that pretty quickly online. And one of the reasons that I really loved Hastings is because I thought it had a really – they're both water towns. I thought it had this really similar kind of like laid-back-ish feel to it. That is so funny.

You know, she and I, I think on the surface, we don't notice the ways in which our backgrounds have so much in common. But they really, really do. Yeah. Our towns are similar. We're both half Jewish. I'll have to bring that up to her though. She'll get a kick out of that. Yeah, it was really funny because there's something,

I don't know about you, but we've actually thought about moving a couple of times and Boulder is a place that I love also. But I go there and I'm like, when I'm not around water, I feel it. I have to be around water. We've talked about maybe one day would we move to sort of like the Rhinebeck area. My brother just moved there, but it's too far from the beach.

Yeah. Same thing. Do you think it's a factor of growing up by in a beach town over a, you know, huge farm in a mountainous area. Yeah. I just love the feeling of like the sea air. I love the vegetation of a beach town. I don't know. There's something about it. I feel more at home. I so agree.

And I think you're probably right. I think you're either wired from mountains or I think it's mountain, beach, or city. There are some people that I know where if like they get hives when they leave the city. I feel sorry for those people. I love the city, but I think you need to have a break. I so agree. I'm like, you know, the fact that Central Park actually exists a couple blocks from where looking out over the city and thinking about what an absolute miracle it is that there's this massive plot of green in the middle of the most expensive real estate in the world. Yeah.

And the fact that that's been maintained is such a gift to everybody who lives here. I honestly don't think the city would be livable without it. It's unbelievable and I'm sad that I'm so far from it because I never go because it's hard to get on a subway to spend time outside psychologically. In fairness, Brooklyn has some pretty awesome parks too. Totally. And Prospect Park is amazing, but there's something about Central Park and maybe that's also from childhood. It's just so magical to me. Right. So what happened in childhood? Did you used to come into the park? Spent a lot of time there. So I went to, well, my mom brought us into the city all the time. We were going to the Met.

We were going to the Natural History Museum. We were going to the zoo in Central Park, the carousel. But, you know, the duck pond, you know, all of it. Right. But then I actually went to high school in Riverdale. Oh, no kidding. What's high school? Riverdale.

Oh, Riverdale Country? Yeah, Riverdale Country. Ah. Yeah. So all of my friends – I was the only suburban kid. All of my friends were Upper East Side, Upper West Side kids. Right, yeah. And this is where we hung out.

So Central Park took on a new face. Still good memories. Probably can't talk about some of those things, right? Yeah. The high school years. Meanwhile, I was like the father of a high schooler on the Upper West Side. I'm like, hmm, I don't want to go there. Tell you where to find them if you want to know the spots.

No, that's okay. I'm good. I'll play it just blind for now and pretend it's not happening. It's funny, though, because Riverdale Country in particular, they're actually getting really heavy into design thinking at the school right now. They are doing amazing things. I am so impressed with the facilities they've built out, the staff they brought on. I absolutely loved it there. And I think that the latest headmaster is so innovative and I mean, it's incredible. I wish I could go back and do it again. Yeah. So what kind of a kid were you growing up in the Hastings?

So I was very good at school, very into school. You guys can't see it, but there's like a, there's a smile, which is as you're saying that there's like, there's, there's something else underneath that. Yeah. I had a rebellious streak too. And I think it was hard for anyone to know quite what to do with that rebellious streak because I was getting straight A's. So they couldn't have like a full on, you know, we're worried about you. But I definitely with teachers, with my parents was always trying to push the limits, see what I could get away with, hated having rules. I think that's probably what led me to one day want to need to be my own boss, not even want to, but need to. But I at the same time, you know, school was extremely important to me. And my parents put zero pressure on me,

but I put a ton of pressure on myself. What's that about? I don't know. I've tried to figure that out. I really wanted to do well, and it had nothing to do with even pleasing my teachers. It was all self-driven. Does that stay with you to this day? I'm a total perfectionist when it comes to my own work product. Which is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes you accomplish a ton, but then sometimes it's relentless and like you never

actually forgive your humanity. Totally. And I've also had to, over the years, really teach myself to delegate and let go, which I think has been, you know, one of the greatest lessons that I've had to learn becoming a boss, starting a company. You know, I started out with the mentality of if I do it myself, it'll be just right. Yeah. And obviously you can't scale that. Right. And it's not true. My team's amazing and they do an incredible job and they bring ideas to the table that

I would never have myself. Yeah. It's, I mean, letting that go is such a hard thing. Oh yeah. That was a struggle. The other struggle I had to learn throughout my career was diplomacy. You got to take me deeper into this. Well, I just, I think that when I started out, it goes back to my initial, you know, problems with authority. The rebellious side,

yeah. Yeah. I think that if I felt like someone was making the wrong decision or, you know, steering us down the wrong path. I had a very hard time managing that without offending people. Especially when I was young, like in my early 20s, when I had a job in advertising, I said things to people that were far more senior than I was that could be very much construed as rude. Like I look back now and I'm like, oh my God. So are there any sort of examples or moments that stand out to you? Yeah, I'm embarrassed to share this, but I was right. I'm going to lay it all out, right? That's what this is about. I was writing a strategy and the client had changes that I thought were so nitpicky and inane. And I actually said, not to the client, thankfully, because I probably would have been fired, but to a senior woman in the office, I said, why don't they just hire a stenographer?

If that, you know, if they just want to dictate. Right. So it says that the 20 something person. Yeah, I was like 23 years old. I got in trouble. That is interesting though, because when you come into something and you feel so strongly about it, yeah, you want to be heard. Totally. And it always came from a place of passion. It was because I cared. I wanted it to be right.

You know, it wasn't just about I need to win. It was that I believed that what I was recommending was right for the business. And it upset me so viscerally to see people thinking, doing what I thought was a mistake. But I think that as I've grown, I've learned to A, just again, let go, you know, B, open up my mind to the fact that other people's opinions are obviously also valid and that they're coming from a place that I may not be coming from, but that makes sense, you know, and picking my battles. Yeah. That's a big part. That's life, right? Yeah, totally. I used to fight every battle so hard.

Yeah. It's amazing how we can't learn any of that from a book. It would be so much easier if we could. It's like eventually you get so battered and bruised. You're like, all right, I get it. Well, at least you, I hope, but I think a lot of people actually never hit that point. They're just kind of like, I'm going to bowl my way through life, and this is the lens that I'm going to wear. And to hell with anyone who disagrees. That's a tough way to live. Oh, God. I can't imagine now.

I mean, you get so angry and so worked up,, it ends up hurting you. You know, I remember there was a moment when I was leaving my first job that I suddenly realized that these things that like plagued me and kept me awake no longer mattered at all because I was leaving. And I think I woke up in that moment and I was like, oh, I'd get so worked up over, you know, the yogurt strategy. And now that has nothing, no bearing on my existence because I'm going to a new job. And suddenly it put everything in perspective. Yeah. It's like you get that meta context. Yeah, exactly. It's like, this isn't, this isn't life or death. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting too. Cause I, you know, I, I grew up pretty average kid just outside of, you know, on the other side of New York City from where you grew up. And yeah, good childhood.

And I've had conversations with people who've been through the most atrocious things early in life. And it's a horrendous thing. And at the same time, those same people developed a perspective on what truly matters so much earlier. Yeah. I'm really curious. I'm fascinated by the moments that allow people to come to that point and how that happens.

Absolutely. And I think the other thing you need to find a way to achieve is balancing that with still caring. Because it would be easy to go too far in the other direction and say, okay, I go to work every day. I'm not a heart surgeon, right? I'm not like building wells in, you know, underserved populations, but I still do believe that the work that we do is extremely important. And I think you have to find that balance where it still matters, but you're not letting it, you know, get you worked

up or stressed to the point where you're unhappy and making others around you unhappy. Yeah. And I think it's a tough balance sometimes. Yeah. And it's, you know, people throw out the term first world problems. Yeah. But that's a really rough. I struggle with that because it's also a lot of times it's a way of just, you know, devaluing the truth of something that really matters and sort of dissociating yourself from it.

Yeah. And I feel like that's sort of a hashtag people use to absolve themselves of being obnoxious. True on that. So your fierce commitment to doing the best landed you after Riverdale High in Harvard. Yes. Not a shabby place to end up. And you ended up studying, what was the actual, it was like a blend of culture. It's a terrible name for a major, but it was an amazing program.

It's called social studies. So of course, you know, in middle school and high school, that means geography. Right. That was like the president. That was the class that I didn't want to go to. Yeah, exactly. I have told people outside of Harvard, I was majoring in social studies and they're like, oh, so you're learning like the capitals. But it was actually an amazing program that really enabled you to self-direct your course of study. And the core

of the program was like political theory and some history and philosophy, I'd say. And I really gave myself a bent towards ethical philosophy, which I absolutely loved. I actually realized when I graduated that I had enough classes that I could have graduated with a philosophy degree too, because I took so many courses in that department. And I also did a lot of classes on pop culture. Like every class that Harvard offered that was sort of a little out of the box for them and more about contemporary culture and postmodern theory, I took them all. Which is kind of funny because if you think about ethical philosophy and pop culture, it's almost like two sides of a coin. Yeah, I think so. I love that you see that. I mean, certainly for me, they felt very related.

What was the deeper thing that really pulled you towards this? I think for both, it was a fascination with what drives people at the core. And I think what I love about pop culture is the idea that there can be, I mean, a song, a TV show, you name it, that somehow we all agree is amazing and we connect on. And then to me, ethical philosophy is about the rules that we all need to agree on. There was a class at Harvard that I actually didn't take, but I love the title of it. It's if there is no God, all is permitted. A lot of my friends took it. I didn't take it because I was sort of covering the same material in other classes. It's made new for a book too, actually.

Yeah. But, you know, I think that's what ethics is, right? It's sort of outside of religion. What are the rules of the game? Like, what are the, you know, ten to an interest in trends. Even the fact that there are trends, I find just so fascinating. I love thinking about the fact that, you know, generations have things in common among the generation. Like it's just so endlessly fascinating to me. And that's ultimately what led me to advertising. Yeah. It's so interesting because that could have taken you in a lot of different directions. Absolutely. You know, and advertising is kind of like a really fascinating outlet for that. I had a similar interest and some of the early manifestation for me were actually in tracking market trading and like how people behave around data in terms of like what are the trading signals and how hysteria, like mass hysteria sort of like flooded the trading pits when they were run largely by humans who were just going crazy. But yeah, it's sort of like flooded the trading pits when they were run largely by humans who were just going crazy. But yeah, it's sort of like the same thing. It's understanding like why do people do the massively irrational things that we often do?

Totally. And what are the rules of driving that underneath? Absolutely. And just the whole notion of like group behavior that we're all buying into certain things. I read this article way back when. It was right when TiVo was about to launch, and New York Magazine wrote this amazing article about TiVo. And I remember they were saying that in 80 years,

we're going to find it unbelievable that everybody bought the same brand of detergent. Because without TV advertising, we're going to lose these sort of mass national brands. Like there won't be a tide. I don't know if that's true or not, but I really, that struck me. Like that line was what drove me to want to work in advertising. Huh. That's pretty powerful.

I'm like thinking about that now also. I'm like, I wonder if that's true. I know. I don't know. Because we're kind of in the middle of that disruption right now. Yeah. The article was probably, I'm sure someone enterprising on the internet could find it. I think it was in 2000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because everything's being split up, disenfranchised. And yet there are still these mass national brands. And once there's an allegiance to it, like soap or toothpaste or razors,

people don't change those very often. Totally. Although now I'm on the other side of creating the brands that are disrupting those mass national brands. So I guess ultimately the goal is to usher in a new generation of mass national brands that ideally are built on better principles that serve the customer more. I think that's what's driving a lot of the startup innovation these days. So if mass TV was one of the things that drove like the original brand affiliation and your like daily work now is sort of like recreating that with new and emerging brands, do you still see TV as a key piece of that? I wouldn't undervalue TV.

I think that obviously the dollars are shifting away from TV. I know from my friends who still work in traditional ad agencies that those budgets are getting cut every single year. But TV still has an incredible power to reach a very, very large number of people at once. And people still watch the Super Bowl and talk about the ads the next day. And startups who reach a certain point, like that moment when they've grown up is when they do a TV campaign. Well, that was always like the big thing. You know, like when you had your Super Bowl ad. Oh, totally.

That was the turning point in your company. Totally. It's like the mark of achievement. Right. Although it didn't actually turn out that way for a lot of the earlier, you know, like tech-based companies advertising the Super Bowl. Like that was their last piece of cash. Yeah, exactly. Like maybe you should have saved that for salaries. It is so fascinating the way that people are changing, the way that they're just behaving

and what's influencing them. And I think it's democratizing so much, which is a good thing. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I mean, this is almost a cliche to say, but, you know, the power of the consumer has obviously gotten so much greater. And yeah. Well, I mean, and just the fact that we're sitting here hanging out, you know, like I've got my own little mini studio, you know, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. We're building our own audience, our own channels. And it's not a big thing behind us.

And people can pick and choose. And many of sort of like the top podcasters, top people out there, they're not big enterprises behind it. Oh, totally. And the explosion of the podcast over the past year has just been incredible to see. It's so fascinating. Talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing. Yeah. I mean, so I will admit that I'm not as heavy a podcast listener as some people I know. My wife is obsessed. She listens to so many different podcasts. She's always talking to me about them. I have a few that I listen to regularly. But I think what's so interesting about it is that in many ways, it's like one of the most old fashioned forms of entertainment. It's like the family sitting around the big old radio.

Yeah. And I love that people are embracing that in ways. I think it's so cool. I think that what's great about it is exactly the point you were making. You know, there's not these huge production budgets. Anybody can kind of get started and it boils storytelling down to its essence, right? You just have to be a really, really great storyteller because you can't rely on much else.

Yeah, it's so interesting to hear you say that because especially that last part, you can't rely on much else. When we started Good Life Project, we actually started shooting video. So we had like three camera crew and we were shooting that. And then we eventually made the switch to just pure audio. And I learned really quickly, you know, that we can't rely on all these visual cues.

Yeah. You know, but the conversations I feel changed in a pretty major way. The moment we just said, hey, you know, it's me and you sitting across from a table with two mics and a cup of coffee rather than a whole crew with lights and stuff like that. It just, it changes the nature of the whole thing. I am so much more relaxed right now than I would be if you were filming me. Yeah. And it was funny because I didn't, in the beginning, I got used to the cameras being there pretty quickly because they were just, that was my life.

And I kind of forgot that people would come in and they weren't used to it. And it was like, as soon as the lights went on, everything stiffened up just because it's not a normal experience for most people. Yeah. And you don't know what to do with your hands. Right. Yeah. All of that. It's been interesting being on this side of the table. This is kind of interesting to hear, like, because you're working with brands also that I'm sure are to a certain extent, exploring podcasting as a medium to start to actually build the brand and get the word out. Yeah. Well, a lot of our brands advertise on podcasts, which is cool. I think I love that the sort of new economy of brands is financing the new media economy.

There's a nice relationship happening there. But not many of them have actually looked into producing original content. And I think that that boils down to resources. I mean, as you know, it takes so much preparation and time to create something of quality. Yeah, I agree. And I think since Serial kind of made the whole space explode a year or so ago, the expectations about production value and quality are rising pretty quickly because now all the public radio shows are pouring onto podcast too. And they're used to producing at the level of public radio.

So people are just starting to expect that more and more, I think. Totally. Yeah. I was a huge, huge, huge serial addict. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, diving into subreddits. I know. It's like you and the rest of the country are all like, next episode, please. Talking about it to like anyone who would listen. It was amazing though, because I, you know, and I, everyone sort of tried to deconstruct what actually happened because there were podcasts around for a long time before that and well-produced ones. And that just took the world by storm and besides the fact that yes it was launched on you know this american life which was you know like the biggest juggernaut in the space there's still it exploded in a way that

nobody really expected and the idea of non-fiction serialized storytelling i think is so powerful i'm surprised we actually haven't seen more people sort of like piggybacking on that format yeah although i think it's very hard to pull off as well as they did. Totally agree. I mean, these are the best producers in the industry who came out of decades of radio doing that. Absolutely. And incredible journalism and storytelling. I mean, you know, that was no small feat. Yeah. And I am surprised too, there haven't been more copycats, but I'm glad that people recognize that it's not an easy thing to pull off. Yeah. Well, I remember when it was maybe a month or two ago, Alex Bloomberg, who split off and also then started Gimlet Media, he, one of the sort of in-between episodes before

their next season starts, he kind of took people behind the scenes. And basically there was an episode called something like, why nobody else can do this. Or that wasn't the title, but it was basically, he's like, I'm going to show you what actually happens here. Like to produce a show, like this is the team and this is the staff and these are the resources. And all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, this is a really serious thing that people are working crazy hours. And like these people are the best and the best in the world. And that's what lets them do what they do. Absolutely. And I love when talent is rewarded like that. Like I love that they are the best and people recognize they were the best

and that's why they were so successful. It doesn't feel like a fluke to me. Yeah, no, totally agree. How interested or curious are you and how much do you explore storytelling? We think about it all the time. You know, I think that what I do at Red Antler is lead strategy and that's an area in which there's so many different terms for it. And storytelling is one of them. You know, I think a lot of times brands actually come to us because they know they need help with storytelling. So while we don't call what we do storytelling, that is what we do. We're helping brands figure out, you know, at the core, what do they want to stand for? And then how do we bring

that story to life? So, you know, while it's not typically in like a narrative form, it still is about crafting a story, especially when you think about how does this come to life on web, right? And we're leading people through an experience and we're thinking about the order in which we want to present information and we're thinking about what's most important and what do we leave off? Like that's writing a story. Yeah. I love that you say that because when I think about strategy too,

I write sales letters and not business plan, which is a little bit weird, but it's because I want to get into the story and see if I can actually tell it in a compelling way to the person that I'm looking to serve when I'm thinking about building a business. So I teach, I start with the messaging and then I back my way into strategy or business plan. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely, that's one way to do it. You know, it's like, what is the story you want to tell? You know, sometimes, actually frequently, people will come to us very, very early for help with their investor decks. And that is storytelling at its core.

You know, I think that's similar to what you're saying. It's sort of like, what do we want people to take away from all of this? And then let's back that into the strategy. Because it's like, here's the story that is designed to convince you to give us money to see if we can find a business to go around the story. Totally. And it has to be extremely compelling and succinct and have an arc. You know, there needs to be a bad guy. There needs to be a challenge. There needs to be a hero. Right, the whole monomyth. Yeah. That's so cool. Do you know Nancy Duarte?

I don't think so. She runs Duarte. It's just called Duarte, actually. It's the largest presentation design firm in the world out in Silicon Valley. Awesome human being. They started out as a design agency, and then they realized really quickly, she was like, okay, what's the future? And the future for her was they really want to specialize. So they started to do just pitch decks. Well, not just pitch decks, but the best decks in the world.

And they realized that production was all going offshore for a lot less money. So they hyper-focused on creativity. And so they did all of the entire presentation algorithm used for Inconvenient Truth. They did. But the reason I bring it up is because Nancy has told me that one of the things presentation Al Gore used for Inconvenient Truth. They did. But the reason I bring it up is because Nancy has told me that one of the things they also do is they'll create decks for internal presentations.

So somebody who wants to get a $100 million project funded, they'll spend six figures to create a presentation to actually go to the board and actually get this thing. This is really cool. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, it matters so much. So I want to fill in the gaps a little here because we've been jumping around. So you

end up coming out of Harvard and you're like advertising. That's it. Yeah. Well, so while I was at Harvard, I had this deep interest in pop culture and was exploring all different industries and initially thought that I might want to go into the magazine industry, which thankfully I did not. That's a tough industry. Yeah, now it is. Especially now, yeah. I didn't know it back then.

Right. You know, that was probably 99, right? And yeah, dodged a bullet. But had an internship at a magazine, a big one in New York. Didn't love the culture. That sort of turned me off to it. And then just wanted to spend a summer in San Francisco and happened to be able to line up an internship at an ad industry, ad agency out there and didn't know much about advertising at all. And I absolutely fell in love with it. It really touched upon what I was interested in,

which was thinking about, you know, how do we drill down into specific truths and messages that can motivate a large group of people and, you know, finding like, what do people care about? And how do we, I mean, I guess the cynical way to say it was, how do we manipulate that? But really, how do we tap into that? So that was my first job out of college. I got really lucky in that I met a woman who told me about strategic planning. I had never heard of it. It's not a job that people, you know, learn about in college. And it was exactly what I wanted to do.

It was, you know, being responsible for getting to know consumers, understanding what drives them, and then crafting the core idea for the campaign. So not the actual words, not the actual creative idea, but what's the message that people need to take away. So I got a job sort of assisting a planning department right out of school. I was helping create decks for people. I was doing research for people. I was managing our pitiful intranet site that if you saw it now, you would be absolutely horrified. And then from there, moved into a position on brands. And then I was in advertising for six years before moving on to start Red Antler.

Yeah. So I want to touch on something you just said. So you mentioned the M word, manipulation, which has a lot of baggage attached to it. I want to sort of talk about that with you also. But I'm curious, when you think about what you were doing then and even what you're doing now, and then you kind of zoom the lens back to like what you studied at Harvard, the ethical philosophy side of it, how do you dance with that? So I don't want to bash the advertising industry because it's where I got my start and I learned so much. But part of what ultimately led

me to want to do something else was that I felt like there were cases, and it's not true in every case, but there were cases in which we were trying to drum up excitement and interest in something that people didn't actually need. And with Red Antler, I feel that we're very lucky in that we get to be much further upstream and choose what businesses we work on. And we're creating things or helping to create things that I think, using need loosely, people actually need and making people's lives better in one way or another versus trying to lure people into the store to buy something that may not improve their life in any way. So, you know, I don't think that advertising is evil. I don't take that stance. I think that you'd have to go much, much broader than that and say that like, capitalism is evil. Fine. Maybe it is, you know, but like, let's not even go there. I think advertising is a necessary part of consumer culture. I'm sure that there are many,

many, many criticisms that you could make of consumer culture and that would take us a long, long time. But at the same time, I ultimately didn't feel proud of the work that had no effect on the product itself and was just about the message. That's the tough part of it, I think. And the truth of it is people freak out when you talk about, okay, I'm going to understand how to get into somebody else's head and create an experience which is designed to have them take a specific action. Sure. I give people more credit. We're doing that all day long. Yeah, I give people more credit than that.

I think the biggest mistake that marketers can make is to underestimate their consumer. So great. When I'm in a meeting and people are like, consumers are dumb. I'm like, no, they're not. They're really smart. And look at the success of Target, right?

I always look to that. Target is a mass, mass brand that's selling goods at like value prices. And they were like, everybody wants good design. Everybody wants smart advertising. We're going to come in and we're going to partner with amazing designers and we're going to give people goods at an affordable price and not underestimate them, not dumb things down. And they killed it. They did so well with that approach. So I think that people are very good at making their own choices. And I think that when done well, you're tapping into drivers that are already there. And again, it's opening such a can of

worms. It's like, oh, is it wrong to assign values to goods? Like, okay. But I hate to dismiss that as if that's not an important conversation to have. I think it is important, but I've spent a lot of years learning the language of influence and studied, you know, learn how to write copy. And you get to a point where you know that, that you can write something that's gonna move somebody to take an action, you know, and, but you also know that just because you can, doesn't mean that you should. The flip side is once you gain sort of a baseline set of skills, like basic influence skills, you also start to realize, and I had this conversation with Maria Konnikova, who has

a book out now called The Confidence Game, where she looked at like the biggest cons, the long cons in his fast, oh my God, you were so geeked out on, you should totally read this book. You were so geeked out on. You should totally read this book. You would so geek out on it. And what was so amazing, we got to, we're going through this and these are people who had these complex cons running for years. And as she broke down the stages and the tools, like I started getting anxious because I'm like, you're talking about marketing.

It's like, are we, it's like the exact same thing. And really the difference and what it came down to in the conversation with her is like, it's the same set of tools across all of life, whether you're trying to convince like your best friend to stop smoking or whatever it is, it's all the same stuff. And the difference between quote good or bad is really comes down to what you're hoping to motivate people to do. I mean, again, putting aside, you could take like an aesthetic life and move to the woods and live, you know, in a cabin and sort of cut yourself off from society. But I'm glad to be part of society. I live in New York City. You're staying in Brooklyn. I'm in Brooklyn. These are the assumptions that I'm taking as a baseline.

Within that world, people need a mattress, right? People need great content about health so they can learn to be healthier. I believe in the goods and services that our clients are providing. So I don't feel at all conflicted about helping them find ways to connect to their audience because I actually think that that will benefit the audience. Yeah. I once had a conversation with a copywriter, world-class guy, like an A-lister, and he was asked, how do you choose? Who do you take? And he said he won't write for anyone unless he believes the product is a blessing in the

world. I love that. And I completely agree with that. And we have turned down many businesses because we don't think that the product is helping the world. Yeah. Which is really, I mean, it's a powerful line to take. Let me ask you this, though. When you're, you know, so you guys are eight years old now?

Yeah, eight and a half. Right? So you're in a place now where you're successful. You've got this amazing, your own brand, your own reputation is like phenomenal. Thank you. In the early days, because a lot of people, we have a lot of entrepreneurs who listen to this, and we all know that making that decision in the early days when you're just looking to cover your rent and pay your payroll, it's really hard to say no when somebody's showing up with money that's going to keep your business afloat. But you know it's not quite aligned. Did you struggle with that at all?

Sure. I mean, I think that we got very lucky, obviously. I don't want to discount that in terms of the businesses that we met early on and finding enough of them that we were excited about that we could say yes to. But for us early on, the most important thing by far was building our reputation. So we were considering that probably more heavily than paying our rent. My business partner and I joke that some of those initial projects, we paid them to do the work because we were so determined to build cases that we'd be proud of that would get us more work. And that strategy absolutely paid off. That is why we are where we are today. So I think the fact that we weren't just taking on anything and we had very limited resources in the beginning and we weren't just saying yes to kind of the wrong thing, like not quite what we did.

Like they wanted us to do sort of a small piece of what we did. And that's almost a harder thing to say no to, especially when the budgets are high. But we were determined to stay true to our brand. Yeah, I love that. But yeah, it is very often, you know, in the early days. I wonder sometimes whether, like if you had to make the trade-off between going all in and knowing that you might have to bend a little bit to cover your costs in the early days versus keeping a side job or day job and being able to say absolute yes and absolute no

only to the things that you know are just hyper-aligned with what you really want to create. That's a tough trade-off to weigh in the hypothetical. I think it's very, very hard to start a business when you have a day job. I'm very wary of entrepreneurs who come in our door who haven't quit their day job yet. Okay. So I'm going to share something interesting with you. And this may or may not air before the conversation I'm about to tell you about. So I was – do you know who Adam Grant is?

He wrote a book called Give and Take, which is phenomenal. He's got a book out now called Originals. He's the most loved professor at Wharton for like four years now. Like crazy, smart, awesome, super nice guy. So I was recently talking to him. He had the guys who started Warby Parker in his class. They came to him and showed him the business plan. He said no, because they were keeping their day jobs. And he's like, for you to succeed, you need to be all in. So I'm not in. Wow. And then did were keeping their day jobs. And he's like, for you to succeed, you need to be all in. So I'm not in. Wow. And then did they quit their day jobs?

No. They kept their day jobs for a long time until they actually really started to hit the ground running. And then finally, one by one, peeled off their day jobs and did it. So Adam got really interested. They actually did some research, or he found the research on it. And research shows, I'm trying to remember the stats right, that you are actually 30% more likely to succeed if you transition into it. If you don't go all in, you're more likely to succeed in building

a company than if you go all in, which blew my mind because that's not the mythology. That's shattering my assumptions. Right? Because it goes so against everything that we've always learned and thought. Why is that? I don't know. And I asked him the same question. He's like, I don't know.

Huh. Okay. All right. Yeah, but it's because I'm like, and this is new information to me too. So it's making me question a lot of assumptions. Yeah, definitely. I guess the companies that I've seen that have made it,

and obviously Warby is a glaring exception to this because they're so successful and have built something so tremendous, but the founders are obsessed. Right. They are around the clock. And every company I know that I, you know, have seen succeed over the past, you know, five, 10 years, the founder has been living and breathing the business. I don't know.

I know. I'm still struggling to digest it. I wonder how long the period of time is that you're allowed to keep your data up. I want to dig into this research a little bit more. Is that in, like, ideation phase? I know. Exploration?

I'll see if I can get some, like, data from him if we can actually see the actual story. Yeah, are we talking, like, until the series A until the series A, like let's break this down. I'm curious about it also. But it is a fascination. So you moved through sort of, what, eight, ten years of working for other people before you started Red Ants? No, fewer than that.

Six years. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I was at a place called Darcy. That was my first job. I was there for a year. They got bought by a big holding company, Publicis. My brands got moved to Saatchi and Saatchi. So I ended up at Saatchi

and Saatchi. That's where I met one of my now two partners, JB Osborne. He and I became friends at Saatchi. I then left to go to JWT and I was very unhappy there. No offense to JWT, but it was not the right fit for me at that time. And JB had then, since I had left Saatchi, he had been hired by a New Zealand agency that wanted to start a New York office. And he was a really young guy and they took a chance on him. And I would run into him at Saatchi happy hours. And I was just totally jealous that he was doing this on his own. It sounded so exciting. He had these cool business cards. And I basically started a campaign of harassment to get him to hire me. I mean,

he tells it differently, but I absolutely just wore him down to get him to hire me to do it with him. So he did. So I think he was 25. I was 26. And we were doing that together for about a year. And it was an amazing crash course in starting a business. You know, we were getting paid salaries by our bosses in New Zealand, but we were responsible for creating this agency from scratch. And the conflict arose when we started to meet incredible entrepreneurs because it was New York City, like 2006, I think. The startup scene was really just getting started here.

And we were meeting these amazing companies that wanted to work with us, but they didn't have ad budgets. And our bosses in New Zealand just did not understand why we were bringing them $5,000 consulting projects. So eventually we broke apart and we were very, very lucky in that a company that we had been helping, who's almost on the side of our jobs, called Behance. The CEO there. Dan Belsky.

Yeah. Scott Belsky was an incredible advocate for us. And he is the person who really convinced us that people might pay us to do what we did. And he was our first client. No kidding. Yeah. And in the first year of Red Antler, we were working out of the Behance office. That's too funny.

I know that office. Yeah. The original office first year of Red Antler, we were working out of the Behance office. Oh, that's too funny. I know that office. Yeah. The original office, 17th Street. That was how it all began. Ah, that's so cool. So then you all, I mean, you had the added challenge then of you started like right before the bottom fell out of everything. Yes. But I credit our success with the fact that we started in the worst recession. How so? Because it forced us to be really conservative and scrappy. After that, we could weather anything. You know, we didn't start our business

in this like boom time where we took things for granted. We had to work and fight so hard for every dollar. And I think that's affected our mentality ever since. Yeah. I also think that it was our mentality ever since. Yeah. I also think that it was a really interesting time. It's going into 2008. We were convinced that we'd have no business that year. And we were like, let's start our own business. We came up with an idea, like we were going to launch a brand. And we actually were extremely busy that year because I think again, with, you know, the economy in shambles, a lot of people lost their

jobs. It was, It was ironically like a good time for people to think about starting new things. I mean, that makes a lot of sense, actually. And also because of the size of the companies that you were gravitating towards, it wasn't the, you know, it's interesting, actually, that I guess it was really most of the bigger companies where they got hit hard and the budgets vanished. But yeah, so many people were being pushed out of those companies that then wanted to do the types of things that you wanted to actually serve. Totally.

And there were so, our overhead was so small at that point that it's not like we were relying on, you know, multi hundred thousand dollar ad budgets to keep the lights on and keep a staff employed. So we were able to, you know, I mean,

we weren't like living large, but we were able to survive and again, grow our reputation. Yeah. What were you, when you decided, you know, when you sat down with your partner and you're like, all right, we're going to do this. Like, did you know then, do you have clarity around really what it is you wanted to build or has that evolved over time? It was shockingly similar to what we are today. Really? Yeah. We wanted to be an outside resource for helping startups figure out their brand. And initially it was just me and JB and our now third partner, Simon, he was running a graphic design company and had been doing so for years. And we had met him, he's from New Zealand. We'd

met him through our New Zealand connections. So we were hiring his company to do all of our creative work. And JB and I were really in a strategic role. So eventually, we brought Simon on, we're now, you know, three equal partners. But from the very beginning, you know, our ethos was really driven by strategy. And Simon, too, is an extremely conceptual design thinker. He's very much his work is led by strategy. So it was all about helping startups figure out who they are and how do we tell that story. Since then, obviously, our services have evolved. Our team has grown. We've been able to expand the definition of what we mean by brand.

But the goal was the same from the beginning. So as you start to grow, because at some point you move out of Belsky's office. Yes. Well, they were growing a lot. We were on a futon in the back room. And then when they were moving offices, we decided it was time for us to jump out of the nest. Right. Yeah. Where was it? Because they moved down to Broadway. Yeah, they did. And they offered us desksks but it was becoming harder and harder to serve other clients out of their office you know we felt weird having meetings in their office right it was incredible to begin with so did you go from there straight to the place that you have right now because you have

five thousand square foot beautiful space now or something yeah so we had a couple other desk rental situations after behance um just friends who had companies. And then our friend Doug Yeager was running a company called The Hyper Factory. So we had desks there for a while. And then, oh, sorry, he's not the Hyper Factory. He was the Happy Corp. And then Derek Hanley was The Hyper Factory. So we had desks there for a while.

Sorry to Doug and Derek for messing that up. And then from then then when we were merging with Simon, that's when we moved to Dumbo. And we had a very small space in 45 Main that felt so enormous to us at the time. I was like, what are we going to do with all this room? Did that freak you out? It was exciting. We didn't have a conference room. We had this like tiny table that was our conference table, but it felt huge. And at that point is when we really started to hire a full-time staff. So that's when we started to bring on designers.

We brought on a woman who at the time we hired to be like our first account manager. She's now, you know, an essential part of the Red Antler management team. She's been with us since then. From there, we've been now in three spaces in Dumbo. So now you actually, you have a big, dedicated, beautiful, I mean, I haven't been there, but I've seen the pictures and the videos on your website. It looks awesome, actually. Thank you. I'm like, that looks like a play space to me.

It looks more like a... Yeah, a lot of work gets done in that play space. And, but when you start to go beyond that original core group of people, where you're like, look, we're all here for the same reason. We get what we're doing. Like, we've got the mission pretty much now. Then you're still pretty much stuck to it the whole time. And you start to actually build a family and a culture around that. How do you hang on to the ethos? That's so hard. So hard. I mean, I see our clients go through this too. But for us, I think

maintaining culture, making sure that the values upon which we built the company are maintained as the team grows. Making sure that everybody who works for Red Antler understands what Red Antler is all about is really challenging. And I think what's exciting about growth is that my job changes every year. You know, I think when we were first getting started, we talked about this before we started recording. I had a moment where I was like, what am I getting into here? Like, I'm never going to just be able to pick up and leave. Like, you know, I'm committed. It's like getting married or something, right?

I'm like, I'm building this company. I'm never going to be able to just decide I want a different career. And it felt like this huge commitment. But what I didn't realize at the time is that, you know, running a six person company is extremely different than running a 60 person company. So my job actually does keep changing and that keeps me challenged and engaged. In terms of the team, it changes. You know, it's not the same as when we were six or even 20 people. And that's not going to be for everyone.

And, you know, we've had people who I'm still very sad about leave because they don't necessarily want to work at a place that's larger. But I think that we do a lot to make sure that we still have a feeling of connection to the team and a positive culture that people want to be a part of. We're very, very careful about who we hire and we make sure that the team has lots of opportunities to hang out with each other. We built a bar in our office and that was not some like frivolous, you know, tech boom move. It was a really deliberate choice to make sure that we had a space that people could socialize and get to know each other. And we plan outings and, you know, you have to be deliberate about it. It used to happen spontaneously and now we have to plan it and i think that's the biggest difference and it's it's got to be so interesting like you said also because so many of your the companies that are

your clients are sort of weaving in and out of similar time frames and sizes as you so to be able to actually have the lens into how they're all managing it's got to be really fascinating oh totally and because our clients are venture- backed, they grow at a pace that we've never, you know, we've never taken any outside investments. So for us, growth has been steady, but managed, you know, and like, you know, we've had to control it. Whereas, you know, some of our clients, like it can go from 20 people to over a hundred in a year. Yeah. Have you, have you been tempted to take outside investment? We've thought about it. Service industry is a tough business and the margins are really tight and multiply that by a lot when you're working with startups. So there are times when we're like, would our lives just be easier and we'll be able

to achieve our goals so much quicker? But I think a lot of our success to date has been that we don't answer to anybody. So what's it like then when you're, because if a bunch of your clients are VC backed and for those who are listening, VC just venture capital, I mean, there's other people's money invested. But when a lot of your clients are VC backed, where it's not just three founders and this is our vision, this is what we wanna do,

but it's also the people who just put seven, eight figures into the company, they have a say in the direction of it. And you're the one who's sort of in the middle to a certain extent. It's going to be interesting. I think that the good VCs know when to empower their founders and not step on their toes. And right now, I always get confused between buyer's market and seller's market, but the founders are in control right now. That'll probably change. but the good founders have their pick of the litter. And honestly, sometimes we're really, really grateful for when VCs step in and sort of act as the adult

in the room and, you know, force some tough decisions because they have a tremendous amount of experience. They've seen so many scenarios. A lot of times they actually can act as our ally. That's gotta be pretty cool. So through this whole process, the thread that like keeps pulling you from ahead, what is it at this point? The thread that keeps pulling me, sorry. Like pulling you from ahead,

like the deep interest, the fascination, like the, what is it that's like you wake up and you're like, oh hell yeah, this is still here and it's getting better. Yeah. That's a great question. I am obsessed with figuring out what problems we're solving for the people who we're serving. So any business that's launching, I want to understand at the core what's missing from our, you know, audience's life, our consumer's life that this brand can be an answer for. And I want to go deep on that question. You know, I don't want to stop at, oh, what's missing is a convenient way to buy whatever online, you know. Okay, but why does that matter?

Why does that matter? Why does that matter? You know, and just keep asking why I actually have brought this up before in other conversations, but I call it the death test, which is that you have to keep asking why until you land at fear of death, because that's the ultimate motivator for everything you do. Until you get there, you're not done. Yeah. And then you're not done with the exercise. But then you can go back and pick something a little more low to the ground. Right, like two levels back. That's where we'll work with. But you're not allowed to stop until you hit fear of death. That's too funny.

Yeah, I've heard of like the five why test, but I haven't heard the fear of death threshold before. Yeah, that's my personal threshold. So that's endlessly fascinating. I mean, at the end of the day, it's about people. You know, what we do is about people. And when I have the opportunity to go out and do primary consumer research, which doesn't happen on every project people and getting them to talk about anything, any topic. They just never cease to surprise me and move me. And I mean, you get to do this all the time. Trust me, it's one of the reasons. I mean, this is fun.

Yeah. And like, wait, this is work? Yeah, totally. Totally. I was running focus groups last month among people who had recently purchased houses. And it was so interesting just talking to them about what motivated them to buy a house and the stress and the pride. And there's so much that we have in common. And I love being reminded of that.

That's actually an amazing point. The moment you come back to like talking to human beings and move away from spreadsheets and flow charts and whiteboarding, I think it's such a good exercise to keep going back to the humans at the end of like whatever it is that you're trying to do and kind of like, okay, like fundamentally I'm you and you're me. Like, like remind yourself how connected we really are. Absolutely. And then that's where the power of design comes in. And that, you know, is not directly what I do, right? I'm working with a team of like the most talented designers, I think, in the world. I've seen your work. I pretty much agree. Thank you. I mean, I can't, you know, I can't take credit for their brilliance,

but it's so amazing to me that you can create something visual that moves people and moves people more than something that's not as good. It goes back to what we were saying about cereal, like quality actually makes a difference. And it's so hard to put your finger on it. You know, my wife is always showing me logos and asking me if I think they're good because she doesn't, you know, she just wants to know like what makes a logo good and what makes it not good. And it's so hard to put your finger on, right? Like it's so hard to describe, but there is power in great design. And I love that too, because it speaks to something so visceral about us as human beings. Yeah, I so agree. And it comes down to like, there's what makes

somebody stand in front of the painting and weep where another person walks by and like, yeah, absolutely. Or a song or you name it. But then there are those things where it's like, and I guess maybe this is kind of the Holy Grail for you to a certain extent where it's like almost everybody, like, even if you don't like opera, you know, like you hear this one thing and you're just, you're, you have chills. There's something where it's like universally, it just, it lands across all of humanity and it's just that. Is that what you shoot for? I mean, that's such a brutal threshold.

I'm not gonna put us in the glass of Verdi. Yeah, but not even that. But I mean, like, do you look at that and say like, you know, like that's kind of like to a certain extent what we're looking to do? Yes, we are looking to connect to people on the deepest level that a brand can connect to them with. And obviously category to category, it can start to sound very, very self-important to say that we're creating timeless works of art. But I think that within the realm that we're working, we're always trying to get to the core of what matters to the people who need to love this brand and how can we build a brand that's going to embody that idea.

And that's really what it comes down to. And I do think that one of the pieces of good design that you can quantify is if it's conceptual. It needs to be conceptual. It can't just be aesthetic. It needs to stand for something. It needs to have an idea baked into it. It needs to stand for something. It needs to have an idea baked into it. It needs to be smart. There needs to be a cohesive system that builds on that idea and that connects and that, you know, that surprises people and makes them think and, you know, doesn't just sort of

sit on the surface. Yeah. No, I love that. I think provokes emotion. Definitely. And that's true no matter what category it is. Yeah, totally agree. So you're building this incredible career, this incredible business.

It sounds like you open your eyes and like you're like more and more and more, this is cool. You know, of course there are challenges. There are always stuff like that. There's always work that you don't want to do. So if I would kind of start to come full circle and zoom the lens out a little bit, bigger picture life, you know, you also have a life outside of Red Antler. You know, You're married.

I try to. You do other things. So how do you feel about the word balance? Is it a fallacy? Is it something that's thrown around? Is it something to aspire to when you're really mission-driven at building something as sort of like the focus of your contribution to the world? Yeah. I think it's a complicated concept. And for me, I don't separate my job from my life in the sense that this is something that I've created, you know, other than my family. It's the thing that I'm the most passionate about. I don't mind pouring my heart and soul into it because it's mine and I'm proud of it. I think that that feeling has to be different when you're

an employee and there are huge benefits to being an employee too. But I think work-life balance is definitely more of an important thing to think about when you're working for someone else. Because for me, this is my passion. This is what I care about, you know, so I am happy to pour my soul into it. And that's, I'm sure that can be true as an employee as well. Like, absolutely. I think that you need to love what you do. So it doesn't feel like you're constantly choosing between, you know, what you care about and work. And that's obviously not possible for everyone. But I think as much as you can try to not feel like you're just living for the weekend, that's a goal to work towards. That being said, I am very, very determined to not be the person that's on their phone at dinner or, going home and not checking email. And I don't check email after a certain time of night. And we don't allow electronics in our bedroom. And when I take

vacation, I'm on vacation. And I think that's extremely important too. But that's actually even more for my wife than it is for me. Like I want to be present for her. Like it's not that I mind being checked into work, but I think it's unfair to her to have me sort of half in, half out. Yeah. A friend of mine, Mitch Joel, came up with it. I think he came up with the term work-life blend rather than work-life balance. Oh, I like that. I think for especially entrepreneurs or founders like business owners, that's more of like, well, I could lie on the beach doing some, which I hate doing, or I could kind of like sit at a chair and do a little work, which I actually love doing.

And it's a really, it's. Yeah. If you actually love doing it, you know, why. It doesn't feel like a struggle. Right. I mean, I love lying on the beach. I will lie on the beach for like eight hours reading a book and not checking my email the entire time. But I then when that's over, I'm

not dreading going back to the quote unquote, real world. And you know, the whole notion of work life balance implies that like work is this thing you have to do, right? Yeah, they're opposites. Like you have to balance them against each other rather than no, they're actually they can live harmoniously if you really dig both. Exactly. You know, I've had periods in my life where I experienced, you know, the Sunday night dread. Yeah. And I will do anything not to feel that feeling of like, oh, it's starting again.

That's horrible. And you're sort of living for the nights and the weekends and feeling like you've got these just hours and hours during the day, during the week that are wasted. No, I think we've all been there at some point. And like you, that's why I do what I do. Yeah. I can't remember the last time. It's not to say that I don't feel stressed and I don't feel pressure. I do. We're trying to build serious things and you are and so many people listening to this are, but it's different because I created that

and I can alter it. I can morph it. I can, and I'm as in control as I could be. Absolutely. And it's such a core part of your identity. Yeah, absolutely. So let's come entirely full circle. So it's called the Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you to live a good life, what comes up? Big question. Oh, I'm struggling to answer this in a way that doesn't feel completely cliched. But I guess I get maybe that's okay. Because, you know, if one of the themes of our conversation has been the things that bind us all together, I think the obvious answer is love, you know, and really prioritizing relationships with people around you, you know, whether that's a romantic relationship,

your friends, your colleagues, you know, I try to make sure that every interaction I have with someone, they leave feeling, you know, better, right? I'm bringing some positivity into their day. And I don't always succeed. I'm sure there's people listening that are like, well, you didn't do that yesterday. But I try. I strive to do that. I think that if you can project good energy to others, that's going to come back to you every single time. And, you know, if you can try to spread joy and smile at people and, you know, make them happy

in any way that you can. So I guess that would be one. And then, I mean, I think that enthusiasm is a really important value for me and just being excited about what the world has to offer and sort of having that abandon sometimes and that glee and just throwing yourselves into things and seeking out new experiences. So that was sort of rambling and incoherent, but hopefully there's something in there that you can make sense of. But it was your truth and that's all that matters. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real, unscripted conversations and ideas that matter.

And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. And you can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam over there. And if you haven't yet subscribed while you're there, then make sure you hit the subscribe button while you're at it.

And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you.

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