Good Life Project - The Great Discontent and The Good Life: Brad Smith

Episode Date: June 30, 2015

After years of launching, building and selling technology ventures, Brad Smith was at a crossroads. Starting almost accidentally, he parlayed a self-taught expertise in computers and then design into a series of ventures that kept him busily creating. But when the company that bought his last venture was sold, destroying his ability to run the business the way he wanted, he realized it was time to exit.He took a wild contrarian leap away from technology and joined the team at The Great Discontent to help take their soulful online magazine and grow it into what is quickly becoming a stunningly beautiful "artisanal" print magazine. Some would view this move as nuts. I mean, print is dead, right?In this week's episode, we explore his sometimes crazy journey, his entry into entrepreneurship and his journey through various startups, mergers, burnout, pulling the kill switch, self-care, time off, the timing of opportunities, making something extraordinary to help people, and returning to the roots of what inspired you in the first place.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am so excited about this because I wish I had this in my hand when I was 21 years old, leaving college not knowing what I was going to do. I wanted this in my hand, and that's what we're doing. We want to build this beautiful inspiration tool. Brad Smith has had a whole lot of success in his life, along with a lot of bombs like every entrepreneur has had. He's existed largely in the online world, coming out of Missouri and then building almost inadvertent entrepreneurial ventures into the digital world, then the design world. selling them and moving into different places. Until finally, he ended up as the executive publisher of The Great Discontent, which started out as this extraordinary website with in-depth

features with creative professionals, but made a really bold move about a year ago. They decided to publish a print magazine. When all the world is saying print is dead, they're the contrarians and not only publishing a print magazine, when all the world is saying print is dead, they're the contrarians and not only publishing a print magazine, but publishing a large format, gorgeously photographed art style magazine with a level of investment and quality that you literally see as almost like a coffee table book, but it comes out on a regular basis. So why would they do this? Why would they take such a bold contrarian move? And who is Brad?

And what's the journey that's informed him, that shaped his entrepreneurial lens, his design lens, his artistic lens, and would make him leave so much of his history in the online world to go back and embrace print so boldly, along with his entire team? That's just a part of the conversation with Brad

Smith in this week's Good Life Project. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. I'm really excited to just jam with you and have a conversation. I actually first was exposed to you when I saw you on Profile in The Greatest Content.

I was like, huh, really interesting story. Okay. And then I feel like I blinked. I'm like, wait, you own it now. I'm like, huh, really interesting story. And then I feel like I blinked. I'm like, wait, you own it now. Or I'm like, what happened here? But your journey is just kind of, it's really fascinating through entrepreneurship and through design.

You're an entrepreneur, designer, coder slash developer too a little bit. Way, way back in the day, long, long before anything. Right, so you seriously have this massive Jones to just create stuff, to build things. And I'm always curious where that comes from. So we're going to take a step back first. Okay.

Most certainly. You grew up in Missouri. In Missouri. That is correct. You've done your research. Didn't take much. I remember. It's kind of all over the place, man.

Great. So where in Missouri? Missouri. It was a little town called Scott City. It's about three hours south of St. Louis, right on the Mississippi River. in Missouri? Missouri. It was a little town called Scott City. It's about three hours south of St. Louis, right on the Mississippi River. Population? Back then, probably 3,000 people.

Graduating senior class was, I think, 60 people, 62, somewhere around there. Very nice. So what were you into as a kid? What was I into? That kind of evolved over time. But as a kid, it was being outside, just on a bike, living in Missouri, kid stuff, that type of thing. That was about it. I had a huge fascination with chemistry sets for some weird reason. That was taken away a few years later after an incident in the kitchen.

It's like, we don't have enough insurance for the kid to play with his cameras. It literally stained the ceiling of the kitchen. So at that point, you blew something up, literally. Something didn't have a bond like it should. The two chemicals, I don't remember what I was doing. But it involved a flame and a test tube. Right. All right.

So in an odd way, I guess maybe you could say that's a theme that's continued throughout your life. Not always the explosion, but the experimentation. The experimentation and having no idea what I'm doing. So that's the theme. When you were a kid, were you comfortable with that? Just constantly running around trying new things and being cool however it came out? Yeah. Because it seems like it's a really interesting common theme with your path.

Yeah. I didn't have any specific focus. I mean, I didn't even own a computer. I didn't have access to a computer until my senior year in high school. And we had a little Canon 486 desktop machine. Didn't even have a sound card. That was really the first access to it. So everything before that, I think I was about 12 or 13. And we had a camcorder, like the big type that took the vhs tapes and that just changed everything

because that was the new the new creative thing so instead of drawing or whatever it was it was the camcorder you start making movies with it oh yeah oh yeah i made a movie for my uh my grandparents 50th wedding anniversary. Yeah. You got to tell me more. I don't really remember much more, but I remember that the closing credits were the paper taped to the wall. I would shoot for a second, pause it, and then swap the paper out, shoot for a second,

and who knows? I'm sure my mother still has a copy of it somewhere. I remember Super 8 video. Back when we were, and we would do a little stop motion animation with like little toy soldiers outside the yard and stuff like that. And occasionally strap a firecracker onto a GI Joe and like make a real battle scene. Yes, yes. And then there was the whole outdoorsy meets the camcorder. So maybe this 20-pound camcorder could possibly be strapped to a bicycle.

Ah, did you go there? That one didn't go over too well with the folks. I was sensing there were multiple occasions where there were things that didn't go over too well with the folks. It still happens. I can name a few this week alone. So you get into video making as a kid. Was that just a fun thing, or was there something that clicked in your mind where you're like, huh, media is cool. This could be something more.

That was more of it. Media is cool. And that had been really my first access to any type of media. A friend of mine, even when we were smaller, we used to do radio shows. We had the little cassette recorder that had a two-microphone in it. So we would play music in the background and pause it and do the little DJ overlay. Right. That was the fancy cassette recorder, by the way, if you had the two inputs.

Oh, it changed everything. And then you had the jam box with the two different tapes. Right. And you could bleed between them back and forth. So that was your post-production. Right. You'd take that in afterwards. You'd add the music in, get the sound effects.

Right. And then you would hold up like a third one up to record it as you're fading between the two tape decks. Exactly. Ah, good times. And then the mini tape players, one of those mini recorders with the mini tape in it. Oh, that's right. That allowed you to be a reporter on the road.

Yeah. I mean, at that point, it wasn't unlimited. You could do whatever you wanted. Right. From there, so you're kind of geeking out on media. Are we talking about like going into high school now? Getting close, yeah. Right. From there, so you're kind of geeking out on media. What were we talking about, like going into high school now? Getting close, yeah, high school. And did that turn into something more serious?

Did you decide that? At any point in your thinking to yourself, I'm going to make movies? No, it was more just loving to create. And art was my favorite class until ninth grade when yearbook was an option. But I was all over yearbook. Science club and yearbook, those were my two things. Right. So wait, but you're doing yearbook then in ninth grade at a time where you're not working

on computers then? Correct. We were doing the wax pen layouts where you lay photos out on a page, you draw your crop marks with a wax pen over the photo. You're submitting copy and you just have the copy on a printed piece of paper is labeled you know what it will go in the magazine as so this goes in spot a3 this photo goes in spot a2 and the photo has a crop mark drawn on it right uh but it's so interesting right because back then you you had to really be so you had to go so much deeper into thinking

about all these things because kind of like once it was done you know it wasn't easy to tweak and move everything right you know so it was like really like really thinking about layout and design and on i think i wonder if you did it a lot more on a level then then a lot of people do now where they just know it's just constantly fluid like until you literally hit print or you have to put you know run this thing to print you can just constantly keep changing yeah there was i mean there was there was situations where i am not a sports guy anyway it knows me at all i just don't follow much sports ball or or anything like that and for some reason my section of the because i worked on the editorial side of the new or the yearbook right but uh i also did photography for some reason the the teacher that was in charge of the yearbook group, because yearbook was an after-school activity, they put me in charge of sports photography.

And I cannot tell you the amount of football and baseball and basketball games I went to because I would have to shoot and then use those pictures in the layout of the yearbook. And I had no idea what I was doing. Right. So you're like a crowd shot when somebody's scoring a touchdown. Right. It's like, where's the when somebody's scoring a touchdown. Right. It's like, where's the guy on the field, man? That's exactly right. Look at how the popcorn lays across the bleachers here.

Notice the beauty there? Notice that? That's good. By the way, we lost that game. And it was because of you and your photography. Right. Too distracting. So you're jamming on on your book so you go from media from

video to um your book and doing layout was writing an interest of yours at that point always yeah uh we we did uh we did have a god old school word processor the one where it had the tiny lcd display i remember this and you would type it and, and it wouldn't type it out manually. And you would just save it on the internal memory of the word processor. And then when you're done, you can hit print. I had one of those when I was in college. And it was like the first one that ever came out. And I did a term paper on it.

And I didn't know how to get it out once I was done. I literally went into the professor's office. I'm like, look, I don't know how to tell you out once I was done. Absolutely. I literally went into the professor's office, and I'm like, I don't know how to tell you this, man. I really did it. I'm happy to leave the whole computer with you if you want, and you can scroll through the three gray and white LCD lines for 25 pages. The good thing is the word processor was about the size of most portable drives at that point. Right, so it's not so bad. Where's my word processor?

Let me know what you think of my work. I know. He's like, just figure it out and get it to me whenever you want. So you're into writing. Were you a journaler also? No. Yeah. No.

For some reason, I think it was junior or senior English class, you had to keep a journal every day for the entire school year. That was the worst experience ever. I think it was because I had to write. Never really journaled. I think I wrote some MacGyver fan fiction at some point. Because if you're going to try fan fiction, you might as well start there. Of course.

You can't let Murdoch get away ever. So it's interesting also, because I'm not a big journaler, but almost every writer that I know has had like a lifetime of journaling, and they keep their journals, and they catalog them, and they go back to them every once in a while. And I almost feel bad about the fact that I actually don't really journal. Yeah, it's one thing I wish I could do more. I did a, uh, I'm blanking on the name of the book right now, but I actually just about eight months ago did this whole program of kind of fixing burnout, uh, creative burnout, the artist way. Thank you. God. And, uh, I went through that entire thing and I love the, the morning journal of just writing free form. Even if you sit there when you wake up and say, I don't know what the hell I'm going to write today,

but I think I'll make some oatmeal in a little bit. Right. It's pretty crazy how that would open up into writing. Yeah, it really is, right? And it's funny because I've done a bit of that also, like the three morning pages. And sometimes you're just like, I'm writing, I don't really know what I'm writing.

And it seems nonsensical, but it does. It somehow clears things out in a way that just kind of lets you say, ah. Yeah. It's weird the way the brains work that way. So you're going through high school. You're rocking the yearbook. Then you find a computer. At what point do you start to get interested in technology

and also entrepreneurship? Entrepreneurship had kind of been just a background throughout even childhood. Did you grow up around entrepreneurs? No, no, I didn't. I used to set up a cash register and sell items in my bedroom to my sister at times. So I just enjoyed that. Is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? Well,

I would get them back because we would use Monopoly money, of course. Right, right. But no, I just, I never really planned. I loved the design aspect. There was no thought of, you know, business school. I did terrible in FBLA in high school, the Future Business Leaders of America Club. Like I just did terrible at it. Because at that point, I was more focused on just the creating aspect. Right. So, but clearly, there's something, there's like a transactional, okay, like this for that thing going on in the back of your mind, you know, if you're selling stuff for Monopoly

money as a little kid. And then, and then into, you know, there's a, there's the media creation. And then there's the obviously visual layout type of thing. How does that also morph into, I don't want to get back into the entrepreneurial stuff because obviously there's a big conversation to have around there. But how does this morph into your curiosity and then exploration of design too? The computer was introduced around my junior or senior year in high school. And the computer had nothing on it other than you know the basic windows god windows 3.1 applications at that point so microsoft paint and that was the application that i lived in and

and would draw in and uh so it was microsoft paint and you just started messing around started messing around with that and then uh yeah one thing led to another and it was time to get the computer upgraded which i realized that you could order catalogs and purchase this thing called RAM that you could put in the computer to make it faster and your applications would load quicker. And that just kind of led, you know, one thing into the other. So I became equally interested not in just design but the technology behind it too. And that's why a job that I did for a couple of years was in computer sales and computer repair, just because I was so fascinated with this device that I discovered that I never knew of before. Yeah.

So it was like a simultaneous thing where you're like, huh, like this is giving me a capability to actually create the things that I see in my head. And at the same time, the technology that's allowing me to do it is really fascinating also. Yeah, Yeah. Did you ever think about going more into, well, I guess you really did, right? So you really,

it's almost like those two things have been these constants that you keep kind of like bouncing between or integrating in so many different ways. But at some point also you devote yourself more towards design. Yes. Yeah. First semester of college, a friend of mine and his girlfriend or girl he was dating on campus or whatever, we started a school newspaper. So that's where I had Aldus Pagemaker, Aldus Pagemill. I forget what it was called back in the day. Was Adobe even in existence then? I feel like Adobe was in existence, but they were just releasing like Photoshop 1.0. But as for page layout, it was Aldus who, I don't know if they acquired Aldus or what happened there,

but basically the Aldus software I used became PageMaker for Adobe. So, you know, we kind of tried that. I built a, I started learning HTML on my own and missing classes and doing things like that because I would rather figure out how to launch this cool website on this terrible, terrible hosting platform called Tripod. And I'm going to launch a website and I'm going to build it. And that kind of became my focus. I wasn't interested anymore of the classroom and what I was being taught because I could stay up all night and really learn stuff at a much faster pace, which I gave a shit about at that point. Yeah. What happened with college then? I eventually, it was a mixture of leaving and flunking out.

But it's almost like you're flunking out of college and you're flunking into what's really lighting you up. Yeah. And that's the thing. College just wasn't taking me down a path where I was excited for it. And I didn't know where this other path was going to go. Yeah. But I liked it. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. So you're coming out of a small town in Missouri. You go to college, and then at some point you sort of like, you get really,

it's funny because I wear my parents' hat here sometimes. I'm like, huh. Like, so it's like, I love my kid. You know, she goes off to college and clearly like not doing well. But at the same time, I see this mad passion and devotion and insane work ethic developing outside of that. You know, how – and I've had this conversation with a lot of different people. How sort of your family supports you or wars against you very often is determinative of whether you actually move forward or not.

What was the – what was it like the conversation in your family around that time? My senior year in high school, my father died suddenly. And it kind of – that event led into graduating high school. And I just kind of left, you know, to get away from just that town that I grew up in and the problems that that had created. So I just kind of took off. So I didn't really, and my mother was, of course,

behind whatever I wanted to do. So, and she always has been and always will be. And, you know, that's what moms do. And the dads are the ones that are typically a little bit more, let's rethink this. But I truly did not have that in my life. And I know that I would have made different decisions had I have. Yeah. So.

Yeah. It's interesting just to know how that so many of the decisions come out of the social dynamic and the support systems that we have and our willingness to either roll with it or just walk away or risk, you know, being severely judged and having some separation for a while. And that was a lot of the fear originally was just not having a support system, truly feeling out there, you know, on your own. And that's that's when I got a job doing. So to answer your question and get into that, I got a job at this computer sales and repair shop. Still in Missouri at this point, just in a different part of the state. And I started at this point, I knew how to build websites. So I started helping them with their website, which then parlayed into helping them redo a logo, which at that point I was awful and still am pretty awful at that stuff,

but we'll get into that later. And so, yeah, just design kind of started to take over more. And then when I left that job, I found this small little web design studio that needed just somebody to come in and help. I literally got hired to make banner ads for the web. I didn't even code anything. I just made 468 by 60, whatever the old banner size was. And that's kind of where it started. So how long you were doing that for? I did that for two and a half years until that company was having some hard financial times where it was going to basically dissolve the web design division. That's when I went to them and said, Hey, look, we've kind of built a team at this point. I managed the department. So I'd kind

of spent two and a half years and was running the small team of seven. We've done a lot of hard work. We've busted our ass. We've, we've actually got for small town, Missouri, we've got some cool clients. Like we might not be raking in town Missouri, we've got some cool clients. Like, we might not be raking in the dollars, but we're paying the bills. And that's when I went to the president of that company and said, what do you think about, since you're kind of killing this department, you allow me to take the clients and, you know, take some of the computers, the things that you're not going to have any use for, and pick from maybe these employees. So we already had a client list of people we were currently working with and a list of potential bids out there. So it kind of made it easy and less risky just to dive in and say, I'm going to start a design studio. Right. What made you okay just walking up to that guy and say, Hey, can I have

all of your business assets? I, um, my stepfather at the time offered me a lot of advice. And I truly, for the first time in my life, loved what I was doing. And did not know how it would equal paying the bills or anything. I just loved it. And I didn't want it to end. And the idea of having this team that we had and kind of building our own shop and going our own direction just excited me more than anything. Yeah. And I guess in your mind, also, you're thinking, well, you know, we had this team, but this business still failed. So I there's a way

that I know how to do it different or better. That'll make us succeed. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not saying we just went out on our own and things were great. Like, it got, I went into some crazy credit card debt. But it was a long road, but it worked and just didn't give up. And so when are we talking about here? This was 2001. Okay. 2000, 2001. All right.

So, which was an interesting year in technology, a time in technology, too. Yeah, very much. So. It was right after the bubble, if you will yeah exactly um did were you affected by or did that make you change what you were doing or focusing on no not really no so you start building that on your own take on massive amount of credit card debt how did you it's so this it's like the classic bootstrapping story right and you hear so many entrepreneurs that do that, just leverage everything to the hilt. How did you experience waking up every day and building the company with that sort of financial backdrop as your day-to-day?

Fear begets pressure. Pressure begets inspiration and drive. So it was. It was waking up every day and knowing like, okay, we have to run payroll. We have to pay rent, you know, and at the same time going, fine, we're just going to call it quits. Like we can't do this. We tried or just being as stubborn as possible and, you know, having family and friends go, what the hell are you doing? And just believing in what you're doing and knowing that it might fail,

but I wasn't ready to give up yet. Because, I mean, we had that company for, God, close to five years. And the first three and a half years, we were literally, I don't even want to say paycheck to paycheck. We were literally, because my paycheck would exist and then other pay periods wouldn't be a paycheck

just because there was no money. But we existed client check to client check. And a client check would come in. People would get paid. The only things that definitely had to be paid every month were the internet bill and employees. Other than that, things took a backseat. So what keeps you going for three and a half years then until you, I'm assuming that was around the time when you turned the corner? Yeah. At that time, maybe it was just,

I didn't know better, but I still loved it. It, it was, it was wildly stressful. And at times I had friends saying to me, we don't see you anymore. You should just kind of get out of this and go get a job somewhere and quit killing yourself. But I didn't want that. What I wanted was what I was doing. And I believed in it very much. And I believe that if we push and push and continue creating something truly of quality, you know, as beautiful a web design that we can do in 2001, 2002, 2003, if we can continue doing that, the spark will start aflame. Yeah.

And we just have to hang on long enough for that. Do you remember what it was or was there a moment or a window that turned the corner? Yeah. Yeah. We basically, there was two events that happened both in a very small amount of time. But we were having coffee one morning, Ryan Sims, myself, and Sherry, who helped with,

who basically ran our customer relations and sales at the time. And we were having coffee out on the balcony at our little office and the phone rings and I go and pick it up. And it is a guy named Tony from Two Advanced Studios, which back then Two Advanced Studios was, I mean,

they're still around. They still do amazing work, but they are very flash-based. Back then, you aspired to be Two Advance. They were doing, you couldn't comprehend that they were building websites that cost $50,000. I mean, you could buy a house in Missouri for that. You could buy three Kia, four or five Kia automobiles. Like how is somebody going to pay 50 grand on a website? They called us, and they had found our work and said, hey, we have a lot of projects that come in that are below our budget. We've been looking for a really good studio that we can forward projects on. And all we ask is if you close these, you cut us a commission. And we flew to LA and met with them the following week. They brought us out. The entire company went out there

and it was the first time I had ever been on the West Coast or only the second time I'd ever been on a plane. And that really changed the game. And after that, we started getting bigger projects and we did a photography and CD design for a very indie band on Sony Records. But then that album design went on to win a National Addy Award. So at that point, it truly just started spiraling.

Yeah. It's amazing how you can work so hard. And it's funny because, you know, sort of like a lot of times we think in our minds, especially for bootstrapped entrepreneur, I think for a VC backed entrepreneur, a lot of times everyone's waiting for the hockey stick moment and how you whether you think that's a good thing or bad thing is a whole different conversation. But I think for most bootstrap entrepreneurs, you kind of feel like, you know, well, it's just this progressive thing where you get more and more and more and more every day. And you kind of know slowly and progressively that you're going to be okay. And, but a lot of times what I found when you really have conversations with people, you're in the game for years and like you're waking up every day and you're saying to yourself, I don't know if we're going out of business today, or I don't know if we're going to like break out today. And the day before that something happens

that leads to the breakout that you could have been sitting there saying, should we shut this sucker down? Cause I just don't know. And it's such a common experience that's been shared with me so many times. And I felt it with my own businesses. Yeah. And that's the thing. I was just very, very lucky in those circumstances

because if that phone had not rang on that morning of 2004 or late 2003, I have documentation of it because it's in the scrapbook for me. It's my personal good stories scrapbook. But, you know, had that not happened, who knows? Maybe I would have had to say eight months down the road. I'm going to pull the plug. But I do know that it would have taken a series of very negative events for that to happen, or I would have probably just stuck in there and went into more debt. Yeah, which is- Because I believed.

I believed that if we work hard enough, it will work. And that is the thing, right? It's like two things. You love what you do when you go to work in the morning, even if there's massive stress behind it. And you still hold that belief that it's just, we're doing such good work and there is demand for it,

that at some point we're gonna get found, we're gonna get traction. It's like, it's just we're doing such good work and there is demand for it that at some point we're going to get found we're going to get traction it's like it's going to work right but the flip side of that is that you can also at some point become buy into that so much that you become delusional and you lose track of the reality which which is true and that is why it's very good to keep a a great group of friends that can be open and honest with you. Because it is easy to be very delusional in that. And I've done it several times in my career and I've watched other people do it. And sometimes you just need to sit them down

and be like, look, this is just not a good idea. And I've done it with several friends and I honestly hope that at that point when I make a stupid call again next time that there's somebody near me to go, Brad, let's take a step back here. And is this really what you think you should be doing? So you mentioned you had your stepdad as one of those people. Was that sort of like your prime go-to person or did you have a small group of people then?

No, I did not. I didn't really have a small group of people at that point. I leaned on him a lot. He was an elementary school principal and probably didn't know the first thing about starting a business, but he was much wiser about it. I mean, he taught me my first spreadsheets because I never learned how to build a spreadsheet in high school. He helped me put my first business plan together to go to a bank and get a line of credit. So he offered me a lot of assistance there. And it wasn't until a few years later where I had individuals, you know, once we had a established company and a little bit of a reputation

that networking came into play. And then you're getting to meet people with other small businesses and other small startups and things like South by Southwest, which back then was just a gold mine because it wasn't what it is today. It was a chance to pretty much meet some of the smartest,

not you still don't meet the smartest people in the industry, but that was who was at South by Southwest. And it was so much smaller then. I remember going when it was like 2000 people and now was it 40,000? I remember like the entire interactive closing party was in a lobby of a hotel. Right. And it was amazing. If there was someone you wanted to go say hello to,

you could kind of just look across, you'd see them, you'd go, and you'd have a conversation. And it's, yeah, it's a very different experience now. But so you're at a point where now you're starting to grow. Like you had the magic moment happen. Did you say that there was another one or was that really the big?

The second one that really happened was the small indie band that we did the artwork for, for Sony. Got ity got it um and it it wasn't it was a small band it was their first album um but the artwork you know submitting it to the the addy awards um which is the national advertising federation or whatever it's i just probably bastardized the name terribly but um yeah submitting to that and and winning that award did a lot for us yeah so you get you get about five years in and winning that award did a lot for us. Yeah. So you get about five years in, but that company is not still in existence. So what happened with that? That company, so in 2005, money, again, we weren't rolling in the dollars,

but we were paying the bills more. So Ryan and I wanted to go to South by Southwest that year. So we're like, well, we can't fly. We lived in Missouri. Austin's only 10 hour drive. We're like, okay, we'll find somebody to stay with and we'll drive. And we went to South by, and at that point, Ryan had been freelancing on the first design of a website called purevolume.com. So it was like one of the very, very first music social networks that involved listeners and the bands. And he had been kind of doing this freelance. And we got the opportunity to meet these two guys at South By and had dinner. And they basically said by the end of dinner, they're like, we like what you've done with your company.

We love Ryan's design. You guys should just get out of the whole client work. Let's merge our two companies and move to Boston with us, and let's build this product called Pure Volume. And was this, MySpace was around then also, right? MySpace was very, very early. Very early. So in your mind, you're like the,

it's you and MySpace out there? Yeah. Right, and there's not, it's interesting because it wasn't that long ago, but so the concept of what is a social network for especially sort of a niche-based one, like what could it really be back then? I think you had to be a bit of a visionary to really get the potential for it because a lot of people didn't really see the possibility. You know, Facebook wasn't around yet. And especially if MySpace wasn't around, which was kind of a blew up.

It was people didn't really get it, I think, a lot. But it also required you to essentially shut down your firm and then move from Missouri. And that's the thing. I told them no. Ah, okay. We did not end up actually walking down that path and going that route for at least another six months. So what happened?

I watched Nubix, which was our design firm at the time. I just put blood, sweat, and literal tears into this thing, and I'm not just going to shut the doors. It's been a long road. So, yeah, I just can't do it. I can't do it. Cannot close the doors on this. Busted my ass on it.

It has been my life, you know, living, sometimes sleeping at the office for two days at a time and driving to my apartment just to take a shower. And yeah, so talk to a lot of people. And it took me a lot of soul searching to figure out that this is a step that I needed to take, despite I didn't necessarily want to. What was it?

Like, what was it that made you say that get to that place? One, I wanted to to leave Missouri. And now that I had a company that was pretty much founded there with the core group of employees, like the team that I had built, like we're all rooted in Missouri. You just can't up and move that. We even tried to move the company to Kansas City at one point and we couldn't. So one was the opportunity to leave. And two, it became more and more appealing because I didn't know social networks. I didn't even get that.

And the more research I did into looking into this new MySpace thing and things like that, it became a lot more intriguing. So I dip my toe in the water and go, okay, the water is nice. Maybe we'll check this out. And having to make that sacrifice of, okay, we are just going to set ablaze everything we've built over the past five years. And we're going to walk away from it with the knowledge that we've gained. We're going to walk away with it, you know, the mistakes that we've made. And we're going to go on a new journey. So Nubix at that point kind of just then became the team that built Pure Volume.

Right. So it was almost like an, what do they call them these days? Acquire-ization. Yeah. An acquihire. Acquihire-ization. Right, right, right. Yeah. And thatihire. Aquirisition, right. And that's gotta be so tough though,

because you've got something which in your mind, you've worked your ass off to build to the place it is. And finally, finally, it's doing okay. You're doing good work and you're getting industry recognition. So even if you've got this amazing opportunity, there's so much invested in the past. And I think sometimes we get hung up on looking at possibility in front of us

and we weigh it against sunk costs. And not just financial costs, but sunk emotional costs. And rather than saying, okay, if I just made this decision cold today, looking at, okay, what's the state of this business and the state of the opportunity that's being offered to me? What's the logical choice? We don't make decisions like that.

No. It was very emotional. And especially because it's a geographic move. For you, did that mean leaving people behind too? It did. Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, I had only – granted, I had been different places in Missouri, but I had never lived long-term anywhere long-term anywhere else. So, uh, it did, it mean living, leaving behind family, leaving behind

friends. Um, and, uh, you know, of the, the team that we had built at Nubix, Ryan was the only one that, you know, went along. So only two of us made the exit out of, out of Missouri and into Boston. So you drop into Boston. Yeah. And what happens there? Everything great. It's what you want to happen when you're 18, leaving high school and going into college, is discovering larger cities and meeting new people and these things that I didn't get to do until my later 20s at that point.

So it was great. And Pure Volume grew, and we did that, and it became great. And Pure Volume started to create enough revenue to where it freed us up to start thinking about maybe we build another product. And then that's where Verb, which was also originally another social network, came into play. Tell me more about what Verb actually was. Well, in its original.

In its original state, Verb was, it was, we were building a MySpace competitor. I mean, at this point you knew that MySpace, people were, anybody that used MySpace back then in the early days realized that if you wanted to customize your profile and change it from the static template, like what Facebook is now, you had to throw some HTML and some CSS into the about field. Right. Like above where you would type your bio, paste some CSS in. And we were just looking at that going, what if we truly focused on design first and building a social network around design and letting all the features and extra stuff come in after that. And it was still based around music. It looked like it was.

It wasn't. The problem that it looked early on based so much around music is that we had such a pull with Pure Volume that we had a lot of musicians and artists being our first users. Got it. And that's why the design community and music were the first real people to latch on to it. Right. And it wasn't that we went out there and really caught on with bands. They use Pure Volume. And they're like, oh, they just launched this new product, Verve.

We should go check it out too. Right. And that did pretty well, I mean, at least for a while, right? And it grew into, I mean. It did. I mean, Verve, right out of the starting gate, I mean, we had several hundred thousand users before we even went into a public launch. But timing was just not on our side.

And right around that same time, there was that service called Facebook, and they took the EDU restrictions off. You know, before you had to have a school email address. And once they opened that up to the world, I mean, it was game over. Yeah, it kind of killed everybody. Right. And we knew that, and we saw it early on. And that's where we decided that we were still going to exist. We were just going to exist as a niche social network for people that actually gave a shit

about how something looked. And, you know, that worked. And we kind of became the social network for photographers. And that evolved over time and less about interacting in the social network and more about people just building pretty profile pages. What's interesting about that, too, is that I know Scott Belsky, who ended up building Behance, which was essentially, you know, this giant community for creative professionals to build really sweet looking profile pages and showcase their work. And a social network built around that. That actually wasn't in existence then actually, right?

Because Behance came out a couple of years after that. So there was clearly an opportunity because Behance exploded. There was an opportunity and basically just the lack of knowledge. Like Verb took off. We were not expecting Verb. I had two other business partners at the time. We were not expecting it to do what it did. And it did. And I honestly believe we just did not scale fast enough and make the right decisions and take money when we should have taken money. We had opportunities coming at us,

people going, this is amazing. We want to give you money and going, no, we're this is we're going to do this right. So take me deeper into that moment, though, because I think this is an interesting conversation that people have constantly when you hit that moment where you're like, okay, you see the competitive landscape is getting really aggressive. We've got a product. We've got a business that seems to be working. But for us to actually hit it, we're going to need to grow exponentially faster. There's money being offered, but it's going to really change a lot of things. Tell me more about the internal conversation that goes around that for you guys. Really, it was a belief of two things. One was just letting go of your baby and knowing the

second we do this, we will have a board of people that dictate not only where we go, but how we build it and who we go after. Because no money comes, no strings attached. And, you know, certain business partners felt that, no, if this is the case, we're going to hold out even longer until somebody comes along and offers us a better deal. And they want less equity in the company for, you know, more money. Right, because you're like, oh, in three months we'll be bigger. Yeah, and, you know, why did Verb as a social network fail? And it was probably just because of sheer, you know, ignorance.

Myself very much included there. Just not knowing when to take certain steps and what to do. Yeah. Probably not leaning on the right individuals and not taking money when it came our way. Yeah. So what was like the single biggest learning from that? One, God, so many, so many. I think the biggest thing for me was I can make bad decisions. And it really was. It was the

sheer, yep, we could have done things differently and probably ended up in a whole different ball game here. And, you know, it's that kind of wake up call. You're in your late 20s at that time and you kind of start to think you're invincible. You know, you, you build this company and it goes well. And then you kind of do this merger with this company in Boston. You build these two social networks and things are going great. You do kind of start to feel like, Oh, whatever we do is going to work. We just have to hang on long enough. And it really forced me to go. That's not the, not the case at all we can make mistakes and we could build the most beautiful product on the planet but it did not do what we wanted it to do

yeah it's always a coming yeah coming to god moment where you're like ha so apparently i don't have all the answers right but you know we're so we're taught not to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is weakness. But there's, I don't know, a single entrepreneur who's either survived long term in one business or had a series of them who hasn't at some point come to their knees and said, I know nothing. Yeah. And I've made a business out of being vulnerable and I have no problem saying it. because I have people come up to me and they go, how did you guys do this? Like, tell us the backstory. I'm like, there's no formula, no equation.

We just worked our asses off and this is what happened. I wish I could say like, well, I studied at this business school and I know the best decisions to make in these scenarios and the ROI on this. And no, I don't. We just, we were passionate about ideas and we gave them everything. Yeah, I think that's the important part. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. You know, at some point you become, you know, probably after this, you're like, okay, now I need to open up a bit. Yeah, and that's why with the verb pivot, when we shifted out of social network into what is now still in existence, the website builder.

You know, when that happened and the opportunity for money came along, I did the exact, I snapped my fingers. You could hear that in the background. So tell me about, yeah, it's like, that was a snap. I'm still using my hands. Sound effect, fully bored, snap. Tell me about that pivot. So you've got an existing company. You see the handwriting on the wall.

Things are not going, your competitors are exploding around you, but you've got an existing user base. Right. You know, and you've got a website builder that I guess you were starting to build as on the side too, kind of? Yeah. Well, and the thing is with this, with the pivot, and despite, I hate that word, it is

what it is. And in doing that, we knew two things for certain, two facts. It was either going to go really well or really badly. There's no middle ground. That's all we knew. We knew. And people still, you know, I constantly still get asked about the verb pivot. And speaking at conferences, and it's kind of like that horse has been beaten to death because there was no magic equation.

We didn't sit in this airlock boardroom and go, okay, here's the plan. Like, we just knew what we were doing wasn't working. We had a very faithful community. We knew what our users were using our product for. They weren't using the social aspects of the social network anymore. They were using the customization tools to customize their profile. I mean, the product right there is screaming at it. So why don't we just focus on what they are using us for? And that's where the idea for the website builder came in, which evolved. It was just going to be a one-page builder. Verb the website builder was not going to be a full-featured, build 30 pages in 20 sections.

It was going to be a one-page profile. Very, I would say, a more robust about.me is kind of what the original plan for Verve. I mean, it's interesting also because so many times when we're doing something, we become wed to the product rather than the market. And I actually even hate the word market. Rather than the community and what their needs are. And the beautiful thing about what you had with with verb was that you had a big enough and engaged enough community that they were giving you data about what was working and what wasn't.

And your so your job, in a sense, just became to see that data, right? You know, whereas but and but it sounds so simple. But it's not, you know, because so many people, we don't want to see that because that wasn't the original plan. You know, So you just kind of tune it out and tune it out and tune it out until at some point you either go down in flames or the veil becomes removed. You're like, oh, that's the problem we're solving. Yeah. And it wasn't this, you know, again, this magical moment. It was conversations between, you know, my creative director, Ryan, at the time and Matt Rubin who was on our team, and the three of us having conversations around, we see something happening here. How can we turn this into our product?

And it was our last ditch effort of, let's take this verb name and let's really do something. Right. So you made that change and then it becomes a viable enterprise again. Yes. What's going on just in your life at this point? Because the life of an entrepreneur who's, you know, who's just, you know, for lack of a better term, balls to the walls, like 24 seven, especially in the technology space, especially when you've got big, fierce, well funded competitors rising up around you. Zoom the lens out for me a little bit and tell me, did you have a life? Yes, I have.

And it's been great. But it's also been, you know, at times, 100% work. Like right now in what I'm doing, it is consuming literal waking to sleeping hours with little breaks in between. But, yeah, it's, I mean, you try. I'm trying to get better about it. I am looking at myself. I am, I'm seeing a therapist. I'm doing all these things to better myself as a human being because I've spent so much

time worrying about other people and products that I've really started to reflect and go, what about Brad? Like, you should not not be exercising because you're building this new company like that. I have a very big problem with horse blinders and I'm working on trying to fix that because you know, when, when I do get in my entrepreneur mode, it's hard to keep anything else together. Like I will let a relationship unfortunately fall apart or things like that because I have these blinders on and I also don't want to go through the rest of my life being that way.

There has to be a line that I draw that says, okay, that's great. We can build a new company and we can go this route and we can do all these things, but I have to make sure that I am as happy and as healthy and taking care of myself at the same time. Yeah. And it's tough, especially when you actually love the game. It's one thing to be working like crazy because you feel obligated to a lifestyle or to a job that's just the thing you're supposed to be doing,

but really you're not pulled from ahead to actually do it. It's another thing when you wake up in the morning, you're like, this is cool. I'm building something cool with people that I like to be around, and it matters to other people, and you just want to do as much of that as humanly possible. And it's definitely, it's a different process I've experienced.

And it sounds like you too, to pull yourself out of that and say, but there are other things that matter to me equally, if not more in life, than it is to pull yourself out of a process where you've got a job that's consuming all of your waking hours that you just hate. Right. And that's what's exciting is to have the clock say 8.15 at night and look around and go, guys, we're still here. And not that I plan on ceasing that. It's just I plan on sprinkling more of take care of Brad items in throughout the day. Yeah. Well, but that's, I think the fallacy, I actually, I don't like the term life balance. I don't really think it exists.

Yeah. I was going to say there's no such thing. Yeah. I think it's total fantasy. But I also think it's a fantasy thing to aspire to create. Because it's like a snapshot in time of a fantasy, you know, like status that just, we don't live in snapshots, you know. And also it assumes, you know, work life balance assumes that work is opposed to life. Rather than, you know, Mitch Joel had this great conversation with me about, you know, he has the term work-life blend, you know, but the presupposition there is that your work is something that you actually engage with, that you like to do. Right. You know, and then it's like, how do I flow them seamlessly together in a way where I'm

honoring everything? I'm taking care of my health, my mindset, my relationships, and I'm also working a lot, but, you know, it's all working. And it's interesting because I'm, you know, the company we're building right now and I'm also working a lot, but you know, it's all working. And it's interesting because I'm that, you know, the company we're building right now and building and my wife and I are pretty much full time in the company we work together. And it's, it's, and it works great, because we love each other. And we work together well. And we have very different skill sets. So we do different things in the company. So it happens to work really well. But it's kind of funny, too, because, you know, we'll have friends say, wait a minute, you guys are together like all day,

every day. Really? So that's sort of the way that we've tried to solve the problem, you know, of how do I keep my relationship alive and how do we keep connected? Right. Because there's, there's no boundary. Life is work and work is life. And those two things coexist. Right. Which brings up, you know, other challenges too, because like, okay, can we stop talking about work already? You know, and just like love each other or talk about other things or like what we want out of life or just interest or read books, you know? So it's this dynamic thing that just unfolds over time. And I think for entrepreneurs, especially creative, really creative entrepreneurs, it's, it is a really interesting dance

that everybody handles very differently. And a lot of times people don't come to the fact that, huh, I need to take care of myself and the life outside of entrepreneurship until something blows up in a really big way. So you end up at Verb and you keep going in that. So let's kind of finish the story there. Okay, perfect.

We'll kind of fast forward to this next one. See, the Verb pivot happens into the website there. Okay, perfect. We'll kind of fast forward to this next one. See, the verb pivot happens into the website builder. And at that point, I had a really good relationship with Media Temple, the hosting company. And the opportunity for some investment, I met with the CEO. They brought us out to California and said, we're a hosting company. You guys are a social network. We don't really see how this makes sense together yet, but we really like what you're doing. We love your design and we feel like you guys are going somewhere. So if you're willing to get up some of the company, we're willing to give you some money to grow. That took no time at all. That was, I made the decision the same day because I

had just come out of what if on the original verb, what if we had taken the money or the acquisition deal? So you were primed just in such a different way. At that point, I'm like, okay, the universe has given us a second shot at this product and this will not happen again. And I knew that this could be a bad decision too, but I want to walk down that path. And so we did. And the acquisition of Verb by Media Temple was kind of twofold. Initially, we just took investment. And Media Temple had a venture arm called MT Ventures, and they invested in small startups, and they kind of incubated them. It was a side thing. And then eventually, after the web product grew, I mean, here we were, we had been acquired as a

social network to a hosting company, and then we decide to build a website product? Unrelated. We did not build that because of MediaTemple. We built it, like I said, because of what our users on the social network were doing.

And we grew to the point that, you know, MediaTemple sitting there as a hosting company, which unless you know how to build websites and FTP and all that fun stuff, you don't use Media Temple. What if we introduced a product to customers that you don't have to know how to build your own website? And that is when the second phase of investment came from in the form of Media Temple going, look, let's work out a deal where we fully acquire VIRB. You have unlimited resources. You use our social promotion department,

you use our marketing department, you can have an accounting department. You don't even have to do payroll yourself anymore. And it was kind of a dream come true. And that was a weird thing for me to actually see full control of something go away. But I had also had two years with them before that to know that they're hands off, they trust us. And it was an ideal situation. Yeah. And then you're sort of absorbed to a

certain extent. It was an ideal situation until the events of October 2013. And that was when Media Temple was acquired by GoDaddy. And at that point, Verb kind of had no say in it. We were a Media Temple product. We were owned by Media Temple. And where Media Temple goes, we follow. So it was time. Yeah, it was time. And there was some play in there of possibly getting the company back and all this fancy footwork with bringing in some investors and launching Verb back out of Media Temple. But long story short, it didn't

happen like I wanted it to. And I had to make that decision of, here's another product I've poured seven years of my life into. But at the end of the day, that seven years was great. It gave me a lot. I learned a lot. I don't want to work for GoDaddy. So it's time to move on. Back into the abyss. Back into the abyss. And so many people, that's a terrifying place for a lot of people to go. But I think for you, you know, is it sort of like half back into the abyss, but half, you know, licking your chops like, huh? It was utterly terrifying.

Month one. I mean, I had never experienced panic attacks in my life. Like where you physically have a panic attack. I did. These things happened because I came out of this just horse blind or focused of this is my project. This is my life was my work and my businesses and what I did. And one day I wake up literally the next day it's gone and there's nothing to work on, nothing to do, no numbers to get ready for, no board meetings to prep. Like it is just gone. And it is really, really weird to be sitting in that spot going, what the hell?

What am I supposed to do now? And there for a period of time, I actually put myself out there on the market a little bit and interviewed with other companies because I thought that was really the best thing for me. I was tired of busting my ass. I was tired of all this work. I'm just going to take a nice paycheck and go somewhere else and be able to leave at five o'clock every day and not worry about a damn thing that's happening at the office. And I believe that. And I taught myself to believe that for a few months after that. But it was absolutely terrifying it was i discovered a lot about myself yeah in that six months between verb and and my next project i can certainly say i learned more about brad than in the past 37 years of existence was that deliberate or was it forced it was forced it was completely forced and god damn it i'm so happy i would not trade that for anything it was not deliberate i I didn't plan on that.

What was the biggest thing you learned out of that? A lot of what we talked about is to take better care of myself. So that was the window where you were like, huh, okay, this matters. Right. Yeah, and really just kind of stepping back and learning to be creative again. And that's why I did the artist way and things like that. Just I felt really beat up after the verb situation. Like I just kind of wanted to climb under a rock.

I even stopped using the Internet, like Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. I just vanished for a few months and it wasn't intentional. It was just I needed to kind of shut off from everything. Yeah. And and focus on me and and discover like, what is it like to go on vacation and not have to still hop on the computer for two hours every day to take care of something. So you're in that window. What starts to happen that starts to light you up again?

It's interesting because I think I discovered you from the profile that you, your profile is a long profile in The Great Discontent, right around that time, right? It was like late 2013-ish? Or you were interviewed around that time? Yeah, I was interviewed around the time. Maybe the profile didn't come out until later. Right. Right. So the profile was kind of catching you in this window because I remember I think it was kind of like it was very open-ended at the end. Like what's next for Brad? It was what's next. And I didn't know because I knew there was a possibility that I would be leaving Verb, but I'm also not going to say that because, you know, I'm not going to put that out there and then not have something play out with an acquisition immediate temple and then I'm still there.

So I had to leave it open-ended because I knew there was a fork in the road ahead and I could see it on the horizon, but I did not know yet which way it was going to go. Yeah, you can't publicly commit to that. So when you're taking care of yourself, and there's a six month window, and there's panic attacks, and there's what's really going on here? What's the thing that starts to bring you back to okay, there's, there's something I want to start to do again that and to commit my energy to, I started really thinking about the next, what can I really give a shit about? And it wasn't going to be a tech product, it wasn't going to be a website builder, sure as hell doesn't want to be a social network. I just, I felt like I rode that train

long enough. And, you know, I was helping, I was an advisor for a few friends in the city, you know, building startups and apps. And I just realized that I kind of have no desire whatsoever to be in that. I just, I wanted a break. And I started working on an idea, which in some form or fashion, it's still going to happen, but I won't go into the details. But what I found in the artist's way really led me to realize that there is a lot of individuals in our industry that suffer from the same things. things and just kind of creating a program, if you will, for kind of figuring out the best way to not find that work-life balance, but to see that they're intertwined in a healthy way. So it would involve a conference and retreats and things like that. But that was kind of what I started working on. I started writing a lot. I started reading a lot and kind of finding out. I had to test the waters, be like, what excites me now? And anything in kind of the technology area that I

came out of was, you know, non-existent. That's so interesting. It is. It is. You lived and breathed that for so long. I did. And it's not like, I mean, it is still booming and growing. And people look at me and go, you're making magazines now. You basically got out of tech to make magazines. I not like, I mean, it is still booming and growing. And people look at me and go, you're making magazines now. You basically got out of tech to make magazines. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what happened. The thing that everybody else says is like dying industry.

That's where you're doubling down. Yeah, let's go do something that's being called dead right now. All right, so break it down now. So people who don't know what you ended up doing. Okay, so I had met Ryan and Tina Essmaker, the founders of The Great Discontent, which it was an online magazine at that point, an online interview series, rather. I had met them way back when, long before I ever met them in person. Verb was actually a sponsor of The Great Discontent. We would, you know, pay to put our ads on The Great Discontent and be part of interviews.

And that happened for probably a good year before I ever met Ryan in person. And then after they moved to the city, we met and became great friends. They interviewed me. Ryan talked to me not long after leaving Verb. And he said, look, so The Great Discontent, we've now got a print magazine. Our Kickstarter went great. You know, Tina is perfect at what she does at editorial, and Ryan is amazing at what he does with design, but the great discontent is about to grow, and we need somebody to be there to help us out with it. Yeah, you need an operator. And I said no, again, solely because I knew that I would be no good for them at that point. I knew I was burned out. I was in the middle of starting The Artist's Way, and I'm like, you don't want me to come in there right now. Was that an easy no or hard no? It was an easy no. And it will,

it was an easy no, because I knew I had to, it wasn't even a, if then, and I had a potential, really awesome job opportunity come up in about three months after leaving verb. And it fell apart too. And thank God, because if it had happened, I would have probably eventually been miserable there. But I then thereafter realized that I was burnt out to the point that I probably wouldn't even have been as good as what I should have been. How amazing is it that you are so aware of the emotional and physical state that you're

in, that you're aware of the fact that like, I can't really make a rational decision right now. It's even for what may be a great opportunity. I'm just, I'm not in a place where I'm going to be able to make a decision, which is going to be good. I knew I would be no good to their company and no good to myself. And if I'm going to go into something 110%, I'm not going to say yes to something that I know I'm going to give probably about 70%. So what happens? About five months pass and a night of whiskey with Ryan and myself

and he talks to me and we kind of rehashed the whole thing and at this point, you know, their first inaugural issue is selling because the Kickstarter

was funded and... And for those who don't know, they had a very successful Kickstarter to actually turn this online thing into a gorgeous, a really stunning print magazine.

Thank you. Thank you. And issue two's laying right there, by the way. I brought it over for you. Yeah. And that night happened over a bit of whiskey about five months after that. And I was a happier, better, more clear headed individual at that. I also could see a much stronger business model in what was being built now because there was a product and an ability to really curate an amazing brand, a brand that might not have had the potential as just a website.

But you start introducing apparel and magazines, and now that's something I can get really excited about. And we had the conversation, and he's like, look, we want to make you part of this, and we want to make you an equal business partner and come in with Tina and I. And what's amazing about it now is are we kicking our own asses and working a lot? Yes, we are, but I am also more excited than I've been in a very long time, maybe ever, which is weird to say. But it's crazy because, you crazy because we are a perfect fit. We each know our strengths and our weaknesses. And despite we all carry burdens, like Tina is the editor behind the magazine

and writes every word that you read, but she also does customer support. But we each have, we're laser focused. Ryan is focused over here on the creative end. Tina's focused on the interviews and the content. And I'm focused on the business and everything from health insurance to growing the company to getting St. Barnes and Noble, things like that. But it's great for us because there's really very little overlap. And that's exciting to me. It makes for a very, very exciting team possibility.

Yeah, that's amazing. And I love the fact that you're creating, you know, you've got a business now where you're creating something that is so such a contrarian play. You know, the world is moving digital. It's like you can't, and you didn't, you're not just creating a magazine. I mean, you're creating magazines, which are essentially gorgeous, full color books on beautiful paper that are getting put out on a regular basis. So this is a serious investment here. And there's probably a serious investment also when you're talking about trying to convince like a Barnes & Noble or a big distributor or a big retail outlet to carry these. They're like, well, the retail price is that of a book.

Right. And you're taking up space on ourselves. So it's, I mean, it's almost like you're going into this thing, which logically is going to be brutal, but there's something where, I mean, you literally, it's funny. Like you came over today, you handed me the latest copy. It hits my hands and I smile.

You know, and there's- Just wait till you smell it. Yeah. I'm flipping this, what you hear now are the pages. Ah, there we go um there and there's it triggers something visceral that takes me somewhere i don't get that from online you know and i miss it and that is the magic equation of it because their indie magazines are making a huge comeback right now. Print might be dead, but the way I look at it is old print is dead. Print by far is not dead.

I mean, there is our printer that we use out of Vancouver, Canada. They are signing new magazines all the time. People are focusing more on design. Magazines are doing for print now what we wanted to do for the web with Verb. But it's not just about pretty. And that's why sure there's, if we want to go to Barnes and Noble and go to the lifestyle section, there is a lot of beautiful magazines, but the biggest reason more than being excited by the brand and what we could grow this into the biggest thing that captured me as the content,

we are the double-edged sword. It is beautiful, but it's not empty content. You are reading stories. I am so excited about this because I wish I had this in my hand when I was 21 years old, leaving college, not knowing what I was going to do. I wanted this in my hand, and that's what we're doing.

We want to build this beautiful inspiration tool, and part of the essence of inspiration is you're not going to read it on a glowing screen. You're going to hold it. You're going to touch it. You're going to take a picture of it and put it on Instagram. And that's what I love about it. It is beautiful and it is awesome. But at the same time, it's full of truth and stories to tell everybody else out there that, Hey, you might be having a hard go of it, but here's somebody super successful that went through a bunch of shit too.

Yeah, it's funny because in that way, we actually share really similar missions. I mean, that's largely what Good Life Project is. And I didn't realize that though until I was into it for a little bit. And we had enough of a body of work up there where I stood back one day, I'm like, huh, what we're kind of creating here

is actually a body of evidence. You can find any one person who's maybe super successful now, but then you're gonna see their story. And you're doing it in print and beautiful design, beautiful photography. We're doing it in audio and for the first couple of years, video.

I didn't realize that that's a solid chunk of what we were doing as well. And I have a similar bent to, I guess, probably all three of you in that I love physical objects. I love social objects that are physical touch and feel. It's the reason why I'm an author, but I still love the physical book. You know, so we're starting to also, you know, we're thinking, okay, what can we actually create?

You know, whether it's journals or merch or whatever it may be. That's this tangible, you know, sort of like thing. Yeah. The world will never go glass touchscreen. Even now we're building, we're building haptic feedback into our touch. So now I'll be able to touch a piece of glass and it gives me a feeling. Right. It's, it's not going anywhere.

And does the beauty and the design of the magazine put us in front of an entirely new audience that would not have been possible? Most certainly. But yeah, that's, that's what exciting you, you tell people like you tell Barnes and Noble about this over an email and they're like, yeah, that's what's exciting. You tell people, like you tell Barnes & Noble about this over an email, and they're like, yeah, okay, yeah, sure, send us a copy. And then you courier a copy over to them, and within an hour, you get a phone call

from someone in the New York office going, holy shit, this thing's beautiful. Let's figure out how to put this in our store. You can't do that with a digital product. You just can't. There is never that aha moment. You either look at a website and you go, that's a cool idea for an app. I'm going to download it and try it out. You know, we were backwards.

You get to tell you about it and then you get to hold it. I love that too, because it's, it counters the prevailing wisdom in the market, which is make it good enough ship and iterate. So you're always going to iterate. You're always going to try and make it better and better and better. But you know, I, my sense is that it stops so many people at the point of good enough, where they were really capable of making something beautiful. You know, of, you know, I remember, yeah, amazing opportunity to sit down

with Milton Glaser a couple years ago and talk to him and a conversation I didn't want to end. And you ask him what he's about. He's like, I want to make beauty. And I think we stop ourselves before we get to that point. And not everybody is driven by that. But a lot of people are, but they don't own it because the market says make it good enough and ship. And good enough is good enough. You know, then you see something like this and you're like, when somebody really goes just to make it something extraordinary, I think now, because there is so much good enough and ship in the market, it stands out so much more.

Agreed. Agreed. And that was the big thing. And I left Verve and took that time off and had this idea for this new company that was going to help people. And that's what got me excited here is we are making a product, but the goal of it is to help people. Yeah, I love that. So coming full circle here. It's kind of funny also because, you know, just you coming full circle back to media when you were a kid.

Back to media, back to a company without investment, back to how are we going to make money. Yeah, it's interesting. Nubix kind of grew into three different companies. It evolved from that into pure volume and then into verb. And, and then we, we threw the kill switch and I'm literally starting over and you know, I, it parallels very, very much of what it did 15 years ago, 16 years ago when we started Nubix. But I am a lot wiser. I'm a lot more aware. Yeah, it's exciting to be on a brand new product.

Yeah, that's awesome. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that term out to you, that phrase, to live a good life, what comes up? What does it mean to you? Oh, boy. You have another two hours? To live a good life. I'm going to relate back to what you said, but it's not the finding the balance. Like how much is too much work and too much life and the in-between. There's no rules.

Just find out whatever makes you happy and be good to yourself and treat yourself well and keep yourself healthy. And other than that, do whatever the hell you want. And if that requires you working 12 hours a day and going into credit card debt, then do it. If the good life to you is not having that risk and raising a family and going out there and just working your, you know, nine and leaving at five and spending the night with your kids, like, more power to it. There's so many entrepreneurs and people in this industry like, oh, I don't see how you could do that. And we're each our own individual. And I think the key out there is to just take care of yourself and pour yourself completely into whatever makes you as happy as possible. Love it. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. I really enjoyed that conversation.

If you found it valuable as well, would so appreciate if you would just head on over to iTunes, take a couple of seconds, and let us know. Share a review or rating. Always honest. And if you found this episode, the conversation, valuable and you think other people, maybe friends or family, would enjoy it and benefit from it, go ahead and share it with them as well. And as always, if you want to know what's going on with us at Good Life Project, then head over to goodlifeproject.com. And that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. We'll see you next time. Summer runs or playoff season meditations. Whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you,

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