How Simple Modern Forged Customer Bonds

We were at a more competitive price point than more, you know, better capitalized competitors. And so they were like, "You've got the colors I want? The quality is as good as anybody, and I'm not paying as much." Like, as long as you guys are. What's not to look? In 2016, I co-founded a drinkware company called Simple Modern. I was obsessed with a question, "What would happen if we built a full-profit company focused on generosity?" This podcast is behind the scenes look how we scaled from a bootstrapped startup to nine figures in annual revenue. We'll share with you the strategies we used, things learned along the way, and how we built a different type of company. This is Scaling For Good. Welcome back to Scaling For Good. I'm Mike Beckham, your host, I'm the co-founder and CEO of Simple Modern. One of my favorite sports is basketball, and I love following the NBA. Over the last 10 or 15 years, as analytics has played a bigger and bigger role in the NBA, one of the things that's become coveted by general managers across the league is players who can play multiple positions. It gives a team flexibility, different ways of attacking the defense that make them really hard to defend and contain. On any team, it's exceptionally helpful when you have somebody who can play multiple roles and do that well, and transition to different parts of the team depending on the needs of the company. Today I'm excited to have somebody with us that has done that for Simple Modern. I'm joined by Chris Hoyle, who currently is our Chief Marketing Officer, Chris. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Mike. Chris, won't we start out by just hearing some of your background before Simple Modern? So I have been in Consumer Package Goods for over a decade, and I was with companies like Cadbury and then Kraft and then for our candy selling to Walmart and Sam's Club, doing shopper marketing, sales, those kinds of things. And so I had a lot of history in sales, primarily in some data analytics. And then when you and I connected, there was an opportunity to be a part of a company that was just getting off the ground and thought, what a great way to learn new skills, try new things. I'd been in Fortune 500, billion dollar companies like, okay, let's see what it looks like to start from the ground up. And so was excited to bring that experience to Simple Modern. So when we first started talking about an opportunity with Simple Modern, the role that was open was a kind of head of sales, chief sales officer, something like that. And as you mentioned, you had sold a lot of mainly candy to Walmart. How many pounds, millions of dollars worth of candy do you think you'd sold the Walmart? I have no, I mean, definitely, it's got to be hundreds of millions of pounds of candy. So how much of the world's diabetes problem do you think you personally? I don't think that I can be tagged with a lot of it, but certainly in North America, a good amount, at least a quarter of it. So anyway, you had been, you had obviously gotten really good at selling into those kind of contexts. And when we were starting to talk, I had gotten some meetings with Mastery Tellers. In fact, we'd even landed a couple of programs, which I didn't realize this. You know, I knew so little that I didn't even understand that what we had been able to accomplish up until that point was, you know, just didn't happen. I remember that being one of the first things you told me, like, hey, this just does not happen. I don't know how you did this. I still do. I mean, the idea that a retail, the size of Sam's Club, you know, would make the kind of commitment they made with a startup. I just thought, wow, like, I don't know what you said in that meeting, but that's amazing. So I mentioned just at the beginning of the episode, really, I think one of the things that stands out about you is tremendous growth mindset versatility, right? You really can succeed and thrive in a lot of different places in the organization. So you came in and worked in this role where you were basically leading up sales, helped us to get into target, which was a massive coup for the brand at that point. This would have been like 2017. And really just as you were hitting your stride, I came to you and asked you to switch jobs. Why? Well, we were getting to a place where we were just getting too big to manage it because you were kind of leading everybody and doing everything. I was still wearing like, you were a head recruiter, yeah, you were in head of a drawer, and additional, this other stuff, which just didn't make sense to me. No, and so, and we were getting to a size where it was like, we need some structure in place, we need some processes in place. We need somebody else to be in charge of hiring because we're going to need to be hiring. And so, yeah, you came and you were like, hey, I think that with your experience in these bigger companies, et cetera, can you kind of take that role? I mean, it was, I think chief operations officer, but it was really, we came up with that name because it was like, I don't know what we call this. It's going to be a little bit of everything. And so, yeah, that was a, that was a great time for me again to like try something new, stretch and put into practice a lot of the things I had been reading because I love, I love leadership, I love, I do love reading. And so, it was an opportunity to think through, okay, how, you know, and you, and the founders had already said, you know, this is the kind of company we're going to build. This is what we're going to do, but some of it wasn't, you know, on paper yet. And so, you know, that was part of my role was to help us all think through, okay, what exactly is the mission? You know, what are our values? I mean, we had, you know, excellence in generosity, where values from the very beginning was like, okay, is that enough? And so, it was, it was such a fun role and time to think through, what kind of people are we hiring? You know, what are we hiring for, you know, all those things? What are we, what are we going to be about and can you really codify that? Yeah. So, one of the things about you, and this is one of the reasons why I think you do have such a really exceptional growth mindset, is that you are a voracious reader and you learn a lot from the experiences of other people. You're constantly telling me about a new book that you've gone through and you're take away as you take notes, you're, you're deliberate and intentional. I think that's something that I've picked up from you. I was not reading nearly as much as I do now and even now, I don't really, you know, physically read it. I do audiobooks because I have terrible eyesight. But it's a habit that I picked up from you and I've seen how you constantly have a lot of inputs. It's one of the reasons why you have a lot of fresh ideas. When you stepped into the role, we were probably about 15 people and we pretty quickly doubled the organization and it was like we'd gone quite a few months without even hiring somebody and we'd gone to the point where it was just kind of absurd that we hadn't hired people that we had under hired and then you came in in a matter of months, we basically doubled the organization. What'd you learn through that process? People are the most important part of the organization that you cannot compromise on who you bring into the organization. I mean, especially when you're like 15 people, like those first hires, I felt great pressure in a good way to like get the right people. Foundational hires. And they were and they're still here and they're still cornerstones of what we're doing. And so yeah, so the people are the most important thing. Two, an interview is helpful, but prior work experience track record, track record and like talking to people that they that worked with them and even getting to work with people are there's no substitute for that whenever you're trying to hire it. If there's a way to have somebody work on a project before they hire, you hire them, you have them do it. But you just interviews are really helpful and they're an important piece of it because you do learn a lot, but you just can't go on just that because you can miss people. And this is what the research says. The research says that what we end up doing when we primarily base things off of interviews is that we look at, you know, we get over, over indexed on physical characteristics. We hire people that are taller, that are better looking, people that are more extroverted, present better in person. And none of those things have high correlation to better work output that we just end up hiring people that present better, but not necessarily that are going to be better for the role. And that's where I think previous track record matters. One other thing I want to call out and then really the majority of this conversation we're going to have is actually going to be about marketing, which is your current role. But I do want to hear you mentioned this. When you came into the COO role, I think one of your big convictions was we have a lot of ideas of what we want the company to be about. And we talked pretty openly about this. Those existed from day one, but we had not really crystallized those and we hadn't codified them. We hadn't put them on paper. And you were dead set that this was a thing we needed to do. We had to do. I was kind of rolling my eyes in the sense that I felt like, well, everybody gets it. Everybody knows what we're about. Why do we have to do this? But you really pushed me that, hey, this was something to do. why was this such an important thing for us to step for us to take as a company? Yeah, I mean, I had, again, seen a lot of different businesses and asked questions of their founders. What was it that did it for you? Like, what was it that was foundational to success as a business? And it kept coming back that we were really clear on mission vision and values. I'd read a number of books on it, the culture solution by Matthew Kelly. It really hammered that point home and he had so many examples. I really admired the business that Chick-fil-A had built. I really admired the way that culture and that was one of the core things you'd asked me to do is like, let's really, let's really, you know, be focused on the culture. So I was like, who's really concerned about it? And I read two or three books on Chick-fil-A and then there was a couple of books from Netflix that were really helpful and all of those folks were saying, even if you feel like everyone knows what it is, you've got to get it down early in the company so that people don't waver whenever decisions get hard. And I just thought everything they're saying is exactly like what we want and we've got to fight for it and we've got to make sure that it's written down so that in five years when you're not talking to everybody as much as you were able to early on that we all know exactly what is. Here it is. This is what we're about and we're going to live it, but you have to have it on paper and it was really fantastic and it's the way that we evaluate, you know, at the end of the year, it's how we evaluate people, how aligned are you with our values? And that's the feedback that people get and so there's all kinds of ways. I'm proud of the way that we have kept to that seven years later that the mission is still exactly what we're about. Everybody would say that it's what we're about and people know I'm either doing a good job or not doing a good job based on how aligned I am with the values of this company and I think that's great. I think it was a huge win for the company and right as you got to the point of being very comfortable in that role, I did it again. Yeah, thanks. I can't exactly because I'm very good at this Chris, I want you to really throw your heart and soul into something and then right when you feel like you're hitting your stride. But you know, the reality was that I needed you in a different role because we had grown as an organization, we'd grown sales at this point. I think when I approached you, we were probably in the 60, 70, 80 million dollars in sales. So we'd definitely gotten to some scale and we had a great solution in leading up sales. And I felt like there were other people you had really established. I had kind of taken the baton for while you'd taken the baton for while we'd established the type of person. We were looking for the type of culture we were aiming for. But what we did not have built internally was really a marketing creative machine that to run a consumer brand, you have to be strong in these areas. And we just had way under invested in building out those capabilities. And so I was kind of faced with a decision that I could either go outside of the organization and try to find someone that had a lot of experience doing these things and bring them in as kind of an expert or I could hire internally. And my preference has always been to promote internally. I think if you want to attract really top leaders and you want to retain top leaders, then they need to be able to see that they're going to be able to advance within the organization. And I've always felt like if I can avoid it, I want to avoid going out to get that person. We've done it in certain situations. So I started looking internally and thinking who's the person that could lead this. And I think the combination of you having done some things in the kind of customer marketing realm combined with the fact that you just shown an amazing growth mindset that I could plug you into a new situation and you could very quickly pick up a lot of the skills and fundamentals because you do read so much and you do have such a desire to grow. You do often get together for breakfast with people in the industry and other leaders in the business world just to pick their brain and just to learn. And so I approached you about becoming the chief marketing officer. When you were first approached with the opportunity, what were your thoughts? I was humbled. I mean by the idea that you would think I could do something else. I shared it with a family member and he was like, are you sure that they're not sure what to do with you? And this isn't one step from getting rid of you. I said, I don't think so, but you could be onto something. But so I thought, I thought what a great challenge. This is, it's been kind of tangential to things I have been doing for a really long time. I worked with marketing a lot. You know, when I was in sales and when you're on the Walmart team, you have a lot of interaction between marketing and had done shopper marketing, which is more like in the store, kinds of marketing. So like was familiar with marketing concepts, et cetera. But so was excited, was nervous, was thinking, you know, this company is heading towards being a really big company. So I've got a lot of work to do if I'm going to become the right leader for a long time in this role. And so got to work at like learning as much as I could about what does it take to lead a marketing organization? What are the things you need to know? What are the things that need to be true of your marketing? What is what needs to be true about what you understand about the customer, what your messaging is, how are you going to tell all those sorts of things? Like I got to go, I got to go to school on all this stuff. Because now it's like, I'm going to be giving direction and not just kind of taking what other people had come up with and then applying it to my retailer. Now it was like, no, now it's like you need to work with your team and you're going to be providing that sort of leadership. And so, yeah, it was an exciting time that three years later, I feel like I'm just as excited and need to learn just as much as I did back then. So now you are the chief marketing officer for Simple Modern. We are a brand that does nine figures in revenue. And you're stepping into the role. The very first thing is you were determined to really know our customer inside and out. I remember you telling me like, I can't be effective in this role if I don't understand our customer and kind of crawl inside their mind. So how did you go about that process of starting to really understand our customer on a deep level? Yeah, I mean, I am not a creative person. I'm not going to be creating designs, et cetera. And so, when I got into the role, it was like, okay, the value I bring here is quality of thought on what we're going to do, who the customer is, how we're going to talk to them. And so, I was like, I don't know. I mean, so I started with like looking at reviews, Amazon reviews, don't understand how people thought about products because that was a data available to us. And then pretty quickly, just got into focus groups. We had a number, you know, we had tens of, at that point, tens of thousands of people that were signed up for email. So reached out to folks and just said, and this was still in the middle of COVID. So wasn't trying to do anything in person, but was able to through Zoom have many different. So it was literally just talking to customers on Zoom. Yeah, I just said, you know, here's, I will offer you a free water bottle if you'll be a part of a focus group and just give us an hour of your thoughts on the brand, you know, why do you buy, et cetera? What do you, what do you capture in a conversation like that that's not going to come through from doing a survey or something a little bit higher level? Well, I didn't, I hadn't even done a survey at this point because I wasn't sure even, you didn't even know to ask. I wasn't a heart percent sure what to ask. And so it was like, I wanted to get a sense of, you know, the, the kinds of questions we ask at that point, I really wonder, stand, why are you buying? What do you, what do you think about the brand? Does brand play into it at all? Because we, we have some opinions on why we think you're probably buying. And so it was like, asking other questions like, if, if simple modern had a radio station, what do you think would be played on it? You know, are you, are you buying, who are you buying for? Are you buying for your husband and your kids? Because, because we could see in the Google Analytics that, you know, women were our primary, you know, purchaser, but one to understand who was using it, how were they using it? All those sorts of things and got so much information, you know, the biggest thing that we learned early was our mission. Most people don't know what it is. Yep. At that point, that was like three, three years ago. Like, most people don't know what the mission is and it is just a nice to have. And where we were thought, this is maybe like one of the bigger reasons they're buying from us. But really, it came down to quality style and value. And it was like, okay, that's, that's what we're hearing. And so then did, biggest there, I want to talk about that for a little bit. Because, you know, it was, it was a period where we were trying to understand what are our distinctives. How do we really emphasize how we're different than our community? competitors and we really felt like our commitment to generosity was both what made us special and what made us different. And I think your research was really helpful in the sense that we needed to understand what customers wanted to hear from us. I teach at OU and I work with a lot of students that are entrepreneurship majors and they are coming up with business ideas and to a lot of them what we've done with simple modern is kind of a beacon of hope like this is the type of business I want to build. Unfortunately what that can lead them to do is come up with these business models where it's almost like they start with who do I want to give money to. And then let me throw a business model on top of that and I've really had to emphasize that is just not how the market works. I mean we talk a lot in this podcast throughout the episodes about our culture and about giving and although they are integral to how the company runs and I think what makes the company special most customers they do not want that to be our lead foot and and even some customers just don't care. They want to know about the product first and foremost and I think we had to really kind of come to grips with that and understand okay what is it that customers want to know why are they purchasing us what makes us special in their eyes and instead of what is the story we want to tell what is the story that customers need to hear in order to connect with the brand. Yeah 100% you know yeah we did follow-up surveys where we sent it to a few thousand people and got feedback I think the very first survey the big survey did had 700 people and that was totally consistent everything we heard in the survey was totally consistent with what we heard in the focus groups and so it was like okay I think we've got I think we've got we understand who you know who we are who our customer is how do they see us why are they buying us and you mentioned it but you say it again what was that intersection where yeah it was we really did well it was style so what a style was so style was the look and so what does that matter to customers yeah so this was something that you really caught on early in our company was that people think about drinkware as an accessory like they would choose or a purse and so we were we were offering at that time I think between 15 and 20 colors on Amazon when most folks were doing maybe four or five colors that may not be true but that's how I remember it that we were by far had the most colors and people really were able and we're very affordable you know luxury and so people were able to buy different colors to match and so that was important to them quality was number one they were like your product keeps my drinks cold for 24 hours it's I mean they they really thought we were putting magic into it yeah you know because this was this was early early enough that you know double walled documents related you know drinkware was it was just like crazy it keeps it cold I go to bed and there's ice in my cup and you know the next morning and that was that was the number one reason and and then and then even though we didn't talk about it and we haven't talked about ourselves as a value brand but that we were at a more competitive price point than more you know better capitalized competitors and so they were like you've got the colors I want the quality is as good as anybody and I'm not paying as much like as long as you guys are what's not to look as long as there's that formula like I'm gonna keep by like you keep doing that in other categories and people have said that you know it's like because we that was other things we asked them like what would be you know innovation that you would you know be willing to consider from us and and anything along those lines around style quality and value has done really well today's episode is brought to you by the van group about a year ago we decided it was time to update the simple modern website we desired to create a look that elevated our brand while keeping a focus on performance and speed we talked to many other business owners for a list of recommendation and after talking to several potential partners we chose to work with the van group over the past several months we have been working closely with the van team on building and launching our new website kick things off the team it banded a fantastic job of gathering our input and walking us through a proven process to create a winning product van group has developed a proprietary brand conversion design framework using this strategy van is able to deliver highly creative and perform at websites don't compromise on brand and improve the bottom line in our experience we've been impressed by their deep knowledge creativity and collaboration once our new website launched the team at van work tirelessly to address issues and make data driven improvements for all these reasons I'm very happy to advocate for the van group and their outstanding team you can learn more by visiting their website the van group dot com there's been this combination of forces that have helped the company to be successful and you know survivorship biases are real thing it is so easy when you've made it and things have gone well to say well let me tell the story about how smart we are and how we did all the right things pushed all the right buttons and although that's a story I would love to believe it's probably not accurate the reality is that we've had probably the intersection of good fortune some good strategic insight and then some tailwinds that just happened from being in the right place at the right time obviously the being in the right place at the right time our category has become it's just become a massive category if you look across hard lines in in housewares like it's the best category you could have been in over the last seven or eight years and so some of that is like we just we just are in the right place at the right time and I would be the first to say that yeah and not only that but we really chose to focus on Amazon during a period where Amazon won huge you know I've made the joke before that 30 years from now it really felt impressive to us to build the company but 30 years from now people might look at the case study of simple water and be like well of course those guys you know got really big they were in drinkware on Amazon like how could they you know you have to be an idiot to not become big yep but one place where I do think it mattered the insight that we had is we really believe that drinkware could become a more fashion driven category and I think that's been the mega trend the mega trend has been that this is an accessory that people do think about hey how do I buy a water bottle where the color matches my dress or I have a different looking one for when I go to the gym yeah versus when I'm at my my desk in my office versus you know when I'm on the go or whatever else and that once we realize that we realize that or I think we had that theory that thesis very early on in the company and we just have progressively learned leaned into it and one of the reasons why this is worth highlighting is it's one thing to say hey style is a huge part of why people are buying but you were walking into a marketing role where it's all about convincing people to buy our product based on style if you don't have a really robust product pipeline where you are constantly bringing new looks and new designs and new styles to the market you're you're gonna be dead in the water yep right like there's only so much you can do with creative you know but if you don't actually have the assets you don't actually have a lot of different looks that you can show to people it's gonna be very difficult for you to succeed if style is and fashion is one of the mega trends in your category yeah we we were we had a creative director that was really great on staying on trends she really understood you know this idea and like what people were looking for and and then just as a company we just value testing things and so we just we have I mean sometimes on Slack people will post old ornamentations we try and they're like look at this you know it's like yeah that is funny now but like at the time it was like we didn't know if if that thing that looked like a Pollock you know painting was gonna work or not because because you know it looked pretty cool and it was different it didn't work but then but now we've got new products that kind of remind me of those you know the Tarotso items that you know I have that kind of special look and you just don't know with fashion what is in today yeah at 1.4 years ago was really out yeah and so almost no matter what you try it's like if you just wait long enough it probably will be on trend and it will be I mean I don't know there was a terrible brown that we called Java Brown that we did and maybe that never is gonna be I don't know if that ever really pops I don't know what the demographic is that's gonna ever we know yeah we did try it and but I think that attitude is certainly part of what's made it successful yeah and obviously this is a big part of being successful in marketing is that you don't know what's going to resonate you don't know what ad what creative what video what what hook is going to really engage people so you have to have a willingness to experiment and test a lot of things that requires a team and a process how did you go about building a team to be able to make the enormous amount of creative assets that an organization like this requires at its scale yeah I mean we talked about earlier it's all about the people I mean we just had the early you know Hillary Barnet was our creative director and she has high capacity. She was able to produce a lot. Aaron Jesse was our first graphic designer. He was able just to crank out a ton of different things. And so it really, I mean, we could have had the best process that the marketing world had ever seen. But if we hadn't had those kinds of talented, hardworking, committed people, I don't think get what it worked. But we just, we do have processes. We use a tool called Asana and we get down ahead of it and we have campaigns and then we have sub-tasks where it's like, we need this community calendar. This many creatives for this. We're looking out. Our company is moving really rapidly. And so we're looking out about 45 to 60 days. Like we're not getting too far ahead of ourselves because things change so rapidly. But we're probably six weeks out and just making sure that everyone knows. And now at this point, it's like, okay, if we have a new product, we know there's photography that's going to have to happen in a studio. We know there's going to have to be lifestyle photography. We're going to maybe do some studio work where it is more stylized in a studio. And then we've got other people that are going to use that and create emails that are going to go out to people that have signed up for emails. And then we've got people creating social ads. And we're constantly evolving on this. I mean, just yesterday we had a meeting with half the team where we're just looking to ads and we're thinking through, how do we, because we launched a lot of new products this summer. And so how many new products did we launch this summer? I don't even know. From April to through August, it was probably 10 or 12. Yeah. A varying sizes. And if you include, we have both product launches where it's like, hey, this is a new, you know, this is a new lid or a new type of water bowl. We had things where we got into totally new categories. This is a tote. This is a beach bag. And then we had a lot of things where it's like, hey, now we're doing Harry Potter. Now we're doing, you know, Marvel or whatever, where it was licensing based, where so there were a lot of different needs for a lot of needs. And one thing that you can't do when you're launching this many is is get super concerned about every pixel that I get that pixel right? Is that shade of that email just right? Which creatives can do that? You can do that. I think that has been part of my role is to help us not do that. Where it's like, I know you guys want to make this where if you put this in your portfolio that you could, you know, everyone would be amazed. But like, it's, we've got, there's got to be a balance here between like what really represents the product and the brand well and what's perfect. And so a lot of times I've had to be the, hey, that you may not think so, with that's amazing. Like, let's, let's ship it. I think managing creatives, you're not a creative, right? You know, I'm not, I appreciate it. And so I can, this is just like, you know, in a process, 100% you would not test out as a creative. You would test out as somebody who's very good at developing processes and organizing people. And I think you've done that. But obviously the people that you're working with are primarily creatives. And I think that I've seen this really commonly, people, more business-minded people struggling to work well with creatives because their way of processing the world is so different. And you mentioned this, but to creative, they get a vision in their mind of what could be the way that that picture could look or the video could come out. And it's very frustrating. There's a lot of dissonance when they're not able to recognize that vision. And it can be really difficult to be, if you're creative, to be asked to, hey, I know that's not, you didn't get to your vision, but it's good enough. And now we need to move on to the next thing, because we have another, you know, thing coming. How do you do that? How do you balance helping them to do their best work, but then knowing when it's time to move on, even though they could continue to tweak and perfect, you know, that picture or that video? I think what one thing that's been helpful is casting a vision for where the company's going. Because I think that it can be tempting to want to say this thing that I'm working on right now is the most important thing that we're going to work on all year, but it is just going to be one of the most important things. So I think it's constantly reminding folks, this is where we're going. Like this is like this is going to get a lot of wax at the you're going to yeah, it's like if you don't love, if you don't love this one, apply what you want to do to the next one. And so I think it's continually, you know, just keeping people's eyes up and not down is one of the most important things. And I think for me and for the creatives, I have found asking them, what are you trying to achieve here? Like before I would give any feedback or push too much on anything, it's like, what are you trying to achieve? And like really talk through and it's like, do we need that or not? Because sometimes it is like, okay, that is worth taking that extra hour or two hours to make that happen. But sometimes like, I hear what you're trying to achieve, but I don't know that on this one, we need to necessarily achieve that. We don't even know where you'd find five drafts for that shot. Yeah, exactly. Where it's like you can easily, you know, in pursuit of that perfect you're sure or whatever, like the time, the cost can just blow out and helping them to be realistic. I'm showing appreciation. You know, I think just just show an appreciation that I recognize what you want to do here. And it's amazing, but we are going to have to like keep moving. Yeah. And I think that helps. So you have to balance a lot of quantitative inputs along with qualitative input. I mean, creatives are mostly going to give you qualitative input. How do you balance those two things? I think by testing things, by split testing, you don't have to, you can, you can keep more people happy because you're trying to think that they want to try. You're not having to say no as much whenever you're like, let's just split test it. Yeah. Let's just split test. You're thinking this, some data is maybe saying this might be a better solution, but we don't know. Let's split test. And so I think testing constantly. And so that's what we do. We're always like when it comes to ornamentations, we're doing surveys where our customers are telling us what ornamentations do you like best? Do you like this kind of color and this kind of look or is it this? And that just helps immensely, you know, focus us on what we want to do. And so I think when it's not just I think, but it's like we know this. It's really helpful. It's so easy to get into qualitative debates, especially with people that have a strong point of view as creatives often do. Where like you said, it devolves into I think, or I feel, you know, I feel like this would be best. I feel like our customer really wants to see this. Or I feel like this would be the same thing we did last time. And to be able to say, okay, in order for us to have unity and cohesiveness of purpose and work together as a team, we have to be able to use something objective to get aligned. And I think you've done a really good job at saying, hey, we're going to allow our customer and our customer's feedback to help give us the data where we don't just have a bunch of I feel, I think, conversations. But where we combine our qualitative insights with what data has actually shown us. A great example, this is how we look at ornamentations and the way that we come up with new ornamentations. Do you want to walk through that? Yeah, so like I mentioned, we've got Hillary's in charge of ornamentations and she's looking at trends. She's, she's, she, and she does a great job of this of getting a sense of like, where is the market going to be in 12 months. And so she will put together hundreds of different designs. And we, they get put in, you know, survey software. It goes out to a bunch of customers. And we, we start to rank, you know, where, you know, these ornamentations are going to be. And so we get a lot of data in that way. But I, there still is, there are choices they have to be made because it's like sometimes ornamentations are close to each other. So like, where do we truly get incrementality? And we don't have spend dollars or maybe we're trying to, you know, think of, you know, we need new designs on Amazon. It's like we're a partner, like we're working with a licensing partner that's like, hey, we really want this property included, even though it doesn't serve very well. And that's part of the contract. There's always considerations that are, you have to kind of stack on top of the feedback from customers. And sometimes buyers will make choices. So that's the process that we, we'll get in a room and we, we look at the rankings of all this and we have to make decisions on what, where's their incrementality? Where is there, um, like feasibility, like, can we actually execute on this like new style of thing? So ornamentations is a great place. Another place where testing has been really fantastic this year, we've done more of it this year is around our email marketing where it's like, how long does it, does it need to be? How short does it need to be? Where does it call the action need to be? When does it go out? When does it go out? What should the subject like? Like all those kinds of things. What percentage of our list do we send to? And we, and that we had been with a lot of like, I think that, you know, people aren't going to actually get all the way down if an email is that long. Um, and so we just started testing stuff and figuring out, you know, are people clicking? When do they click? When do they buy all those sorts of things? And it's been really helpful. And, and honestly, instead of being stifling to the creatives has been, it's been great because it's like, try stuff. Yeah, try it. And what it does is it It serves as a mirror and it gives them feedback of not just, hey, what of your work do it looks good to you? But what of your work is the most effective? And it gives them a signal of like, oh, when I did X, that really resonated with customers. Okay, well, I can lean into that and I can learn from that. So it helps them to advance in their career, understanding how to be more effective, which none of us can grow in our effectiveness unless we get feedback on how we're doing. And we, and like you said, the combination of experimenting, trying things and then getting feedback is a process that we all need, whether we're trying to become better as a creative or a public speaker or in leadership or planning or whatever, you know, category is shooting a basketball that you talk about, we need that feedback. So one of the things you do, anybody, you talk to any chief marketing officer, there's a combination of using internal resources and external partners. We've used some external partners that have been really helpful for us along the way. As you know, Oklahoma is not the most scenic place in the United States. That's what I'm told. It might be the second most scenic place. But we have partners that are based out of places like California. So when we're doing photo shoots or especially video shoots, sometimes we've used partners because of geographical locations and different reasons. How do you think about when to do something in-house versus when to outsource it to a partner? Yeah, I mean, as far as video goes, that one's pretty easy because we don't have the same sort of structure for models, you know, here in Oklahoma, we just don't have the volume of folks that you might need or locations. And so for videos, and we'll do videos for new products primarily because we need that sort of thing on Amazon or on our product detail pages on our website. So with videos, it's been pretty easy to know that we need support and just to get an outside view. So that's been an easy decision. As far as like, things like ads or emails or other sorts of creative resources that we need for our digital business, that's where it's been harder. I think for us, going into 22, the business was, we were really starting to feel it on the creative side and we were having the hiring in the creative space was going a little bit slower than the growth. And so it was like, okay, we have business imperatives that we have done. They have to get better. These products are launching whether or not they have to happen. They have to happen. And so then it was like, okay, we know that we're going to need outside resources to achieve our business goals. And so just being able to service the business dictated us when we need it because there has been, we have a really talented team. So we haven't had to go get a specific like skill set very often. We could do most things in house and maybe more people. But video has been one of those things where we've known early on that we need help there just because of all that goes into that. And I think you captured this ethos throughout our conversation. But you have a willingness to do things and to learn. And so the combination of having talented people that want to learn and grow and a willingness to learn and grow with them has meant that sometimes sure is there somebody out there who we could pay to do this at a B plus or an A minus level. Absolutely. But internally we could do it at a C plus or B minus level today. And my team can learn and grow and we can expand our capabilities. So we're going to do it internally when you have that internal willingness to test and to experiment and to allow people to grow into roles. That really increases the scope of what you can do internally for sure. Yeah, for sure. And we have it in growth mindset is one of our core values and we hire on that. And so really all the people that we get have that they're not complacent. How do you measure how you're doing at your job? Great question. I think obviously the sales of the company are I think all of us should look at that. I mean, it's the ultimate truth metric. I mean, it tells you is what you're doing resonating with people. So that start there for sure. And then from there, look at things like Google trends, like an Amazon search volume to understand. Just wrote about that last night on Twitter. We look at both of those. Absolutely. And so it's like it's awareness because you think about what are the things, how does marketing justify their existence and obviously sales is number one. But also things like brand awareness, brand affinity, net promoter score, all those sorts of things go into whether or not people are are we doing a good job of getting the message out there of knowing what the message is and then hitting the right people. And so right now we're seeing all those grow and everything's green right now. It feels like that we were doing a good job. We've done it like two different like national market surveys around brand awareness. Those have been very encouraging and then trending up. And even hearing because there are some qualitative questions and just hearing from those people saying, I saw you here. I saw ads here and it's like, okay, that's starting to give us some feedback that yeah, what we're doing is making people aware of us and growing affinity. And so we see with net promoter score in the 80s and 90s that like, I think one way that people can rate you lower on net promoter score is if they have an expectation of what something's going to be and then you don't hit it. And so I feel like we're doing a good job of saying, this is what you should expect from us. And then what they get is higher than that. And so that's been great. Yeah, I try that in my marriage all the time. Under sell what you're going to do. And then you're really happy with. Yeah. No, in all seriousness, I think that that's absolutely accurate. And part of the challenge is once you do have quantitative numbers that tell you how you're doing it in this case, where things are going really well, being able to deconstruct that. And then you add the qualitative in and say, okay, why do we think it's going that way? And even looking at our competitors and saying, who's growing, who's shrinking, why do we think that's happening? And that becomes the basis for not just our strategy in marketing, but also our strategy kind of across the business. What products we're going to release and everything else. So what's been the most challenging part in your mind of growing the simple modern brand? Yeah, there's so much that has been easy about this because of market trends, et cetera. But challenges have been, you know, a lot of D to C companies, primarily D to C companies have built into their margin structure a lot of marketing because that's how they're going to get customers is through digital marketing. And being on the channel the way that we are, we are priced in a way and we're giving way 10% of profits to nonprofits, which we are super excited to do. But it makes it more challenging because you do have fewer resources when you're competing against these, like if you're just thinking about the D to C part of the business. That makes it more challenging because you do have fewer resources to really try to get the message out there on new products. So we've had to be more creative on, you know, using, you know, things like Instagram, own channels, kinds of things that are more affordable. And so, so that's been one challenge for sure. I think another challenge is that there's so much competition finding the right message, finding the right brand distinctive assets to stand out in a crowded market has been, has been a challenge. But one that it seems based on, you know, just market trends that we're doing a pretty good job of competing. And I think another challenge is how do you marry the style quality value part of our brand with the generosity piece? Humility is a, you know, a value that we have. And so the idea that we're going to go around and beat our chest about the giving is just, it's not what we're, it's not core to who we are. And so we've kind of shied away from that. But at the same time, that's one of the most compelling things about our brand. Once you get beneath the surface of like who we are. And so I think finding that right balance of we do want people to know that we're the kind of company that's giving away, you know, giving away money and product to worthy causes. We do want people to know that because we do know that that will encourage and inspire others to do the same. And we want to be an agent of change. And so like just being able to kind of bring together all of those different messages in a cohesive way under the same umbrella is a challenge that I think this year in particular we're thinking through how do we do that? How do we tell the brand story while also having amazing products? How what's the balance there? Is it 90, 10 that you talk about it? And then also thinking through, you've got a lot of developments like when somebody buys a product, there's a box there. What do you mean, K on the box? Like how much of it is product versus the brand story? You got inserts and other things. And so I think all of that has been challenging to think through and to figure out how do you make those messages work. I mean, you're making a great point, which is to build a culture where we say we value humility. Self promotion and humility feel like Antonim. But you have to do some self promotion. I mean, that's the game. You're building a brand and trying to convince people that that brand is valuable and they should want to buy it. And so it's a fine line to walk. So we've been doing this for several years together. I'd love to hear what are a couple of your favorite memories from the road this far? Early on in the company, we were able to do this more. We would have times of affirmation where we would as an organization. And at that point, it was like between 10 and 20 people. And maybe even up to 30, we were doing this. But like we were just giving time to, hey, we're going to affirm Mike today. We've been or somebody else today. 45 minutes an hour going around a room. Yeah. Just sharing what we appreciated about somebody. Yeah. And it was like, what is it about them that you really admire? And it wasn't performance based, typically. It was very little of it had to do with their business performance. It was like, I love that when I had this issue, they were there. Yeah. I just look back at all those. And we still, and we do, we do still do affirmations. And I love it. But now it's like, it's just, it's a few people that do it. And we write it out. And it's really meaningful for people to be affirmed by their colleagues. And so whenever I got affirmed, just a really great memory, thinking about specific memories of just hearing people appreciate things. And that I'm so thankful that we've got that as a company. And I think that's a really uncommon. I think those happen in places. I think they probably happen in every company, but it's one person saying, I see this about you. But we're like, we're willing to take an hour. We think this is important enough for you to know how we feel about you. Yeah. And it's just, it's really impactful. Well, when we do it today, we'll usually do a few people. And someone will go out and gather feedback from several of their close co-workers. And then we turn it into a document actually that gets read. Yeah. But you're also presented at the end of that, you're presented with like a framed version of that document. And if you go around our office, one of the things you'll see in almost every office in the company, is that somebody will have their affirmation document of all the things people have said about them because it really is meaningful when other people affirm you with their words. I'm going to get you out of here on this. What gets you excited and motivated for the future? Yeah, I'm in my mid-40s and I'm one of the older people in the company. And the idea that we can impact the next generation of workers. That's what really gets me excited. I love the idea that there are going to be people coming to simple modern, some for their first job, and that they're going to get an idea of like, business can be really redemptive. Business can be something that is different, that is, it's going to pour into your life. That you're going to grow as a person, that you're going to, that you're, that we're not going to reinforce the idea that life is about attaining things, but about serving others. That gets me really excited. The idea that people can come from other industries or other businesses, and they have an idea of what business can look like, and then they get here and they're like, "Oh, it can be like this." So being a leader in an organization where that's true, gets me really excited. Chris, thanks for all of your thoughts. I think that your wisdom and your growth mindset really came through. And it's obvious why you've been so successful in a number of different roles. That's it for this episode. Thank you for joining us on Scaling For Good.