Patrick Criteser, CEO of Tillamook

(upbeat music) - Hey there, welcome to the Faces of Marketing podcast where we talk about the human stories and lives of different people and perspectives in the marketing profession and entrepreneurs and movement makers. This is your host, Ryan Buchanan, and I'm here with my friend Patrick Kreitzer, President and CEO of Tilla Mook. Welcome to the show, Patrick. - Thanks, Ryan. Thanks for having me. - Awesome, awesome. So before we get into some big, weighty topics, I wanted to start with what is your favorite ice cream flavor? - That's hands down chocolate peanut butter. Actually, I think my family accuses me of having eaten chocolate peanut butter ice cream every night for the 10 years before I joined Tilla Mook. So I've kept the street going. - That's actually my wife's favorite too, we're big Tilla Mook fans, and it's almost so addictive that it's dangerous to have a near freezer. So hard to keep to one bowl, I think. - For sure. Awesome, so you and I met, I think about a year ago through Tilla Mook's EVP of people and culture. Her name is Sheila Marti, she's an amazing woman here and you're lucky to have her. I agree with that, yes. And so I got to know Sheila when she was at Oregon Community Foundation, which you must have gotten to know her there 'cause you were on the board there. - Yep. - And so she was part of a small group of leaders in the community, men and women of color primarily. And I was one of the few white guys where we convened and she helped to inform this nonprofit that I've co-founded called Emerging Leaders to be, it used to just be thought of as an internship only program as a diverse college aged internship program. And she helped to inform and really with our mutual friend Sue Embrie, who's also been on the show, kind of helped give a vision for that program to be much more expansive for professionals of color from college to the C Suite and for it to be a leadership program. And so I think what she saw in putting the two of us together is two straight white guy CEOs on a similar journey around equity. And so I kind of wanted to kick it off with your journey and when you started to become more conscious and aware of your white privilege and just what, what were some of those moments? And I know it's been a journey, but their moments along the way if you could kind of talk to us a little bit about that. - Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to. I mean, certainly a journey. I had the opportunity early, the good fortune early, sorry, my career, Procter & Gamble, which back even in the early '90s, heavy emphasis on diversity in particular. I think the concept of inclusion and ultimately equity have sort of evolved over the last 20 or 30 years, but at that point, I really had an opportunity to learn about the value of diverse perspectives and experiences in the conversation, in decision making. And so I've kind of carried that forward with me a bit, but I'll say that certainly over the last two or three years, my understanding of the important dimensions beyond having diverse voices in the conversation. So for example, creating an environment where everyone's bringing their authentic self to the conversation, where we're avoiding driving things like assimilation that sort of naturally happens when you join an organization or a community. And then really sort of looking for ways to break down barriers that folks face because of their ethnicity, because of their background, because of their orientation, because of their immigration status, frankly. And so one of the things that, as I think about my journey, so I started, well, I grew up in a family with very little educational background, and then certainly modest means, and it felt to some degree like an outsider in a lot of situations. And through education, a lot of hard work, I've been able to enjoy some career success. And at least internally, I've always sort of thought of that as my story as an example of the opportunity for people that reach their full potential in our society, and in our capitalist oriented culture. Anything is possible if you made it, anybody can make it. Exactly, this kind of concept of, well, look, people helped me along the way, certainly emphasized that, and understood there's a lot of luck involved. But look, we have a system where people, anybody can make it. What I've certainly come to realize, I would say over the last five or six years, much more acutely, and certainly the last couple, even more so, is that that opportunity does not necessarily exist for everyone, and that there are barriers to institutionalize and societal barriers, and inequities that folks face that I didn't face. And certainly doesn't diminish the pride or satisfaction I take in what I've been able to accomplish, and the position I've been able to put myself in now in terms of impact, and again, never believing that that was done all independently. I had lots of help along the way, but it's certainly shifted my perspective about that story, about that idea that anyone can accomplish anything in the system we have, because I understand, I'm coming to understand, and this is a learning orientation, and an interest to serve has allowed me to kind of lean into asking more questions, trying to stay open-minded, and certainly I'm on the journey somewhere. Certainly, I don't have a full understanding of it, but as I think about my, you know, you ask the question about my journey around equity, I think it's certainly, even particularly over the last couple of years, this idea of how I see my own story, and my own experience has certainly shifted, and fortunate enough, you mentioned Sheila, but there are others in my life that are generous with their time and their thoughts, and are willing to sit with me and challenge some of the things I say and think, and to the extent that I can. Sometimes I struggle with a bit to the extent that I can be as open-minded as possible, and hear what they're saying. You know, it's certainly been on a journey that's going to continue. That's awesome. What I like about what I heard and all of that is that it is highly personal and not compartmentalized to like the office environment, and then like, "Oh, okay, now I'm going to leave that at the office, and I'm going to go home and go back to thinking in my personal life." Like, maybe was, you know, for me, raised in a house where we didn't talk about race, because, you know, we didn't have to, we weren't confronted with it, and you know, taught to not see color and all of these things. And I was raised by super progressive, like, amazing parents and family, but we've just come a long way into now knowing that those are like, now microaggressions to say, we don't see color because it doesn't acknowledge, you know, a person of a color's life experience and things like that. But I just, with that being said, you know, you shared your personal journey and would love to hear in Tillamook, because we're here in your office, and it seems like you've made some pretty major strides as a company, and it probably started with your personal journey. But you, Tillamook is like the iconic Oregon brand that deals not only with equity like we're talking about, but this rural and urban mashing together, 'cause you're a collection of farmers, but probably a lot of your consumers are urban. And so how has, like, what are some things that you've done here at Tillamook to embrace equity across some of the things that I mentioned, across race, across the urban rural, peace, things like that. I know it's a really wide topic, but maybe just expand on some of that. - Sure, yeah, thanks for the question. So a couple of the things that became clear early on. So I came here just about exactly seven years ago, and a couple of things became clear to me. One was we needed a more diverse set of voices around the table. So for us to make great decisions in this company, we need to bring in folks with different perspectives and backgrounds and invite them to bring their authentic self to the conversation. And so one of the places that was glaring for us was around gender and leadership. So we had, I think at the time, we had a little over 500 employees, and I think we had two women working in the company with the title manager. Today, we have 45% of all managers across the business. We have around 1,000 employees now. 45% of managers across the business are women. And they're all in the same company. And that's a heavy manufacturing intensive environment too, which tends to be a little more challenging in terms of recruiting gender diversity. And so we're very proud of that, but the better point of it is that we're making better decisions. And so that was one aspect of how do we get, how do we get a more diverse perspectives around the table to make better decisions? Another aspect was that, you know, and you mentioned the urban and rural. I mean, we have folks that work in Portland and frankly, other cities around the country. And we have a lot of folks in our ownership, the farmers that live in Toulmouth, and most of our employees, 600 plus of our employees are in Toulmouth County. And we have another 150 or so in Moral County, so they're living in rural areas. And you know, that was, that's been over time, certainly a source of tension, and it was at the time. But we shifted that, pivoted that conversation to say, this is an asset for us. This is a competitive advantage, and it will make us better to have urban and rural perspectives within the company, inside the company. And so, you know, kind of, so one, bringing in more diversity, and then two, and inviting them to participate, but then two, you know, shifting the way we see it to be an advantage rather than a challenge. And we talk about that today, you know, the fact that we're a 100 year old co-op, and at the same time, a growing innovation-oriented, progressive brand, those two things are intentioned, yes. But they're also, they're also an advantage for us. So, you know, in more recent times, we've gotten a lot more intentional about our inclusion and diversity work, you know, through, you know, through hiring practices, where we're making sure that candidate pools are more representative of the diverse communities that we're like, we're wanting to draw from and wanting to build here, through, you know, training around cultural agility, terminology, you know, awareness within the company. Also around our policies and practices, and how those create an environment of intentional inclusion. So, rather, or conscious inclusion, we like to call it, rather than unconscious bias, you know, kind of the proactive approach to that, and then social impact as well. And so, one of our, meaning how are we impacting the communities in which we're operating? And so, one of the things that I think has been important for us is a couple of years ago, we defined our core values. And one of those core values that we defined was, genuine care for the whole person. And the idea is that we're, we're kind of officially announcing our aspiration to not just see people as the role they're in, the productivity they have for the company, or the value they can bring to the business operations, but to take steps proactively as a company to serve them as the person that they are inside and outside of work. And so, you know, in particular for people that face, you know, social and institutionalized inequity and barriers, that's part of their life outside of the work as well. And so, if we think about the progress we've made, not just in recruiting more women to leadership roles here, but creating an environment in which their voice is heard and their influences is positively impacting the business, what are we doing in the communities where they live? Same thing with people of color. As we recruit more people of color here to the company in leadership positions and otherwise, how are we impacting their experience outside the business? So, those have been motivating factors for us as well. But certainly, you know, early on, the focus is probably a little bit more on how do we benefit the business with more diverse voices and including those diverse voices and decisions? And it's sort of evolved to this point around this value of genuine care for the individuals that work here in the communities and our obligation of social impact in the communities where we're operating. - That's cool. I think for us, we're a little different in that we're not nearly 1,000 employees, but our changes happen so fast and we don't quite have the infrastructure to have a large HR department and things like that where, you know, what I would imagine at Tillemook is that you're systematizing these things in, you know, at my agency, at thesis, we're like catching up with some of that systematizing and it's been very intentional but very organic and one of the things that I heard from one of our directors that I think a lot of people that are maybe newer on their journey in HR and when you're hiring and you often talk about a cultural fit and that mentality can really play into more homogeneous culture because you're like you talked about assimilating and one of the things that he mentioned is like in his creative department and design, they talk about and we've now adopted it throughout the whole company but a cultural addition, you know, so like where life experiences valued and that really looking across the whole team of what is needed to complement the whole team instead of very individual, you know, did you go to Ivy League School or did you go to this very traditional pipeline of where companies typically look at, we really look differently at pipeline and stuff like that. So I don't know, those are some of the things that you all do. - Yeah, absolutely that, I mean, that idea of fit versus being additive to the culture really resonates with me and it's something that we've tried to focus on here. You know, fit is a dangerous concept because it can easily just evolve into the same which would be the easiest implementation of that, you know, the same communication style, same relatable background, same interests, same industry, whatever it happens to be. And so I'm a big believer in putting that sort of somewhere in the process that's screened on a hire that says, what is this person bringing to my team to the team dynamics, the team thought process, the team capabilities that I don't have today? And if I can't answer that question, I think I need to keep looking no matter how talented and how great a culture fit that person is going to be, if they're not adding something to the team, then, you know, I think we probably aren't doing as well as we could with the hire. And a lot of times, and so if that's an objective then working up the funnel in terms of the candidates you're surfacing to make sure you're surfacing candidates with a range of backgrounds and experiences and life experiences, I think is important. - Yeah, yeah, just because this is a marketing podcast and I was doing a little bit of research before meeting with you. Here, I noticed a couple things that kind of reinforced what we were talking about six years ago in 2013. I saw online at this Oregon Business Plan Summit that you were key noting and there was a video that had all this beautiful Oregon imagery. I think the quote in there is like, "The wagon trains came in the 1840s "and they kept going west as far as the west they could go. "A U or I or anyone else could claim 640 acres "and it was yours if you made any improvements to the land." So I looked at that video and then kind of compared it to, you know, kind of the language and the video of the Challenger project that just a year or two ago. And one of the things that like before I really had my awakening moment which was at the end of 2015 and I'm not sure if this was YouTube but like that language and the way it was with the imagery and it was like, "Oh, I'm an Oregonian like, like, tillumook all the way." But if we look at that, it's actually not really true because only 30% of Americans are white men and white men were the only ones that could get the 640 acres. There's a lot of women in America and then in America is almost 40% non-white right now. So anyway, I just I wonder if that it must be intentional that the language that you're using externally, not just we've been talking to everything internally, has changed because you've grown so much in your equity journey as a company. Is that accurate? - Yeah, I think, I mean, that's a really interesting example 'cause I think you're right on that, you know, at the time that video was put together, which actually interesting side story about that video from a marketing standpoint. So that whole voiceover, you know, it's, I don't know, it's like three or four minutes long, was actually just an interview with the head of the Oregon or the Tillemook Historical Society. And he just went on and it was so great that we said, let's just run that. There was no script, there was no actual voiceover intention, but your point is a really great one, which is that, you know, I've seen that video so many times you can imagine. And that just didn't occur to me that that language was, that was not true. Like you and I or I or anyone else, yet the guy who said it and I would qualify, but a lot of people, wouldn't. And so I think it's a great example of how putting a more culturally sensitive lens and an equity lens on the marketing communication is so important. In that case, if we were to do that today, are we any less proud of our history or heritage related to the company? No, but would we have included that line that I think is insensitive? No, I'm sure we wouldn't include it today. So I think that's a really interesting point. And so in terms of marketing, the way our marketing is today, I think you can, well, I'm not going to say that that, that folks in our history and heritage in the way that we did then was inherently bad or that the mark from an equity standpoint or that the marketing that we're doing now is targeted, you know, is driven primarily with an equity objective. What I will say is that you can see the lens difference. So when we launched the Derry Dunnwright campaign, which is one of our big, which was the point of our big shift in the topic of conversation for that challenger video that you referenced, there are, you know, there are various elements of photography that include people of color. For example, one in particular, there's a pair of hands breaking a two pound block of cheese, which is not easy to do, by the way, but kind of on video and slow motion and, you know, there are black hands. And I've had several people say to me, hey, I noticed that. That was really great. And so while I don't know that the, you know, that it was the primary driver or would be for either kind of campaign, certainly you can see the evolution and what you're pointing out in terms of our sensitivity to the issue. And, you know, we, you know, the intention is to be conclusive, certainly not to perpetuate societal issues. And as we can to advance, advance the progress that we need to make. Awesome. Cool. Um, yeah, so we're going to switch gears to our regular programming on the podcast. Um, and really just getting to know your story personally, not necessarily solely through inequity lens, but just kind of how you grew up. Um, I think it was in rural organ or outside maybe suburbs or rural, uh, here in organ and kind of what it was like grown up, you know, do you have siblings, mom and dad? What, how was it like Patrick as a boy? Yeah, so, I, um, my parents were divorced when I was very young and I lived with my mom, uh, in northeast Portland. Um, so maybe not that rural. No, but we're getting there. We'll get to that part of the story. Yeah. Um, so I lived with my mom, uh, in northeast Portland, uh, and in the Hollywood district. And we until I was 12 and then I moved in my mom ran into some, uh, financial issues that, and she had, uh, I have a sister, uh, that's a couple of years younger than I am. That's, uh, we have the same parents, and then I have two other much younger sisters that have a different father and, um, and so, you know, sort of taking stock of her economic situation. Uh, she came to, uh, my sister and I, the one next down and said, you're gonna, you're gonna need to go live with your dad. So we moved in with him, um, his wife and my three step sisters, uh, when I was 12 years old out in Corbett. So there's the rural part, uh, kind of not too far out of, out of Portland, you know, just a 30 minute driver. So, but certainly a rural area we lived on several acres and had some animals, you know, cow and some, that was back in the day, right? When Corbett was way out there. Yeah, Corbett, yeah, Corbett was farther away back then, wasn't it, you know, exactly. Um, so, uh, yeah, I went to Corbett Middle School, Corbett High School, um, you know, pretty small school there, uh, then, uh, my graduating class, class of 1986, uh, Corbett Cardinals was, there were 49 of us in my graduating class. So quite a small school. Were you into sports and, you know, what kind of stuff are you going to do? Yeah, well, the cool thing about being in a school with like, you know, whatever, 180 people in it, or something, 200 people is that you get to do everything. So, uh, yeah, I played football and wrestled and I was, uh, student body president and, you know, kind of pretty active in the school. Uh, and, uh, you know, kind of, it definitely, because it was so small, felt like sort of one class, one community, clearly, when you're dealing with that few people, um, more so than, you know, my kids go to larger schools and it definitely is kind of more split up in terms of groups. And so, and like, did you, were you begging to the outdoors or I kind of want to know like, what, what'd you do as a kid on the weekends, like, you know, 10-year-old boy? Yeah, um, well, I mean, at 10, I was riding my bike around Northeast Portland until the street lights came on and we all raced home, right? So, um, so, you know, but I really was into sports always growing up, played basketball before high school, before I switched to wrestling, but, um, you know, definitely into sports, like to be outside, running around getting into trouble at that age. And then, you know, as I got older and we, and moved out to Corbett, um, certainly I did appreciate, although probably not as much as I do now, did appreciate the, uh, the forests and the hikes and the things that we could do out there. But, you know, in high school, I was a busy guy. I mean, sports all year round and, uh, I studied really hard. I was very much into school. Um, I, uh, you know, I, I feel like, uh, a couple teachers early on, either, either they were right or not, but they convinced me that I had an aptitude for academics. And as I mentioned before, um, my, uh, no one in my family had been to college before and in fact, my dad's father dropped out of school in the fifth grade. And so, um, but, you know, sort of as I, as I, as I got great support and continued to kind of, um, you know, achieve in school, I realized, this, hey, there's something here to this. I can win at this. I can, I can do well in school. I can leverage that into, uh, into a college education. And then who knows? I could do great things someday. So, for me, academic sort of materialized, does that opportunity to, uh, to really, you know, kind of create a, a life of impact that I wanted to? And what, because I work with so many college kids and my daughters about to go to college next year or in a year, always, I'm super curious, like, what drove the decision of, I would imagine you had a lot of options in front of you, why you dub and was it their engineering program or was it just like, yeah, why university, Washington? So, uh, yeah, good question. Having, having just gone, having gone through this in the last four years with three of my kids in terms of what schools they picked and, and how competitive is everything, it's funny to think back on 1986 because how I figured, how I learned about schools, how I got the application to put in a typewriter, like I have no idea. I mean, this is such a different, you know, different world at the time, but you didn't tour a lot of schools in your kid. Yeah, there was, there was no touring happening. There was no, uh, the, the, when I went, when, when my dad drove me up to Seattle and we landed on the university, Washington campus, it was the first time I'd been on a college campus in my life. So, you know, there, there, there wasn't a lot of, you know, input, but what I do recall finding somewhere, getting in the, not on the internet back then, right, but finding somewhere in the library or something, a list of the top ranked engineering schools in the country. And so, I applied to a few of those and UW seemed the most within reach. Also, the, I don't know if it still does, but University of Washington had a, Oregon Washington had a reciprocity program. So, in state tuition, you can get in state tuition if you, so I think the deal was if you were one of the top GPA students from Oregon at a Washington school, you know, they, they, they would go down the list and pick a certain number and then you could get in state tuition. So, I was working towards that and I did it and I'm ultimately getting that, but, um, but that, that was a factor. And, you know, just no money to fly places and, you know, all that, just the opportunity to drive up there. Right. Got it. Um, so, if you had to think about most of the time in our lives and kind of the premise of this podcast is often, um, something that happened in your kind of foundational years, which typically is, uh, high school, college and right after. Um, do you have, is there, was it that moment of moving to corporate at 12 years old or was there another moment in that 12 to 22 timeframe where it was like a big obstacle that you ever came that is like either very independent. Um, so maybe go into college. Or it was just really hard and you, it gave you more grit and perseverance and so it's like, oh, this allowed me to be on a leadership track because of something hard I overcame or independent or both. Yeah. Um, that's a good question. I a couple things come to mind. One is certainly that move into my dad's house because at the, at the time, my dad, uh, with another partner was starting a business, um, which, you know, ultimately did not, you know, pan out the way he wanted to, but during, those first couple of years that I moved into his house, he was working 24 hours a day, sleeping at the office doing all that. And so there was a pretty rapid transition to a lot of independence. So two things. One is I got to see how hard he was working, which was inspiring. He's pouring himself into something. And then the other thing was just here I am on kind of on my own, you know, to and from school and practices and meals and all that. And you know, I just sort of adopted this probably level of independence. You know another thing, we talked about the UW transition or move up to Washington. And you know, I can think of a lot of times in my life, I sort of referenced this earlier, where I felt really out of place, you know, showing up on a college campus, you know, we showed up, we went to the dorm, then realized I need bedding because the school doesn't supply that. You don't know that if you've never been to college. I can't. And no conversations in your family about college because you were the first to go to college. So, yeah, so many. Here's what to expect. None of that, right? None of that going on. And so, so, you know, that's one example. I mean, certainly later at Harvard Business School, you know, even some elements of just sort of day to day living, like being in a restaurant, you know, what to do exactly, you know, those kinds of things sort of have emerged for me constantly, how to go on a date, how to go on a date. Yeah, any of that stuff, right? I mean, it's just like, okay, I'm going to try this and it will figure it out, right? And so, there's some amount of kind of vulnerability that kind of helps in those situations. And just sort of this learning orientation, what are other people saying? What are other people doing? How are they acting? And how do I need to act to be able to fit into this situation? And so, well, certainly, I mean, referencing our earlier part of the discussion around equity, I mean, certainly I enjoy a lot of advantages as a white male, but but there's a lot of just sort of discomfort. And then it works out. And so, I feel like that's a pattern that's kind of stuck with me. And it translates into business, you know, kind of our approach to business strategy or things that I want to, you know, teach my kids or get involved in outside of work is that, you know, I don't know, let's try it and see if we can make it work. And if we believe enough that it will, and we work hard and we make smart decisions along the way, we'll figure it out. Yeah, I mean, as an entrepreneur, I absolutely relate to just try it, like, you know, jump and we'll figure out, figure it out along the way. So that definitely resonates. So I wanted to build off of graduate from UW. And I saw, it's not that I did that much research, but there were a couple good videos online. One of them was with our mutual friend Craig Wessel, publisher of the Portland Business Journal. And I guess the question here is, it seems like you had an incredibly positive experience with the like a leadership training or almost like an academy within Procter & Gamble. And if you had to choose between that and Harvard Business School and everything that comes with that, the network and the education, all that stuff, which do you think was more beneficial to your personal professional growth? I mean, both certainly have afforded benefits and a lot of learning. But I mean, I if I had to pick one, I'd pick the PNG experience, the Procter & Gamble experience. I mean, the opportunity to be a shift leader, you know, at age 22 and all the humility that comes with that and all the learning that comes from managing 28 people that are all your parents age, you know, kind of quote unquote, managing, right, learning how to adjust to that and how to approach leadership from a servant, kind of from a service orientation. That was tremendous. And then kind of referencing the earlier comment about, I mean, the values that PNG, you know, kind of implemented or leveraged or worked built off of in day-to-day decisions was really strong. You know, and I would say too that the PNG experience really colored my view of what business can and should be in that I see, you know, I see business as an important pillar of our society that not only can, but has an obligation to play an important role in the progress we are making and need to make. And I mean, business creates economic activity that provides jobs and funds, state and federal tax payroll or tax roles, but way beyond that. And I know there's a lot in the news about this lately about, you know, the business roundtable coming out with a multi-stakeholder model versus the, you know, fiduciary obligation just to the financial stakeholders. But I really see business as that as that, that opportunity, not just to impact the employees, the work of the business and their families and their kind of by association, their communities or churches or whatever happens to be, but also just how communities need to show up in the, how companies need to show up in the community. Yeah, I was nodding at my head a lot in that, the way that I would say it and maybe a few less words is that business can be a platform for good in the community and it's an amplifier. So when I look at, you know, other entrepreneurs, friends of mine, or like, what are you going to sell the company and, you know, basically sit back and be some retired guy that maybe does volunteer thing here or there. And that's just not interesting to me because I feel like, you know, you have a thousand employees here at Tillemook, we have 120 at thesis. And if you can inspire your employees to get engaged in specific areas, maybe it's around equity or things like that, it's, you're amplifying by a thousand, you're amplifying by 120 versus as a retired, you're just another retired old white guy. Like that doesn't have as much impact because you, you can't amplify what your, your employee base can get engaged in. And so, and then that ripples throughout all of society. So, I think, you know, obviously, B-Corp is a community we're not a B-Corp yet, but there's a lot of like-minded companies like Tillemook and thesis in Portland, especially. And, you know, I just think it's important for people to not think, oh, government and nonprofits are going to solve this and business needs to just be purely greedy capitalist picks. Like, it's just not, it's not good for business, frankly. So, no, I agree. And I think, I mean, you're a great example of how thesis gives you that platform to, you know, do good, not just within the company, but then through your employees and their activities and then into the community through your role at thesis and the leverage that gives you so that, no, that's fantastic. You didn't have to say nice things about me. Happy to, maybe I'll ask you some questions too. That's another time, another time. We only got a couple questions left. So, you have had a professional journey of going from Procter & Gamble, then you went to Business School, then Disney, Nike, then this, a total shift in going to Smart Force with a very, you know, kind of embedded in the Portland scene as far as a Angel/Venture Partner, and then went back to kind of mid-sized companies with Farmer Brother, Coffee Bean International and now, Tillumook. So, I wanted to give that context to our 173 listeners. But what was the, what was kind of one of the hardest things that you've had to endure? And it's always like the most painful things are often the things that are the biggest learning opportunities, but you would never seek them out because they're so painful. Do you have one or two of those moments in that path? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think the coffee bean international, sort of Farmer Brothers kind of situation and transition really was that. It was very challenging and it gave me a lot of opportunity to learn and I'm very grateful for that opportunity. So, you know, we had coffee bean international was a great company. When I joined it, it had been around 40 years, pretty small business and just great people and great culture and product. And so we grew it pretty rapidly through some really fun years of expansion and then sold it to, it was a private equity owned. So, you know, private equity partners that get to the end of their investment life cycle and sold it to Farmer Brothers, which was, you know, a public-e-traded NASDAQ-traded company based in Los Angeles. And so, then we, so the CEO of Farmer Brothers who had acquired us said, you know, you guys are on a great trajectory. You've got a great strategy. And, you know, in part of the sale, I agreed to a lock up. You know, it's pretty common, right? So I've got to stick around. I actually to three years. Part of it was because I really loved the company and I wanted to keep doing it and part of it was just negotiating and all that stuff. Typically, it's a year. What I've seen is private equity companies leave the company that's been acquired alone for a year and then literally at the 366th day, it's like, "Okay, making big changes." It feels like that from the outside. No, I think that's right. I knew I was green to a really long lock up, but the arrangement, what I believed would happen was in the CEO who had acquired us told me, "Look, what you're doing is fantastic. You're the growth engine for the company. You keep doing what you're doing and we don't really need to do a lot of integration here. We'll look for opportunities, but you can stay very independent." He said he's got some other things he's going to focus on. I really love that company. In fact, a lot of the people that worked there work here at Tullumook now. It's just a great culture and great business. I wanted to stick around. But during that period, farm brothers made another acquisition. That didn't go very well. It was a bigger one than ours and that didn't go very well. What it happened was a couple of things. One is there was some pull gravitational pull towards integration. I was getting pulled more into being on the leadership team of the parent company and I was resisting that. There was a phase where I was trying to stay away from the parent company. Somebody gave me some great advice and said, "If you're in this situation, make the most of it. Leaning out is not doing anything for anyone. You're not learning anything. You're not having an impact. If you don't like the situation, lean in and make a positive impact." That was one of those moments for me. Somebody hitting on the side of the head with a two by four. "Okay, wait. You're right. I can have a positive impact." I started to lean in more to that situation. Act like a member of the leadership team with the parent company contribute to overcoming some of the challenges associated with this other acquisition that they had made. Then through a crazy series of events, I find myself as co-CEO of the parent company fairly suddenly. The parent company, farm brothers, was stock price had dropped from 18 to 4. It was losing 6 million in cash a month, losing thousands of customers a year. It was just a death spiral and had thousands of employees spread all over the country and a lot more leaving and just a lot going on. So leaning into the situation better prepared me to serve the organization in that way. The other part of that story, just to cut it short, but while it was a publicly traded company, there was a significant shareholding by the third generation of the guy that had founded the family that had founded the company. They were pretty big stock shareholders. For some reason, they had an unreasonable and unwarranted kind of disliker, distrust of me. I think because they didn't really like the acquisition of our company in the first place. The whole time that I'm trying to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, spend every week in LA and all over the country trying to turn this company around, which was going to benefit them. They were sabotaging you. They were investigating me with private investigators and crazy stuff was happening. You were getting followed around? I was. Yeah. And people like friends of mine would get knocks on the door like as a Saturday morning and they call me and say, "Some weird private eye." I kept calling this family and saying, "Let's just sit down." I'm like the least interesting person you're ever going to investigate. There's nothing that you can't know, but anyway, so it's a longer story. But the point of that was, we got the stock price back up. We got a cash flow positive. We got employees re-engaged. We got customer accounts turned in the positive direction. It was a really successful turnaround. A lot of people involved, not just me, but my co-CEO and the rest of the team. We served that family well in terms of their, the future of their company that their grandfather had founded and their economic situation. Yet they never recognized that and weren't going to come and thank me and shake my hand. But my role was to serve them. It helped me be empathized with where they were. They didn't know anything about the business. They weren't involved in it before. They were scared of the changes. They were concerned about what was happening. They didn't understand what was happening. My role was to serve them even in the face of their kind of strange behavior. I haven't faced that kind of strange opposition from the inside again. Hopefully I never will. But it did teach me to try my best to understand where somebody else is coming from and to understand my role in the situation. In this case, it was to serve these folks. That's what I signed up for and that's what I was there to do. It's just using an analogy. I've only had a couple scenarios where rocks are being thrown at me either internally or in a public way. It's got to be hard to do that day in and day out when it's not just one incident from the outside, but it's literally nonstop every day. It was very difficult. It was a long year. It was a lot of work. It was a crazy turnaround of a big company. A lot of difficult decisions. But what a learning experience. What a phenomenal learning experience. Folks throw some pretty big rocks at me now. I can take it. I'm used to it. But I'm proud of what we got done there and got done for their benefit. The last question I'm just really personally intrigued by this. I think a lot of people are out there in the community. The question is what do you love most about being CEO specifically here at Tellamoq? Where it comes from is I'm an entrepreneur. The only thing I know is to start something from nothing. You had a little bit of that with Smart Force. You were working with a lot of startups and things like that. I just think it's what's interesting about your path and Joth from Dutch Bros and what have you is. You got the training around brand, maybe at Proctor and Gamble. You're running a thousand person company. You have to have a sense of brand and marketing. What do you look for if you were to hire say in 25 years another one of you here to take over or how do you get to be CEO of a large consumer company? Yeah. One thing that's interesting about the CEO role and you know this is it is a unique role. People sort of, I don't know if it's subconsciously think of it as an amalgamation of all the other roles in the company or something but it's not. It's a unique role where you're sitting in a unique position to or almost sort of elevation to see small parts of everything rather than going deep on anything. Financial, marketing, ops, people, all of that. Exactly. Relationship to external stakeholders, all of that stuff. It is a unique role and until you're in it I don't think you really can understand or appreciate it. Folks, when you think about it, if you're leading sales for an organization, you could push a little bit because the finance person is going to say, wait, we can't do all that stuff. When you're CEO, there's no one's who's shoulder is up against your shoulder to push back on the crazy idea that you know is probably like 150% overblown but you'll get scaled back to 100. So there's a little bit of that. It's a little disorienting from that standpoint but you know the thing is it's also a unique role in that everyone else is really there to do the work of the business and so what's left for the CEO to do? Certainly connecting dots across all the different functions you talked about but I think more than anything it's supporting and developing the people in the organization and you know we've had great fortune here at Tillemok to attract and retain the phenomenal talent and you know I'm here to serve them in their capacities that they're where they're leading and how they're serving the business and you know one of the things that the CEO role does for you is by by absolving you of some of the day-to-day responsibility of you know planning next year's marketing campaign or closing the books it allows you then the space to think about how the organization works how people are supported how they're developing and how they're working across the organization with each other. You know the other thing for me is that you know I I'm very focused on close-up. culture and that's something that's developed over time. Certainly I've had to influence in all of those companies. But for two reasons, one is because I think culture is a competitive advantage. How we all work together today relative to how the competition works with each other today is what's going to really make us win in the marketplace. I believe execution is 80% of it in strategies 20%. So culture is what drives execution. How we get the best thinking and talent and energy from everyone and how they all work together. So I think culture is a competitive advantage but the other thing is culture can provide a fulfilling and enriching experience for the employees. And so as I've progressed in my career, that second objective has been elevated. And I still love the scoreboard. I love to win as much as everybody else. Market share, return to shareholders, everything else. But I also have increasingly kind of become interested in and weighted this idea of what experience are we creating for the people that work here. And so back to your question about the CEO role. The CEO is in a unique position to make broad sweeping changes that affect how people work together. And what their experience is at the business and how their careers progress and how, again, back to our value of how we're supporting people and genuinely caring about them as a whole person. Awesome. Love the conversation. Thanks for being on the show, Patrick. Thanks so much, Ryan. It was a lot of fun. Awesome. Cheers.