This is the full transcript for Episode #291 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Stephen Lease – Sunglasses Spirit Animal, Co-Founder of goodr. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Stephen Lease 0:00
These things look like you’re on a booze cruise with a flamingo.
Max Branstetter 0:17
Where else would you rather be than a booze cruise with a flamingo? Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur, every single entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. You can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 291. And today’s guest is Stephen Lease. Stephen is the co-founder and chief executive octopus that was not a typo, of goodr. some of the most fun sunglasses or shades you’ll ever come across. In this episode, we talk how Stephen has built goodr to 150 employees, distribution in 1000s and 1000s of locations, how to create a fun culture at a place that people actually want to work at. And everything from spirit animals to ultradistance races that are tiring. I’m so tired thinking about I can’t even tell you how long they are. It is not good but goodr. Enjoyyyyyy the showwwwww! Aaaaaalrightyyyyyy we’re here with Stephen Lease, co-founder and CEO chief executive octopus. That’s the first one for the podcast, of goodr. One of my favorite brands of shades out there. Same with my wife. Same with my father in law, same with my cousin, we can get into all that story. But Stephen, so excited to speak to you and all eight of your tentacles today. Thank you so much for joining. How you doing today?
Stephen Lease 2:04
Oh man, I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.
Max Branstetter 2:06
Yeah, yeah, of course. And I mean, right off the bat here like you have one of the most fun and I know you’ve been have four F’s brands that I’ve ever seen. So we’re gonna get to that but a little birdie or rather a little pink flamingo told me that. Not only are you a marathon runner, but you’ve even done in 100 miler. That is correct. I’m ready to faint. And in this episode now, for anybody who’s not familiar with that, obviously very daunting. How does the 100-miler actually work?
Stephen Lease 2:40
I got into running late in life so I didn’t remember his marathon till I was 30 which is pretty interesting. And then that was in 2012. Five years later 2017 I just fell in love with running that’s the only way I can describe it. And I remember early on I’d meet friends who run and then they’d rent 50 mile races and all I would ever do was marathon I remember I remember literally just saying out loud There’s no fucking way I’m do 100 mile race as a stupid shit ever heard of and then a couple years in you think you’re thinking I’m like I don’t know you’re in pretty good shape. Maybe you can do it. And then I find myself training so it is 100 mile straight. You you usually have a time cut off depending on the race you know, could be 24 hours could be 35 hours. So you have to do it in that amount of time. And you there are like little there are like little huts so you can sleep I didn’t and you don’t you run straight through the night start at 5am I ended I don’t know maybe started at five and did it. I don’t even know ninth or 10th next morning and you run starting at 52 miles I could have a pacer about a crew with me that helped and I did design 100 Back to the 17
Max Branstetter 3:50
hold out. That was the biggest thing I’m wondering about just because I love sleep I’m not very good at but I love sleep. So you didn’t nap like at all in that or like any downtime?
Stephen Lease 4:00
No, I mean, you know at TradeStation you’ll sit down and rest sometimes you know fuel up i and I’ve paced people who have taken 2030 minute nap so it is a kind of go each way. I’m a when I start moving. I do not like to stop. So I’m a pushed through person, especially when it comes to that but I think my 100 mile day my hunter mom O’Shea’s are behind me, but you never know. That’s
Max Branstetter 4:22
what I tell people to I’m like, Hey, I’m past that, you know, past that part of my life. But I mean, a marathon or even a half marathon or a 10k. Like it’s it’s strenuous enough. What did you find is the secret to unlocking the I guess the mind and the body to go such Ultra distances as they say? Yeah,
Stephen Lease 4:43
I mean, I still I ran a 50k in May with a bunch of people here and gooder. We do a group every year. And so I still have a very I still have active run practice. I don’t put down the miles that I used to and I don’t go as fast as I used to. For me. I think why I gravitated towards running is is a high mover always had been in life and you know side hustles always on my feet hate waiting in line. And so it was it was really good way to burn energy then it actually became moving meditation in a lot of way it’s very I find a very calming to my brain and I think where I’m headed out now I have a group of people that I run with. So there’s some great community there. But I think at its core, it is moving meditation for me.
Max Branstetter 5:22
moving meditation and alliteration for the ages something you probably thought of in the middle of 100 mile run so probably
Stephen Lease 5:29
I had a great I have great ideas what while it while I run, I mean us how did I how do I push through a run? I think the really interesting thing is, my job is never to sell anybody on long distance running, in fact, I think is kind of fucking stupid sometimes out there. I’m like, What are you? What are we doing? I didn’t say anything. Yeah, we’re grinding out here. I love it. And I love any number of things. I love the movie meditation. I love how I break things into small goals to achieve them. And so like I don’t from a push through standpoint, it’s a really interesting question. I think the nice thing is, is when I do long runs, I usually almost always do an out and back. So if I’m doing 20 miles, I go 10 miles out and run 10 miles back. And so for me, once you run 10 miles, there’s only one way you’re getting home that’s turning around. How do I push through? I don’t think about it at 20 miles I think about it is one foot in front of the other.
Max Branstetter 6:18
I have to ask which individual mile is the hardest in 100 mile race?
Stephen Lease 6:24
In any race just in general I kind of hate the first two or three miles body needs a warm up and that kind of is a weird thing that happens with long distance runners is those first couple of miles are are a grind. I mean for me it was mile 38 Because the mile 38 it got hot, I didn’t take care of my hydration my legs locked up, I crammed over and fell facedown in the dirt and you know all the things went through my head which were you. You are a fucking idiot. Well, this was a complete waste of time. There’s no way you’re finishing this race today. And so I had to get my life together and it took me about the next 30 minutes walking to an aid station getting my life together and mentally in my life and hydrating so yeah, mile 38 to 40 was were the were the toughest
Max Branstetter 7:07
or next time I’m doing my five minute warm up jog on the treadmill before I do some weightlifting. I will think of this conversation will just be enough motivation. So thank you very much. You’re welcome. So running actually ties seamlessly into the gooder story. So let’s get to gooder alliteration chiming in there again, but what race was it for you that not only did you get the moving meditation idea together, but you got the idea for this potential business which has now taken over your life in a wonderful mix of animals. We
Stephen Lease 7:44
started in 2015. But I think the origin story, I would go back a little bit further right now we’re nine years in we’re over 150 people were sold and five house doors around the world. It’s been wild. Like people think it’s like an overnight success. And it there’s some fairy tale nests Believe me, I love it. It’s amazing. But glitter is the sixth company either started with a party starting and the other five were failures. So I think it’s an important thing to acknowledge. I got really good the first one the hardest to fold. I worked corporate America I got really good at starting side hustles and understanding okay, how can I spend like, you know, $5,000 and start a company 10 That was launched a company and see if it’s going to work if it is do more if not fold, I would just in the mode of that like really entrepreneur mindset was just had that. And in 2012 ran my first marathon fell in love with it. And then 2014 Two years later, I’m training for the Grand Traverse with when our business partners Ben, we’re going to my first Ultra actually it’s 40 Miles ish. It’s from Crestview to Aspen and Colorado. And we’re talking when you do long runs with people, you just talk the entire time because there’s nothing else to do. And we really just actually felt that there was nothing there. There wasn’t a run brand that spoke to us. And at that time, it wasn’t sunglasses per se. We just didn’t feel like any run brand represented fun and fashion. Oh, we just started run brands which kind of kept talking about it and kept talking about it. And then about six months later, I was training for LA Marathon with a group of 100 people in LA. And I’m looking at this group one day in January 2015. I noticed 80% of the people are not wearing performance eyewear. They’re either wearing cheap $10 Gas Asian sunglasses like I was or they’re wearing Ray Bans, but they’re not wearing expensive performance eyewear. And it hit me like I knew a little bit about the eyewear industry and I’m like we should make fashionable sunglasses for runners. And so that’s kind of where the where it was birth as 200 people that I knew that ran hey what would you blue sky What do you want from pair of sunglasses and we heard same five things categorically. Look at number one affordable number two, not slip when you sweat. Number three not bounce when you move number four and protect your eyes number five, and so we reverse engineered the company The brand was started on solving the problem which was rang sunglasses are ugly, expensive and over engineered and so we made them affordable, stylish and performance without the extra bullshit. So yeah, that’s that’s kind of that’s the Super abridged version.
Max Branstetter 10:14
Appreciate the super bridge that sounds like a version of a Zeppelin song from yeah, there’s 12 album. But when did it fully like convict you that like not those not just this was a an idea that could help out runners and people looking for, you know, the four F’s of of goodr but like this needs to become my full time thing like this might even be you know, like the most important thing that I do in my life.
Stephen Lease 10:40
There was a couple of data points I started as a side hustle, we launched product November 2015. And when you first launch product as number of run groups, and so you have this kind of swell of friends and family or people that buy and then the holiday season that was great. And then January’s comes in 2016 sales go to zero. And it was a side hustle for me, Ben and Carrie and my two co founders like all right, we at that point we put we actually start putting products on Amazon, and we started selling stuff, you know, 10 us in a day, 20 units a day to people that we didn’t know and like, Okay, well, there’s something here, then January, February, it’s a dead season for sunglasses, just in general, then we started selling a little more and a little more. And the business is kind of starts growing naturally. But it was a side hustle. And I cannot stress Max the importance of it being a side hustle because it was allowed to grow and evolve on its own. We didn’t have to, we’d have to make money to pay our rent. And flash forward to May of 2017. In that month, three things happened. It’s kind of funny, we used to buy as much product as we can, we would sell out and then buy more. That’s just that’s what we did. We use all the money we had, we’d been put over on personal money and buy more we kept doing that. And it was like it was great, but it was not a sustainable way to run a business. In a week period three amazing happens. We got a giant shipment we sold out again, it was crazy. We got $100,000 line of credit from our bank, which is laughable now to us. But at that time it was more it was like life changing. And we got better terms from our manufacturer and so right away so that change it I quit doing all my side hustle the next week and focus on a full time. Holy cow.
Max Branstetter 12:22
That’s how the week or hell of a month. Yeah,
Stephen Lease 12:24
it was a hell of a month. And then you get the last for your question, which was, when did I think this is going to be you know, one of the most important things I did my life. That’s it’s for sure. It’s actually the most important thing that I’ve done in my life. I don’t have like this. I do have a memory of this. We had our first office in 2017 18 months later it was 800 square feet we moved to our second office it was 6000 square feet we thought we’d never set where I will never go to the space. And I remember this day we did a thing called good or stock we had about 25 people at the time and just looking over the distributor like wow, we did it just like a real this is a real company. And that was probably the moment of I felt like it was a real a real business.
Max Branstetter 13:09
I have FOMO that I missed out on good or stock which by the way I appreciate there’s there’s a lot of like little concert series and events and stuff like that. I feel like more need to bring stock back like that. Yeah.
Stephen Lease 13:22
I was like it’s funny. I have to actually be like what’s goodrstock? I’m like what you like Woodstock goodrstock be like, oh, yeah, my Yeah, maybe it’s more of like my Oh, now
Max Branstetter 13:30
there’s probably some people that are like, oh,
Stephen Lease 13:32
what? What is Woodstock? Yeah, what? Oh, for sure. Oh, for sure.
Max Branstetter 13:36
So besides that initial, like research that you did, where you got those key criteria of like what people actually wanted of the future to be good or what went into like the actual and like classic designs that are now like Staples for good or the
Stephen Lease 13:53
OG which is kind of that Wayfarer look, which is just an iconic shape in general. But
Max Branstetter 13:59
by the way is Wayfarer. Is that is that the name of the shape? Or was that a name
Stephen Lease 14:03
of the shape? Yeah, it is known as the wayfarer shape. It is I’m sure it is trademarked by somebody’s for sure. Not trademarked by us, but that kind of initial type of Wayfarer is it and so that we targeted that look because we knew it was just so iconic. It is the masses. And so for us, it was like okay, target here. Let’s go. The really interesting thing is we identified the $25 price point we we said hey, if we could bring a pair of sunglasses to market at $25 we believe it will take the decision making process out of the customers mind right you were used to paying eyewear is expensive 100 $200 But you see something that you like for $20 That’s a I can’t get it quick enough. And so we worked backwards from that and the Oh gee. You know, originally we wanted to like silicone inserts. So now now we have models that are $35. But to do that that was an extra tool that was extra pricing. So we had to say no And what was really beautiful as we we had a constraint, we knew it was sunglasses, we knew the price point. And so it allowed us to say no to things really, really quickly. So instead, if you’ve ever felt like are good, or they’re out there like this almost like a rubber grip, coating, super snug fit, so they don’t bounce rubber coating settlements won’t slip in. So limiting the rules of the game is actually really clarifying easy experience. I recommend anybody with like, like, this is the bare minimum. So that’s what we did. And then we went through the process of sampling it out. And it took about six months, back and forth with manufacturers. And
Max Branstetter 15:35
that had to be really easy finding a manufacturer for this totally new brand, right? It’s
Stephen Lease 15:39
the hardest. I mean, it is one of the hardest things we ever had to do. Having finding a manufacturer with no like connections in that world. We couldn’t have started good or we got into the 50 We could have started at 95 I mean it would have well I don’t know what you do you fly to privatize a fly overseas and find manufacturers now with the internet and any number of resources out there. It’s a lot easier. So we’ve gotten very lucky in a lot of ways. Yeah, I
Max Branstetter 16:04
think that’s probably how it works like you just fly overseas pick up pick a random country that’s known for manufacturing and get out your binoculars and just see what you find. But lockout St.
Stephen Lease 16:13
Does anybody makes sunglasses? But he makes I’m sure a story. Back in the day, you probably just I guess you would track it back a friend of a friend of a friend, who do you know in that world that can make you an introduction.
Max Branstetter 16:27
Absolutely. And so that that $25 price point is gold, glitter gold, we’ll call it I think that’s one of the things that I love most about your brand. Like in addition to all the fun, this and the four F’s in the how they how they look great, the fact that they’re such high quality and and usable for a price point, like that is a total game changer because I bought like yourself, like I’ve always been somebody who I would get the like, super cheap pair of shades from like CVS, Walgreens, whatever. And it would be totally fine until like, pretty soon after, I mean, I was probably going through like three or four pairs of shades a year because they would like break in my backpack or something like that. Like it just wasn’t sustainable. And then on the other flip end of that, like, I remember going to the mall one time and looking at, I don’t know, one of those sunglass providers at the mall and being like, Oh, these are pretty cool. And then picking up and seeing that the price point was like 250 or 300 bucks. I was like, No fucking way are people spending this much on sunglasses. So like you had a really, really great area there. How did you come up with that number of 25 that you still I mean now with 35 as well, but 2535 that you’ve like stuck really rigid to?
Stephen Lease 17:38
Man, I don’t have a clever answer for this. It was pretty clever. Actually. It was. Yeah. But I mean, we knew we didn’t want to do there was if you notice our pricing is 2535 It’s not 2499 We’re like pretty gangster about that. Because I just think that’s a weird parlor trick.
Max Branstetter 17:55
You shouldn’t use 2501 just to like really stick it to him. Yeah, we’re
Stephen Lease 17:59
really drive the margin up. But it was a hey, I actually don’t remember what how we came up with that number. But it was a wouldn’t happen to that. Yeah. 20 It always feels right. And it’s weird as 30 feels too expensive. 20 feels too cheap. 25 feels right. And when you say that way people are like That’s weird. It kind of does. That does make sense. Weirdly. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 18:20
it does. It does feel just right. We got the what does that three Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Yeah, three bears. Speaking of that, like what went into incorporating animals and just like the fun kind of pina colada vibes of glitter together?
Stephen Lease 18:39
Yeah, I think that one of the things that felt from the beginning was we wanted to create a brand that’s just fun, or reverent and absurd and didn’t take ourselves too seriously. And so when your names the misspelling of grammatically incorrect word good, or it’s really hard to take yourself too seriously. So you start from that origin. The first few classes that I wanted, when we had the idea for the brand, it was burned into my mind was the flamingos on booze cruise, which is our staple. It’s like the pink luteal lens. It’s on the top of our shop and Abbot Kinney. It is the brand in a glass is my favorite pair of glasses. But we get this back and I still remember it as clear as day I pulled the golden samples out and I put it on my whole these things look like you’re on a booze cruise with a flamingo. In fact, we’re gonna call this color flamingos on a booze cruise where name over colorways crazy crazy names so my partner Ben. Sure Steven because he has to humor me. And then that’s what we did. Or the original stakes. You know, we’re playing on a booze cruise, Swedish meatball hangover ice by Yeti was shot to Satan, donkey goggles sunbathing with wizards we had the idea in 30 seconds and ran with it and so creativity can come anywhere trust your gut so now all of our product has really fun named and kind of set the tone for us having fun being reverie absurd also differentiating ourselves from other brands in the market.
Max Branstetter 19:51
The ones that uh, my wife gifted me are I would call him like black or matte black. I’m black black ones. And what’s the name again? Something unicorn
Stephen Lease 20:00
A unicorn’s calamity?
Max Branstetter 20:01
A Unicorn’s Calamity. So I mean, that’s, that’s good or in a nutshell is like, take something that like, I mean, I’m like a very boring, like, I am like my clothes are like Navy black. Like that’s it. And yeah. And so like, Dana knew that, like if she was gonna get me shades, they had to be like the black, quote unquote, boring ones, but they’re not boring. They’re awesome. And then with a name like that, it’s just it’s just proof of how cool of a company it is. But how about the animals? Like, I mean, you incorporated flamingos in the name and designs and everything. Where did the animals come into the fight? Well,
Stephen Lease 20:34
the name you know, so sometimes I’m just curious was what was the first name but so that kind of that started and when we started having people, we actually let people still to this day, everybody has like, their lame title that is to the outside world, because everybody has to know what that is. But then everybody gets to make up their own title. So it can be whatever so my spirit animals and octopus, Chief Executive octopus, like I have to be known as CEO to the outside world, otherwise people would think Who the fuck is this person? So it just worked out my spirit animal, I could replace officer with octopus. So yeah, it was just it’s just kind of been the brand was based off my ban and carry my two co founders, humor personality. So you work in animals in any number of ways. Yeah, it just kind of happened organically.
Max Branstetter 21:21
Organic has multiple meanings there with wild animals like that. How do you know like, I feel like some people are like, Oh, this is my spirit animal. Or like, we’ll talk about somebody famous and be like, like, yes, that’s my spirit animal. But like, what was it about octopus? Octopus?
Stephen Lease 21:39
Octopus, which is Yeah,
Max Branstetter 21:41
which I which I learned they’re actually octopus right or octopus?
Stephen Lease 21:43
Well, you can say either one either one’s correct octopuses octopi What is it about
Max Branstetter 21:48
them that that lat or pardon my language but sucked on to their
Stephen Lease 21:53
I think they’re incredibly unique. You know, I have to have my hands and everything. So like the idea of eight tentacles I love I just like I I am have. I’m always doing multiple things at once. And they’re world class problem solvers. And I am a world class problem solver.
Max Branstetter 22:08
I have to shout out my college roommate, Tyrek, who I’ve done this on the podcast before but it’s never been more relevant than this. He used to use the term when you’re trying to carry all your bags of groceries at the same time. He said oh, just octopus that motherfucker. You do for your full time job? Yeah, yeah,
Stephen Lease 22:25
I do hedged. Yeah. Afterwards, that motherfucker.
Max Branstetter 22:29
Working on the designs is one thing. And obviously you keep innovating them. And then you know, if you check out your site at any time of year, you’ll see like different seasonal ones or different celebration designs. So that’s really cool, right? very aesthetically pleasing there. How have you been able to grow the team over time? Because at the start, it was you know, just a few you guys obviously very easy to have your personality flow through to the brand. But now you said 150 employees congrats on that. 150 employees, you know, you’re coming up on 10 years in business. What’s what’s been your secret sauce for growing gutter?
Stephen Lease 23:00
Couple, uh, last year that a friend’s wedding or two years ago, and there was a sleight of hand magician walking around doing tricks tabletop and I’m a child too. I love magic. And this magician does an incredible trick that blows my mind. And he said the most incredible thing to me. He said, Do you want to know how I did it? I absolutely proceeds to walk me through how he did this trick. And he shows me how he taught himself dexterity with his pinky. So he could pull a card out of the deck with just his pinky, put it up his sleeve, while he’s like sleight of hand and then put it back and I’m watching him do like this is incredible. I asked, How many times did you have to do that? To get it down? He’s like, Oh, I don’t. I don’t even know is I kidding. I go like 500 or 1000. And he said more like 10,000. And that was the moment I realized. Magic does not just happen. It is created through fundamental excellence. There is zero secret sauce and gooder. We are fundamentally excellent. We have been from the beginning. We got very lucky, we work really hard, we have a lot of process and to get lucky again, and so on and so forth. But we’ve never done anything perfect. We just do multiple things really well continuously. And we make so many mistakes. It’s not even funny. And so I don’t know that. So there there is just no series. I was I think if I was to drive back our prime strategy, it is just that, how
Max Branstetter 24:17
do you know like, what do you have kind of like an internal rule of like, Alright, now we’re ready to hire a new flock of flamingos.
Stephen Lease 24:25
At the beginning was very informal. You know, we kind of had hired Oh, we needed a person do this, this this. I think we got to about 30 My dream at the beginning was run a completely flat company where there wasn’t any bosses. And everybody reported to me till we were about 30 people and I was like, well, this doesn’t work. And so we had to wait to create teams. It was for a while. What do we need? And then now it’s you know, we’re very strategic about it. We evolve all the time. All right, where’s the brand going? X, Y and Z so it’s it is we are thinking about it. We you know, we have a leadership summit every quarter where we’re looking towards the future. We call them strategic difference. So we invest in a team strategically, and then build it over time. What
Max Branstetter 25:04
was that moment like for you? Like when, when you had the flat structure, and then it’s like, oh my god at 30 Like, I need 30 tentacles, not eight tentacles for all this? What was the point or like, even maybe even like a rock bottom moment of like, okay, I need to make a change to the structure here.
Stephen Lease 25:20
I think that you could run a company completely flat if you had everybody you hired was a next level. I mean, I can name 10 people that work here on my on my wall, if I had, you know, if everybody was like these people, you don’t even you wouldn’t need bosses. And what you realize is, that’s a fantasy. So so so I want to just acknowledge that number two. The bigger we got realizing like, oh, there’s a reason there is some type of structure and org throughout time, you know, and I was just getting pulled way, way, way too thin. I don’t have this like rock bottom moment. I mean, I would say numerous times when you’re trying to come in like this you get any entrepreneur will pull yourself in. And so the practice is understanding, okay, this is thin time to stop what you’re doing because this is not working and need to do something else until this was just one of those moments.
Max Branstetter 26:18
If you want a little moment of face palming head scratching, you name it every Thursday, then you should sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter is where podcasting meets entrepreneurship meets the worst jokes. A Flamingo would be significantly better at telling these jokes. But anyway, some of the worst puns known to humans and animals, you can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter That is short and sweet every Thursday, Podcasting to the Max. Now let’s stretch because I cannot touch my toes for the life of me. Speaking of stretching you too thin now just kidding. But we’d love to dive in a little bit more to the awesome culture you have like there’s been lots and lots of coverage and people just talking about, like how cool your brand is, but also how cool internally your company is and how you got like awards for coolest places to work, things like that. Yada, yada, yada, congrats on all that. But can you share some of kind of like your guiding principles? Or like what, what makes good or unique from a culture sense that’s allowed you to grow this way?
Stephen Lease 27:28
Yeah, I mean, our two core values are fun and authenticity. And we defined fun as celebrating the work over the results. And we define authenticity is liking who you are as part of this brand. And we have hundreds of actual supporting and slippery behaviors for each phrase, were very explicit about what this means they’re not just like bullshit words. And I think at the core, if you kind of unpack those two things, you need to love the work you’re good at, we’re not a party brand. We’re a fun brand. And we think fun is celebrating the work of the results. And so good is actually not an easy place to work. I think that if you like work you’d like challenging, if you like solving hard problems, you like changing very, very quickly. It can be the best job ever had your life. But if you don’t, if you’re gonna be miserable here, and so I think that’s important. You just have to love doing work, be driven with patience. And then from an authenticity side, liking who you are as part of this brand. Man, I don’t want anybody ever to be have this Sunday scaries or be miserable. I think it’s okay to have five or 10% of your job you can be annoyed by because you’re like, Well, this is just bullshit, I have to do it. That’s fine. But I think anything over that I’ve done to talk about this recently, it’s coming to me, if 20% of your job you find miserable, you got to find a new job. Because that’s one day a week you’re miserable. That’s that is not sustainable. And so I think if you those two things, and it’d be okay. Like, Hey, man, goodr is great for some people for a while, and then it’s not. And that is that is okay. So I think the two things that we just lead with are fun and authenticity. And I can go like down even further. But when it starts there, I like the
Max Branstetter 29:06
thought that if you’ve been 20% of your job is miserable. It’s not like you should look elsewhere. And I think like too often people get sucked into that. And it’s actually well, all their job is miserable most of their jobs miserable. But you know, they don’t feel comfortable jumping elsewhere. What tweaks or little slippery things, as you said before, have you made like what have you find tuned within the company to make sure that like, we are not a miserable place to work in fact, like you, like people are excited to be a part of this.
Stephen Lease 29:37
First and foremost, it is impossible to think we’re gonna keep the same culture at 25 people at 50 at 150. Right? That is That is insane. That’s a fantasy. That’s not my job. My role is to evolve the culture appropriately. And so that’s that’s number one. I believe in that in 2018 We created this thing called amp. And amp is it’s taken from Daniel Pink’s book drive. It stands for autonomy mastery purpose, it is our, at that time was a quarterly performance review system. So every quarter starting 2018, there would be a performance review with a person and their leader. And I sat in every single one for everyone in the company for the first four years. And so the five heading for the first two, that first four or five years, so every quarter, we will evolve this max to like tiny Oh, you know, this way, this way, this way? And what where we’ve what we learned is all right, feedbacks important, making sure people are on the same page as important. And we just we kind of we tweak that every time now. It’s, we’re no we don’t work on the quarter system. We work on the trimester system, because we did it for so long. We’re like, we don’t have to do is every quarter. Now we do every trimester, but we continually tweak it. Like that’s one small example. But everything that we have here is on the table to change. And we do change it. We do not believe in like the sunk cost fallacy. There’s so many things like that’s a really good one to kind of that we still change every single trimester. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 31:05
that evolving? I mean, that’s tough to do. That’s tough for any size business to do. How do you stay nimble, no matter how big you get as a company, in terms of evolving appropriately?
Stephen Lease 31:17
Matt, one, you better have leadership that is okay. Changing. I mean, I will, I will turn the
Max Branstetter 31:23
tide. Thankfully for you that sounds like that’s, yeah,
Stephen Lease 31:27
I mean, it is I mean, we change very quickly, we move fast running a company of 50 people versus 150 people as if there’s like three times as hard. It’s 10 times as hard. But we can still I will still turn to I will still do a u turn with the Titanic. I’m like, oh, no, we find that out. Let’s go. And so, man, it is a delicate balance. Because too much change is too hectic. I think that you lead with emotional intelligence. And you just kind of ask questions and listen, see what’s going on? You should know. I mean, back to the amp. Because I was in everybody’s performance review for that a long time. I know our business. So well. I know people’s roles. I understand what’s going on. And so I can understand where the winds blowing, understand when we’re like, No, we need steadfast or Yeah, we need to move. And so I know the easy answer is you pay a lot of tension, and you make a giant bunch of mistakes. And then you learn from those mistakes.
Max Branstetter 32:21
Do you have a process for nipping mistakes in the bud as I say,
Stephen Lease 32:24
I’m a huge productivity person, personally, professionally, it is something that I I love doing. I my simple process is, man. Whenever things are bubbling up, I just I open up a blank note and I just do a mind dump of like, alright, well what’s going on Blu and then I roll through. So I just I go stream of consciousness, sometimes, like now with software, I’ll just talk it through. And then I go back to alright, what is the actual problem? What is the solution? What do you hope to gain from it? And then out of what you set up your what’s facts and what’s feelings? Because a lot of times you realize you’re mistaking facts for feelings. So I would say that mind dump, understand the problem and solution, understand what is fact and what is feeling then then you start to build from there. Or sometimes you realize like no, there’s no facts there. That’s all your personal opinion. That’s a fear based personal opinion. You just need to move on. That also happens.
Max Branstetter 33:22
Yeah, another tough decision of like wind it, let’s just cut it and go. Because you really carve like your own path here in terms of the company overall, but especially like the vibes and culture and fun and authenticity that you talked about, but like, who are some inspirations that you have that have been influential to the business leader you are today?
Stephen Lease 33:43
I am constantly a sponge of absorbing content in the world. I mean, Squarepants Spongebob Squarepants is number one, he’s number one, Patrick number two, grew up in like a, you know, lower middle class family. My dad was golf course superintendent. And then on nights and weekends, he had a landscape company. And so he always worked two jobs and I was gifted a very strong work, work ethic. Were in college, I went to school two days a week and then worked 13 hours a day, three days a week so I could pay for school. I started side hustles I in fact until 2017 When I started focusing on good or full time. I never did not have two jobs. And that’s something I realized later in life. So I was just I was gifted that work ethic from my father so I think it starts there. And then man, early bosses, you know, at any any number of places. My first boss at the at this miniature golf course named Ken Chancho. Then working through work to eat and I’m the president of Easton Chris Zimmerman. He’s now President St. Louis Blues mentor actually ran him recently at a wedding it was it was quite wild Duke Stump who was our like CMO? He was a mentor he he was on the got me into professional speaking and then, man, so many books, right? I mean, I’ve never met Brene Brown, but I consider her a mentor. I’ve been fortunate to talk to Seth Godin on the on gooders podcast. He’s a mentor Dan Pink’s a mentor. So many people sometimes it’s two ways. Sometimes it is, it is just one way but you know, you can find mentorship anywhere. You know, good friend mine, Morris Miller is a mentor of mine right now. So yeah, I’m very fortunate in my life. That
Max Branstetter 35:31
is an all star lineup of names that you just mentioned. Also, like, literally on the name standpoint, Dukes dump might be my favorite name ever. I gotta gotta gotta research dude. All right, let’s wrap up with a couple of fun wacky zany segments. This first first one is called the unusual so this is about you personally doesn’t need to tie back to the business at all. Of course, you’re welcome to if you want to pet peeves. What is something that just really grinds your gears are grind, grind your gutter gears?
Stephen Lease 36:04
Well, you’re in love this max, people were late to meetings. Nobody is late to meetings and gutters. Every meeting starts and ends on time. I actually I find it amusing when people are late to a good or meeting. They don’t know what they’re not like they don’t know what they’re walking into. So. So actually, in full transparency, I don’t know how much that it’s a standard here. But I’ll say that I think timeliness I think it’s it’s important.
Max Branstetter 36:25
Can you give us a quick impression of? I mean, do you just like turn an article when someone’s late? Like, what does that look?
Stephen Lease 36:31
No. Well, the thing is, is everybody I mean, I’m still late to meetings, right? Something something happens, but anybody who’s late to meeting here, they are coming in there, they are hustling. They’re like, I’m sorry, it still happens to me. But nobody’s casually sauntering in wait for me. No, it’s there’s so I think the really interesting thing is during onboarding, there’s like a moment a day where it’s like, Hey, I think we say you’re on time to be just be clear. Like, don’t, don’t you be on time to meetings? But no, nobody nobody gets yelled at everybody here actually is pretty into it.
Max Branstetter 37:00
Awesome. And then maybe everybody’s a spirit animal is cheetah so they can be super fast or whatever bird has the super fast alarm clock, so it’s off. So or Yeah, that’s great spirit animals.
Stephen Lease 37:10
Well, Rooster rooster. What?
Max Branstetter 37:12
How about weird talents or party tricks, like something that you just have a really good knack for, but it really doesn’t impact your day to day at all.
Stephen Lease 37:23
Oh, man, that’s weird. I can give my I cut my own hair. I mean, I have I get my hair cut every other week. But then I cut my hair, my hair in between. So I get myself I can give myself a cell fade. Oh, so I can like fade? Well, it looks fantastic. I’ll still I mean, that’s 10 does affect my day to day.
Max Branstetter 37:40
You know, technically I trim this little column on the swirl as they call it up top to so I have like the kindergarten version of what you do. It’s perfect. All right. And then quirks with something a little bit quirky about your personality that, you know, friends, family team. Somebody calls you out for it, but it’s who you are. You’re not jaded.
Stephen Lease 38:00
Oh, man. I mean, I’m pretty impatient. And I’m pretty patient. I’m also I am a planner. Like I plan everything this fun thing happens with with people with like, I have to wake wait lines and be like, Oh, are you gonna be okay, buddy? She your your? And so that that for sure. In patients or planning?
Max Branstetter 38:19
I was gonna guess you were overly patient based on your policy about being late to meetings. But yeah, totally got that wrong. All right, let’s wrap up with some rapid fire q&a. You ready for it?
Stephen Lease 38:30
Let’s do it. All right, let’s
Max Branstetter 38:31
go wild. The 100 miler you said was at Zion? Correct? Correct. Which I always don’t know if I’m pronouncing it correctly. So thank you for confirming me, stealthily there. But what is the like as part of that crazy run and race? What was the most beautiful sight of just nature you saw there?
Stephen Lease 38:52
It was probably watching the sun come up. Because at that time over the desert, I was with my friend Andres. At that moment, I was foreign from the race where I’m like, I’m like this. I’m going to do this this is that this moment, this is going to happen. So that was really cool.
Max Branstetter 39:07
Real quick on that do you um, like do you hallucinate at all when you’re when you’re running for that long, like does any weird we will stuff happen in your head?
Stephen Lease 39:14
I’m sure. Some people not for me. I’m more like, yeah, wish I hallucinated. Wish I was. Wasn’t just to be entertaining.
Max Branstetter 39:22
Yeah. All right. You mentioned that you worked at Easton which I always thought was a really cool company growing up like I love playing baseball and what is something about being in the baseball soft Bill softball gear business or soft bail your business as I said, that most people would be surprised to hear
Stephen Lease 39:44
how the bats are. I don’t even I’m trying to think you’re what
Max Branstetter 39:52
sounds like a prequel to The Dark Knight right there. But yeah, first of all,
Stephen Lease 39:56
I didn’t know I was on my baseball bats, but I mean, to hear I mean baseball bats drive the business. They’re the you know, they’re the most profitable thing and so that was very very realities. They were the they were the king product. I think people can get their butt hands on those born product. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 40:10
well they literally drive in runs as well. So yeah, it makes sense. Baseball puns aside you mentioned that good or is your sixth business that you started or been a part of since the early stages of those five before that what’s like the most random are people would be like you did what?
Stephen Lease 40:28
Oh, I mean, the first one started industrial water treatment systems so 120,000 our water treatment systems for golf courses. Use ozone gas to clean irrigation water I know so much about water irrigation gas effusion it’s insane. I had a
Max Branstetter 40:44
feeling we were gonna get to gas diffusion in this Yeah, I didn’t know when but here we are. I
Stephen Lease 40:48
can explain 203 molecule and how it works now. It’s how it attaches up to anti radicals and bore you to fucking death.
Max Branstetter 40:55
I love it. That’s what we’re here for. And then you have a really, really cool brick and mortar location, the Cabana, which I figured just from your brand that it was going to be pretty cool looking. But then I searched on Google and it has some of the biggest pairs of goodrs I’ve ever seen. So it’s awesome. But what’s what’s the coolest thing that having a brick and mortar store is provided for you.
Stephen Lease 41:15
The pair on top is 14 feet wide. We do have one pair that 20 feet wide that hangs in the office. But it is the photograph that’s on Abbot Kinney in LA in Venice. It is the photograph and texts random people that I have not heard from for any other times I like holy shit. Because it is a it is an experience when you go They’re
Max Branstetter 41:34
awesome. They what they gotta get you digitized in the next version of Grand Theft Auto be perfect. Try to partially and then last one. We know your spirit animal. What’s your advice for anyone to find the correct spirit animal for themselves?
Stephen Lease 41:50
Oh, I mean, I don’t know. I don’t I’m not I’m not an aficionado there.
Max Branstetter 41:53
You’re not a whisperer.
Stephen Lease 41:55
I’m not a whisperer. It’s got it’s got to speak to you. And also be very clear. You know my favorite animal is a basset hound. I’m a basset hound man, our number one bearing sunglasses of all time is Bosley is bass down dream. It’s the tortoise shell we call it hound shell. And so your favorite animal your spirit mo are not necessarily the same thing. rules that
Max Branstetter 42:15
I learned in business school as well. So thanks, Stephen, thank you so much. This has been awesome. You have fully did a one ad on me I never liked the term lease before and now I love the term lease. So thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. I know if people want to learn more they can check out gooder.com That’s g o d r as well as check out your podcast which is awesome all about culture of good or so fantastic stuff there anything else you want to share? Like if somebody wants to connect with you personally online? Where’s the best place for that?
Stephen Lease 42:45
LinkedIn or Instagram @StephenLease And yeah, listen to podcast CULTURE goodr.
Max Branstetter 42:51
Fantastic. And then last thing, it could be an animal impression. It could be a quote words to live by whatever you want. Final Thoughts just send us home here short and sweet.
Stephen Lease 42:59
One thing I’ve learned as the CEO leader of a company is you can either choose to be happy or choose to be right. And quite frankly, I would choose to be happy most of the time. Being right is over overhyped.
Max Branstetter 43:16
Being someone who is mostly wrong, you know, I agree with that Stephen, being right is overhyped. Thank you, Stephen, so much for coming on the podcast, sharing your incredibly creative and fun personality brand company, all the above spirit animals. And thank you, Wild Listeners for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite podcast app. And check out the video versions on YouTube. There might even be some goodr shades in that video version for this one. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter. You can also find us on Goodpods, where there are good podcasts and good podcast recommendations and probably good spirit animals, as well. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is short and sweet, every Thursday, where podcasting meets entrepreneurship, and awful, just awful jokes. And you can sign up at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter Now that was a ferocious slash that a ferocious slash that I give up. Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
