This is the full transcript for Episode #268 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Clement Mok – First-Mover Advantage, Dynamic Designer. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Clement Mok 0:00
Whatever that last time that they have a bad experience, you’ve lost that customer or guests for life
Max Branstetter 0:21
Happy hello, you incredibly attractive person. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new 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, and you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 268, and today’s guest is Clement Mok. Clement is a first-mover after first-mover after first-mover in the design space and beyond. He was one of the early employees at Apple in the ’80s, incredible lessons and design career there. He also launched the first royalty-free image library, he created tools to help designers in website designers and web visual website creating tools. I’m sure that’s the technical term, and that there was a very high pitch. And if that wasn’t enough, Clement has now pivoted into the restaurant space as well. So helping some awesome restaurants, such as SUGARFISH, in terms of operations, supply chain management, and what the optimal menu looks like for a restaurant. In this episode, we talk all those stops being a first mover and some of the craziest things Clement has ever eaten. It is Clement. Enjoyyyyy the shooooooow!
Aaaaaaalrightyyyyyyy we are here with Clement Mok, all-time designer, I just gave you a new nickname, The All-Time Designer. Incredible designer entrepreneur first mover which we’ll get to, throughout the interview, comment, so excited to speak with you. Thanks so much for joining How you doing today?
Clement Mok 2:21
Oh, good. Thank
Max Branstetter 2:22
you. Thanks, man. Okay, got, of course, of course.
And we’re just gonna see how many times I can stumble over my own words today, I think that might be the new record. So that will that will go for the all time grammar. But we’re very excited to get to many stops in your career a lot in the design space. And we’ll call it disruption space. Before we get too far into that you had a really, really, really, really cool, we’ll just have to say, stop at Apple in the pretty early days. I think as far as a lot of modern day like Apple fanatics are concerned. Can you take us behind the scenes of what was what it was like when you’re working on Macintosh and kind of your your only real early roles in apple.
Clement Mok 3:10
This is rewind, rewind in the clocks and 40 some odd years ago back in 1982. I moved from New York, to Cupertino, and to the Apple headquarter in Cupertino, at that point, there was still an orchard, as well as a farm in the main campus that had chickens. So that’s how long ago it was, I joined the Mac launch team in 1982, November of 1982. The median age at Apple at that point was 25-26 years. So that includes the CEO Steve Jobs. So that was pretty amazing. But it was a really an amazing period of time when anything and everything was possible. And Apple through resources and launching the Macintosh at that point against pretty much the industry, a lot of the odds in the industry. That period of time, I spent five years there. And that pretty much informed how I set for approach, design and taking risk as well as just looking at how to pursue a career in design and and Silicon Valley.
Max Branstetter 4:31
Being in that environment with that people if that kind of leader at such an early age has to be so foundational, as you mentioned, like what are some of the lessons that have stuck with you throughout your career that you learn in that environment? Was heady
Clement Mok 4:45
times We all drank the Kool Aid and we’d sort of believed that we were doing things that would change the world. And that’s sort of the soundbite but at the core of what he was trying to get at is that here you are, you’re in the midst of creating something new and different in the world, you have the opportunity to really set the benchmark and, and set the standards for for others to follow. So that really was the thing that I took away over the years at Apple when you go design something, and if it’s something completely new and foreign, then do the best you can possibly do so that it’s so hard for other people to catch up. And also
Max Branstetter 5:36
known at Apple that you were involved with links, before the internet was a thing, which is hard to even wrap up hard, even wrap your head around. But can you shed some light on that?
Clement Mok 5:48
This was back in 1987. Through the apple education group, there was a new technology that they were trying to launch in the education market as a piece of software called HyperCard. And it’s just as the Macintosh was for the computer for the rest of us, I HyperCard was software programming for the rest of us. Big claim. But it was the friendly to use programming application that you can do simple programming with. So it’s a really difficult concept for most people to even fathom that they can create a button to create an associate associate link to somewhere within the computer, forget going out into the internet, but going to another page, or another document was it’s such a foreign concept. So the ability and just trying to figure out how to explain what that link is to people was one of those big challenges that I worked on at Apple. And I think as always, that’s how I also got my foot in the door for user interface design and and the career basically in interactivity.
Max Branstetter 7:09
So you will call you the missing link. Did you even use the terminology link back then? Yes.
Clement Mok 7:15
It was a terminology coined by the programmer go back and said go back and sin was the software guru that had was the father of Lisa. I’m not sure if any of you know who know. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 7:30
yes, Apple. We’ve had a previous guests. Robert Brunner now mentioned. Lisa Lisa. Yeah,
Clement Mok 7:37
yeah, he was also responsible for the Mac, graphical user interface. And then HyperCard was his latest child and back in 1987.
Max Branstetter 7:48
It’s good to stalled you there. Yeah. There’s something called the HyperCard. Coming out of the 80s. It sounds like something that would be back to the future or something? Well, yeah,
Clement Mok 7:56
I mean, this whole notion of that stack of cards, that that was the metaphor. And instead of using the word card, you call it a page, and you have the ability to link. And that’s essentially, you have the internet in a box. And in your computer, that’s what it was.
Max Branstetter 8:16
So let’s get more into multiple boxes of your career. Somewhere after that you stumbled into the royalty free photo space?
Clement Mok 8:25
Yes.
Max Branstetter 8:26
What attracted you to photos? How did that shape out?
Clement Mok 8:30
Well, I think when I left Apple, I decided to save instead of focus on designing work for Silicon Valley startups. Because many of the folks that were doing software in the Valley at that point, were all former Apple, product managers and executives, and they were out and about, you know, creating companies creating Silicon Valley startup businesses. And out of that period of engagement with these companies. I got very much involved with the desktop publishing media space, Kela calibrators, software, font software’s and all the tools that people were using to do publish it. And one of the frustration that I have in that space was the complete inability to incorporate an add images into documents and the various media types because there was a very complicated and arcane process of licensing images for use in the digital medium itself. Americana sec. Well, these are the things that I like to use, why are those things out there? So there is an eight. So I think well, your typical visco is like there’s a there’s a need, there must be a market out there. So I sort of figured out a few things as to patterns of what how people use publishing. And I realized, well, people use a lot of little simple images over and over again. So why don’t I provide a library with these iconic images that people can incorporate into their daily communicate communication, publications, and behold, that was born.
Max Branstetter 10:25
Now, that’s a really natural way to go about it. And it’s the one of those business ideas that it makes perfect, it makes perfect sense. But it also sounds, the more you think about it incredibly daunting, because I mean, there’s essentially unlimited images that you could focus on. How did you actually go about, you know, attacking this at a reasonable pace.
Clement Mok 10:46
And this is where my design background comes into play. I mean, so much what a designer does is the their ability to synthesize, edit, and really figure out what is the most appropriate image to distill an idea about saving. So, you know, the obvious one, most people think about it, it’s a piggy bank, but what kind of piggy bank, so if I were an art director, I have a photoshoot with piggy bank photo would I use, so it’s really going through each image with each concept, and say, Alright, if I were to convey outdoor word image, what I use, and if I come upon an image of an umbrella, what kind of umbrella? So it’s really going through and going through these cultural archetype images that people would immediately come to mind as well. That’s what, that’s what will convey. So that’s how I sort of arrived at the library itself, and then go source, the actual items that are back, which is a real challenge.
Max Branstetter 12:05
Design kind of keeps seeping in. And then with NetObjects, it was even focused on web design, or like, I guess the early days of of site design there.
Clement Mok 12:17
Yeah. How
Max Branstetter 12:18
did how did you get involved in this digital design space before? Probably most people even knew what digital design was?
Clement Mok 12:26
Yeah, well, I think I actually got an unfair advantage of being at Apple, I was able, you know, I had a front row seat. I’ve seen what’s possible, how all the pieces fit together. So I do have sort of this advantage of seeing the stuff first. But yes, it’s one thing to be in the right place and right time, but not knowing that there’s an opportunity. So I think the other thing that I’ve learned is that it might be the right thing and the right time of the right technology. But if you don’t have the right application, it’s kind of pointless. The whole fact that I was working and producing projects for Silicon Valley company, I had a good sense and got a sense of where the industry was going. And I was actually one of those early firms. And I said, Well, someone’s going to I mean, this thing called the internet and website. I mean, these companies are starting to deploy that. Why don’t I experiment and tinker with a client? And unfortunately, I do have some clients who say, hey, you know, this internet thing might be a big thing. Why don’t we want a website? So this was back in 1993. When we did our first website, once again, I had an early headstart. And just sort of at that point, I realized, since we’re the first one, we’re we’re sort of the guinea pigs for a lot of things. Why can’t we do this? Why can’t we do that? And we just asked a lot of why. I also realized that if I’m the one that’s having a problem, many, many other people are having the same problem. And being a graphic designer on site. It’s one of the things that drove the desktop publishing, boom, in the late 80s. Was this whole ability to edit visually and dragging pictures around? Why can’t we do that in a web authoring environment? That sort of instigated the idea of like, well, why can’t we do not instigate and do a WYSIWYG web editor? So that begat the web development tool back in 1995. Instead of net objects,
Max Branstetter 14:57
that asking why it’s so powerful it is one One of the best questions that really makes you think. I mean, it sounds like it’s come up a lot through your career of like continuing to ask why can you expand upon the power of digging deeper like that? Yeah,
Clement Mok 15:12
well, and I think it’s part of the designers ethos, how many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Or your question of just like, why can it be this way? Why can it be that way. And there’s this whole notion that designers focus is always, the orientation is always about the future. You know, whatever we design will end up being in a space, an object in the future. So we always have to think about when we look at a problem or solution, how can that be better? And why is it this way? Why and why why? Why do we need AI? Why do we need the internet? Why do we need social media? I think as a result of asking those why questions, you will uncover things that are often overlooked in the world of business, or in the world of engineering, or just in life in general. And I think that goes to the heart of how a designer fits into the grand scheme of things. They ask why from a very different perspective.
Max Branstetter 16:25
Why not sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter? I can’t think of a good reason. I’ve been trying for for a long time to think of a good one – I can’t. It’s, I’ll drop the corny shtick but it’s where podcasting meets entrepreneurship – and terrible puns. Every Thursday, short and sweet to your inbox, you can sign up and MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. You won’t be disappointed, you might be disappointed, because I’m adding one email to your inbox. But you also will not be disappointed. Now let’s keep asking why and get our tastebuds disco-ing. So why? No, I couldn’t resist that. But it’s really interesting looking at your career up to that point as because there’s it’s kind of an evolution into different spaces. But also there’s that common theme of first moving, there’s the common theme of, of digital and design. And then more in the, I guess brick and mortar side or public and person’s side. At some point, you started dabbling into the restaurant industry. Yeah. What’s what started besides food just being delicious? What sort of what started pulling you into the restaurant space as well,
Clement Mok 17:45
I think part of it, it’s a couple of things that was going on in my life. I think one of that was that I was in the fast moving pace of the computer world for well over 20 years. And the internet bust in the early 2000s. And also was a natural place for me to just pause and and really rethink what I wanted to do next. And it got to a point in the late to the early 2000s. And I’ve been working in a world of computer and it was in such an when you’re dealing with database, the user profiles and networks and personas of different environments. It just got so heady and abstract in a way that I stopped making things. I mean, yes, I’m making things making software in the most abstract sense and developing software and applications. But the fact that I wasn’t creating anything physical, I’d said I really need to get back to making things. And this whole notion of a beginner’s mind was important that I wanted to be excited and learn new things. And then kind of stumbled into cooking classes says, Wow, this is something that I have absolutely no knowledge about. It’s a craft. It’s a skill. It’s immediate, you make things and it’s you get to present it not like composing a layout so that I’ve done my interested in food and learning more about food. And that baguette couple conversation with some friends who decided we’ve also had had enough of just being in the high tech business. And they want to switch career as well. Well, it was Jared Greenberg, who had approached me and said, You know, I know the chef in Los Angeles has this amazing sushi restaurant, we love his food. But you know what, you know, I think there’s a lot of things that we can bring to the table to offer his reach a lot more people, because of all the things that we’ve learned in the tech space, there is a way that we can still maintain the quality of that food, and bring all the knowledge that we have in the tech space regarding Supply Chain Management, efficiency, and just design in general how we can repackage that to, to be able to offer amazing food to people. So that journey started back in 2007.
Max Branstetter 20:33
So it’s been the most delicious decade and a half of your lifetime. Step
Clement Mok 20:38
out, yeah, got to eat all kinds of fish that I never thought I would. And that the associate business is one that really needed reinvention. Yeah, as we studied that space, Jared was just looking at just the amount of waste that goes into running a sushi restaurant, the fish itself, if you look at that, the fish, its inventory, and inventory that expires as the clock ticks. And if you can’t operate a business to optimize the use of quality fish, Chef Nozawa using these amazing fish that cost a fortune, you know, so part of it is to make sure that what you plan to have your men on your menu and your fish that you get fresh from the fish market that day, do get used. And one of the problems that we saw was that most sushi restaurant, run a menu that inventory you know, 510 20 different fish. And but at the end of the day may be at most 1/3 of the fish get use the two thirds and gets discarded. And there goes your margin. So what we decided to do was really look at, you know, how can we design and structure and menu that would have would allow a lot of predictability. And as well as design and venue that people love to eat? Yeah, so you know, in a strange sense, have you never thought of designing a restaurant that way? Because when we most most people talk about designing a restaurant. It’s about the chairs, the tables, the menus, and then the chef to talk about designing a menu. But it doesn’t, we don’t talk about in the current context of an entire entire supply chain, and the social aspects of how people think about sushi.
Max Branstetter 22:42
Yeah, it’s fascinating how what you’ve known from the tech a design world has helped so much on really the operations and supply chain world like that would be a big shot. I think when anybody to your point would hear you talk about design at restaurants, they think, Oh, the sign or the aesthetic inside. But there’s much more than that. Here in New York. SUGARFISH is huge. That’s one of the restaurants that you partnered on. I know you’ve worked with plenty other restaurants as well, for restaurants that are in different spaces. So like even beyond sushi are there. Noticeable notable, or I guess noticeable differences that are pretty striking. When you compare different styles of restaurant. We
Clement Mok 23:28
all have stereotypes about restaurants on what a I mean, a pizza restaurant should be a pasta and Italian restaurant should be Chinese restaurant, you name it every single genre of food have their own little stereotypes. But one thing that we’ve observed over the years is that and even it’s just not us but many other restaurants have observed over the years now is that you can’t have a menu of 4050 items and be really good at it. The same with anything you do. You should be really good at a hopefully a dozen plus things and you just need to hit it out of the park all the time. You know, you go to a place to eat for a burger and you say, All right, I’m gonna have the best burger, you better deliver on the best burger. The thing that we have discovered in the all the different types of different style and format in the restaurant business is that whatever you decide to do, you better make sure you hit a home run every time at guests dines there, whether it’s the 20 of time or their first time because whatever that last time that they have a bad experience. You’ve lost that customer or guests for life. so it applies across the board for the different genres.
Max Branstetter 25:04
And I think that goes back to those classic examples of simple menus of like, obviously in LA, California, it’s In-N-Out Burger. But then even Chipotle, and like the increasing, you know, like how fast casual or quick service restaurants have blown up over the past two decades. Yeah, the simple ones that do the simple things really, really well seem to be the ones that rise to the top. And also on the flip side of that is, it’s kind of like an angel joke of like, if you’re going to a diner diners, obviously, huge hair jersey, there’s a lot of really good stuff you can get. But also, like, if you scroll deep to the, if you look deep to the back of the menu, there’s probably some stuff there that you’re like, oh, do I want to eat this here? It’s so hard to do at
Clement Mok 25:47
all. Well, yeah. And then I think, as always up for those sort of edge case where you are guessing that all right, this doesn’t seem like the right place to order this, but I’m going to order a matzah ball soup anyway, right? In a diner, right. Right.
Max Branstetter 26:03
Which is, that one I will say is always delicious. But
Clement Mok 26:08
in New Jersey, yeah, it’s probably not in some other parts in California, we have to be very careful. And I think in some markets, they just purely provide that to scratch someone’s itch for something that they normally can’t get. So it works for them. But the way that we’ve approach our business because we’re we’ve entered into other categories that are a really tough category to get into, I mean, the burger business there, you know, just about anyone and everyone can say we we make burgers. And you know that there’s always a burger joint somewhere. And then there’s always a place that sort of pasta somewhere. And that’s, you know, it’s a sticks and what have you. So these are all old categories. I think a lot of ways we decided and that’s gonna go back to the old playbook of, you know, keeping it simple, keeping things focus. That’s how we kind of approach and reinvent those categories.
Max Branstetter 27:15
So let’s wrap up with some rapid fire q&a. Are you ready for it? Okay.
Clement Mok 27:18
Yeah.
Max Branstetter 27:19
All right. Let’s get Wild. You mentioned you’ve tried some really unique fish. Your way what’s the most most unique fish that you consume?
Clement Mok 27:29
Most unique fish, monkfish liver, pompano. Those are sushi. And there’s quite a few as a result of working in decision business. Some of them will gross people out.
Max Branstetter 27:43
I’ll pretty much try anything.
Clement Mok 27:45
Yeah,
Max Branstetter 27:45
what was the biggest adjustment? Personal life wise, moving from New York to California?
Clement Mok 27:53
It’s changed, but I think it was this notion that the cultural center of the planet was in New York. And I realized after after three years, it took me three years to realize, oh, no, there’s a different culture. That’s in California, you just have to get used to it.
Max Branstetter 28:15
That’s a good way to describe it. If you could do one thing, one activity just in your spare time for the rest of your life. What would that be? Well,
Clement Mok 28:26
recently, I bought a house in Palm Springs. And this house overlooks Coachella Valley, and the views there is just absolutely breathtaking. And for the last six months now I would because go out in the morning and the middle of the day and evening, and that scene constantly changes. It’s just absolutely breathtaking. At this point in time. That’s the one thing I just enjoy doing.
Max Branstetter 28:54
That sounds so peaceful. Yeah, that’d be great to just chill out Cadillac. Yeah. What is the biggest lesson that you learned from interacting with Steve Jobs? Have
Clement Mok 29:10
a point of view. And this was a hard lesson. It was it took me a whole year and a half, trying to please Steve Jobs, just trying to anticipate what he thinks what he likes. And at the end of the day, there were things that I strongly believe that it was the right thing or the wrong thing to do, but never was able to sort of say, Hey, Steve, I don’t think this is the right thing to do. And to say no, it took a year and a half. And then finally, in one instance, Steve said, What do you think? And he’s like, I think this is wrong. And it was a project that I’ve worked for four months on and I know Steve, absolutely believe this is the right thing to do. And explain why and At that point I’ve just said, okay, and that was one that I realized, why didn’t I do this? At earlier?
Max Branstetter 30:10
So you got an okay. From Steve. Perfect. comment. Thank you so much. This has been an absolute blast. And now we know how to say no and question things and we know how to ask why. So thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on. Where’s the best place if people want to connect with you online or just learn more about your work and projects? Where’s the best place to do so? Yeah,
Clement Mok 30:31
just go to ClementMok.com
Max Branstetter 30:36
And last thing, Final Thoughts. It could be a quote just as quick simple line words to live by, send us home here, could be anything.
Clement Mok 30:43
Technology has won. The tally has yet to be counted as to what we’ve lost.
Max Branstetter 30:53
Tech-tacular. Clement, thank you so much for coming on the Wild Business Growth Podcast, sharing your stories, and first movements. 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 hit that follow button or the + button, whichever it says on your phone, and subscribe to the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite podcast app and tell a friend about the podcast and do a creative deep dive with them, inspired by Clement. You can also find us on Goodpods, where there are really, really good podcast recommendations. 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 at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Until next time, let your business Run Wild – a little southern accent there – Bring on the Bongos!!
