This is the full transcript for Episode #310 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Dane Barnes – Beach Shade Brothers, Shibumi Co-Founder. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Dane Barnes 0:00
We called and texted the first 7,000 customers that ordered one
Max Branstetter 0:19
Shibumi! 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. You can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is Episode 310 and today’s guest is Dane Barnes. Dane is the Co-founder of Shibumi, the creator of the Shibumi Shade, the original wind powered beach shade. These things are so cool, they’re awesome. You have to see him to believe it. And in this episode, we talk everything from prototyping to learning from Adam Grant in college to starting a business with Dane’s brother and best friend, testing in a NASCAR wind tunnel and a bit of minimalism. It is DB. Enjoyyyyyyyy the showwwwwww!
Aaaaaaalrightyyyyyyy we are here with Dane Barnes, Co-Founder of Shibumi, one of the most fun company names to say, I think ever so you did well on that with the name change pivot there. But really, really cool company. Just Google any picture of shabumi, the shabumi, shabumi shades on the beaches, and be sure to brighten your day. Literally. Dane, thank you so much for joining. Excited to dive in. How you doing
Dane Barnes 1:56
today? I’m doing well. Thanks
Max Branstetter 1:57
for having me. Max, yeah, yeah. Of course, of course. And we are recording this under a Shibumi shade. So no, we’re not really. But for those watching video, I have a Crazy hair day, and it kind of mimics the wind flowing through a Shibumi shade. So that was extra prep on my end. Thank you very much. But before we get to Shibumi one, I have to call out that this is going to be a very confusing interview for me, because my wife’s name is Dana Branstetter, which is close enough to Dane Barnes to begin with, but also her family calls her Dane for short. So really, Dane B, Dane B, I just interviewed a Max B, which is myself, so I don’t know what’s going on anymore, but, uh, your roots, actually, I know that you’re from Winston-Salem, but you went to UNC. Is that like, does that create some bad blood in the basketball community there?
Dane Barnes 2:48
I don’t think so. I’m still a demon Deacon. Stand for Wake Forest as well, locally and then, but always wanted to go to UNC Chapel Hill, so was fortunate to do that and stay in state.
Max Branstetter 2:59
Yeah, that’s cool. Well, UNC is an awesome school. There’s so many amazing schools in North Carolina. Obviously, any basketball fan knows the basketball history, but as somebody who’s from North Carolina, can you take us through like, what went into your college finding process of what jumped out to you? Because, like, there’s so many great offerings in that pretty concentrated area there. Yeah, North Carolina is
Dane Barnes 3:18
really fortunate to have so many great universities. I thought about them all, but only applied to two, UNC Chapel Hill and NC State, and was lucky enough to get into UNC Chapel Hill. So that’s where I went and where I always wanted to grow. Wanted to go growing up as a Tar Heel fan probably
Max Branstetter 3:37
is where you wanted to grow as well. So Freudian slip there. You know, I grew up in Ohio, and I always heard that Ohio State, some people call compared to Ohio State and UNC, like both big public universities, kind of like great sports history. So I always kind of felt some sort of a tied to that, and like we got to check out campus one day on the one year on the way back from Myrtle Beach, where we used to go as a family, little beach preview already there, but seems like a really, really cool school. What was your favorite? Hands down, favorite thing to do at Chapel Hill
Dane Barnes 4:09
in Chapel Hill is the campus is so beautiful. Anyone who hasn’t had a chance to walk through it definitely should, if you ever get the opportunity, of course, going to basketball games. And I also really enjoyed the education there. I felt like I was really well prepared, and really had a great time in class too.
Max Branstetter 4:27
And you were well prepared in both the realms of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, which is actually what I majored in at IU as well. So we’re just the same person, basically. But you know, on the entrepreneurial note, you started optimize higher a bit after school, which, you know, we were there for almost a decade. I know Shibumi started to rear its beautiful head in the midst of that. But can you take us just through, like, a little preview, like, or a little recap of, like, what’s the main thing you learned from the entrepreneurial standpoint, from that stop of your career before shabumi?
Dane Barnes 4:57
Absolutely. So. I. The great fortune to have a professor named Dr Adam Grant, who’s really famous. I
Max Branstetter 5:04
was going to say that like the Adam Grant, the
Dane Barnes 5:07
Adam Grant, so he he taught at UNC Chapel Hill before he left to go to the Wharton School. But I can’t say enough good things about him. He is extremely smart, such a giving, caring person. So at UNC, again, he was my professor. And then after college, we started a company called optimize hire that helped businesses to try to improve their hiring decisions. So rather than just reading resumes and conducting interviews, research shows that employers can make more accurate and better hiring decisions if they also assess applicants and things like their cognitive ability, certain personality traits, certain types of motivation. And so we created a pre employment assessment company. So I did that for 10 years, from 2009 until 2019 and I think what I learned from that Max probably the number one takeaway for me, because I was a one person company for quite a long time there. So I did everything from customer service to sales to you name it. And so I think maybe the two things that taught me, one is that, like with sales, like I felt comfortable talking to anyone, you know, a doctor, a manager, an executive, that I just really through lots of trial and error, and specifically error just learned, and, you know, just became very comfortable talking with anyone that I didn’t feel intimidated. And then the second one is just, you know, consciousness, that it just takes so much hard work. And so I really, really learned both of those two things from optimize higher well, we’ll
Max Branstetter 6:46
get to some more Adam Grant later, but I have to commend you for pronouncing the world conscientiousness correctly. I think because I you can tell there I said world instead of word. I think so I couldn’t even get there. That’s a tongue twister, for sure, but What an unbelievable entrepreneurial experience. From pre employment assessment to really, really cool beach shades is a bit of a natural flow, I think, mix some wind in there, but let’s get to Shibumi. So super cool, like one of the coolest, as I mentioned, names, but also just esthetic, esthetic and fun vibes and, you know, conscientiousness of a company. But where did like, the first trickle or inkling of an idea for what Shibumi would become today start up here for you? Yeah, so
Dane Barnes 7:38
family vacation growing up, was always one week at the beach, and in those days, there were only traditional beach umbrellas and pop up tailgate tents like the 10 by 10s and so then fast forward, my parents bought a house at the beach in Emerald Isle, North Carolina. We I guess I have a healthy dissatisfaction with things that you know don’t work well. We were using umbrellas. They’re rusty, they’re broken, they tumble away on the beach. And so we wondered if we could come up with something that would work with the wind, and so that, that was the impetus, if you will, for how the Shibumi shade was born.
Max Branstetter 8:19
I guess. How many examples of, like, the current shade or wind block are not working well? Did it take for you to go from like, we could do something about this to like, no, let’s actually like, drop what we’re doing and, like, commit to this? Yeah,
Dane Barnes 8:34
it was a lot of iteration. So, you know, at first we would, I guess we would build a very rudimentary prototype out of materials from a hardware store and getting fabric by the yard from a fabric retailer. And we taught ourselves how to sew. And in the beginning, we were never planning on selling any we were just making one for ourselves. But then people would walk up to us on the beach, left and right, and say, What is this thing? And where’d you get it? And they asked us to make one. We said, No, but enough people came up that it gave us the confidence that we thought, okay, maybe there’s something here. And then we worked to refine the idea in countless iterations before we launched it in 2016
Max Branstetter 9:16
I love that prototyping stage. I think like being fortunate like you to take some classes in entrepreneurship in college. Like, people have asked me, like, what like, what do you do? Like, it’s kind of funny to take classes in entrepreneurship. And, like, one of my favorite memories from IU was, like, actually coming up with an idea, solving a problem, and then going out to, like, the streets of like, Kirkwood Bloomington, and like, asking people for feedback. And even though it was just like, a very basic prototype and it was just a class project for that, for example, like, There’s something so just like core to entrepreneurship and beautiful about that prototyping process. What can you share, like, what are some tips to making sure that prototyping isn’t just fun, but it actually turns out to be valuable for your business?
Dane Barnes 9:57
Yeah, I think, I think the best advice that we. Got from a friend was to fail fast. And what he meant was, you know, don’t wait until you perfect the given idea or the product. You know, take a more rudimentary concept, get out there. Use it yourself. Ask people for feedback. And that was really important, you know, for us to kind of take this, this prototype, out, use it ourselves, get people to notice it and then get their feedback. Was really important.
Max Branstetter 10:25
What were some of the early insights on how you can make the design better?
Dane Barnes 10:30
I think you know for us, like in the very like for the first prototype that we had, we used PVC conduit pipe.
Max Branstetter 10:38
I was gonna guess that exactly up in your house that that
Dane Barnes 10:41
is meant to go together once and not come apart. But we were kind of using it as a as a frame, you know, for our structure. And I think it was obvious how we wanted to improve it, like we wanted to make it more portable, we wanted to make it lighter weight, kind of make it higher quality. So those were kind of the early insights which we had.
Max Branstetter 11:01
And I heard from a little birdie that at the start, you guys were literally sewing this yourself. What did you learn to this seamer or seamstress, or whatever it’s called, skills.
Dane Barnes 11:12
So a friend actually gave us a sewing machine and the needles and thread that we needed. And so then we pull out the manual and we’re reading it, trying to figure out how to thread the sewing machine so that we could start working it. We’re watching YouTube videos of how to sew, and it was tough, and in the beginning we were not good at sewing, but we kept at it and learned, and we were able to put some stitches together, and then got better and better. So we sewed the first 32 Shibumi shades in 2016 kind of taking orders on the beach, you know, by hand, and making them to order and delivering them to folks in the week or two thereafter.
Max Branstetter 11:52
So you got entrepreneurship class, you got marketing class, you got home economics class as well. You got, you’re like, a role model or an ambassador for the the value of education in a variety of different ways, but, but I think I keep going back to with the beach product. Like, inherently, beach products are so fun. And, like, we’ve had some past guests like, uh Kevin Lane from Create A Castle, like, some really, really fun beach products where, if you get it right, it’s like, who doesn’t love? Like, beach toys, beach products, like things that are going to make the beach experience even better. But also like is a very unique environment to have a product that can withstand the elements and also looks good and works well. What are some of the early challenges you ran into in terms of making sure that the Shibumi shade, like actually works in all the ways you want it to work exactly.
Dane Barnes 12:37
I mean, I think because the Shibumi shade is wind powered. We didn’t know about the wind. I mean, you know, growing up going to the beach, we were inspired by kites. My mom loves to fly kites at the beach. We were inspired by umbrellas blowing away, knowing that wind is kind of ever present. We were inspired by the seagulls or pelicans that are just kind of gliding down the beach hardly without flapping. So it seemed like wind was ever present at the beach, but we weren’t sure of like how variable the wind conditions were, hour to hour, day to day, that that was certainly one thing, which which we wanted to kind of hone in on and learn from, but making sure that whether it was wind or the sand or the sun or the salt, that that the product would actually hold up under those conditions as well. Well,
Max Branstetter 13:26
I feel like the, I mean, you have a lot of differentiators, but the first one that comes to mind is that wind, like the wind powered ability, one looks really cool, but also it’s thanks to nature, is like how it works. What was the aha moment that Wayne could feel this thing.
Dane Barnes 13:42
Yeah, I think, I think again, just inspired by those things that I mentioned, like kites and, you know, like my grandparents would hang a sheet on a clothesline at their farmhouse. So I think, I think those things. But, you know, with the first prototype that we made, just taking it out to the beach for the first time, and seeing it really work, I think that that was a big aha moment to me that, like we had this idea, we taught ourselves how to sew, we made one, and that it really worked well. Was, was very gratifying. And
Max Branstetter 14:13
now you have, I mean, you have the awesome branding, and then part of it is the colors that are like from your main original core version, or is the technical like color coding blue and teal? Correct? Blue and teal. So how did you decide on those? And to make it so like omnipresent, ever present, I always mess that up, so make it so everywhere.
Dane Barnes 14:34
Yeah. So the for the first seven plus years or so of shibumi’s existence, we only sold the shade in one colorway, and that was the blue and teal. And the reason we chose that is that it represents the ocean, specifically the deep water and the shallow water, kind of where they meet. So if you look at drone photos of the ocean, you always see that very dark blue where it’s deep water and the. The teal where it’s more shallow water. And so we wanted to choose colors that would really fit with the place of the beach and kind of gel, you know, with the environment, and not stand out in a bad way too much. And so we made the decision to to make them all blue and teal. And I think that decision turned out well, because it really became, you know, iconic when people would see the blue and teal color block like on my shirt out on the beach, that they would know that it’s a genuine Shibumi shade.
Max Branstetter 15:30
And so that’s how it was for a while. What does it look like now? Yeah,
Dane Barnes 15:34
so this year, in 2024 we launched our first new colorway in addition to the blue and teal, and that was orange and pink, which represents colors of the sunset, sunsets. And so that was very well received.
Max Branstetter 15:49
I love how strategic you and team are with everything behind it. Like it’s not just, you know, random color palette, or like there’s some brands that try to have every color imaginable, or even invent colors to it like you. You stuck with your core for a long, long time, and it’s still your core, but now it’s makes perfect sense, a sunset option as well. And speaking of product tweaks, actually, I saw feedback that, like your original version. The one main downside that people were experiencing was that it could get pretty loud sometimes, and so like noise was a concern. Can you share what what you and team how you kind of counteracted that and how it’s revamped today?
Dane Barnes 16:28
Yeah. So you know, to your point, we’re always trying to listen to customers, to their feedback, and beachgoers in general, to understand what they would like to see from Shibumi. And so we heard from some customers that when the beach was really windy, that they felt like the Shibumi shade could be noisy. And so we worked for several years in our research lab, if you will, trying to develop a canopy fabric that was significantly quieter. This year, we launched the Shibumi shade with quiet canopy, so the fabric, the canopy fabric has a bit of stretch like yoga pants. And the kind of end result of the secret sauce is that it is significantly quieter when it flaps in the breeze as well. And you know, just kind of talking about the development, we actually built a wind tunnel in our warehouse here in Raleigh, North Carolina, as a way to test durability of various, you know, fabrics and threads and stitches, so that we can deliver products which are built to last for the beach, and then we also test them on the beach for other properties like sound, etc, to try to check all the boxes. How
Max Branstetter 17:37
does one exactly build a wind tunnel? That’s awesome
Dane Barnes 17:40
for NASCAR fans. There is a wind tunnel in Mooresville, North Carolina that is used by NASCAR teams. They take the NASCAR cars and put them in the wind tunnel, and then they blow it up, you know, over 100 miles per hour, and they’re trying to make the cars more aerodynamic. So that’s what the primary use case is of the wind tunnel as I understand it. So Shibumi had a different use case. We wanted to test various poles for our frame and various, you know, canopy fabrics and stitch types, etc, because we wanted to test how well it would it would perform in 3040, miles per hour and more of wind. So we set up a full size Shibumi in the NASCAR wind tunnel and tested it. And it was very expensive, very, very expensive per hour, and we weren’t able to break it during that, you know, short amount of a couple of hours of testing. So the owners of the wind tunnel were actually nice enough to design a smaller wind tunnel for us. Kind of give us the blueprint for it, and then we built, we followed the blueprint and built a wind tunnel. So now, instead of a full size Shibumi in it, we test like, you know, when people go to sports games and they roll up the flags for their sports teams in the car windows. Now we test things like that in our wind tunnel for, you know, weeks at the time, and kind of monitor what’s more durable or what’s less durable, as we try to, again, make things that are built to last.
Max Branstetter 19:05
Well, they’re certainly built to last. My mind is blown to last. How many different aspects of, I mean, this is just in general, of like a product is, like you don’t realize until you get into it, like, how many different aspects of that product, like you need to tweak and fine tune. And so, like you and team, have done a masterful job in terms of perfecting that and continuing to improve on that and and come out with different iterations. But you also, like you, continue to make, I guess we’ll call it small pivots along the way. But this was a pretty big one. What caused you to change the name to shabumi in the first place.
Dane Barnes 19:41
Yep. So we just had a working name at the very, very beginning, called shade wave. And we found out that there that another company owned the trademark for shade wave, and that was kind of just a placeholder name for us, anyway. And we came up with a list of 300 different names. And finally. He settled on Shibumi. And the back story there is that at UNC Chapel Hill, my brother Scott and best friend Alex and I were the three Shibumi co founders. We all three lived at a really small apartment complex called Shibumi, and we had never heard of that word before. Came to find out that it is a Japanese design concept that means the elegance of simplicity or effortless perfection. And so we felt like that was a really good description for the Shibumi shade, given its kind of minimalist design. And so Shibumi was a fun double meaning for us in that or, you know, fun double meaning common thread where we both lived in that apartment complex, and we felt like it really fit with our design philosophy and our first product. The issue movie shade
Max Branstetter 20:47
this well, just goes to prove that sometimes you stumble into could be, even be your new living environment that inspires an idea you can apply back to your business. But no, there’s some it’s a very esthetically pleasing word. It rolls off the tongue and it it fits the waves of the wind for your product. Yeah, it is. When you look at kind of the history of your company so far, and like the numbers that are out there publicly is pretty staggering, like the amount of growth you’ve seen and how this how far you’ve come from this initial prototype to, like, the amount of sales you have now and the beaches that are becoming, like, more and more covered and grace with the presence of Shibumi. I’m sure you say it that way. No, I’m just good. But like, if looking back now, what would you what would you attribute to growing the business? Like, what’s actually worked well in terms of scaling?
Dane Barnes 21:39
Um, I think a handful of things. I think, you know, one thing that really helped us grow the business was that the product itself, the Shibumi shade, looks so different from the traditional beach umbrella or tents that were out there. So I think it looks so different that it’s like a tractor beam for people on the beach. They want to know what it is. They want to know how it works. So I think that’s one thing. I think then when people realize that it’s so lightweight and portable, it’s really easy for one person to set up. It can’t blow away. It provides a lot of shade that the kind of functionality of it, or the kind of like, I guess features of it, is a better word. They really appreciate that. I guess one other unique thing is that Scott, Alex and I, the three co founders, we called and texted the first 7000 customers that ordered one. And so we would say, for example, like, Hey, Max, this is Dane, the co founder of Shibumi. You know, thanks so much for ordering a Shibumi shade. I’m curious how you heard about us and which beach you visit. And so we’d call and text Max, would go to the beach with his family, and then he likely would text us, or call us and say he was so excited. And I think it helped people kind of bridge the gap between company, whatever that means, and customer, and kind of like, pull back the curtain a little bit. And so people were pulling for us. So that was really a good thing. And then I think lastly, we weren’t trying to sell out, you know, it was just so hard to forecast demand. But we did sell out the first five years in a row. And so there was this kind of, you know, feeling among folks that that shibumis were hard to get, and they were and so I think that scarcity principle also helped us a lot. So I think it was some sort of mix of all of those things. When
Max Branstetter 23:25
did you realize you’re at the point where, all right, like, we physically can’t call or text every single customer anymore?
Dane Barnes 23:32
Yeah, so once it got to be, you know, 100 orders a day or something like that, that was too much. Because the other interesting thing Max was that Scott, Alex and I all had full time jobs for 2016 2017 2018 2019 we’ve never paid ourselves a dime from Shibumi. We would just reinvest all of the proceeds from every from every Shibumi shade that we sold. And so then it got to and so therefore we were only working on evenings after our day jobs and on weekends, but towards the tail end of 2019 it got to a point where there was so much work to do with Shibumi that we were burning the candle from both ends with our day job and doing Shibumi nights and weekends, that we realized that Shibumi would be hurt or not do as well If we didn’t make the jump to full time. So I’d love to think that it was a super brave, courageous, risky thing to do, but I think it
Max Branstetter 24:28
will call it that all those words fit the mold. We’ll give it to
Dane Barnes 24:30
you because we were so risk averse, yeah,
Max Branstetter 24:34
looking back to where the company is now, and kind of your vision for the next few years to, you know, those early days when you’re still working other jobs, working other jobs, working on prototypes and that, like, what’s the biggest thing that has changed in terms of just kind of, like, your strategic approach with the company, or, like, how you guys manage the company?
Dane Barnes 24:52
I think now, you know, in the beginning, for the first many years, there were only three employees, Scott, Alex, and I, the three Co-Founders. I think the biggest change is that we’ve done a lot of hiring. You know, now there are 22 approximately full time Shibumi employees. And so I think being able to make that transition from we’re doing everything ourselves as a really, really small group of founders, to now there’s a lot of people working on Shibumi. I think being able to let go of some of that responsibility and control and kind of entrust that and really smart people who we work with has been probably the biggest change. To me,
Max Branstetter 25:33
the biggest change in the podcasting world in recent years is the addition of video to traditional audio only podcast. And did you know the Wild Business Growth podcast is the first ever video podcast to be on YouTube. You can look it up. You won’t find anything about that because it’s not true, but we are on YouTube. You can subscribe @MaxBranstetter for the video versions, like this wonderful video with Dane, where my hair tries to mimic a shaboomy shade in the wind. You could subscribe at max Branstetter and keep your eyes out for that one. Now, I am a bit eager to move on, but let’s talk some family and friend stuff. I know you’re, you’re eager to get to pet peeves, because that’s a, you know, a deep, deep segment. But before we get to that, I do want to switch gears a little bit and touch on what you’ve alluded to, which is actually the fact that, you know, you got two co founders. One of them’s your brother. Another one is, would you say best friend, a really good friend. Like, yeah, brother, best friend. So, the three amigos, the three shaboomers. I don’t know. I actually took a history of rock class in college for a couple semesters, and one of the famous songs was SHABOOM, SHABOOM. So I think you got a partnership there with that song. You can license it. But anyway, let’s start with your brother first. So your brother, Scott, what? How would you characterize what it’s like being in such a big, growing business, but also working so closely with your brother?
Dane Barnes 27:09
It’s been great. You know? It’s funny. Max, at the beginning of Shibumi, I had read so many articles like because I studied business at UNC, Chapel Hill, and my focus in in the business school was entrepreneurship. So I remember reading articles from time to time saying, you know, don’t start a business with your family or close friends, because if it goes wrong, it could damage those relationships. And so I was mindful of that, but it just felt natural to do it with them. And so at the very beginning, we kind of set a goal or said to each other that, hey, our relationship is more important than the business success or lack thereof. And so no matter what happens, good or bad, once we decided to kind of make the leap after this prototype that we were going to keep each other first on the list of priorities. And so it turned out to be a really great thing, because it has allowed us to spend a lot of time together, as opposed to having different jobs, different lives, that I think it’s been a really great thing for us.
Max Branstetter 28:11
Yeah, I think that those ground rules are so important, and it was so great that you guys were on the same page before you started. Because, yeah, you hear stories all the time, whether it’s friends or family or even somebody that’s just kind of pure business partners. Of how, if things go awry, which I always want to say is already, because it looks like it the, you know, the relationship can really get damaged. So set that up from the beginning. Fortunately, like the business is doing great. So that’s awesome.
Dane Barnes 28:40
I think if we would have struggled, it would have been, you know, maybe not as easy, but yeah, fortunate there too. How
Max Branstetter 28:46
about with Alex? So best friend, obviously, super tight as well. What sort of differences do you see in terms of being business partners with a family member versus a close friend?
Dane Barnes 28:57
I don’t think too much. I think, I think, you know, we’re all three so close that I don’t really see any distinct differences for us. Alex and I were college roommates all four years at Carolina, and we knew each other before Carolina. We grew up in the same in Winston Salem as well. So we’ve known each other for a long time. So I think, I think no differences in the brother versus best friend and kind of how that’s played out for us. Does
Max Branstetter 29:23
any sort of, I guess, personal life or like sibling fights going back to when you were a kid? Does any of that find its way trickle into the business? Or have you found a way to nip it in the bud, as they say,
Dane Barnes 29:33
Yeah, I think luckily not. I mean, in the beginning, I think we argued more and things were more tense, maybe because we were just, you know, things were just more uncertain. But I think with practice and just, you know, more time working together that things smoothed out seemed like, like every day from the beginning to the end. And so now, now things are, you know, we still have disagreements, but they’re, they’re kind of normal things, and we don’t. We don’t hold them personally or take them personally.
Max Branstetter 30:01
And are you able with Scott or Alex to hang out normally outside of work anymore? Or is it always come up with work?
Dane Barnes 30:10
No, yeah, we well, yeah, we hang out at work. You know, we work in the evenings. We still hang out together, and a lot of times we still talk about work. So it’s all, it’s all, you know, Blurred Lines,
Max Branstetter 30:21
yeah, well, sounds like a good problem to have. Speaking of problems to have, you got a big problem now, because we’re going to get to the unusual. So this is, uh, pet peeves, quirks, weird talents. Won’t make you wait any longer. What? What’s a pet peeve? What’s somebody that, maybe Scott, Alex, friend, family, team, somebody calls you out for I butcher that we’re gonna keep this in. Let me rephrase that. What is your biggest pet peeve?
Dane Barnes 30:49
Yeah, I don’t know what my biggest pet peeve is. I would say, like I mentioned at the beginning, I do feel like I have a healthy dissatisfaction with things that don’t work well, and I really want to improve them, like with the Shibumi shade, you know, going from umbrellas to the Shibumi shade, or, I don’t know, other things, so, yeah, I feel like just kind of striving to try to improve things is something that I would say might be a pet peeve. I don’t know if that counts as a pet peeve, Max, but
Max Branstetter 31:18
I would say it definitely does. And even though 90% of that question I started asking the wrong question, you answered it swimmingly. So perfect. But I would also argue that that is a fantastic trait to have as an entrepreneur. You know, going back to entrepreneurship classes again, like all you learn is like entrepreneurs are problem solvers, and it’s like a lot of times they’re people who maybe, you know, didn’t grow up and say, like, I want to start a business that does this. You just come across problems, and you’re like, man, like somebody should really do something about that. And like, oh, maybe I should do something about that. So I think that’s a great, great trait to have. Do you have a system, whether it’s now or in the past, for keeping track of, like, little problems that you’d like to see a solution for.
Dane Barnes 32:01
I don’t. Probably should. And, you know, it’s funny that you say that, like being at the business school at UNC Chapel Hill and studying entrepreneurship, I always admired entrepreneurs so much about just what you said, their ability to find a problem, you know, to, like, recognize a problem and then find a solution for it. And so in school, I always thought, man, it would be so great to be an entrepreneur, but I never knew if I would have an opportunity of recognizing the problem and coming up with a solution. But I think that is a good suggestion. I should keep a list that
Max Branstetter 32:36
wasn’t my intention. But hey, you never know. No, the Notes app works wonders, but at least in my case, probably for a lot of others as well, it’s like, I’ll, I’ll make notes of things that, like, huh, like potential business ideas or things like that. But vast majority of them, like, realistically, you’re not going to act on, but like, it’s good for the brain to start, start doing, or start to think that way, in terms of problem solving. All right, so let’s try to unbutcher My first question. So this is what I started to ask blindly. I don’t know how that happened. What is a quirk like something that Scott or Alex or anybody just kind of calls you out for? It’s a little quirky about your personality, but it’s just who you
Dane Barnes 33:10
are. Yeah, I am a people person, through and through, and I like talking with anyone, everyone, anywhere, so where I would think that maybe they’re more normal. Of, you know, having, like, normal social, social interactions, that I really kind of seek those things out. I just like talking to people, learning their stories. Maybe that comes from the early days of optimize higher and just kind of learning to talk to anyone on the phone. But I just have a genuine curiosity I think about other people, and so I want to, I want to talk to people and learn about them. So
Max Branstetter 33:45
you’re the guy in the elevator, like in those insurance commercials that’s talking to everybody in the elevator and everybody else on their phone. I
Dane Barnes 33:52
wouldn’t go that far. I
Max Branstetter 33:54
think draw the line somewhere. Yeah, I
Dane Barnes 33:56
draw the line. I think I’m still introverted to a decent degree, but I think where socially acceptable. I do like to make conversation with people.
Max Branstetter 34:04
It’s a really pleasant trait to have. You know, my dad talks about how like he taught himself growing up, and I think his dad, my grandpa, Fred, was the same way, how like they wanted to feel confident enough to walk into any room and be able to anybody that doesn’t need it needs means needs to turn into anything. It could just be saying hi, but it’s good to, like, just constantly get yourself out of your comfort zone just a little bit. So it’s cool you have that, have that trade as well. And then what is a I call them weird talents, but it could also be seen as a party trick, like something totally random and very like tiny in the grand scheme of life, but something that you just have a knack for you, like, really good at.
Dane Barnes 34:46
Yeah, I can’t sing, I can’t dance, you know, so it’s none of, none of that kind of stuff. But I’m somewhat of a minimalist, so I don’t like having a lot of stuff or clutter, so I’m good at i. Uh, not having a lot of stuff, or donating things, throwing things away, whatever it is, but I’m good at not accumulating stuff. I think is a weird talent. You
Max Branstetter 35:11
are my dead spirit animal, all those things. But also, uh, one of my favorite shows of all time, which nobody talks about anymore, but they should, MTV Cribs. Do you ever watch that growing up? Yeah, I think it was the skater, Eric Costin. His house was like, the most minimalist house of all time. I’m gonna look this up, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I’ll put the link in the show notes too. But I just remember, like, the amount of rooms he had where there was like one piece of furniture and it was just, like all white walls. Was just, like, a lot of open space. It was just so minimalist. I remember thinking, like, Huh, that’s kind of interesting. But like, there’s not a lot of furniture or anything. And my dad, my dad, watched it too, and he’s like, that is an awesome house. Let’s wrap up with some rapid fire. Q, A, you ready for it? Yep. All right. Let’s get wild. What is the best lesson you learned from Adam Grant? One
Dane Barnes 36:05
of his books is called give and take, and it’s about how givers, rather than takers, you know, do better at a lot of things in life. So Adam was extremely generous with his time with me and with so many of my peer, classmates, but I think generosity is one thing that I took from him that I really admire.
Max Branstetter 36:25
Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a wonderful thing. Nobody’s gonna complain about that. They will complain about this next one, though, totally random. Have Did you ever see? Do you watch Family Guy growing up at all? Very little. Okay, so you won’t get this at all then, so great question, Max, but I was looking up beforehand. It actually is, like a comical remake of some song from some old like, Sound of Music type show or movie, something like that. But there’s one episode where Peter does this giant dance and like halftime show for a song called ship Whoopie. And I hadn’t thought about that in years, decades, even, until came across your brand and just the similar name. But now we know that shapobi is not the inspiration. So just want to make that totally clear like that. But anyway, we’ll have to find that in the show notes as well. I just didn’t know how often that came up, and I’m glad, glad you didn’t watch that, because it’d probably spoil your brand. That’s awesome. All right, so that was more of a comment. I know you’ve become a bit of an art collector. Who would you say? Or what style of art would you say is like your favorite all time style of art?
Dane Barnes 37:34
Yeah, just broadly contemporary art. I really like and I have some wonderful friends who are great art collectors and just know so much about art. So I try to soak up from them what they what they know. And again, they’re, they’re very generous with, you know, teaching me, as I kind of dip my toe into learning more about contemporary
Max Branstetter 37:56
art and contemporary that could be, well, that’s like modern art, right? So that could be, that could be paintings, that could be sculptures, that could be wide range of stuff, yeah,
Dane Barnes 38:04
so I guess contemporary art is art made today by living artists, um, whereas I think modern art is, oddly, just like a little bit older than that, so shows how much more, yeah, 1860s to the 1970s so which is still, still great art as well.
Max Branstetter 38:23
You’re gonna love the art of the future as well, which is called prehistoric art. Probably the way that the naming connotation goes, denotation goes, whatever it is, all right? And then last one, if you could live on a beach and not, I don’t mean like beach house. I mean like, literally, sleep in the sand under a Shibumi, course, shabumi shade. If you could live on any beach, what beach would that be?
Dane Barnes 38:47
I’ll give you two. So Emerald Isle is where I have gone. Emerald Island, North Carolina, is where I have gone to the beach every year since I was born. And I love it. And the second one that I would say is bald head. North Carolina is an island in North Carolina. There’s no cars on the island, so it’s just walking, biking or golf carts. But it’s a very magical place as well. So two North Carolina beaches for you, awesome,
Max Branstetter 39:15
perfect, cool. Well, as a gift, I’ve purchased a plot of land for you to live on it. No, just Dan, thank you so much. This has been an absolute blast. Just love what you guys are doing with the company. I think it’s awesome again, just like anybody tuning in, just like literally Google pictures of this jaboomi shade and products, and it will just brighten your day. So really, really cool. Thanks again for coming on. Where’s the best place if people want to get their hands on a Shibumi shade or any of your other products, as well as if they want to connect with you online, what’s the best places for
Dane Barnes 39:49
that? Yeah, so for the Shibumi shade, you can go to Shibumi shade.com. S, H, I, b, u, M, I. Shade.com. And then reaching out to me, either via LinkedIn or shooting me an email would be great, perfect,
Max Branstetter 40:06
awesome. And then last thing stage is yours, final thoughts. It could be a quote. It could be another problem that grinds your gears, whatever you want. Send us home here just kind of one final thought.
Dane Barnes 40:17
Ah, it’s a good question. I think I don’t know. Final thought, I’m really excited about the future of Shibumi. We’re going to announce a new product in March. I can’t say just what it is yet, but we’re really excited about that. And I’m just really excited again about where Shibumi can go from here to help families have a safe and enjoyable beach experience with products that are built to last
Max Branstetter 40:47
Life’s a beach. Thank you so much, Dane, for coming on the podcast, sharing your stellar Shibumi story, 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 platform and/or subscribe on YouTube. YouTube is @MaxBranstetter for the video versions. You can also find us on Goodpods, and for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and while you’re there, sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter that is at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
