Full Transcript – Edgar Blazona – Wild Business Growth Podcast #215

This is the full transcript for Episode #215 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Edgar Blazona – The Sofa King, Founder of BenchMade Modern. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

Edgar Blazona 0:00
I bet I can figure out a way to fix that it can’t take 16 weeks to make a sofa.

Max Branstetter 0:22
Hello. 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, MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at max and you can even email me sometimes I say email too fast. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 215. The big 215 and today’s guest is Edgar Blazona. Edgar is known as The Sofa King. He is a serial entrepreneur in the furniture space. And he is the founder of BenchMade Modern, this episode covers everything from scaling that selling that to graffiti and Burning Man because why not? It is Edgar B. Enjoy the show. Already, we are here with Edgar Blazona, The Sofa King, who I am so fucking excited to speak Sorry, I couldn’t resist. But Edgar, the man behind BenchMade Modern, which is he’s built and has since sold and has done plenty of things in the furniture and design space serial entrepreneur, lots and lots we’ll get into today. Thank you so much for joining. How’re you doing today?

Edgar Blazona 1:53
We’re doing good. We’re doing good. Thanks for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this

Max Branstetter 1:58
perfect, perfect. I you know, with a little hesitation there, I thought you were gonna say that you’ve been dreading this. And I was like, that’s probably appropriate. Because usually where these conversations go, but no, you’ve there’s so much that you’ve done in your in your background, I’m even just reading your bio and fascinating. So, really excited to dive into that. Before we get into any of the furniture world. It was a time in your life when you were a high school dropout. And I also know you got into being a graffiti artist. So you know, everybody’s done that same but. No, no, it’s it’s really interesting to think of in and out. Can you give us a little background of kind of the, the story of that part of your life?

Edgar Blazona 2:39
Yeah, sure. Well, you know, I grew up in San Francisco, you know, before it was like, you know, the big.com era, you know, it was like a gold rush, you know, but before that it was a real blue collar town and I grew up there, I kind of grew up in the ghetto, you know, my, my parents bought and sold houses and rebuilt them and all that and, and I was while I was, you know, in a good school and all that I was really interested in this other side of the tracks, you know, and I also was an artist really wanted to be a graphic artist, you know, growing up and really was starting to study that. And graffiti came along and, and it you know, it mix this this life of, I don’t know, rebellious sort of feeling along with art and, and I really loved it and San Francisco while New York was kind of the leader, you know, San Francisco and LA were kind of, you know, close followers in the graffiti, you know, kind of movement and it really kind of helped me stay creative. As a young you know, high school and you know, even later on in my life as well. It really played a role you know, I used to I used to paint for bands and we would go to Lollapalooza and we would you know, they would hire us to paint all these you know, broken cars and on the screens and I would I painted for this one band called Total Devastation you know, and onstage kind of thing and you know, walked around like I was like in the band or something, but I was just a graffiti artist, but it was fun. It was fun times.

Max Branstetter 4:09
How does one learn how to graffiti if that’s even how you say,

Edgar Blazona 4:13
oh my god yeah, your your style your letters, like man, you sit there and you write your name over and over and over again on paper right? And you’re trying to fine tune your craft and you know, it’s just like any sort of, you know, letter font and all that, you know, you you you are creating your own style and there’s rules right you can’t copy everyone else you got to have your own style your own you know your own thing and, and I was always into being the king of height right? Blaze was my was my name and blaze the King of Height, right? And so that King mantra that whole, you know, graffiti artists love to call themselves King, right, which is, you know, I’m the king of the subways or I’m the king of the bus yards, right? And so I was like During a height meeting, I would paint on top of the highest places, you know, you’d find my work. And that kind of carried over into my sofa world, you know, I’m, I really do, I’m the sofa King, you know, and that’s all straight up comes from my graffiti days and that errand time.

Max Branstetter 5:15
So how I’m always amazed and you’ve seen in different parts of the world, like, I remember I was visiting Berlin. And obviously Berlin is you know, one of the most famous graffiti towns of all time here in the world. And there are some hotels and high rise buildings there that you’ll look up and there’s stuff like 20, 30, 40 floors off the ground, on the side of the buildings. There was graffiti up there and my friends and I were just like, how would like how was somebody even up there? Yeah. So for you how, what’s some secret sauce behind you being the king of height?

Edgar Blazona 5:49
Yeah, I mean, back then, you know, this was early on right? People weren’t painting like that yet. And you know, I would I would use window washer you know, apparatus, you know, ropes and pulley systems and I would drop down on a window washer type setup, or I would pull myself up on a window washer setup, I may or may not have, you know, borrowed a, a cherry picker, you know, in my life, you know, a man lift right, you know, things like that, you know, you would you would climb you’d find these pipes, you’d look around, you find these pipes, and you’d scale these buildings using these pipes to get up to the top. You know, thank god they didn’t, the bolts that are holding the pipe to the wall don’t break off. But, you know, you put a lot of trust in the work of others, you know, to get up that roof.

Max Branstetter 6:33
I love the may have borrowed-ness of a of a cherry picker. Yeah, I may have borrowed lots of things now. But did you ever get caught in the act of graffiti? Graffiti? No,

Edgar Blazona 6:46
I didn’t. And I did. Well, I guess once I sort of got caught but I would I would run so you know, I was I had a nickname SkinnyFAT I was kind of the the fat kid that can run from the cops like the skinny kids and, and I would go for the rooftops again, I would climb things and I would get over things I would jump right off a rooftop you would never catch me there’ll be no cop that will ever jump off a roof top like I would. And I could get away and and and so I was I kind of had this weird little nickname, you know, SkinnyFAT. And, you know, again, even in myself a business you’ll see that name gets carried over, even in my DJ name is you know, SkinnyFAT. So I kind of I love those things going back to our childhood, I think that those are the things that start to push us into business. And, and in fact, on the same graffiti front. You know, I started a company called Graffiti Graphics. I wasn’t that great of a graffiti artist, but I hung out my crew. You know, we’re all good graffiti artists. And so I started this little business. And I figured out how to kind of monetize, you know, my graffiti friends. And I would go to these, you know, stores and clubs and big concert venues. And, you know, and I would pitch you know, our company, and I would say, you know, you pay us a painting, you know, a little bit of cash, and we’ll do these big, amazing murals for you. And yeah, it’s a big step for them. You know, they’re looking at these, you know, kind of punk ass kids and they’re trying to figure out like, okay, and, you know, I would have to do my sales technique to do that. And that was, you know, early on was, you know, I was the little entrepreneur in that world.

Max Branstetter 8:20
What was your, your best lesson you learned as that first little SkinnyFAT entrepreneur?

Edgar Blazona 8:26
What was my what was my best lesson? I mean, gosh, probably, I’ll tell you what, when I was hired by the city to paint all these skateboard ramps, I would actually paint the ramps, but but little little known to them is I would sell the ramp space to the skateboard company. So I would then take the ramp space and I go to the skateboard company say I’ll do your logo or whatever on these ramps, in exchange for clothing or skateboards, or, you know, whatever I could get out of the company. And what I learned was that there was a press article, it was my first real press experience. This reporter just milked me for all the information all the bad shit I’ve ever done in my life. I told this reporter

Max Branstetter 9:12
and it came out sounds a lot like this interview.

Edgar Blazona 9:15
Yeah, it’s like feeling like this right? And it came out in this illegal I’m a little bit smarter, though. I won’t tell you the real illegal stuff, you know, but I told the guy that and, and suddenly, you know, this two page huge article came out about me and, and all you know, I kind of spilled the beans on so much and, and the mayor was, you know, I couldn’t do the skateboard contest. The cops were at the skateboard contest, you know, waiting for me and all this. So, what I learned was, you know, be careful with the press.

Max Branstetter 9:45
And so we’re going to continue being careful in this interview and make sure we all don’t get go to prison. But let’s get to the BenchMade Modern story. So this is a super cool, super cool I do that. Sometimes there’s nothing cool about this business it but I just made it cool. A super cool furniture business that you started from nothing totally differentiated stood out had a great run with and have since sold to American Leather. And there’s I mean, we could do separate interviews and interviews and all the entrepreneurship stuff you’ve done but I think to highlight on BenchMade Modern, what is it that got you into the furniture space in the first place?

Edgar Blazona 10:24
Well, in high school, I was living on my own and I had a small apartment I had no furniture and and I realized man, I maybe I can make something and so I made a piece of furniture, a table and chairs. I ended up selling it in a gallery that you know, I just finished it in this gallery. I was talking to this gallery owners, well, we could sell something like that, why don’t you show us what it is. And, you know, I gave him a Polaroid right? That’s how long ago this was, I gave him a Polaroid and showed him what I made. And, and that was a Friday, I gave it to him. And by Monday it had sold, and I got $400 It seemed like so much cash, right? It was like I was you know, I was rich, you know, this is like this is my payday. And so I’ve been in furniture ever since and, and so that’s just kind of how it happened. It just, you know, just started off with needing money, and it turned into a business and I later dropped out of high school to pursue it. And I just little by little, you know, I started making custom furniture I was I was slinging furniture out on the streets, you know, in front of the bars at late at night, you know, trying to trying to sell whatever I made and you know, kind of hustle but but hustling in a different way, you know, take a product that is not used to being you know, sold by a little punk ass and, and you know, put it into play a little bit differently. And that grew from there.

Max Branstetter 11:43
So you were a little pencast but the you were creating stuff that was putting a lot of little punk ass is in comfortable seats. So good on you. Yeah. So so so you gravitated towards his furniture space? Did you have any inclination at that time of, you know, this is going well, I want to turn this into like a big business and actually, you know, you know, devote so much of my life to it.

Edgar Blazona 12:04
A quick little little side note is yeah, you know, I started, you know, I had a business had three employees. And I realized it’s going to be a long way for me to, you know, really make this into a big thing to get that dream house that I always had, you know, envisioned or whatever. So, I shut that business down and went to work for Pottery Barn to learn, right, and I and I maneuvered my way through Pottery Barn, you know, trying to show them how I could fix problems. But in reality, what I was really trying to do was get into places where I could learn, see what real factories were. And then fast forward, you know, 10 years, something like that, I started a little modernist brand. And then fast forward that was called true modern. And then fast forward there that I figured out if I if I sold at retail, directly to the consumer, right, I mean, pre DTC right directly to the consumer, gosh, I can cut out the wholesale markup, and I could do so much better. And, and then if I could find a product where I didn’t have to inventory it, you know, I didn’t have to have a warehouse and I had gotten stung in 2008, I had two warehouses filled with products, and everything crashed. And, and I had all this rent costs, you know, of these warehouses, and nothing was selling and all that, but this is a bad business model. And so, so if I could, if I could come up with a business plan that I didn’t have to hold inventory, you know, what could it be? And, and I found sofas, you know, and I found these things I was like, they’re kind of custom made. But if I could just figure out how to make them faster, you know, and I got so sick of going to these dinner parties and hearing like, well, I bought a sofa, you know, blah, blah, blah retailer, and, you know, took 16 weeks, and, you know, I bought it and read I don’t even like read anymore, you know, whatever that was constantly and, and so I thought, god, I should fix that. Like, I bet I could figure out a way to fix it. It can’t take 16 weeks to make a sofa, you know, so there’s something broken and and that’s what I set out to fix. And so that was the disruption, right? That was the thing that I was going to disrupt right I was going to disrupt the American leathers, right, I was going to I was going to do it in custom by the inch made in in 24 hours. Right? How can I do that? That would be amazing. And that’s what I set out to do.

Max Branstetter 14:22
You’re probably going to, you know, drop off this interview right now. But the the one little anecdote that, that I’ve experienced recently from about sofas taking forever to get delivered was, you know, a couple years back when my wife, my lovely, beautiful wife and I moved into our apartment building. Our Wi-Fi wasn’t set up yet. So like the first couple of days, I had to chill and work from the lounge in that apartment building and I met another couple that moved in at the same time they were in the same situation. And you know, fortunately we had all our furniture and you know, big shout out to our families for providing a lot of that but this other couple had ordered a couch and they’re like, Yeah, our couch still isn’t here yet. And we would occasionally see them in the hallways for months after that. And like three months after, I’d be like, Oh, how you guys doing? How’s your place? And they’d be like, Oh, it’s, you know, it’s good overall, except our couch still hasn’t been delivered. And it turned into months and months. And they ended up moving out after a year, so probably a quarter to a third of their entire lease duration. They were without a couch in their living room. So you’re doing some incredible work there. But so the shipping time the customization, direct to consumer, those aspects, those are huge differentiators there. What did you do to really bring this to the attention of customers of saying, Hey, we’re BenchMade Modern, we’re different than, you know, x x x. Sofa company.

Edgar Blazona 15:47
Yeah. You know, when we launched, you know, I tried to figure out how long would it take right? Quick, first of all, cannot make a sofa that’s custom by the inch. Right? Why are we choosing a sofa that fits fits better in the truck, right? That’s really what it’s all about, you know, an 85 inch sofa fits great in the trunk and chips cheap, it goes up right and fits the doors, all that? Why are we doing that? Right? Do we allow people to have other options, right? So by the inch became became a differentiator. And then my second differentiator was, you know, made in as little as 24 hours. And so you could pay, I think it was $200. I think it went to $400. Later, but it was started out as $200 difference. You could have this sofa custom made in 24 hours. So how did I do that? Right? Everyone’s like, Oh, my God, you know, how could you do that? I just moved it to the front of the line. Hello, right. Like, no big deal, we will do that in big factories all the time. But instead of like hiding that, I made a big deal about that. And so, you know, it doesn’t take it takes us six hours, eight hours, maybe maybe eight hours, six hours to make a sofa, right? Even a sectional sofa. So and that’s and that’s just not us. That’s that’s most, you know, reasonable size factories, right? And so, so why do we wait in this line? Like, that was my hack, right? That was my disruption. And the reason why we wait in the line, in case case you’re wondering, is there’s just a line out the door, right. And on top of that, they when they sold the sofa, they didn’t know if they had red fabric, you know, going back to that red fabric thing. They didn’t know if they had red fabric. In fact, they probably didn’t have red fabric, and they had to order red fabric. And that was going to take six weeks to get from the mill. So how about this, let’s not sell a sofa in red fabric unless we have it. Right. Another crazy hack, right? And so. So that’s what I tried to do. And and that was our real differentiator. And, you know, interestingly, right, it turns out, the 24 hour thing didn’t work. And you know why? It’s because people think, well, if Restoration Hardware, makes sofas, and it takes six weeks to six months, then How good could a sofa be at Benchmade modern that only took six hours. And I can tell you, I’ve worked at Restoration Hardware, you know, I can tell you the same factories are making those sofas in four to six hours. Right. And so it’s just how they lay it up and how they stack the line. And, and I felt like I should, you know, use what I could to to differentiate myself.

Max Branstetter 18:33
It’s like the, when something is priced. So Well, that seems too good to be true. And then you’re like, wait, something’s gotta be wrong here. That’s the same thing applied? Yes. From from a timing sense. Yeah, but that’s so but it’s amazing that you obviously you weren’t doing you know, as it went on, you weren’t doing 24 hours all the time, but being able to deliver something in weeks instead of months and not have like the disappointment of oh, we don’t have that color. Like that’s a huge benefit, especially for sofas, something that people use, you know, it’s one of the most use things in their entire home.

Edgar Blazona 19:05
Well, it is and they find themselves, you know, getting attached. And so, you know, part of our process was really to attach the customer, right was to take them down this journey. And so, you know, I’d send them out this box of swatches, right? And they, they fall in love with it, I’d ask them I’d get on video calls and you know, and I’d say okay, spill some wine on it, rub it on your dog, you know, like do all these things that that and all this works great for me. You know, Rob, you know, what do you eat? What is your kitty? You know, my kid eats you know, hotdogs with ketchup. Okay, put some ketchup on it, you know, see, see what how it works and and then I would later on I sent out these full scale drawings. So if it was going to be custom, you know, I didn’t think augmented reality really was a very good trick. It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t work well. You can kind of envision it but but I would send out these paper drawings full scale paper drawings, you lay on the floor and see if it fits in your room. See if your your husband can lay down in between the arms, you know, all those things that that made this difference. And, and what I was really doing all of that was designed around, you know, attaching the customer, right getting that customer interested in the experience, right making the experience fun, it shouldn’t suck, you know, to buy a sofa, right? It shouldn’t be this, this daunting thing that, that you have to go through like paying your taxes or something like that. It should be fun, you know? And so I was really working on that. And, and you know, even at the end, you would you buy the sofa, and you’d get a link and you Okay, boom, now your sofas in sewing. Right? Do you know how much thread this sower sows in a year, you know, all that stuff, and, you know, so and so sewing it, and then oh, it’s in framing, oh, it’s in upholstery. And then at the very end of the line, and these are real clicks, like, this is why like, you would get this thing on your phone and in an app, and at the very end, I put a GPS tracker on the sofa. And then you’d watch your sofa drive across the country, like an Uber car, right all the way to your house. Right? And it was just fun process. And hopefully you sent that tracker back. You know, most people didn’t, I’d have to call him I’d be like, Hey, by the way, I noticed the trackers in your living room still or, you know, driving around Chicago? Do you mind just actually putting that in the mailbox for me, would you, you know, people think I’m like, you know, big brother kind of thing. But I just tried to get the tracker back. So all of that stuff was designed around making the experience fun, and try to get away from that, you know, dinner table discussion about how much it sucks.

Max Branstetter 21:39
Besides those, as you as you almost said, defer initiators, which I think is the is the new term for custom by the inch. And those aspects that just make the customer experience so much better. What can you point to that has allowed the company to grow so much over the years to the point that it’s now been acquired?

Edgar Blazona 21:59
You know, we would, I would always say, you know, let’s take a look under the hood, right? While all that stuff is fun, right? So your customers become your best brand advocates, right? I would tell my team, you know, we can take actually, you know, a shitty situation, right? Got a real struggle, and where the customer is so mad and angry, and oh my god, you know, they scratched my door and they broke my thing. And whatever, you can take that moment. And you can flip that on them. And you can make them so happy that they’re become a brand advocate. And they’re actually the ones out there selling your sofa for you. Right and so so we would just pound on the pound pound pound on that whole thing, turn the customer into a brand advocate. Right. And so that really helped. I also think that one of the things that you know, helps is we put the best materials. So it’s quote unquote, under the hood, right? So you know, why skimp out on, you know, $30 with the materials and foam to buy a cheaper foam when I put the best foam pay the $30 and never hear back from them ever again. Right? Never hear this, like, hey, my sofas broken down, right? Like why not just spend a little bit extra money and make sure that stuff doesn’t come back. And so in the beginning, that was that was our whole that was our whole thing, right? Like, let’s just make great sofas, and we got some great press, you know, the New York Times wire cutter, voted us best sofa, you know, best online sofa two years in a row, you know, they had to change the category, you know, so we wouldn’t win again, basically. And so it was all about really just being the best that we possibly could be. And not in a cheesy way, like real, like actually real stuff, you know, put good materials be nice to people. Like how hard is that? You know? And it turns out, it’s really hard actually for a bunch of companies but but it certainly helped us grow.

Max Branstetter 24:01
How would you characterize the process of, of selling the company to American Leather? Oh, my god.

Edgar Blazona 24:07
First of all, I mean, if you are a startup founder, and I actually went back to some of our investors, and I said, Look, if you’re going to invest in startups, the best advice that you can give them is a folder system of how to keep documents. And if that folder is empty, like you know that there’s a document that needs to go in there, you know, because when you sell the company, right, the process of selling the company, man, I forget the fancy word they use, gosh, the process to sell the company, you know, when they look into your company, they’re like, oh, where’s this paper? And oh, where’s this paper? And dude, you made those papers. You made those documents when you very first started when it was just you It’s four o’clock in the morning things are flying past Do it 1000 miles an hour? Who knows? It’s in my email somewhere, well, what email? Did I even have the right email address at the time that I can even search now, you know, all of those things. And so, so when I think about that, I think, I think, gosh, you know, an American due diligence, that’s the word.

Max Branstetter 25:17
I was just gonna Yeah, exactly. Perfect. When they do that stuff,

Edgar Blazona 25:21
it’s like they dig in so deep. And honestly, if you don’t have that stuff organized and organized, well, selling your company can be very, very difficult. Needless to say, I was not very organized. I’m a way better artist, and designer and entrepreneur than I am, you know, paper organizer, and Excel spreadsheet operator.

Max Branstetter 25:43
Oh, that’s incredible. We’ve heard that from several cases. If you think you have enough documented to sell your business, you’re probably not even close. Because there’s so many companies that are obviously, you know, prepared to make a huge purchase like this. Don’t take these things lightly. You really have to have everything tied up. And but but fortunately, even if you’ve forgot the term due diligence, it’s okay.

Edgar Blazona 26:08
Not only do they have that, they in our case, they had two different teams of due diligence. I mean, they spent, you know, probably a couple 100,000 in acquisition, right. And, you know, at the time, we were just this little company, and you know, I’m just this little dude, and, you know, like, all that, and they’ve got these teams of people, and I’m going, I don’t even know what that is, you know, and no, we don’t have that, and, you know, kind of take it or leave it, you know, we’re doing cool things over here. But, but we are a startup, you know, and that’s a that’s a very different thing than acquiring, you know, a really well run well built, you know, bit you know, business has been there for

Max Branstetter 26:46
a while. Right, but your business, as arguably the most comfortable one out there. So you have that going for you. Obviously, you had a huge successful run with BenchMade Modern. But if you could do one thing differently going back from start of company to selling it, what would that main thing be?

Edgar Blazona 27:06
Gosh, that’s a great question. What would that mean thing be if I could do something differently? I think I would have gotten on the sale train a lot. Earlier, I watched some of my competitors. I, I had this, this general feeling that I didn’t want to become Banana Republic, right? Remember, when Banana Republic was everything was on sale, you know, 50% off basically every day every weekend, you know, and it just really cheapened everything about their brand. And, and, and so I really fought that for a long time, you know, to not become the sale brand. Now, that said, the world has changed. And the world doesn’t buy things unless it’s on sale, I go back to my first job ever a Pottery Barn big corporate job. And I remember realizing, I thought people put companies put things on sale as a way to give back like, okay, you know, we have this, you know, dining table and chairs, it’s on sale, you can come in and buy it, you know, like, you know, take an extra 20% off or 40% off, you know, great customer love the whole, it’s because they have extra inventory of it. It didn’t sell in the first place. And they’re just trying to get rid of it. Nowadays, things have changed in the sense that we don’t buy things online, unless it’s on sale or unless we have a coupon code or something like that. It’s it’s very rare that you’re making these purchases, without at least searching for those things. Right. So So I was late to that game. And I watched my competitors, some of my competitors grow. While I didn’t grow as fast because I didn’t get on that sale train. I should have just jacked my prices up and then dropped 20% off on the sale had the same, you know, outcome at the end, but I would have sold a lot more sofas and people would have felt like they got a much better deal. Isn’t that the dirty? I mean, honestly, like that’s the retail dirty one a one that, that when you hear that?

Max Branstetter 29:08
It’s crazy. You know? Yeah, no, but I mean, so many corporates. I mean, this happens in the CPG world as well. Yes, like often it’s it is when there’s excess inventory when the sale happens, but also like, when you’re looking at it from a pure financial lens, like the executives are all upset every time you do a sale because it’s like yeah, we’re selling more but like what, we should be making full price on these products. You know, it’s like there’s a reason that you know, something was something went wrong the causes in the first place, but yeah, it’s crazy that under the hood of the industry is fascinating. If you want to get under the hood of the Wild Business Growth Podcast, and also learn some podcasts, production tips, podcast, hosting, podcast, interviewing, podcast, marketing tips, I could go on and on and on. Your place to do so is the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. You can sign up there at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter it is your place for behind the scenes of the Wild Business Growth Podcast, plus podcast production tips and some puns as well, I apologize in advance, there’s, there is nothing I can do about that. Now, let’s get to some slump busting, because who doesn’t love a good slump buster. So let’s switch gears a little bit, let’s get to you more as a person and what you do to stay creative, what you do to stay inspired. You’re obviously a super creative person, and you have the whole kind of artistic and design side to you. In addition to the whole, you know, business owner and startup sites you you personally though, outside of work, what are your favorite ways to stay creative and keep your mind fresh?

Edgar Blazona 30:46
What are my favorite ways? I mean, I can say that, you know, during COVID, I went through what I call the COVID slump, right and I, I wasn’t creative, I was struggling to be creative, you know, and, you know, even early on before zoom became a big thing I found pleasure in, in video chatting with people we we are involved in Burning Man and music collectives and all that sort of thing. And, and we started playing these these raves, right, and we would, we would do them on, you know, Google meet and that sort of thing. And Zoom before Zoom was even, you know, what it has become. And I found early on it was It was exhilarating. It was exciting to see people’s faces and interact and, and and so I started doing much more of that even with my business and, and then and then even after that kind of faded this thing I called COVID slump happened. And I lost my design creativity. And so what did I do, I drove around Oakland, California, and I started looking at graffiti again, I started photographing it, I started looking at architecture, again, I you know, restaurants have a really good way they come and go so quickly, that they can be from an architectural standpoint very on trend or the next trend. And so and so when you look at restaurants, you can see these, these kind of these cool things happening. So I was photographing that and, and that sort of thing inspired me. And it kind of it got me back to my roots a little bit. And it also kind of inspired me with this new, you know, architectural design feel and, and it helped propel me back to being that creative person again, and, and got me out of my COVID slump.

Max Branstetter 32:27
That’s awesome. It’s like back to how it all started with the graffiti. And sometimes just seeing new designs and being exposed to that can be creative in itself. But also the fact that you photograph that, like you were you’re applying a form of the arts to looking at other form of the art. So it’s all that’s a creative, creative explosion. They’re so good slump Buster,

Edgar Blazona 32:46
it’s a good slug Buster, right. And, you know, it was very inspiring. And it was inspiring to go back to, to my roots and and you’re right and and a little bit of legal, you know, climbing on some rooftops to see some cool stuff and all that. And I of course kind of kind of love that still.

Max Branstetter 33:01
And I know you have. I mean, you alluded to it with Burning Man. And even before we hopped on this interview, you know, off the record, you were you were testing something from the DJ standpoint, but you have a passion for DJing and the whole music world. How did that come about? Well, I’ve

Edgar Blazona 33:17
been going to Burning Man for 23 years now, you know, 23 out of out of 25. And, you know, the music change out there. I’m such a control freak with trying to control the experience, right. And so we would go out there, you know, relatively small camp, we’d go out there and we wouldn’t have good music, we’d have shitty music, and we spent all night riding back and forth to some blinky thing, you know, three miles away and we get there and it’d be more shitty music, right? And so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna figure out how to play good music, right? And I’m gonna, I’m gonna figure out how to take our experience and fine tune it and, and really kind of turn those little dials and suddenly, you know, I could, you know, learn to DJ and then I got a little bit better and, you know, and now suddenly, I’m the DJ and I didn’t necessarily, you know, set out to be the DJ, but it’s a craft that I really looked up to and, and it’s hard it’s so hard you know, it’s it’s very hard to be a DJ it’s very hard to keep people dancing and and it’s very hard not to mess up on the dials you know, when one song is counting down, you know 543 And you’re going oh my god, I gotta get a new song in there you know, and it’s like, it’s almost like a panic attack and and you know, so I and I tackled that you know, and then now I’m I’m pretty good DJ, you know, I’ll have to say you know, you got to SkinnyFAT on SoundCloud and see me there.

Max Branstetter 34:40
Perfect, and I that name never gets old. I think that is tremendous. Who was influential for you? In learning how to DJ like, did you learn via like YouTube videos or by listening to records or like, how do you do that?

Edgar Blazona 34:54
No, I learned from our from our Burning Man community. There’s a group out here called the Space Cowboys and Yeah, and man, they were really, really good. And I, you know, we’ve been following them around forever and, and some of their DJs I’ve become friends with and, and the one in particular kind of took me under her wing and showed me a thing or two. She’s really good. You know, her name is Shooey you know, and she’s this, this great little DJ that just like crushes it. And you know, it’s exciting. I played my kids rave, my I got a kid in college, and I this last week at Claremont McKenna, right. He had a dorm rave, he asked the old man to come down and play for the dorm rave.

Max Branstetter 35:33
Hey, what, I don’t know what old man you’re talking about. You’re very young.

Edgar Blazona 35:37
Well, I’m old. And I went down there, you know, and I’m, I’m kidding. I’m setting up you know, again, I’m on the stage. And there’s these kids everywhere. And they’re jumping and screaming. And, you know, and I frankly, I mean, there was a lot of people at that party but But I came there and I crushed it, you know, and, and it’s fun to see the old man teaching the younger guys, I could still do it. You know, I still got it.

Max Branstetter 35:59
Yeah. Speaking of old man DJ is in, in dorm rooms. Let’s get to a segment called The Unusual. So this is, you know, pet peeves. quirks. Weird talents, obviously have loads and loads of weird talents. Let’s let’s start with quirks with something a little bit quirky about your personality that maybe your kids, family, friends, co workers somebody calls you out for it’s a little quirky, but it’s who you are.

Edgar Blazona 36:25
Yeah, it’s called a sofa, not a couch. I make so

Max Branstetter 36:29
I was gonna say I noticed that I mentioned couch maybe a time or two earlier in this interview and I noticed that you always refer to him as sofa and I thought wow, maybe sofa is much more classy. Yeah.

Edgar Blazona 36:41
Right. And I learned that the hard way to I went to my first factory and so here’s this is an interesting you might find this interesting. You know, when I was in the in the modern kids furniture business true modern. I tried to get into sofas, right? I started going to all these factories and try to convince them to make my product. And they would all say to me, Well, you’re not in the sofa business come back when you’re in the sofa business, right. So I found a guy finally to make me sofas at retail. Let’s call it $2,000. So I would buy these sofas for $2,000. My designs basically I was having custom sofas made in my design. And then I would sell my custom sofa for the same $2,000 I was making no money. But I did that long enough that it put me in the sofa business, right. So I went to this factory and a meeting with this lady, you know, and I’m saying to her, you know I’d love for you to make my couches. You know, I’ve been in the in the couch business for for six months, you can see all this work on online and our reviews and all that, you know, we’re we’re the real deal. We’d love to get these couches made by you. Every time I would say couches she would return with well, we can make your sofas for you. Or we’ll make that sofa for you in this color. Right? Every time it was that clear? Like it’s a sofa, right? We don’t make couches. It’s a sofa. And I picked up on that early on and kind of play with that. So my quirky thing is that my friends, you know, they most of them have my sofas. And a lot of them say couches when they quickly correct themselves when when they say that it’s kind of become this big joke within our group of you know, sofas versus couches and all that.

Max Branstetter 38:16
Well, thank you, Mr. Couch King for explaining that. But no, I will never say couch again. You hear couch potato but you never hear sofa potato? No. What other pet peeves do you have with something? It could be about anything? It doesn’t have to be about the business. Pet peeves, something that it just grinds your gears a little bit that people do out in public, I guess,

Edgar Blazona 38:37
gosh, just currents like, I mean, there’s a whole there’s a whole list of things like the currents pick yours a little bit. I think there’s something to be said for you know, presenting, you know, something like, for instance, I you know, when you have a party and you have a potluck party, that sucks, right? There’s no control, right? You don’t know, you know, half your friends don’t want to do it. So they end up going to Whole Foods and get some cut fruit or something dumb like that. So you’ve got 10 kinds of cut fruit, you know, and you’ve got, you know, one shitty casserole or whatever, right? Like don’t throw a party with in that manner. Right? Like, control it like set the vibe, like, you know, it’s this kind of food. And this is how we’re going to have it’s going to come out of these times and all that so you can you can fine tune this thing. I love the details. I love the fine little details and no one really can see, you know, that are kind of working behind them and they walk away going, Wow, that was really nice.

Max Branstetter 39:36
No potlucks for Edgar. And then besides organizing fantastic dinner parties, what’s the weird talent you have that and I don’t mean weird like strange. I mean, like a unique true talent this. Now this. I’m not going to let you say the DJ or graffiti thing because that’s obviously you have loads of experience with that, but maybe what’s something like around the house or like a party tree are something that you just have a big knack for?

Edgar Blazona 40:03
Well, weirdly, I can spit really far I can. I can somehow, like curl my tongue. I

Max Branstetter 40:11
just spit water out of my mouth. As you said, thank you.

Edgar Blazona 40:15
Yeah, weirdly, I can spit really far. And that’s it’s kind of weird town. And in fact, I’ll even say to my kid, oh yeah, watch this, you know, and I can spit from one side of the street to the other, you know? And how do you do that Dad? You know, I don’t know how I can do that. I just I guess I learned as a kid you know, you do that kind of thing. You line up on the street, you know? And you’re all standing there. Let’s see how far you can spit. Let’s see over you could sit such a dude thing. It’s funny.

Max Branstetter 40:37
You’d be a phenomenal baseball player, or at least guy hanging around a baseball field. Baseball, you know they’re doing that. They’re doing that. Alright, let’s wrap up with some Rapid-Fire Q&A. Ready for it? Yep. All right. Let’s go wild. So these are all about spit. No, I’m just kidding. So what is one piece of advice for any aspiring DJ out there?

Edgar Blazona 41:06
Get on rekordbox as quick as possible.

Max Branstetter 41:09
Besides yourself, who is your favorite graffiti artist of all time?

Edgar Blazona 41:14
Oh my gosh. Besides myself, who is my favorite graffiti artist of all time? I would have to say Barry McGee “Twist.”

Max Branstetter 41:23
Barry “Twist” McGee. Yes. I was just hanging out with

Edgar Blazona 41:27
Who’s in all the famous galleries and museums and all that like talk about a guy who I was around every day. And you know, a surfer in San Francisco, you know who just made it and you know, it was one of the most famous street artists in the world. It’s pretty amazing.

Max Branstetter 41:45
As the King of Height What do you think is the highest area that you ever tagged?

Edgar Blazona 41:50
was probably the Bay Bridge or I used to climb up on the cranes as a kid and and tag up there.

Max Branstetter 42:01
Oh my god. I don’t have like a serious fear of heights but I just got like a little spooked out when you said that like man that’s a real deal.

Edgar Blazona 42:09
You think about that you know it’s sketchy you know you think like I think about going back you know as I’m hanging on the Golden Gate Bridge on a chain link fence trying to get around the chain link fence to get to the walkway you know and I’m I’m moving my body and trying to fit my feet into the little chain links. And there’s depth below you know, I think about my own kids doing that. Oh my god I I can’t imagine.

Max Branstetter 42:31
Yeah, you’ve well it’s a shame you don’t really have any interesting stories from your background. 23 out of 25 years ish at Burning Man which is incredible. I mean, I know so many people would love to do it. You know just once in their lifetime to experiencing it but you’ve you’ve experienced it more than probably the the founders of Burning Man. What is one thing you must do if you’re going to Burning Man for the first time?

Edgar Blazona 42:55
Gosh, one thing you must do I mean that is such an open-ended question.

Max Branstetter 43:02
This is not an easy one. I would say

Edgar Blazona 43:04
you know participate you know find ways to participate you know do not be a spectator Do not be a gawker you know get in there and play along with people you know a lot of what Burning Man wit is and was is about creating these you know, fake things and fake businesses and fake that you kind of got to beat you got to kind of play you know, and and you can’t just be stiff, you got to let yourself play and get involved and have fun.

Max Branstetter 43:32
And a fun one to wrap up. Back when you’re truly entrenched in the in the sofa slash couch now the sofa business, what is the craziest spill or like destruction to a sofa that you ever heard about from a customer?

Edgar Blazona 43:49
Man, I mean, we have this 99 day you know, love it for 99 days and return it you know and every now and then you’ll get a 99 day return very rarely but every now and then and one time we got this sofa back and it looked like a car had run over it. I mean, you know I mean it it was it was so worn and I’m just blown out and all the arms and fabric rolled over and cushions you know, you know a sofa takes a little bit of you know maintenance right it kind of have to fluff it every now and then if you sit on a cushion that’s you know upright and you sit on it every time it’s gonna be a big U-shaped cushion and and boy that’s what we’ve gotten then. That is a that is a note you just keep that let me send you your money back thank you very much

Max Branstetter 44:43
fantastic, Edgar thank you so much. This has been amazing so fun connecting with you and inherent all your stories and now I know how to you know I know how to Bernie man. I know how to DJ know how to graffiti, not just guy but now just fascinating background and amazing entrepreneurial story and and there’s so much As you’ve done in the entrepreneurship world we didn’t even cover so really excited to see what you do next. Where is the best place for people if they want to follow or connect with you online?

Edgar Blazona 45:09
Either LinkedIn Edgar Blazona on LinkedIn or Twitter, you know, I’m relatively available on Twitter as well as scribbles on on Twitter. Those are probably the best two places to to interact with me and and, and see what I’m doing next and all that

Max Branstetter 45:24
perfect as well as Burning Man. Just don’t be a spectator. If you can find me. Feel free. That’d be a fun game. It’s like Where’s Waldo? Where’s Edgar?

Edgar Blazona 45:35
find me. There’s a last thing I want to know is how you had a problem with your cushion on your sofa at Burning Man. I might just call it a couch at that point.

Max Branstetter 45:45
Oh my god, that’s words to live by. And then last thing, final thoughts. It could be a quote a line. You know, more advice for graffiti, whatever you want. Send us home here.

Edgar Blazona 45:55
I think I would I would bring it back to the business model. Again, you’re going back to entrepreneurship and, and even raising money, ask for money, get advice, ask for advice, get money. Right. And, and I think that’s something we need to remember. Right? We need to when we reach out to other entrepreneurs and investors and all that, you know, ask them for advice. It’s not a this game is not a short game. Right? Right. BenchMade Modern didn’t take you know, one year to make it you know, Facebook didn’t take one year to make it you know, all these companies. You think that just made it right. And you think you’re going to make it in you know, five minutes, it takes a long time. So, so play the long ball game. I think that’s that’s really what it is.

Max Branstetter 46:42
Just dig the long ball. Thank you so much, Edgar, for coming on the podcast sharing your story, the hybrid of graffiti DJing at Bunring Man, while also doing awesome stuff in the furniture space. That pretty much describes everybody, right? 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 app and tell a friend about the podcast. You can also maybe try some graffiti No just kidding. Go try out a couch with them. They’re very comfortable. You can also find us on Goodpods where there are fantastic podcasts and 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’s at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Who would have thought? Until next time, Let your business Run wild. Bring on the bongos.