S1, E98: Nomatic, VP of Marketing - James Atkin

A broken heart, a one-way drive to Carlsbad, and a couch full of spare change turned into a first Hurley ad in Japan—and that same relentless “show up” streak later powered neighborhoods during Hurricane Sandy. James Atkin, now VP of Marketing at Nomatic, takes us through the kinetic path from 90s skate grime to global brand building, showing how falling down (and getting up) becomes a lifelong operating system.

We trace the early St. George scene where mentors traded ten minutes on a real board for candy, to the golden era of skateboarding—Barcelona clips, magazine photos, and the wild night in Tokyo that nearly ended everything. When the recession hit, James eased off the throttle, went home to help family, and found his way into Goal Zero. What started as driving a van to Crankworx became writing product copy, DIY photography, and then a bold Hurricane Sandy response: a buy-one-give-one campaign and truckloads of portable power deployed with Team Rubicon. The result wasn’t just a sales spike; it was proof that empathy, innovation, and action can define a brand’s soul.

We fast-forward through post-acquisition lessons at Black Diamond and Topo Designs, COVID’s burnout and re-centering on family, and the leap to Nomatic. James breaks down why fixing ops beats flashy campaigns—shipping speeds, service times, and consistent experience—before amplifying creators like Peter McKinnon and Dude Perfect. He shares Nomatic’s next moves: approachable premium gear, creator-first credibility, and true omnichannel growth with camera stores, Best Buy, Dillard’s, a Costco SMU, and a unified Europe push. The playbook is refreshingly human: show up, listen hard, build real relationships, and keep momentum. That’s how you turn a travel bag into a community—and a career into a story worth replaying.

If this story refuels you, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s building something, and leave a review with your favorite moment—what will you show up for next?

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Chapters

• 0:00 Host Intro & James’ Unusual Bio
• 4:22 Podcasting Milestones & Live Show Plans
• 9:15 Nomatic Origin Link & Product Recognition
• 12:05 Early Skating Years & St. George Scene
• 19:55 Moving To California & First Breaks
• 27:25 Japan Trip, Hurley Team, And Going All-In
• 33:05 Wild Tours, Lifestyle Skating, Near-Death
• 41:25 Recession Hits & Pivot Back Home
• 47:55 Goal Zero Entry & Realizing It’s Marketing
• 55:05 Hurricane Sandy: Show Up And Ship Power
• 1:03:45 Building Brand, Community, and Giveback
• 1:11:25 Post-Acquisition Moves: BD & Topo
• 1:17:45 COVID Burnout, Family Priorities, Relocation
• 1:23:15 Joining Nomatic: Fix Ops, Then Brand
• 1:29:45 Creator Strategy, Global Retail Expansion
• 1:37:25 Brand Energy, Authenticity, and Community
• 1:44:45 What’s Next For Nomatic & Local Shoutouts
• 1:50:15 Wrap-Up, Plugs, and Final Thoughts

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:45

Amazing time in my life. It was the golden era of skateboarding. Chad got booked to go to Japan with Hurley for two months. He's like, dude, just come. And I went with Chad and just showed up. Yeah, he did the team managing. No, I was coming. We go to Spain for a couple weeks, go to UK. We'd go to Sweden for a month, do another Red Bull, you know, RV trip across Canada. We have our hands out the front window, wiping the windshield because we couldn't see. We had a going-away party with axes and hammers. Wild life experiences. Broken bottle, glass to the throat. You want to hear that story? Because it's so good. If I stay in LA, I don't know if I'm going to last very much longer. Got it. They call me up and they're like, hey, we're doing a PR event and like Powell in a house, but can you come and be our like our athlete? And they're like, dude, you've been doing marketing for 15 years. I'm like, that's marketing? They grew 17,000 percent. So they went from like 900 grand in sales to 17 million in one year. What is up, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Small Lake City Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Nilsson. Now, this week's guest is James Akin. Now, James is the current VP of marketing for the bag company founded and based in Salt Lake called Nomadic. But James's path of getting there is anything but typical. Being born and raised in St. George, Utah, he moved to California as a professional skateboarder, touring the world with all of the stories you could ever imagine. But as his professional skateboarding career came to an end, he pivoted his career towards marketing and uses those 15 years of experience to his benefit. Now, this story is wild. There's so many ups, there's so many downs, everything from booking a ticket randomly to Japan to go skate and having a bottle up to his throat where he almost died, touring the world with Bob Bernquist and everything in between. So you're gonna love this one. This is one of my favorite episodes that I've ever recorded. So yeah, let's jump into it. And I hope you enjoy. There's always a time for your first podcast. I wish this was my first podcast. It's because I have the uh I'm doing it for the hundredth episode. I'm doing a one. Yeah. And it's it's like because like there's certain things in life where you kind of just put your head down, and then all of a sudden you go out for air, you're like, oh, it's been a hundred. Yeah. And then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, we're like similar with the first. I was like, oh, 10th episode. It's like 20th, 25th, 50th, 75th. I was like, you're so you're just running, you don't even know what's going on. And yeah, it's just one of those things that just becomes such like a part of your routine. Yeah. That it's like, okay, yeah, schedule people, record, do this, do that, do that. And then all of a sudden I'm like, oh, it's been almost two years. Yeah, just straight heads down, running. When what what what podcast is this? 97, 98, and you think 95? He's a 98. So one more and then the hundredth, which I'm it looks cool, dude. Live. It's it's like I've thought about it because like one thing I love about the conversations I have is they're very intimate. Like just meeting you in a room. It's about like I'm like, and what is the like, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but I'm curious how much that will change things. And thankfully, the guest I have, she is someone who's talking like is a public speaker, so I'm not worried about something. Because like I've recorded with people, and yeah, because I've experienced both sides of the spectrum. I've had people where it's like, oh, this is my third one this week, like let's just get going. Yeah. And there's people that's like, oh, what's going on? Yeah. That'll be a good vibe though, just having an audience, especially like an intimate setting, you know? Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean it's fun to have a little bit more interactive, get people involved. But yeah, September 19th, flanker downtown, Shereen Gorbani, who's someone it's fun to see like, because I always explain it as there's leaf people, branch people, and treep try truck people.

SPEAKER_02: 5:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 5:18

And there's people, I mean, leaf people are, oh, you know, I do like a thing, I don't really interact with the community, don't really have to say. Yeah. And then you have the branch people say, okay, like you kind of reach it out a little bit. Reach it out a little bit. Yeah. I don't know who you are, you get involved. Then there's these people that have like their hand in everything, yeah, everything that's going on. So influential. Everybody looks up to them, and she's who I believe to be one of them. Those oh, sick. So she's even like past the trunk to the roots, it sounds like pretty much. Like there's a woman by the name of Missy Grice who's the founder of Public. Yeah, she's awesome. So she's like, I would say she's for sure. Snuff. Oh, okay. Um excited to sit down and talk with her because I've never talked to her before. Yeah. So it looks cool. Yeah, I'm excited. If I was in town, I would do it. What day is it again? 17th? Uh 19th. It's uh Friday, September. I believe, yeah. I'll be here the 17th, but not the 19th. Okay. I'll be there in spirit, my friend. I'll feel you. I just look over and there's this like a dark like Vader Anakin just apparition in the back. Like, Jinx, what the hell? Most people would call me Casper, but I'll go with Anakin.

unknown: 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:16

Depends on which Anakin. There's a lot of different ways. Let's go with young Anakin. Not evil yet. Yeah. Just a kid who has a pod raise, you know? Just live like. That was so good. Uh James Atkins. I'm excited about this one. Um, nomadic, VP of marketing. Uh I've had like just my own experience with nomadic. I kind of talked to you about it a little bit, but so my I call him my cousin, but he's really my stepdad's uh late wife's cousin. Oh sorry, nephew. That's a path. So essentially my stepdad's dead wife's nephew. Nephew. Okay. And so we went to college together, did all a lot of stuff. He got into product design. Oh, cool. Um, he helped out with nomadic at the beginning. Oh, it was Mike. Yeah, Mike. Oh, dude, he's the best. Yeah. He he introduced. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Freaking love, Mike. Great guy. Yes. And so it's been fun to see how much he helped with nomadic get things started, how much, I mean, he does a lot of stuff for Sunday call. He's a ninja dude. Just one of those guys that you just see, like he gets it. Yeah. Yeah. You can put it together and understands, executes, crushes it. Yeah. That's awesome. So it's fun to see him kind of start working on these backpacks. I'm like, okay, like like backpacks. Yeah, cool, whatever. Do my thing. And then all of a sudden, when I was working at uh a previous job, it came up a lot. And all of a sudden, and we were talking about like in just consideration marketing and like raising awareness of things. Yeah. All of a sudden I know about it. And I see it seeing it around the airport. I start seeing it on my friends. I start seeing it everywhere. Once you finally recognize it, because like some of our bags, our camera bags, and this bag, and even the stuff Mike did, it's called our navigator series. It's recognizable. Yeah. Right? Like this is a square bag that stands up by itself. Yes. Normally you'd be like, oh weird. But then once you start kind of getting into it, you're like, dude, I see these. Yeah. Granted, you're in Salt Lake. Yeah. You're at the Salt Lake Airport. You see it more. But even when I fly through like Denver or New York or something like that, we're now getting to that phase of the brand. I can't remember what the word is called, but it's when you see it at airports. Or, you know, if you're a kid's brand, you see it at Disneyland or something. Yeah. Where you start seeing it more and you're like, dude, whoa, this is so different than two years ago. Yeah. I actually see our problem, like the first time you're like working at it. Oh, can I take a picture of this? 100%. You're nerding out on people. You're like, yeah, what's your name, man? Yeah, where'd you get that bag? Do you like it? Yeah. All of a sudden you're like, oh, it's there's so many everywhere. I mean, I still do it. Like, I just did it right now. Yeah. Well, because it's fun, like for context, we went upstairs to the top of Edison to the pool. I saw a friend of mine and introduced James to him. And he's like, Oh, I like your like James to him was like, Oh, I like your backpack because he had a nomadic bag. And he's like, Oh, kind of like, thank you, thank you. Oh, I work. There's like, oh, I have four different bags. This is what I do. I'm like, see, and that's like they get hooked. Yeah. And it's nice because they are like they're very on-brand bags. Yeah. Like there is a consistent brand and feel to them. For sure. And there's a quality product. Like, I never had someone have one and be like, it was fine. Yeah. And he didn't know we were based in Salt Lake. Yeah. Which we are. Yeah. Just founded in Salt Lake. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm excited to talk to you about because I do want to talk more about your background too, because I think it's very interesting, especially someone from St. George originally. Yeah. Um, who was in snowboarding industry, slash skateboarding industry, and then skating, and then so much local product companies and just great product companies. Yeah. And would love, I mean, just hear about what made you go there, what you're excited about. But I mean, it even starts off with me, you and St. George working at these like when I because I had a lot of um uh friends and family in St. George, one of which was she means she got into snowboarding in high school, so I got uh acquainted elliptrics via that. And so it's fun to see like your first job was at l at school, which led to it was probably like my tenth draw. Oh, fair. But you know, I don't put like curb painting and changing breaks out on my my LinkedIn profile. Could you imagine if it made you put everything in? I was a server, I did that, especially growing up in like the 80s and 90s. Like I had a job since I was 12. Yeah. Of just the most random stuff, yeah. You know, getting paid five dollars to paint a curb. That was awesome, or washing windows or whatever. You know what I mean? But yeah, they they want your professional career, which those are all professional. Set this everyone set the stage for the next one. Yeah, totally. Um so skateboarding, talking about how you got into skating. Uh well, I got into skating first off, what was that fifth grade? My neighbor was third grade, he had a Bart Simpson board, yeah, which is like one you get at Walmart, like one of those, you know. I don't want to admit to this, but we were also kind of rollerblading at the time a little bit, right? And so you'd go to the skate park, see skaters, and then I started trying to his board. But I grew up next to this school in in St. George's Bloomington, Bloomington Elementary, and it's such a good skate spot. Like perfect sixth air, double sets, ledges, everything. So all the skaters used to go over there. And one of them happened to be the guy that runs Liptricks now. So I would go over there, it was right after Halloween. This is like 1992. I'd take a bag of candy, and because the board that my neighbor had was like really crappy, right? Yeah, I'd take a bag of candy over there and I would offer them handfuls of candy if I could borrow their board for 10 minutes. Hell yeah. That's how I got into actual real, a real skateboard. And then I became friends with all those guys, right? And they were all five years older than me. Yeah, but they all had like little brothers my age and stuff, and so those kids end up being my best friends because we all got into skating at the same time, like Christmas 1992. And so that was kind of how I started getting into it. Older legends in my eyes, letting you borrow their skateboards until I could convince my parents to buy me a board for Christmas. Yeah, yeah. It's like that gateway exactly. I it was a gateway with candy. Yeah, I was like, I didn't have a van, but I was giving away candy, you know, to there were kids that were older than me, but yeah, they were there. That's kind of how I started on a real skateboard. No, actually, ironically enough, like I was a big rollerblader growing up. Yeah, probably until eh, a little bit in college, I started leaving it behind. Dude, there's a huge rollerblade scene here. Oh, yeah. Like Mike Scott and Tori and what's the dude's name that had the video game? You had a rollerblade video game from up here. Jaron Grove. Jaron, like when I moved to California to skating, I would see those guys all the time. Yeah. I was like, dude, Utah and yes. I because I like how you talked about like, oh, the kids I made friends with like five years older than me. Yeah. So in the same way, like I got introduced to it in fourth grade, and then would go to real ride skate park here all the time. Oh good. And then that closed down and I moved away from that friend, so it got away, but then got back into it and asked people to skate park, and all of a sudden, like they're like, hey, just come hang out on Friday. And so I end up at this, like, I'm probably 14 or 15. Yeah, yeah. I'm at this guy's apartment who's like 22, 23, and it's like every age range is represented in there, and it doesn't matter. That only happened in action sports. Yes. And I just want to throw this out there. I hate using the term action sports, yes, because it's very corporate. But in skating, snowboarding, rollerblading, BMX, motocross, that thing where age doesn't matter happens. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00: 12:46

Totally.

SPEAKER_01: 12:46

And it's not weird at all. No, like all those guys that I that let me borrow their boards for the first time for a handful of candy, they all ended up being my mentors. And they all moved to Salt Lake. And then that was we'll probably get into that, but that was like my connection as a young teenager was I would come up to Salt Lake all the time. Yeah. Like I'd just tell my parents I was staying at a friend's house and I'd literally fly up here. I love that because we got free flights. I was like, I'm just gonna jump on a plane real quick and go stay at this homie's house that's 19, having a rager. Yeah, and I was like super LES at the time. Yeah. So, but I just wanted to come and skate. Yeah, that's all you want. Yeah, very similar. Like I remember my mom would drop me off at my friend's house in like Kearns. Yeah. And like my mother is a I love my mother. Yeah. But she's also like from the east side, she was a pediatrician. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just yeah, very like buttoned up, put together. Yeah. And then I mean I wouldn't tell her everything. Sorry, mom. Not at all. Like granted, like I was actually like kind of rude, because I mean I saw people do I mean all sorts of like hard drugs. Yeah, like I saw so many things. Yeah. Well, for some reason, I've talked to my therapist about it, and she thought it was fascinating. But like I still had this like voice of responsibility of like, oh, if you do that, you know it's gonna happen. Yeah, if like you do that. I was never into I like I didn't get into that stuff until I was like traveling the world for skating. Like, where I mean a little bit maybe in the late, late teens, but like in those days, like I just wanted to skate. Yeah, so I didn't care about like, oh, you're doing that? Cool, I'll just care about drinking or smoking or anything like that. I was like, dude, you guys you think I'm gonna hang out? Yeah, flirt with the older girls. We're still gonna wake up at eight and go to that one. Yeah, you're that annoyed kid at the boarding like, hey, you guys good? Can we go? Can we go? Can we? I saw I saw your eye crack off it. You said, Yeah, just go to yeah. All the older dudes are hug over. Let's go. Yeah. Right, Brad Idenbushy tailed. But yeah, I mean, talk to me about like that. I mean, transition into being the young kid that everyone's yeah, the oh, it's the the Grom that's chasing everybody. Yeah, yeah. So then being like, oh, like I'm doing this. This is now. I mean, it was like world is about it was my world, right? It was my like going into skating, young age, and this was like the the time, and it was probably the same with you for rollerbuilding, but like early 90s, like skaters were dirtbags, like they were the lowest of society, you know what I mean? So, like you would see punk 100%. It was that it was the straight edge scene, it was the party scene, it was like everyone just looked at you like you all you you did drugs, basically, right? Like they were just the the crappy kids, right? And so it was an interesting time because like you know, I grew up in a small town, we knew everybody. My family's been there since 1860. Like, you know, you're related to everyone, basically. And so I still got along with everyone, but they all, you know, just people looked at you different, right? So it was not how you view skating today, where it's like in the Olympics and things like that. Um, so you had to you kind of had to endure through some stuff in those days, you know. Cops like to talk to you a lot, yeah, put you in the back of their cars and get kicked out of spots. But it also, you know, in those days too, it just it taught you so many good lessons of life, how to communicate with people, how to deal with hard people, um, skating alone. I mean, you guys have probably already heard your Ian McKay or these other people talk about skating, of how how it teaches you in your life about falling and falling and falling and getting up, getting up. Yeah, totally, until you until you get it. It doesn't matter what it is. And I've taken that across my life and all, you know, other different career paths and things like that. But you know, it was it was a really fun time. Yeah. It was very, you know, a lot of a lot of crazy stuff in those days. Definitely not your typical experience that people get to have if they yeah. So I was just like thing crazy passionate about it. It's all I did. It's literally like all I did for like 20 years until I was like 29, basically, when I went back to school in my late 20s during the recession.

SPEAKER_00: 16:18

What was the change that happened then?

SPEAKER_01: 16:20

It was like, well, it was probably actually when I got a job at Goal Zero, is when I stopped skating as much. Okay. Because I was still, I was still like I still had a board in my late 20s when I hit 30, 31. Um, but it was really during the recession, is when like sponsorship dollars started slowly drying up. And so me and my girlfriend at the time moved moved to St. George. We're both living in LA. And so should we go back farther? Or should we just go there? Yeah. Hit me with your best shot, fire away. I mean, it there's there's all this there's a long story there, but like, yeah, let's do the let's go down the middle. Let's because I do want to hear the context. Because like again, to have that take so much of your life, all the steps does, yeah, and then have that taken out from under you, or like not taken out from under you, but to have to go through another change in life to something different. Well, it and the like just bringing up steps, it's such an interesting concept because there's always this first step that a lot of people forget, and it's the hardest step, and it's something usually psycho psychological that gets people to do stuff. So I'm lewing in St. George, I'm working at the skate shop, you know. So I'd go to trade shows and things like that. And I was also homies with a lot of the snowboarders in Salt Lake and all the old skater dudes. Yeah. So I I came up for all the contests, all the forum dudes were homies, rode for a board company up here. So I was coming up to Salt Lake all the time and go down to trade shows in San Diego for the skate shop. And so I was, you know, just finishing high school. And I went to a couple, like I went to Tampa Am, um, which is like a big amateur contest, which was like a huge eye-opener for me. And, you know, I was at that point in my life where I'm like, do I go on a mission? Do I go into the military? Do I move to California? And I was still living at home. So I graduated high school, I had a girlfriend, started going to college, got it's called the dumb shit letter letter in my family. When you start messing up in your parents' eyes, living in their home, got a letter mailed to me. Showed up in a mailbox, hey, you got a letter from someone here. I'm just gonna give it to I think your dad wrote this. And it basically gave you three options, right? It's like you either you either go on a mission, you get married because I had a girlfriend, or you move out. And I was just like, okay. Right around that same time, um, my girlfriend broke up with me, and I always wanted to move to California. Yeah, you know, I the mission thing, I was like back and forth, you know, you're it's just bread and to you, right? Yeah. So out of eight kids, I was I'm number seven. I was the first to not go on a mission. I actually tried to go. I went in, it was a new bishop, and I told him everything. Yeah. And he's like, We're gonna give it a year, you know. Well, the first come back. The first time I met him, he's like, Yeah, I think you go like in probably in like two months. I was like, Oh, really? Come back next week. He's like, Yeah, it's gonna be at least a year. I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah, so I'm going to California. Yeah, I'm moving to California. So, you know, like the step for me was I got my girlfriend broke up with me, totally like destroyed me. I'm like 19, and you know what I mean. And she moved to California to like her dad's house.

SPEAKER_00: 19:19

And I was like, What the F? I've been trying to go there forever.

SPEAKER_01: 19:21

Can we swear on this podcast? Of course. Oh, okay. Um, and so what I did is, you know, I'm like in this really deep depressed state, but three months earlier I went to that contest in Florida and I met a bunch of people, right? Not not a ton, but I met people.

SPEAKER_00: 19:36

Was it a park contest or should he contest? It was a park contest, indoor park.

SPEAKER_01: 19:39

Tampa it's the Tampa park, yeah. So like a good homie from Vegas named Ragdoll was there. We were already homies. I introduced him, he introduced me to Jamie Thomas, and then I introduced John Ollie to Jamie Thomas. And so it was just like we were meeting all these people, this is how it is, right? Like I had one, I had a free flight to get to Tampa from Vegas, flying standby. It was Martin Luther King weekend. I was a hundredth on the standby list. I was stuck in the Vegas airport as a just little Mormon white kid from St. George for 24 hours. Finally made it there. I had one night hotel. I had Liptrix Escape Shop booked me one night. That's uh that was my sponsorship, right? I was like, if you give me one night, I could find homies and I could stay in homies, you know, in their rooms. Oh, yeah, right. Which happened, right? Let's so we're like staying at the zero room and all these other homies rooms and stuff like that. So I became friends with a couple people. Um, probably had like two or three people that I like stayed in contact with in California. This is pre-cell phone days, right? So this is like this is not even, I mean, emails are around, but you know, like a bunch of skaters that have emails. Home phone, yeah, totally. This is like, yeah, 99, 2000. And so girlfriend breaks up with me, so I was like, okay, I'm I'm moving to California, right? So I start working at a call center to save up money, just to go down there. Contact this dude who ended up being LDS too, I was like, hey, I'm gonna move down there. Can I stay on your couch for like a month? Right. He happened to be the Duff's team manager, the Duff shoes team manager. Yeah, still text me this day, we're homie's for life, right? And so I save up, I think it was like a thousand dollars. This call center. I cannot sell people stuff that is not valuable to them. So I was just getting hourly rage, which, right? Like I'd give them calls with people, and you have your whole script, and you're supposed to sell them this, and you're supposed to get their credit card information so they can run it, see what their limit is, and then you offer them whatever their limit is, right? I couldn't do it. I just made homies with all these people. So I'd be calling this buddy in Tennessee, and you know, they're all like not, they don't have money. Yeah, so these companies are they're the kind of have you seen the boiler room? Boiler room? Yeah, it's literally that. Like we're in one day, you'd go to the office and it would be completely wiped clean. There'd be no desk or anything. It was super sketchy. Yeah, so I would just I would actually tell customers we're calling to not buy this stuff. So like just stay on the call for me so it looks like I'd be stuck. I was really good at like talking with people and getting them to like engage and like if you don't care about what you're yeah, and I was just like, hey man, you got you got like four grand on your credit limit. Don't buy this, like invest in something else, get to school, do you know what I mean? And I'm young, I've got I'm not a life coach or I can't tell them anything going on. Um, so I saved up with enough money, and then right, it was the art festival going on in St. George at the time, and two homies from Salt Lake, Jared Smith's snuggles, the mural artist up here, oh yeah, and Toli Flynn. I ran into them and I was like, you guys, because I was homies with all the Salt Lake people. I'm like, I'm moving to California, come with me.

SPEAKER_00: 22:29

And they're like, oh, okay, maybe.

SPEAKER_01: 22:31

Because we all of us, anyone that was in skating up in Salt Lake, I was really the only one in St. George at like the level that would want to move to California. There was like two or three others, actually. Um, they were that everyone wanted to move to California, or you get into snowboarding. Yeah. So like Nate Bozong, who was on forum, like we are best friends, and he was trying to make the decision do I go to California or do I stay in snowboard? Right. So he stayed in snowboard and I moved to California. So I go, I stay at uh this dude RP Best's house for a month. I get put on duffs, right? Wasn't getting paid yet. Um, start busing tables at a Mexican restaurant, and it was like the lowest part of my life because I was so depressed from doing it. Broken Haze Earl broke your heart. Yeah. Like it's a lot. And I only and I really did only know like two people, right? Like I've met a couple of other photographers and stuff like that. And so I'm busing tables at a at a restaurant, and it was June Bloom at the time, it was May and June. So it was like I was I was in Carlsbad. So it was always overcasted. What did I do? Right. NRP's working a full-time job. He's got a wife, didn't have kids yet. And so I'd go bus tables, then I'd go to all the skate parks. Then I would start meeting people and stuff like that. But I do remember like one specific situation where I'm in Carlsbad, I'm driving to the Carlsbad skate park. I'm by myself. I had a two, you know, two-wheel drive Ford Ranger that was purple, called it purple nurple. And I'm at a stoplight. And again, this is like a really depressed time of life, but I'm at a stoplight and I'm looking around at all these cars, and I'm like, dude, no one knows me. Because I grew up in a small town where everyone knew you, right? Like you're related to everyone. You couldn't get away with things, right? You know what I mean? And it was this weird, like really liberating feeling.

SPEAKER_00: 24:08

Like, no one knows me.

SPEAKER_01: 24:09

And it like it, that's when I started climbing out of the depression, where it was just like this, you can do what you want to do without having that baggage and burden of doing what everyone else wants you to do, especially growing up in the LDS church. Oh, totally. Right. And so it was like really visceral. Like it was just one of those moments it was like, whoa, this is crazy. And so then I just started meeting people and got on a board company and started getting paid from Duff, started getting paid for the board company, and started making enough money at the time was$1,500 a month. My I moved out of that uh staying with that buddy. Yeah, yeah. So I moved out of that and I got an apartment with Jared Smith and Tully and then this dude John Ollie, who rode for zero. We all got an apartment in Carlsbad, and it was like 500 bucks a month. I'm making 1500 bucks. I I started smoking weed and stuff during the time, you know, here in California, you gotta live in a bit of loca. And 1500 bucks was fine. Like I was living great. You know what I mean? You're just dieting, like yeah, you're skating every day, you got your rent, you got gas money, you got money for food, and also you're like, you know, going to skate parks and selling shoes and boards and stuff like that, right? And so that's kind of how I got down there, and I was in Carlsbad. Which is like you had like because again, like in today's world, cool, you have an iPhone, yeah. I mean, it's easy to get discovered, it's so easy to put out concept, but like those days, you have to go where everybody else is, and you want to for yourself and until anyone's gonna say, Oh yeah, and if you're if you're a kooky at all, like you're done. Yeah, you know what I mean? But like, you know, got along with everyone, and right at that time, too, like about two months after I moved to California, I got my first photo in a magazine, which was from a trick I did at Tampa Am where I went out with a photographer named Scott Pommier, got a it was a front blunt on this handrail, and I I was wearing a white button-up shirt, looked straight up from a mission. And that was when my first photo came out in a magazine in Trans World.

SPEAKER_00: 26:00

I was like, whoa, dude.

SPEAKER_01: 26:02

And so it happened to be my next roommate was Shad Lambert. He was working at uh at Trans World, but he's from Colorado in the four corners. At those days, all we stuck together, like Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, we're all really tight in the skate scene. And so he got me published and ended up being a roommate with him. And uh yeah, so I had the Salt Lake homies down. They we did six months of that apartment, stopped doing the apartment, they moved back to Salt Lake because it was still a grind, right? And I came home to St. George for like a week to figure out what I was gonna do. And that was right when 9-11 happened. Like I'm at my parents' house. I got home that night before, at my parents' house, 9-11 happens, and things get, you know, obviously weird for everyone. I stayed home for probably like a week, and then I come out back to California and I I crowd our couch surf for probably like three months or something like that. Yeah. And that was that period. Over time, I probably did about nine months living in my car or living on couches. But at the time I I went from the the Ford Range, and we're kind of brain-dubbing here, but try to follow on. Went from the Ford Range to Honda Civic, and the Honda Civic worked great for living in your car, especially in Carlsbad, a lot of industrial, so you you get the tricks of like putting your t-shirts up in the windows and stuff like that. Because I never wanted to overstay my welcome at people's houses. Yeah, so I never stayed more than like two days, right? And I'd be like staying in Newport Beach at some homie's house and be like, Yeah, I'm gonna go down to Carlsbad, but I'd literally just drive down the street in an industrial park and slip in my car. Yeah, I'll be back whenever you need to come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be here. Yeah, yeah. I'll come back for the skate sash. But you know, California wasn't too bad because the weather was really good and had showers at the beach. So, you know, living your car is not too bad and crowds are surfing, but you know, still down in Carlsbad. Got another, I went moved into a house with the dude Chad Lambert. I was talking about a couple other skaters. And that's that's when my career started. Like I started meeting everyone, I started getting a couple more photos, just turned amateur because you're on flow for so long, right? Started getting a little bit of paychecks. And then um when a big we're talking about steps, right? For a second. Like, let me go back there. The first step, the psychological step for me to go to California was I had it, I had to get my heart broken. You know what I mean? Like that was the step that pushed me psychologically to do something out of my comfort zone. Yeah, you know what I mean. You need some sort of, I mean, it's the laws of physics. Yeah, an object arrest will stay at rest until exerted on by out um uh outside force. Same thing. A lot of things. Yeah. First step, you need to have something happen. Yeah, the step wasn't, oh, I moved to California. The step was like I got emotionally destroyed. And then I took that step to move to California. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Um, and so then fast forward to this period, I'm living with the homies. I actually w my room was a shed in the backyard in Carlsbad, but it was like a half block from the beach. I was sick. Yeah, paid 500 bucks for the shed, had about 14 uh power plugs in there, so I'm pretty sure it was a grill room. Um, but there was no bathroom, so I had to walk through another roommate's bedroom to get to the bathroom. Because it was in the backyard, you know. Um, but it was there. I just got flow for Hurley, and I was just getting clothes from right and Shad got booked to go to Japan with Hurley for two months, right? I think he was doing a month, and another photographer was coming for a month, and he's like, dude, just come. And I was like, Let me let me ask the team manager. The team manager's like, no, we're not gonna you can't go. You're like flow. Yeah, right. So I convinced Duff to buy Duffs to buy me a ticket, and I went with Shad and just showed up. Yeah, like I'll figure it out, I'll show up. No, he did the team manager didn't know I was coming. He was he was actually pissed. I just showed up, right? It's because Shad was going. Shad's like, dude, we'll just come with me. So got a ticket. I had, I didn't have like per diem, I didn't have money. Yeah, I think I had like probably went over with like 200 bucks, thinking that I was gonna be okay, right? So anytime there were team dinners, that's when I was gonna eat. I was still on flow. I get over there, and this is when I met like all my best friends, you know, like in the skate world, like the the homies that you'll be homies for life. So like Nuj, Justin Roy, Chris Markovich, um, Stacey Lauru was there, Bob Bernquist. I mean, we're not best friends, but Bob Bernquist was there, Rodrigo TX. Like, I mean, what experience you guys showed up in Japan? Legends, spot hunting, skating around the city. It was amazing. It was amazing. And I became really good friends with like the creative director who and on you know, going on and doing um Kingdom and some other Netflix series and stuff like that. Like just like baller dudes, right? And I'm just the kid who showed up. And so I'm hungry. I'm hungry at the time. I'm like just turned 21, right? I'm still I'm I'm just entering my party phase. Um, and so I go for a month and just sleep on the couch, but I just I went hard, dude. I just got tons of tricks. I just they would go and have to do photo shoots and stuff for Hurley because Hurley was just opening in Japan. They just opened up an office, and so I was just filming photographer would stay back, and we'd just go skate. And I remember my first ad for Hurley, so I got put on the team after this trip. Okay, like full AMT. My first ad for Hurley, the the actual Hurley skate team were out doing stuff for the Hurley office. It was me, the film, the photographer. And I'm like, dude, I want to go back to this, I want to go to that rail, I want to get a trick. Had zero money. We had to take the subway or the train. The way I paid for the train, I went through all the couches in the house because we rented a house and found change in the cracks. That's how I paid for me to get to that spot, and that ended up being my first ad for Hurley. Wow. Yeah. It's kind of random. Sometimes you gotta show up and just be there and the rest will take care of itself. Yeah, yeah. And so, like during that time, that's like right after that trip, I got put on Hollywood skateboards, which was Chris Markovich's. And um, I already have been on a couple like, you know, domestic trips, like R V trips around, you know, Canada and the US and stuff. But this is this is when I started traveling more um internationally. So like duffs, we'd go to Spain for a couple of weeks, go to UK. Um, With Tom Yetto Hollywood skateboards was over my Tommyetto. We'd go to Sweden for a month or do another Red Bull, you know, RV trip across Canada or something like that. So I started getting a lot of traveling going on. It was awesome. And then a year later, her we made a video when we were in Hurley called Transmission Japan. And so I'm going to tell you my love story because this is kind of part of everything that we're going to talk about in the future. Beautiful. Um, and so, you know, at the time I lived in, I after the first trip to Japan, I moved to Fullerton with all the homies from the trip in Japan. We all got uh an apartment together. It looked like Melrose Place, so we called it Hell Rose Place. Yes. Out of like 12 apartments, we had like seven or eight of them of all skateboarders.

SPEAKER_02: 32:26

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 32:26

And the landlords on a skate shop. So you could just imagine and we're like right outside of downtown Fullerton. Like, and at the time we like all thought we were in the strokes of the band or something like that. You know, like we all thought we were rock stars. Long hair. I had long dyed black hair. Like, yes, I have no hair now. Um, so we're like full party face, right? And you're just raging and skating and like getting tricks, getting clips all the time. It was it was amazing. Um, year later, from the video we made in Japan, it was called Transmission Japan. We went back to premiere it. So we went back for 10 days. Okay. And that was a fun trip. On the way there, my roommate J-Roy sat next to this lady that was from Arizona that was going to visit his daughter, right? Her daughter. We land, and J Roy comes up.

SPEAKER_00: 33:08

He's like, Yeah, dude, I was sitting next to this lady. And she was telling me, like, you gotta get you gotta hang out with my daughter. She's a model, and all of her friends and roommates are models. And we're like, dude, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 33:18

And we were kind of like, we were in that phase of our life where we're actually like hanging out with models and stuff, you know. And we're like, dude, you get her number. He's like, no, and we're like, You were literally the dumbest person in life. Yes. Three days later, I see the lady, because I remember seeing her on the plane. I see the lady. She's and she's white, right? So it's really easy to spot people at this time in Japan. And because normally you're taller and white, right? So I see her and she's with this cutie. So I walk up and say, Hey, we're on your flight. Like, hey, what's her name? You know, got her number. Her name's Meredith out of Georgia. And we're there for just a limited amount of time. And we had the sickest crew there, dude. Like Bob Bernquest, Rodrigo, TX, Markovich, Newt. Like it was so good. Um, and kept calling, trying to call the number. This is this is my love story. Trying to call the number, she wasn't answering. I was like, Oh, Lynn, she gave us her own number. Yeah. Again, this is like Japan had cell phones, but we didn't really have cell phones yet. This is like 2002 or one or something like that. Um, this actually was 2003. This was right at the beginning of 2003. Um, so I think I had like a brick yellow phone cell phone back in the States, but you know, it didn't work in Japan. Yeah. So couldn't get a hold of them. So we keep doing, you know, we're premiering the video at a couple different places in Japan. We're doing demos and stuff like that. Um, we kept going to this one bar called the Lexington, Club Lexington. It was in Rapungi. It was the model bar, the international model bar. So we were always going there, right? Last night, the last night we're there, we get done doing a photo shoot for Hurley. So again, this is different the first time I'm like fully on the team. We go down to the bar, and right when I walk in, this girl walks up to me, and she's super hot. And I come in, I'm wearing boots, boot cut jeans, tight as hell, velvet rough, red crushed jacket, long black dyed hair and sunglasses on. Like, yeah, I thought it was like a full rock. I'm sorry, yeah. So dumb. And she's standing there, we kind of both walk up to each other. I put my sunglasses on her, and she's like, Are you guys the Hervey guys? I'm like, What? She's like, My best friend's mom was on the flight with you guys. We've been waiting. She points to all of her friends. They're all like smoking hot, dude.

SPEAKER_00: 35:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:19

Because they're all like hybrid, like mixed. Like my wife now, she's half Korean, half um American, but she looks Japanese, right? And her friend was her friend was white, but there was like Canadians, Ukrainians, all sorts of sorts of stuff. She points over. I'm like, you guys have all been waiting for us to call you all week. I'm like, oh, we've blown it because it's our last night, you know? Yeah. So I start dancing with her. I grab her hand. I it was like right when I met her. I grab her hand, walk up to the DJ booth, exchange emails as pre-cell phone. I'm like, hey, let's keep in touch. I'm leaving tomorrow. And then uh request uh white wedding from Billy Idol.

SPEAKER_00: 35:54

Classic.

SPEAKER_01: 35:54

And then, you know, hung out with her that night, and then, you know, obviously left and stuff like that actually like it was a weird situation at the end because there was another girl that I was gonna hang out with showed up. We weren't serious. Um it was always a little complicated. Yeah, and I just met, I just met Angela too. And so, like, we leave and then you know, a couple months we get back home a couple months later. I'm living with Fullerton and Angela email. She's like, hey, I'm gonna move to LA to model. Um, do you know where I should move and stuff like that? I was like, hey, why don't you just come stay with me for like three days? Perfect. Right? Come stay with me three days and you can figure out where you're gonna live. So she goes back to Albuquerque, where she's from. She drives all the way to Fullerton. Right when she shows up, it's pouring rain. I'm driving the Duffs van, the skate van, it was the Astro van at the time. Right when she pulls up, I had to drive Lizard King, who's from Salt Lake.

SPEAKER_02: 36:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 36:44

I had to drive Lizard, and this is at the time he's still Mike Plum, he's living under my kitchen table, paying$150 a month to live on our kitchen table, right? So he just came out. Yes, right. And I'm like, hey, I gotta take, I gotta take Lizard to the Long Beach Airport. And she she just showed up. And I did, I mean it's been like you need to take who? It's like six months after, like I did, and I was like, wait, so when I met it, right? I'm like, whoa, she is way hotter than I remember, like, way too hot for me. That was the better side of the the drunk night out with Sun Williams. Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, hey, we gotta take Lizard to the Long Beach Airport. We just jump in with us, correct? Jumps in, it's a 45-minute drive, it's pouring rain the whole time. Windshield wipers don't work. So she gets off of like a 14-hour drive into this astro van with these two dirtbag skaters. We have our hands out the front window wiping the windshield because we couldn't see. Yeah, luckily, lizard and I are pretty funny. So, like, we're just like keeping her laughing the whole time, right? Drop them off. I come back, get back to their apartment, walk her in, power shut off in my apartment. So I had J-Roy sitting there, he's playing his guitar, candles are lit, and I was like, dude, what? I was like, Oh, I forgot to pay the power bill again. I was like, you gotta be fucking hitting me, dude. Um, and also I don't know what I was thinking of asking her to come stay with me. I in my room alone, it's like you had a plan. You're just like, girls coming here, I have a place. Clayton, come here. We smoked cigarettes inside. The only thing in the fridge was beer and mold, right? My room, I had a bunk bed. I was on the bottom of the bunk bed. Mark White from Salt Lake, he was our filmer at the time, was up on top of me. And DJ Chavez, who owns Lows, he owns Kingswell Skate Shop in LA now, but he's from Albuquerque, he had a mattress on the ground next to it. That's that was my room. I was like, Yeah, come share my you know, you could sleep in the bed or he's the number four in our room. Like yeah, totally. So, like we show back up, power shut off. I was like, Oh crap, let's go up to Nugia's apartment. Luckily, we had all these apartments, right? So we go up to Nuges, and you know, he had power and everything. We get it, we get a poker game going. All the homies are we're all there, and she's like one of two women there. You know what I mean? She wins the poker game. Wow. First time. We had homies like Jason Massey and Corey Shepard like storm out of the department, pissed that this girl just showed up and won the poker game. I think she just learned that day, too, or something. Um, and uh I mean, unique story to get there, but then we just never left left each other's side. Cool, yeah. Eventually we all moved to LA too after Fullerton. Got it. Yeah, you man, that's we're all over the place. I mean, that's why I'm saying that's why I love that story because I I will I'm always the fan of more context is better than less contacts. Because hey, it's been phenomenal. And I always love like I mean, I have a deep appreciation because like I can I hear these stories and I have enough of them to like I know exactly what you're talking about showing up to the hash like, oh there's a mattress there, there's there, there's a gas tray over the so dirty. And it it is, but it's like also just it's still home. Yeah, and everyone's again just like yeah, oh dude, it was the funnest time of life. Scout apartment, it was insane. Yeah, but I did warn you I was gonna brain dump. So I if I brain dumping is happening. I had to be like, all right, so anyway, moving on. Yeah, yeah. Um, so cool. So you guys end up, I mean, and you're in Florida, and you go down to LA. Yeah, we all moved to LA, all of us did. Um, we all got a couple different places. We had a place in Gower and Franklin right behind the one-on-one cafe that was a a house that was gonna get torn down. So I was gonna move in there. I didn't because my brother decided to move from Wisconsin to LA. So I grabbed an apartment with him not long, not far away. My and my now current wife got her own apartment for a minute, and then the Hellrose crew got a house. It was like party house, right in Hollywood, dude. Yeah, like where when they all moved out when the the lease was up because they were gonna tear the house down to build a parking lot. Like, we had a going away party with axes and hammers. Like full on, just hammering the wall and breaking. And the guys didn't care that you're turning it down. You're saving them money, yeah. But that was like that was a rager house, dude. That was that was wild. I'm glad that it like it's its proper funeral of like we're moving out, we're gonna break it down, and we're all just gonna go. It was amazing. And it was in such a good spot. You could walk to the beauty bar and like the club, all the different clubs and things like that. So we were there, we were in LA for two years, and you know, I was still still pretty much on all the same sponsors and traveling, you know, traveling the world, going on tours, places, and stuff. And it was like an it was an insane, amazing time of my life. It was the golden era of skateboarding. Yeah, that era is like no social media. You can go, like I was saying, you go live in Barcelona for two weeks or something. This was before Airbnb, but somehow we'd find apartments. Yeah, I don't even know how we did it actually. Um, you go live there, you get a couple photos, a couple video clips. It's like this is a horrible term for it, but I call it lifestyle skating because it wasn't like competitive skating. It was like you're going there and you're partying and you're getting a couple photos, a couple video clips, and that was totally worth it, right? You get a you know, one or two photos in a magazine, get some photo instead of, get a couple clips in a video, and you just went and lived in Marshall Arnold for two weeks. Yeah. It was awesome. Like, I'm a believer like because I hate competitive skating, skateboarding, snowboard, like everything because it's like, oh, well, he tweakes ink. Like, no, it changes it. Yeah, yeah. It's just not you can't apply that lens to it when there's so much more artistry. Yeah. As much as the words ever used, like culture behind it. Yeah. And that's what makes it all that it is. Heavy culture at the time was very it was also very much like a creative outlet, and you also had a ton of like mom and pop brands. Yeah. Like it wasn't like Nike wasn't in Nike tried to come in late 90s with shoes, they got their butts whooped, they had to leave the skate industry. Well, their first shoe to shoe was called the Chowed. You know what I mean? And it will you know, it didn't work out first for them. So you still had all like the core skate shoe brands, the core board companies, the core before they became behemoth before there's like four companies now, you know what I mean? And so you you were out actually able to make somewhat of a living, right? Like I was like B-level skateboarder, right? So I would you know, even making 25 or three grand a month in those times, early 2000s, was like totally enough, you know, you weren't saving money, but you were getting wild life experiences. Yeah, like crazy life. I mean, you were getting fights in Oklahoma and Sweden. Yeah, you know what I mean? Which is so because like I I have enough friends that have been, I mean, pro skateboarders, pro-skiers, pro-snowboarders, that it's kind of like these 20s where they're like, I got to do it all. It was my college years, yeah. Yeah, 100% of my college years. I mean, obviously subjectively, but like way better education than sitting in a classroom learning about accounting. I mean, I got I got and you know, when people ask me, did you go on a mission? I'm like, yeah, I went on a mission of of the hard knocks. Yeah. I got full life skills in those years by just being places and being around people and getting unique experiences. I mean, I'm you know, I'm grateful I made it out alive. Yeah, you know what I mean, guys. There were there were multiple, multiple times. There's people that didn't, yeah. Whether it was drugs or whatever, but there's multiple times like I actually almost died. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like two big Nigerian dudes almost killed me in Tokyo, like broken bottle, glass to the throat. We want to hear that story because it's so good. We can't so this is before I met my wife. We come out. This is when we were living there for a month. We come out of the club Lexington, that bar in Rip Hungy, walk in with like Rodrigo, Bob, Bernquist, Nugge, J. Roy, and Rodrigo had these two girls, Japanese girls, and we're just like raging. We're like, yeah, let's go back to the house. We get out to the to the road, out of the alley to the road, and all of a sudden, like a scuffle happens. I don't even know what happened. And but it was something to do with the girls or something, and it wasn't, it was like a another Japanese guy or something. And uh, those were my fighting days in those days. So I'm like, Oh, what's going on? Yeah, you're just itching. Pick, I pick up a beer bottle, an empty beer bottle on the street. Literally, the second I picked it up, I was pushed against a wall by this six foot eight Nigerian dude, because they kind of like run that area. Yeah, he grabbed the bottle, broke it, and had it up in my throat within like it was like Jason Born shit, dude. Like within a half a second. I'm sitting there like this, I'm like, no, no, it's all good, it's all good. Bob Rucos' brother-in-law, Bruno, passious. I'll just do my life. I could I like anytime I see him, I tell him this. His dad was like a famous capoeira dude from Brazil. I see this fool, like literally, like in my eyes, I was drunk, but in my eyes it was like Superman flying. You know what I mean? Like over people, because it was a big scuffle happening, right? Fucking punched the dude, got the it so it made the beer bottle go away, right? Like, literally saved my life, right? Punches the dude. We all get up and we all just take off running. So we're there's like seven dudes and two girls running away from these. Like at that point, these dudes just came out of the crack in the wall, dude. Yeah, there's probably like three or four like Nigerian dudes running after us, and they're scary. Yes, they're fucking scary, dude. We're running, we all dive into a cab, like literally, are like we're like sandwiched on top of each other, like laying on the seat, and we're like, go, go, go, go. Cab took off, we were safe. But that was one of those times I should have died.

SPEAKER_02: 45:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 45:26

That's amazing. Yeah, it was a fun one.

SPEAKER_02: 45:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 45:31

Man, so we're out. Yeah, so we're in LA. Yeah. Yeah, we're in LA. LA was a fun time, but it's also like this is right around the recession was starting. So we lived in a couple different places in LA. Like, you know, lived in that place, live an apartment, moved out with my brother, me and Angela got a place with another homie, Garrister and his wife in Silver Lake. And then it was right around that time where we stopped, we had a board company called Hellrose. That didn't work out with the distributor, so we shut that down. And then then I got another board company. But it was like starting to be the time where I'm like, if I stay in LA, I don't know if I'm gonna last very much longer. Got it, you know, because we're raging.

SPEAKER_02: 46:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 46:08

And so I needed to pick up some more money those last few months in LA. So I I was still getting some sponsorship dollars, but I started bus, I started delivering pizzas, and I was just like, I don't know, man. Like I'm 25 at the time. And I was still like, I was probably in my prime for skating at that time because I I had like probably 20 hours and hours of skating. Like I was really good, but I was just like, I was smoking a lot of weed, yeah, like an ounce a week. Yeah, it was ridiculous. And so like I was like skating a ton, but it was more, I wasn't like motivated. I wasn't like, I'm gonna make it as I'm gonna keep going, I'm gonna hit as I'll see the person that just shows up on the trip is gone. Totally, yeah. It was starting to fade a little bit, but I was still like so passionate about skating. So it was just I wasn't going where I thought I could go, and it was brilliant, I was just kind of being lazy. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so right around that time, my mom, I was on a trip in Houston for a tour. My mom had a stroke. I got a call in the hotel room. I was like, what? And it was a really bad, bad one. So I come back home. We still living in LA, and I was like, oh man, this is like this is serious shit. Yeah, so go back to LA and after that lease ran up in Silver Lake, where me and my wife, my girlfriend at the time were living. I was like, should we do something else? You know, like recession was just starting. Yeah, right. This is a hard conversation to have when it's been your life for the last 10 years. And she's been modeling, she started modeling at 14. Like my literally, my wife moved to Japan at 14 by herself. Her parents were okay with it. That's insane. Yeah, I mean, Tokyo's the safest city, so she's got a wild story in herself. So we're like, okay, do we move somewhere? We're we're broke, right? We're still making money, she's still modeling, and but it's not like how you think, like, oh, these dudes are balling a new car. You know, it's like, you know, you're you're pulling in three grand a month or four grand a month or something like that. And so we're like, do we go to Albuquerque, figure out what to do there, or we go to St. George? I'm like, dude, I did not want to go to Albuquerque. That's too far. Because I was still, I was still had a probe war, I still was skating, and my wife's still modern. I'm like, dude, let's go to St. George six-hour drive.

SPEAKER_02: 48:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 48:08

So we were the first two years of being in St. George. So we came back, we got married, got back to be around my parents. Fine, Mom, I'll get married. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we came back and we stayed at my parents' house for like three months, and they made us stay in different rooms until we got married. It was pretty funny. Um, and so we were coming back all the time, like two weeks out of the month, I was traveling. Cool, right? So I was still on Hurley. Um, she was still coming down for like modeling gigs and stuff like that. So it was a good place for us to kind of start slowly tapering out of California and the skate world. Um, and I still think about skating every day, you know, so it wasn't like a total intentional thing. But what I didn't want to do is get too like older and older and just like be a team manager. And partly there's no knock on team managers, but I was a kid being managed by a team manager. I know how shitty I was. So I just didn't want to deal with that. Turn around and deal with like five or six. 100%. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to deal with that. And so um, for two years, I still was skating, right? So I wasn't going back to school or anything like that. It was like 26 to 27, 28. And then I started doing some window washing on the side. I started a window washing company because I did one in my teenage years to pick up some extra income. So still trade traveling all the time, but the recession was hitting hard then. And so that's when like the Hurley dollars dried up, they like let go of 90% of the team. Yeah, um, Duff's dollars dried up, so I was just basically getting royalties from boards. So it wasn't enough money. So I was like, yeah, I gotta figure out what to do, right? So I started, I went back to college to get my associates, right? At like 29, which is really fucking hard. Right. I was that to be like, all right, back to a classroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it but I, you know, the one thing is I transitioned over a long over like a three, four year period to to out of that lifestyle slowly. It wasn't just a like abrupt draw, like it you're done, right? Like you have to go do something now. Like it wasn't like, oh, I'm done with skating to school the next day. Yeah, right. Like I was still traveling and then the two weeks turned into one week out of the month to, you know, things like that. So I was still skating every day, um, and you know, picking up some siding cups and stuff like that. Um, but towards the end, this is like core recession hard, right? Hard, you know, it was hard for everyone. So I started going back to get my associates and yeah, I had to start like 990 math and English. Like it was top dude. It sucked. I was never gonna guess. Um, so over the next two years, I did that, got my associates, and then right when I graduated from my associates, uh, I was like, what do I do? Like, we didn't have kids yet. We're we're just got I've I think I was 30, 30 or 31 at the time. So I'm I'm like a late bloomer in the education side.

SPEAKER_02: 50:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 50:47

But I had all this like you know real world experience stuff. Um, my wife was going to school the whole time after we moved back too. So she got her she got her bachelor's in graphic design like a year after I got my associates. So that summer, I'm like, what do I do? Like, skating's not gonna work out. I'm like, I'm too old to like try to make it again. And so um my brother was at Goal Zero. Goal Zero is fresh, like half a year in. He calls me up and he's like, hey, we're doing this event in in Whistler called Crankworks, the mountain bike event. He's like, we have to drive a 12-passenger van up pulling a trailer. He's like, no one's ever done that before. I was like, dude, I fucking have drove across the country so many times with 12 passenger vans and RVs. I was like, dude, I'm in. I literally have nothing going right now. I'm trying to figure out what to do. So contract job, 10 days, drive up to Salt Lake, because that was where Go Zero is based. I was we were living in St. George. Yeah, pick up the van, 12 passenger lifted van pulling a 26-foot trailer that weighed 10,000 pounds. He didn't warn me about that. Yeah, I couldn't drive over 55 miles an hour the whole way, right? So I met a couple of the guys from Go Zero. Again, this is fresh. This is like first year at Go Zero.

SPEAKER_02: 51:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 51:57

They jump in the van. I think one dude dared to drive, but other than that, I drove the whole way. So we drove all the way to Seattle, stayed at one of the Go Zero employees' family's house in Seattle, and then drove up to to Crankworks in Whistler. And 10-day event. I was the only one out of the crew that stayed the whole time. So the other people came, flew in and out, you know, like they were it was like the first half crew and then the second half crew came, right? So we have this big trailer. I'm in Whistler activating 10 days, and you know, in the skating world, like you're doing tours and demos and signings and stuff like that. So you're used to like it's just like, let's go, let's go. You know what I mean? Get the energy, like you're talking to people. Yeah, just managing it all. And so going from skating to that, like event activation, and especially like I started learning about the goals here products, and they had a limited assortment at the time, but it was like, dude, portable solar panel that I could plug my fucking phone into, little battery packs, like this stuff is sick.

SPEAKER_02: 52:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 52:53

So did that event, drove the van back, um, back to Salt Lake, and I called my brother after. He was like the I think he was the president or something. I think it was either the VPSLs or president. I think he was the president. So I called him, I was like, dude, I'm so into this product. Like, let me, I I have no idea what I could do for you. Let me come work for you. He's like, dude, I can't hire you. He's like, then I'll have to fire you eventually. You know? So it's like, okay, whatever. Um, but hire me for contract stuff. So they hired me and my wife to run outdoor to to work the outdoor retailer booth one day, one year, and she didn't know anything about the product, but she was the booth babe, and their Japanese distributors weren't even Japanese distributors. They weren't yet. But after they talked to Angela, because she spoke some Japanese, they're like they they they locked in. It was amazing. Then they hired me for one more event, and it was a PR event because I became friends with the three man, three per not three man, there was a one there, but like three-person marketing team, right? It was like fresh, fresh. It was like their first year. They called me up and they're like, hey, we're doing a PR event in Lake Powell and a house boat. Can you come and be our like our our athlete? You know, because I was still I still had a pro board at the time. I was like, Yeah, I'll come out. I remember in Lake Powell, which is crazy because I grew up stairs. I was gonna say that's why no. Um, and so my my mom was we had a houseboat growing up, but us younger kids were never allowed to go because she was afraid we're all gonna drown. So the first time I actually did a full like week at Lake Pal was in June this year. And it's insane. So go out there, I go out for like two, two or three days or whatever. Um, you know, it was a Bruder Finn PR agency out of New York, so they brought in like men's journal, all its magazine, and all these big, big publications, right? And living on a houseboat, and we have solar power and stuff like that. So I leave that event and the VP of Cells, Bart Miller, stud, he needed to ride back to St. George to catch a flight, right? So I'm like, dude, jump in the car with me. Let's let's become homies, right? Drive back, almost hit a deer, literally saved our lives. Driving like a Honda Cross track or whatever you're called. It was crazy. But we became homies. And right before that, I'm talking to my two older brothers who are kind of like my mentors and they're very successful. One lives here, Drew Akin invests in companies, ran, he, you know, was at goal zero, mountain ops, spare bones, all these places. And my other brother is like a really big-time lawyer at LA. And I was like, dude, you guys, I don't know what to do. I'm like, I'm coming from skateboarding, that's not applicable to anything. And they're like, well, let's talk about some of your experiences. So we talk about it. And they're like, dude, you've been doing marketing for 15 years. Yeah. I'm like, that's marketing? Because I would work with like the creative team in Hurley to put ad concept. But they would never tell you what what you're doing from like a like a corporate land. No, like I we even the board company we owned for a little bit called Hellrose, we'd put our we'd put our tours together, you'd call up skate shops, hey, we're gonna be there, let's do a demo, you know, stuff like that. I'm like, that's marketing, you know, like advertising and like, you know, uh customer engagement and all that kind of stuff. I was like, dude, that's fun shit. So I'm like, okay, maybe I'll get maybe I'll go into marketing, right? So we get back from the the PR event, and that week I signed up for an online marketing degree at Western Governors up here, right? Because I'm like, I don't know if I could stay in St. George, because at the time there weren't weren't opportunities, right? That's we functionable. This is pre-COVID, right? You guys live wherever you want. And so I signed up for my online marketing degree. Right after the day after I signed up for that, Bart Miller calls me. He's like, hey, come work for me. I I'm in sales, but I need someone. I'm I'm not getting what I keep I need from the marketing team because there's like three people. Yeah, he's like, I need someone, I need like a content specialist, someone that could get on a Best Buy, Bass Pro, Cabela's, Lowe's. They were just this is their first year. This is the year they went from they grew 17,000. So they went from like 900 grand in sales to 17 million one year.

SPEAKER_00: 56:34

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 56:35

And so he's like, Work Bart was killer, dude. He opened up all these accounts. Him and my brother Joe just went out and opened up all these accounts, right? And they're like, We don't have the assets for these guys for like their websites and stuff. So I was like, dude, I'll come work for you. Right. I'm living in St. George at the time. So I drive up. My brother didn't know I worked for Gold's Era for a whole week. So Bart just went totally around him, right? He's like, Where's my brother? He's like, yo, yeah, I showed up at the office one day, he's like, What are you doing? I was like, I'm on the sales team. Um so I start. This is so this this was my first again, talking about steps. You know, I didn't know what to do, and I had these little things going on, but then it was this like behavioral moment or psychological moment where I realized I'm like after talking to my brothers, I was like, dude, that's marketing. Like, I like that. I like building energy, I like building brands, I like you know, talking with people, and and I like products. I like products I believed in that I could be passionate about. And so that was a step. I'm like, I'm going to marketing, right? And luckily, this door opened up for me at goal zero. Like it, I owe BART my whole career because like that is that's where I got my MBA. I didn't get a real a real MBA on paper, but the the way we grew, and I'll tell you a couple experiences. So I get over, I'm in the sales team doing marketing, right? Digital content marketing, right? I'm the lowest of the lowest payroll, everything. I'm like barely scraping by. I'm living in St. George, and he's like, Okay, we need copy and we need photos up on all these websites. So I like go to the market team, I was like, hey, do you guys have this stuff? And they're like, not really. So I literally, and they just hired a CMO the same day I hired they hired me. Yeah. So I went and rewrote, I wrote all like they had kind of a website, but I just like wrote all the copy. I didn't have any experience to doing this.

SPEAKER_02: 58:17

Yeah, he was like, All right, I'll just do it.

SPEAKER_01: 58:18

Wrote all the copy, built a little studio in my in my townhome in St. George, little white, tiny, tiny studio, right? Took a bunch of photos, got two homies, Bob Plum and um this kid, Randy Delucci, to come take lifestyle photos with me. So I would like come up here because I would shoot with Bob all the time because it's a lizard brother. I was like, hey, let's just throw a solar panel in this bag and grab this kid that's working at Starbucks, who I happen to be homies with now that lives in St. George. And he because he reminds me, he was like, Remember that time you just grabbed me to go do a photo shoot? And so this was like, I didn't know what I was doing, really. Like, I you know, you kind of did some of that stuff in skating, but this is like actual like real business shit. Yeah, right. So in two months, wrote all the product copy, took studio photos in my room, got lifestyle photos, got up on all those platforms to work with, you know, the big dogs in retail. That was like my first four way into like working with like the digital and the marketing teams at these places. So after two months being in sales, the CMO um who came over from Maui Gym, he comes over, he's like, uh, James, you're doing marketing. You should just come to marketing. I was like, sure, whatever. Yeah, yeah. And Bart was pissed, and he's kind of still pissed at me that I did that. But went over to marketing, and that's when it was like my my opportunities just like opened up and exploded. Yeah. Because we were growing super fast. And so, and I it my pat the the the reason why the marketing thing and the product thing worked for me, because like in skating, you're like you're hungry, dude. You're just like thinking about tricks all day long, you know, using your feet when you're driving, you're like doing kickflips in your mind over fire eye drinks and stuff like that. Yeah, everything you're looking at every rail, every stair side that you drive behind. And you do it, and you just do it like I seven days a week for 20 years, unless I got a rolled ankle or something, right? Or broken ribs or whatever it is. Yeah, and that's that clicked for me in the outdoor industry and in products. So that's right, the the whistler event is when that started clicking for me. I was like starting getting passionate, right? And so I get over there and I'm just like gung-ho, dude, like fucking full pedal. It was it was literally like putting on magnet gloves and jumping on the side of a bullet train. Well, it's like I love that you have this. You when you were 25, you're like, I've lost my energy for this. Yeah. Like, I don't know what I want to do at LA, do all this, and then all of a sudden you're like, we're back. Back. And and I was 31.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:33

And my wife just got pregnant. And so I'm like, we didn't have insurance, right? And she's type one diabetic, so it was like just crazy times, right? I'm like, I need a job that we can get insurance. This just happened to pop up. Again, it wasn't even through my sibling, which was amazing. There was no nepotism, it was actually anti-nepotism. Yeah, right. And so um, I get in there and the marketing team was they're fresh too. They're this is 2011. This is social media coming in, digital e-commerce, all this stuff. And most people didn't know what to do, you know. And Chris, who came over as a CMO, he came from our gym, and this is a traditional world, right? Print advertising, event marketing, you know, things like that, which a lot of that stuff outside of print mac uh print advertising coming back. Yeah, you know, it's not just all e-commerce these days, but um, I was like, hey, okay, I'm doing the digital content stuff. I'm like, who's running social, who's doing social media? And in skating, we were early on on Instagram, yeah, right. And so I'm like, who's running social? And I but I didn't know how to do it for a brand. And they're like, well, there's like seven people. I was like, okay, can I take it? And they're like, yeah, take it. So I just focused on social for six months and was doing the content stuff, but I was like, you know, all the posting, the strategy, meeting with all the different brands in the valley, calling other people. I was calling like Cliff Barn Pull. Or stuff and all these people. I'm like, yo, I just want to learn from you or getting connections. You know, I was it was that hunger, right? Like it was like nothing's gonna be my looking for a couch to sleep on. You're looking for people to, I mean, partner with and it's funny, you know, like when you reach out to people and you're just totally vulnerable and empathetic, like, dude, I love what you're doing. Like, I have no fucking idea what I'm doing. Yeah, like how do you do this? Right. So within six months, I became like really good on got our social, dialed in, and then I was able to hire someone, right? And then I went to the CMO, I was like, what else? What like can I take over? Can I take over events? Cool, took over events. And then this weird thing happened one year. So I I social hired the best dude, Brian Bayless, who lives here in town. And I hope he watches this because I love him and I miss him. Um, he's gone on to start multiple brands and stuff like that, like super successful. But it was he was like so perfect for that role, right? And then he did video for us and stuff. We started basically that was the start of building this insane team that we had of all the stuff in the brand building we did for Goal Zero. Like, we we made the brand go yeah, like it passed revenue. Like the brand was people thought we were 200 million dollar company, we're doing 30 billion, you know what I mean? And so I take over like events, and then no October, October or November 2012. I I oh I took over athletes actually right before that. Because they had become the team manager. I did, I dude, I became the team manager, and it was so funny because they had sponsored people they were working with. Like they had like Renan Osturk and Jimmy Chan, but he left right before I got there, and they had like this pro bass fisherman, they had um Eric Larson, the Polar Explorer, and all these people. They didn't know what to do with them. And I was like, dude, that is my background. Let me take this on, right? So I put I put a whole program together, like contracts, agreements, what we're gonna do, create relationships. Well, that year I put on Alex Honnold, I put on um Mike Lebecki, he's a local guy here, and Chris Burkhard. And Chris Burkhard was still a photographer surfer. Like like we were like his first legit sponsor, right? And Alex, like you know, this was right when Alex was becoming popular in um in climbing. It was 2012. So I and then we sponsored Real Rock and I became homies with Rur Rock, big climbing, you know, production. Fucking awesome dudes. So I remember a conversation I had with with one of the dudes from Roc who's lives in New York, and he starts telling me about I asked him, was like, hey, that last hurricane I saw in the news, like what what happened? And he's like, dude, my power shut off for three weeks. So this is the end of 2012, right? Election year happened, Obama and Mitt go in battle, right? I see, I'm I'm go, I we've moved up to Lehigh, so I'm living at the point of the mountain. I'm down in St. George visiting and I see all the news coming about Hurricane Sandy, right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:33

I didn't oversee anything with our NGO stuff because Goal Zero was founded as a nonprofit in the Democratic Republic of Congo and then turned into like, whoa, this is an actual business. Yeah. By Robert Workman, who's a legend. Like the cricket machine, Robert Starts and Kraft, bare bones. Yeah, Robert started Goal Zero as the rich white guy in Congo trying to make a difference, right? That that was how it started. And then he's like, Well, we could package this right and make a product. And it was like, we bulldozed that market. That market was like a three million dollar market when we entered. We did 17 after 18 months. Wow. Right. So there was always this like give back component of our business, but there was no structure to it.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:09

Right. So Hurricane Sandy's coming up. I don't see that part over part of the business. And I and I'm in St. George's Sunday night, and like got this feeling from that conversation I had with the real rock. I was like, we should do something. Something. This is looking bad. Yeah. And just based off his experience, not having power for three weeks, I'm like, we could actually do something. Got in my car immediately, drove up, called our guy who did NGO sells. I was like, meet me at the office. We go to the office, put this whole plan together four hours. And it was uh, how can we how can we help what's good what's about to happen? Because something's gonna happen. If it doesn't, then we'll whatever. Yeah, we'll just back it all up and go. It's it's kind of a mantra I live. Like, you miss every every shot you you don't take. Like you hear that from everyone, but it's true. Like if you're not out there swinging, you're not getting hits, yeah, right. And so we put a proposal together. I call the CMO and he's like, dude, we can't do this. We're not ready. We don't have the bandwidth or we're we don't have the tools to do this. So being the skateboarder who doesn't like authority, went around and proposed it to the board. We proposed it to the board. I'm like a specialist at the time. No, I was like a I I I can't remember what it was. Um we just it's funny too, because we just brought on um a director of marketing or something. They came from Skull Candy, Jonathan Monk, who's still a good homie. So he wasn't like the top of the top, but he was just coming in, right? And so literally went around and proposed it to the board. And I'm talking about like the CEO of Kroger and Fraser and Frazier Boloch, like the guy who got the Olympics here.

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:37

And because Ryan knew those guys, so I I we he called Robert, who was the CEO and the president, or he was the CEO, Joe was the president and the owner. Um, and they're like, dude, it was a plan to do a BOGO, buy one, give one, and we're gonna take we're gonna take the risk and we're gonna fill up a diesel with six hundred thousand dollars of product and we're gonna start driving to New York. This is before Sandy even hit. Yeah, right. So the board approves it, the CMO's pissed at me. The next day, literally, you had the CEO of Kroger at the warehouse packing boxes and put filling it into a trailer, right? Again, I'm running social media and I'm kind of like kind of managing our athletes at the same time, too, right? Um, so I'm like, okay, fuck it, we're on, right? So we fill up the diesel, send it off its way. I'm like, yeah, we got four people. You were the one driving it again this time. Well, yeah, well, this time I wanted to get out there because we we hired a logistics firm, of course, right? As you would. I know, but that would have been so fun. Yeah, and so this is on day one. I fly out there and I took four employees, right? Again, I'm like the lowest of the totem pole, dude. I don't even know how this shit got approved. It's insane, but it was a wild idea, right? So we we launched the BOGO. It was like right when the hurricane hit, and it was bad, right? We our power was already shut off. You knew it was gonna happen, right? They ended up not having power for like three months, yeah, right. So I we got with the sales team, we said, hey, call REI, call Lowe's, call Best Buy, call anyone, and do a BOGO. We'll lose money on those product products, but if they push this, that's huge for our brand. Yeah, dude, you had Lowe's doing a BOGO. You had our like, I can't remember if IRI, but it was buy one, give one. Our sales increased 400% that month. Wow. Yeah. And it wasn't even about sales, it was like mine was an empathetic, and even Robert, the founder, this is why we this is why the brand started. I was like, we got to be out there to help provide power until power can come back on, right? Right. So I'm running social media, I'm boarding a flight, I'm running our Twitter and Instagram, I'm posting, there's more on Twitter these days. I'm like, hey, is anyone in New York like we're coming out with portable solar generators, power, like battery generators? We need to figure out how to get this to people, right? This dude from Salt Lake, Aaron, tweets back, he followed us, and we're we're literally a year and a half in business. And he's like, hey, I'm going out there right now with Team Rubicon. Team Rubicon, it's a bigger organization right now, but it just started. So it's basically veterans and it's a nonprofit where they bring veterans in, you know, to help give them something to do to still give back. Yeah, right. But their whole premise was bridge the gap. Bridge the gap from something like a disaster to when FEMA comes in. FEMA's super slow, a lot of red tape, experienced it firsthand. I was angry for a long time at the government in when I was out there. So he's like, okay, cool. Let's connect. So I was like, okay, where are you saying? He's like, we're we we're setting up shop at Brooklyn Boulders, which is a climbing gym in Brooklyn. I was like, okay, I'm gonna meet you there. Right? Our truck's not there yet. So we go over there, I was like, there's like 20 people for Team Rubicon. They're like now thousands of people, right? And it turned into a long relationship where we did disaster relief in the Philippines and all sorts of places with those guys. So we show up and we're like, okay, we have all this product coming, but like what do we do? They're like, well, we have one way in. Team Rubicon was testing Palantir at the time. All right. Which now is like wild shit.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:03

But at the time, it was like really helpful because when you go into like different areas, like we were in the Rockaways, like on Long Island and just on the other side of Brooklyn, and you're like, okay, barely using cell phones at the time, but this app was able to say, like, hey, this home right here, and it's all targeted, like geo-targeted and everything mapped. It's like they need this, they need this, they need a shovel, they need this. Because when we got out there, they team Rubicon helped us with the distribution, but our whole team, we're out there, we're like literally bucking water, bucking uh bucking waters out of people's basement. Like it was devastating, dude. Like, I I remember an 87-year-old lady, her whole house was completely destroyed. Her husband just died. All of her remembrance of anything was underwater. You know what I'm saying? And they it was a lot of that areas didn't have water for for three months. It was gnarly. So I was out there for a week and I'm running social the whole time, like updating our followers. I'm driving over the Brooklyn Bridge, updating, tweeting. Everyone else in the car is panicking, pooping themselves. What the fuck is that? You still gotta get the tweet out, guys. Oh, yeah. I because I was like, I went from that my mindset of skating of just hunger and falling and getting up and falling up. I'm like, fucking doing this shit, dude. No one's getting our way. We are helping people out. And I still am friends with a couple people. One guy still like hits me up. He's like, dude, you you saved my son's mental health because their house got wiped, they were out of power for about a month and a half. And he's like, the only thing that helped him get him through, because he's like, we lost everything, dude, was you gave me a battery pack and a light. So we had light at home at night, and we could keep his iPad charged. So he had something to kind of like decompress. Yeah, you know what I mean? And even years after, he would still tell me the story. It's amazing. You know what I mean? And it none of that was for me, but it was great hearing those stories. Um, but it that moment, so we did that and we did tube trucks. We set ended up sending another truck because it performed so well. Um, grew the business like crazy, grew really good relationships with retailers. Um, but it was all real. It wasn't like this wasn't a this wasn't a money-making thing. It was like, no, we're gonna fucking help people. Yeah, and it ended up making it a really good move for the business. And so I I went back home, sent another crew out, right? Because FEMA took weeks, dude. Yeah, it was wild seeing that shit. They were like blocking off airs, like, you guys can't come in and help. We're like, well, are you helping? They're like, no, we don't have the approval yet. There's like Navy ships in the water right outside of Long Island. They they're just sitting there, you couldn't do anything. So I was pissed. Like, because it was like election time too, and like, you know, you're watching this stuff, and I saw firsthand what the issues with the government. They're like, Oh yeah, we're FEMA, we're helping everyone out. I'm like, you're fine there. Yeah, but it was gnarly because we we couldn't even get a hotel in the city, so we had to actually drive every night out to Pennsylvania two hours away, and it was where there all the linemen were staying because no one could stay in the city, it was all booked. Yeah, so they they're bringing linemen in for running electrical and all that kind of stuff from Alabama and Nevada. So we're at all these hotels and the bars are insane. You know what I mean? It was wild. It was wild. So I got back from that trip, and I think the CMO was just parting ways at that time. And the the guy who came from Skull County Monk, he was becoming the VP of marketing. And within a month after getting back, because it did so well, he promoted me to director of community. So I took over, you know, events, just all the community stuff. And it was just I was at Goldzier for six and a half years, and it was moment after moment, and it's because of the opportunity, it wasn't because like just me, the team was killer. Like we kept hiring killers, dude, like Ryan Bayless, Andy Earle, uh Justin, freaking Pitt, Ruey, Seuss Edmondson, all these dudes up here, like just killers in the marketing team. And we were able to build like a really good brand and just a good culture. Like we had such a good culture because we were doing all this get back stuff. Like, you know, I took over our give back program and put a whole program called ShareSell, our share of the sun, um, where you buy a purchase, you get a share of the sun, like literal stock certificate. And you can figure, you can then direct where you want to donate your money to, right? So we were do we were building school or orphanages in Kenya, um, schools in Nepal, a couple school. Uh, we did some in Peru. We partnered with Dell on those ones with Michael Becky, Local Explorer. Um, we partnered with the Hunnell Foundation, we did the Navajo Nation. We did a couple other locations with the with the Honnell Foundation. And so that was a really cool program, like really fulfilling in my life to be able to get back, especially growing up LDS. You're always doing get back stuff. Yeah. Um, and we just like really crushed in that. But those six and a half years, it was just, you know, opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. It was just one of those total, like, you just don't get those opportunities. Yeah. Where I was able to grow so fast over six and a half years, where I end up running marketing there um towards the the tail end, but it was a really cool experience. Yeah, yeah, it was amazing, dude. And it came down to you showing up and just like doing the thing. Yeah. Because so many people like have applied it a lot of my life recently, because like so much of my life is just like being there. And I always tell people, nothing's gonna happen for you in your house. Yeah. Like if you want things to happen, like no one's gonna come applied to everything. It can be applied to making friends, it can be applied to romantic, it could be fine. Anything is yeah, it's not gonna happen in your living room. No one's gonna knock on your door. Yeah. In the same way, like, oh, you need to get to Japan because the team's there and the team will let you, just show up, jump on a flight on a plate. And it and it like it's not it's not always gonna work, but it's not definitely not gonna work if you don't try it. You miss every shot you don't take, yeah. Right. So if you don't take any shots, you're gonna miss them all. Right. And and and the interesting thing about showing up is if you show up and Nate better on our team, our VP of Girl, he talks about this a lot. It's a you know, there's a chart, Charlie Munger uh uh quote that he just did a presentation on this actually like two hours ago, and talked about this quote. But it's like stay in the game long enough that you get lucky, right? And it's not even about lucky, but it's about showing up. Like you constantly just consistently show up because something's gonna happen. You know what I mean? Like all these opportunities you just show up. Obviously, sometimes you need to just put balls to the walls. And like in skating, like that that you know, energy that you learn from skating is like you're just gonna fucking go for it. And we also always call breaking the ice. Like you'd go up to a handrail or a 16 stair stairs. Ollie that you ain't even try to ollie it. You're just I you know, I I tell a lot of people I wasn't even professional skateboard, I was a professional carcass tosser. Like, I just you just you gotta break the ice. You're like, fuck it, 16 stairs. I'm just gonna throw my body down. You're not trying to land anything, right? Right. And then the next one, you're like, got it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:12

You're like, cool.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:12

Yeah, or a handrail, you're like, I'm probably gonna nut in this first one, and then you'll do it second try. Yeah, you know what I mean? And it's the same thing in like the business world. It's like fucking just go for it. Yeah, you're gonna professionally nut this rail. Yeah, but obviously there's risk assessment, you're not gonna do that on a 40 stare, you know, a 20-stair handrail because you might get hurt, you know. So you're gonna be a little bit more intentional and meticulous about it. But same thing with the business, you're not gonna go do like a porn shoot for a you know a backpack company. Sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, but you take those kind of learnings that that's I think with that background that I have was just totally different. That helped me like get really passionate. Obviously, I have to be passionate about the product and the brand, but just go hard, dude. Yeah, just do shit, just get shit done. And when it's like, I mean, to fast forward a little bit, just for sake of time, honestly. Um, I mean, this is all because I imagine this is like so much of the context. Cause I mean, you go on to I mean, work with so many amazing brands, I mean, like Black Diamond and Topo Design until I mean nomadic itself, and would love to hear kind of how that transition was and how you thought about joining that and kind of what some of the stuff you worked on there. Yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, at the end of Gold Zero, I was there six and a half years and we got acquired. I stayed two years longer to figure out what it was look what it was like to work for a fortune company. And then I was like, yeah, it's time for me to go. Yeah, right. We're different owners, it wasn't the same thing. So Black Dime was local, uh, went over there for a year and it was awesome. Killers that worked there, like freaking still to this day, the people that worked there are fucking awesome. And then Topo approached me, and at the time our kids at this time we had three kids. Okay, right. So during all those years, we're gonna go zero, we're gonna BD, working 78 hours a week, had three kids and got my bachelor's degree. So it was it was in the part of the reason I'm bald now. Um, and then we were like, well, kids aren't school yet. Maybe we should try something else. We were living in Salt Lake, I think like seven years at that point, right? And we were in Mill Creek at that last point point. It was like, let's try something new. And so Topo was based in Colorado. They had an office in Fort Collins and in Denver. I was like, let's go check it out. And it's like environment-wise, not much different, but definitely different vibe.

SPEAKER_02: 1:18:14

Yes, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:15

A lot of the breweries, a little bit more diversity and stuff like that. So we ended up moving, moving out there. And I like, I like Topo too. And I still talk with I literally still since I left almost five years ago, I still have a monthly meeting with one of the founders. Oh, our monthly one-on-one. Um, so I was there for three years, awesome. It was great. It was great. We started growing the brand, it was really good. Then COVID hit. Obviously, 2020 was gonna be the year for Topo. Like the the marketing plan we had in the foundation, the energy we had built up behind the brand to take it was it was all there. All the all the recipe was there. It was ready to go. And then COVID hit. Like our marketing plan, it's it was so good, went out the window in 45 minutes. And this happened with everyone, right? Yeah, and so this goes into my transition and nomadic. So unfortunately, had to let go half the team, take on all those jobs, close all the offices down. I'm working in my bedroom, right? So 22 hours a day, I'm in my bedroom, sleep and work because you're doing so you're doing all these jobs. Um, spend two hours with my family, do that for six months, start to lose my mind. Like, of course, right?

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:12

How do you not?

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:12

How do you not? And COVID was fucking weird for all of us, yeah, right? We still haven't really talked about it. Um we still haven't really really recapped.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:19

Can we just talk about this, honey?

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:20

Can we can we just kind of like later, later busy? Yeah, who's the who's the worldwide therapist for this one? Um, so it was Labor Day. We're come to visit my family, right? And we're super safe. Again, my wife's type one, so we're like really safe, right? Um, we come through and but also it was like not as safe as wearing bubble, you know, bubble outfits in the outdoors. Yes, you know what I mean? We drive to St. George and we pass through Cedar City, and there's a full fucking football game going on. Like full stadium, dude. Full stadium. We get into St. George, there's like people at restaurants, and we're like, what the hell is going on? And we still were wearing a mask and everything, but it was at that moment where I'm like, I'm working from home. I'm stuck in my bedroom. And but and then I saw my parents who at the time were like 78, 77. I'm like, they're getting old, and we're far, like it's a four, it's an 11-hour drive. Yep, right. So my kids see them once a year. I'm like, and it hit me of you know, I'm gonna be pissed at myself in the future if my kids don't get time with their grandparents because I have a fucking job. Yeah, you know what I mean? So we went and looked at one house and bought it. And it happened to be it was a house in downtown, small house, big yard, third of an acre. We have chickens, it's amazing. Got a mini ramp too. Uh most important. Walk in to look at this house and this kid I went to high school with. Shut up. Yeah. So we weren't even the just like it's funny to think about like that liberating moment in San Diego. We're like, yeah, nobody knows me. I can go everyone to 100%. Yeah. Oh my god, it's but dude, it changes when you're older because when we first, you know, I had to get out in those early, late teen and early 20 years. When I came back, late 20s, it was it was hard. It was hard for me. Um, because I was still kind of in party phase. So we were raging there, coming up Salt Way, go to Vegas, go to California, whatever. Um, but this the second time coming back home when I'm older, it's kind of what we were talking about earlier. I'm like, I have kids now, right? It's a different mindset. So when I come back and I see my parents getting old, I'm like, dude, we gotta get my kids down here. Also, like into mountain biking, into golf, you know, into skating still, hiking. You know, I've been in the outdoor industry at that point, 10 years, you know, have all the shit, climbing gear, everything. Yeah, I'm like, this seems like time now, right? So bought the house, went back to Colorado, talked to the founder and said, Hey, uh, you know, we don't have our offices. Like, do I have to be here? And he's like, Well, I guess not. I was like, Cool, because I bought a house that I'm moving in three weeks. And he was cool with it. So we packed up quick. We wanted to get out before the winter. It got a lot colder in Fort Collins, like negative 10. And you'd get those Wyoming winds, so it'd be like brutally cold and and ice on the water. Dude, and the hail there, bro. No, thank you. Call Falls. Yeah, yeah. Truck got total one year. We had to get our new roof, actually, because it was that bad from the hill. So we're like, let's get out before the winter. So we moved the end of October um and come and we we there was renters in our house at the time, so we lived with my parents for a couple months and start remodeling, and they got out the renters, and then we started remodeling our house. And it turned into like, oh, we'll change out the carpet. Day two, I'm knocking a load-bearing wall down. So stupid. So I'm here, we're in St. George for two months. I get hit up. I knew that Tobo was gonna want me to move back to Colorado, and I didn't really want to do that to the kids, right? Right. Did you say like biting your time? Biting my time, yep, exactly. And that's that was our little evil plan. Don't tell Jed Rose at Tobo, but um, so we're so I get I got hit up by two brands at the time, which was Dometic, who makes like fridges and stuff and RV equipment and things like that, and then nomadic. And uh the two founders called me up. My other, my brother, actually from Golzero, was like their their kind of investor, but also he's their investor. Hire you again. We talked about that. Yeah, he's like their investor, but he's also like their their like he's like the chairman of the board, basically. Right. And he he call he calls me first. He's like, Hey, you're back in Utah now. He's like, Do you wanna he wanted me to move up here? Um he's like, Do you want to talk with the nomadic guys? He's like, they need someone that understands brand and can build community, but also understands e-commerce. Well, that knows brand and can and can build community but understands e-commerce. He's like, literally, I don't know really anyone but you. And now that you're back in Utah, I was like, Yeah, let me talk with him. So I talked with those two dudes, and I was already talking with nomadic. I was like in interview number four. You know what I mean? Like they were they they like literally were offering me a job at that time. I was like, let me talk to the nomadic guys. And the fact that Joe was involved to like have all the trust in the world with the guy that did is a straight-up genius. And so talk with the dudes. I like the guys, they're really kind, but they were also kind of like somewhat like slightly nerdier for me at the time. And I was honest with them because I'm coming from Topo and like Topo went from hipster brand to like we were starting to create it as an actual outdoor cool brand. Right, you know, the crossroads between like streetwear, outdoor, and Japanese fashion style. Um Topo Pants for now. Yeah, Topo Pants for now and a nomadic shirt. So on a Topo tangent, yeah. Um, I was in Disneyland as waiting in line as one does, and I see this guy with this, I think I can't remember if it was clothes or a bag, and I was like, it's kind of because I'm a big fan of like Japanese fashion. Yeah, yeah. Like, oh that's kind of sick. And I pull up my phone, I'm like, don't hang. I was sitting there like scrolling the website for an hour. And so yeah, that's funny. Jed, Jed was always ahead of trends for because he followed high fashion Europe and Japanese fashion and Japanese outdoor. And so we always had things like two years too early. Of course.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:31

So so talking with those guys and and they sent me some product, and it was based in Utah, and the Dometic was based in the Illinois, and they're gonna want me to eventually move to Chicago outside of Chicago. And I was like, I don't really want to do that. Yeah, and so talked to these guys, got the program like, dude, this this product's wild. Like it was it's it is very I I call approachable premium for its premium, but it's affordable. Yeah, you know what I mean? Affordable premium doesn't sound as good as approachable premium. Yeah, and so talk what they need, and they told me what they need, and everything I was like, dude, this actually sounds like really, really up my wheelhouse. So decided to join um nomadics, started Jan 1, 2021. Um, so I left Topa again, still homies with all those guys, and then it was basically, you know, balls to walls, let's figure this thing out, right? So I was I was coming up, you know, still living in St. George, I was coming up every two weeks on a Tuesday, Monday and Tuesday, sleeping in the office. They actually didn't even know I was sleeping in the office for a while. They're actually it's okay. I'm used to that. Yeah, yeah. That's actually pretty luxury. Yeah, I would I would like to bring up a climate uh air mattress and there was bathrooms there and everything. And so like I was, yeah, I was sleeping in there. But they finally found out they were like kind of a little weirder about it, but not weird. I was like, you guys, they're like, oh no, like grab another tour. I'm like, you guys, I literally would go on tours sleeping in bathtubs because it was the safest spot to sleep in. You know what I mean? I'm like, I have no problem doing this. So for the first while I was doing a lot up and back. Like, you know, I'll still, I still come up here all the time up here right now, but I'll still come up back uh up and back in a day drive. You know, like I'll drive eight and a half hours, eight hours in the office. It's kind of gnarly. But so I started and we were just coming, we were just going into a new Kickstarter, their second camera bag. That was my first Kickstarter I've ever worked on, and it was awesome. We did$2.2 million. It was insane, right? And these guys have built like really good product. Um, there were some other issues we had to deal with before building up the brand side, like our operations needed a little refresh, customer service needed refresh. You know, we were seven-day response time on customer service. So I took that over, and it was really just a strategy and bandwidth thing. So, you know, hired people who got down to like a 30-second response time, two minute, three minute, you know, depending on the channel. Um, and so started to not build up the brand side yet, but started to get the relationships going, started to get, you know, helping on the op side, helping all making sure e-commerce was going. And then once the op side started getting in, because the problem was you can't really build a brand in a community if you're shipping, you know, time is two and a half weeks. Yeah. And then your customer service takes seven hours or seven days. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it's just a crappy experience, especially when you have a premium product. Yeah, well, I mean, part of a brand is meeting expectations. And if you're not missing expectations, then negative brand. Yeah. So from end to end, you that that's what we did. We restructure the whole thing from what the ads look like to, you know, and there's always opportunity even to this day, right? But product is good. So you get it to them on a time when they need it, they get the product, and everything after that is good too, right? We call that like you know, why club service, concierge service, right? Like we're gonna treat our customers, they're spending$300 in a bag. We better be fucking awesome to them. Yeah. You know what I mean? Packaging looks good, the full experience. And so we just started going hard and and building up, you know, this is right coming out of COVID. So so travel's still slow, right? Our camera collection is doing well, um, but luggage and travel bags aren't, right? That's they're at the beginning of 2021. Then as we get through part of 2021, revenge travel starts to have back. Just rubber bands this whole way back. Everyone's getting the hell out of it. You know, they they dipped down heavy in 2020. They almost went out of business. Wow, right? But they launched their camera collection that right at the right time, like literally safe their business. And they launched it with a big YouTuber named Peter McCann, and it really helped him stay in business because it's self-funded business, right? Because that Joe, who invested, was just, you know, owners could take a little bit of chips off the table, wasn't to fund the business. And so we go, um, and there were two people in the marketing team at the time, too, you know, really small studs, Russell Steed and and Nate Benner. So I come in, we start growing. We regrew 20% that year, 25%. And then 2022 hits, and that's when revenge travel came back. And it was all you know, all my buddies in the outdoor space, that's when they started dipping. Because the outdoor space boomed during COVID. You got your check, yeah. Then you're like, dude, I'm getting a new grill, I'm getting a camera, I'm getting some new skis. Yeah, let's go. You know, everybody's the only thing I could do is outdoors. Yeah. Yeah. And so when travel opened up, that was awesome for us. We grew 89% that year. Wow. Yeah. And we were still a small business, and these all sound like big numbers, but like for self-buzz self-funded business grow 89%, is that's like kind of impossible, actually. Yeah. You know, no line of credit, just straight up. Well, I mean, that's what that's right. To that point of scale in any sort of business. I mean, you get outside funding, and it's all going towards sales and marketing. Yeah. And scaling the business so it can support whatever sales and marketing you can bring in. We still haven't done that. Yeah. Yeah. And so it was, it's, it's just been a fun ride. You know, we we started expanding product lines, added colors, um, some new luggage, we a new category with apparel, worked, and we're we're in an interesting space because we came out the camera bag that opened up the door to creators for us. So prior to nomadic, I've never really like worked with YouTubers. I never did Kickstarter. It was all core outdoor stuff or skate, you know, in the skate world, like action sports. So those are the industries I knew. Coming in here, I knew a little bit about travel because you know, we had travel bags at um at Topo and some some small travel stuff at Black Diamond. Um, but then I started like working with YouTubers and I'm like, dude, this world is wild. Yes. Like we did some stuff with Dude Perfect, we've done some stuff with Zach King, um, work with a lot of people. But the strategy at that point was hey, we have a sick camera bag and we just came up with another one. Let's be the bag for creators. Yeah. So that was my strategy. Went hard. Seating product. And they're the people that if they like it, then next thing you know, it's like, oh, you like this bag? It's like my favorite bag in the world. Totally. We should go get one. Yeah, and a camera bag that's a lifetime warranty and is super durable and could throw out a Tesla going 70 miles an hour and your camera stuff's fine. Awesome. Yeah. So that opened up a new like learning experience for me is like working with creators and this level of like it's that world is mind-blowing of how much money they make. It is and how much influence they have. Oh, yeah. Um, and so that was that's been really cool over here. Um yeah, let's start. You ask me questions about no mic. Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's just a like I just love like like your just like go-to attitude, your ability to just like roll up your sleeves, but then also just like go through hard things and also be like, hey, I'm the VP of marketing, but I'm gonna go sleep in the office, and like just not have this pretentious probably isn't the right word, but just like also like, and I also love that you remember every single person along the way and they're like our actual homies. It's not like, all right, well, thanks for the card of wishing me well on my next job. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, dude, follow me on LinkedIn. I've helped, I've helped people on my team get jobs. Yeah. Like when they're like, dude, I'm not happy. I'm like, let's get your job, bro. Yeah, let's go. Let's find, let's find you something. What do you want to do? Where do you want to move? You know, it's just like when you talk to your brothers and you came back for it. It's like, okay, what have you been working on? Tell me about this. What do you want? I mean, dude, it's about being real. Like, I I've said this on other things I've done, but it's like real recognized real authenticity. I I even hate using that word, but it's like there's, you know, when you get in the corporate world, and this this was hard for me, especially the Utah corporate world, the the bubble is coming up because I'm I've always been a real person and it's especially, you know, like. When I was learning social and all these things, where it in bluffed out the office. So you're you're going to these like conferences with all these tech companies and like you've worked in the world, you know how the world is. There's a lot of good people there, but it was really hard for me to to like accept that world and and still be me and but still have to live in that world because people exist. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's we all grow up differently, right? And and I didn't come out of high school for a corporate career. I didn't even I didn't get into what I'm doing now as a corporate career. I did it because I was passionate and it was fun. Yeah. And I could learn things. It wasn't like, you know, you know, your normal thing where it's like I'm gonna go to college and I'm gonna be a career marketer. Like I don't even talk, but that's like how it works out so much better. Because like so many people, again, like going back to that moment in San Diego where it's like, oh, I can do anything. Yeah, yeah. Nobody knows me. Yeah, yeah. And once you realize, like, again, you transition from being raised good born and raised in this place in St. George, this micro bubble there where everybody knows you crazy bubble. So much of the motivation and like uh influence that they have over you again, like even just looking at missions, like, oh, it's because I'm in this place and they want me to do it. Yeah. But once you can realize, like, oh, my journey is my own, I can create my own future and then have enough data points of like that working out, yeah, the world is your oyster. Yeah, yeah. And it doesn't matter anymore because you realize and you have enough data points that if I'm just myself and I don't compromise on that, everything else will work out. Yeah. Because the right people will come in, the right opportunity. Yeah, yeah. And this flywheel of being yourself. Yeah. But so many people are so beholden to this moment of like, I gotta be like this. I gotta here's the planet, I just have to do it. Yeah. Until they get to a point in like I'm I mean just turned 35 and I have so many friends, it's like, I don't know how I got here. I don't know why. I don't like this. I don't know what to do. Yeah. Because they've just been following, like, yeah, yeah, here's what I'm gonna do, here's this, I'm not gonna ask any question. Yeah. And so a lot of people who at the wrong stage are very intimidated by that because it's so antithetical. So anything that they've done, yeah, but at the same time, they're like gravitated towards it because it's so novel.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:45

And all of a sudden, like you're their favorite person because like you're the person that they want to be, but can't be because of the like internal conflict. I feel bad for saying some of this stuff. Like, I'm not trying to knock on anyone, it's a it's just different for me. Like the corporate world.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33:59

I don't know why people are successful at it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:01

This is what I will say. Coming from coming from skate to goal zero, which is the most opposite of corporate world. It's in skate, it was the only way I could have eased into this world. Yeah. Because we were a startup and it was moving fast and it was get shit done. We're having fun, we had a strong culture, morale was high, the energy, it was it was. I mean, I drank the Kool-Aid, I guzzled the Kool-Aid. You know, you'll hear this from people of Kool-Aid. It was the best Kool-Aid. I mean, we were literally changing people's lives because we were doing all this give back stuff, you know. Like, dude, you built a school with Dell in freaking Tanzania. Like, that was sick. Yeah, right. So I was drunk off the Kool-Aid. It was the it was the way for me to get in that corporate world. So those years at goal zero going from, you know, new hire, new hire, that were all like mentors to me that came from bigger businesses where like, hey, these are the terms, this is the reporting, this is this. I eased into all that over time. And so I was able to use it, but that wasn't, you know, I didn't go and get an MBA. I didn't come out of school like knowing what to do. Thank God you didn't go to a place where it's like, oh, right, now here's the perfect way to write an email. There's no way I would have lost. That's the thing. Like, there's no other company or other opportunity that I would have made it this far if it wasn't that goals here at one. Yeah. Like it was just right moment, right time, dude.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:16

Like straight up. Again, you kept putting yourself out there, getting the bats, having the right things, and it works out. Yeah. And then I, you know, out you know, when we got acquired, I worked for a force training company and really figured out real quick how much red tape is involved in reporting. Yeah, I was spending 70% of my time reporting. Yeah, you're like, pendulum swing too far that way. Yeah, it's like you're not using my strength because I'm not my strength is not reporting. Yeah. Yours is out. Again, again, skateboarder, you know, anti-authoritarian. That's why I we're stuff. But I mean, I guess like on the last topic of uh nomadic before we get into wrapping up, but like, I mean, what are you working on now? What are you looking forward to? Um, with nomadics specifically. Yeah, I mean nomadics at a at a really interesting and fun stage just because it's 11 years old. Like it's been here for a while.

SPEAKER_02: 1:35:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:59

Right. And it started with one product, it was Wallet. The two two cousins had 200 bucks. They came up the concept of Utah Jazz Game just down the road, and they're like, hey, maybe we could do this. Threw it on Kickstarter, did 120,000 or something like that. 170,000. And so they're like, oh crap, we can make more product. And so, you know, for the first six, seven years of nomadic, it was like dog ears. It was like one product every like 12 months, and it was a Kickstarter, right? We've done 15 Kickstarters. Um, and then about four or five years ago is when we started speeding it up. And we're like, hey, we actually have something here. You know what I mean? Like there was a brand, we it was very uh it was very niche brand, you know, small audience base, but still doing well, profitable, you know, big Kickstarters, things like that. Now we're at a phase where we're full, we're going to omnichannel. It's it's I would almost said full omni-channel. It's we're growing it. So we're coming out in Costco with a uh an SMU, a special product for Costco bag that's palette. So the pallet ties, the palette wraps that you'll see in Costco. We're going out. We did a test with 14 doors last fall that was successful. So we're coming out, I think it was like 120 doors. Wow. We're in like 350 camera stores. Um, so we're rolling out into retail, which is great. I mean, you know, post-e-com world and and you know, the late 2010s, where's everything's no, everyone's DDC, everyone's DDC, everyone's DDC. It's changed a lot. I mean, retail has struggled a lot just because of post-COVID, but there are retailers who are killing. We just got back on Best Buy, right? So we have a bag in Best Buy now. We're we're in Dillard's, we're in, we're opening up countries. Um, we're just locking in Japan. We have Korea already. Uh, we've had a separate brand in Europe called Gomatic due to a trademark infringement issue. Uh, they're called trademark terrorists. They sue everyone they can, but we actually worked out a deal with them. So we're we're rolling nomadic back out in Europe in March. And so that's gonna be awesome that we don't have to deal with two brands. So the UK will do really well. We already do well with there with the secondary brand. UK, Europe. Um, we'll open up Mexico soon. We just opened up Canada at a bigger way, so we're open up retail. So the expansion of the brand is what's fun for me. Yeah. And because it gives you opportunities. So, like, you know, Sean from Ridge Wallet says this best on how you grow a brand is more people, more places, more product, right? So get in front of more people, come up with more product, whether category SKUs, whatever it is, that doesn't mean you have to get inflated by product, you have to have a good life cycle management, right? So you're coming in with this color, whether it's seasonal or this product, you know, now we got updated version, things like that. And the more places one is exciting because as a as a self-funded Kickstarter brand to then e-com with Shopify, to then global footprint. And we're not fully global footprint, but that's the mode we're in right now, right? Like we are entering that phase. And the work we've been doing on the brand side for the last four years to get us set up for this is really exciting. Like, we have all these really good relationships. We work with Chris Williamson for the Modern Wisdom podcast, Peter McKinnon still with the camera bag. Um Huberman was rocking our bag, dude perfect all rock our bag. Like, you know, we're not big enough where we could afford deals with all these guys. We do have one with modern wisdom, but we are the bag for creators and we have great relationships. We have a lot of energy, and that's like the thing I like try to focus on. And it's hard to put a number to it. You could put it on like brand awareness and stuff like that, but building energy behind a brand, right? I'll give you one example. This is when I first realized there's actual energy behind the brand. This is really ethereal too when I talk about this, but I remember because I'm a brand guy, I'm from skating, right? We were friends with the Skull Candy guys early on because I when I went into Gold Zero, I hit up a bunch of people over there, right? And so I was like really into it. They sponsored skaters, lizard was on them, and like, you know, rocked the headphones, especially in Utah. It's such a nice one. It was huge. Yeah, yeah. I remember one day I went to Best Buy and I was looking at their display because I was doing some some market research stuff, and I picked up a product, one of their headphones. I'm like, weird, I don't feel anything. I'm really, I'm a really like kind of empathetic, sense and sensitive type of person like that. Yeah, it's weird to say this shit. Um sounds super hippie right now, but yeah, but I but I didn't feel anything, right? I'm like, something's that's weird. I like I've been so into this brand. But later that day, I find out they fired almost every skateboarder and snowboarder. They left four people and they hired all the Victoria Secret models.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:05

And it was because there are there is an energy behind your brand from a culture standpoint that can get wiped out immediately. Yeah, and Squok and they had a really hard time for a couple years. They're coming back now with Brian and um Justin, there's a few people working over there, they're they're building that back up. But I re I remember that.

SPEAKER_00: 1:40:20

How many years did it take to hunt that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:22

So basically they lost their soul. That's how it felt to me. And so that was my first realization where I'm like, whoa, brands have souls, they have energy. And like, how do you build that? Because, like, in this corporate world, like you can't put an ROI on that, but you actually can't. That's what builds the longevity of a brand, the profitability of a brand, right? Because we're not in commodity, we're in community.

SPEAKER_02: 1:40:43

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01: 1:40:43

It's a different, different wheelhouse. And so the way that I've always built brands and every brand I've gone to is like very, you know, I start with the it's all relationship-based at first. Um, I go to as many events as I can, I talk with people, I get in with the key people, you know, whether it's the buyers, whether it's the athletes, ambassadors, depending on the category and the industry you're in, and create real, real relationships and create excitement where like you see them, they see you, they're like, pneumatic boys, yes, you know, like and and like every brand I've done that at, and it's like, and it's and it's real. That's the thing, is like that. I have to be like really passionate and really excited about this stuff because that relationship, the energy I bring out of my body and put into the brand is real, and people you could feel. And other people do this too. Like you do GoPro did this early days. Like a lot of brands, there's a lot of people that have that same mentality that do that, and it and it really works, dude. Like I think that's the big difference on building a brand is you have to build energy and momentum behind it. Yeah, it's kinetic energy. Yeah, once it's going, I mean you could you could fall it could fall apart very quickly, and it doesn't start off the bat. It doesn't start fast. It takes a while. Yeah. Like it's taken a bit to get more and more energy in these different categories where in it with nomadic, but it's not just me, like the team is doing this. Like I try to get everyone out at events, try to get, you know, at one point we had every every employee calling customers called the voice of the customer program, you know, like, hey, how was your how was the order? Did you get it? How did you like that? If you if you don't know what your customers are saying and thinking about a product, 100%. Dude, that's the only way. It's the empathy model. Like I heard a podcast the other day with the the one of the the CEO at 974, which was more like a B2B agency, but he was talking about the model that they do when they put the campaigns together and stuff like that for brands they work with. It's called pie. Profitability, innovation, empathy. But they flip it. Empathy, innovation, profitability. Who is the customer? What are their needs? What's the gaps? Right? How do they feel? Really be empathetic for that customer. Innovation, how do you be different than everyone else? And then just make sure it's profitable. Wow. Yeah, it's great. I like what it was like one of those. I'm like, I didn't learn this in my freaking marketing degree. Like they didn't teach me this at Dicksie. Dooksie, Duxie for life. But it was like one of those models where, yeah, totally. Like, you know, it goes back to even the real recognized real. Like when I go to shows and stuff, and I've taught this with the team, and some of the team already had this, it's like, dude, we're homies with people. I don't call them customers, these are friends. Yeah. Even if we just met them, ask them where they're from.

unknown: 1:43:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:43:09

Don't just be the soulless person. Tell me about the product. Not at all, dude. I'm not wearing pleated pants with a, you know, I'm wearing a polo right now, but not, but you know what I'm saying. Like pleated pants tucked in polar. Like, no, we're having fun. We're meeting people. We're gonna really like get to know them. These are these are homies, dude. Like, straight up. That's how you start to build that. And then you understand it from the marketing side on the empathetic side of like, how do we how do we talk with people? How do we stoke people up? How do we change? How do we help amplify their life because we know our product is really good? How do we help get that into it so that they, you know, they have that confidence, basically? Yeah. So very brain dumpy. No, I bothered it. Um, oh James, this has been amazing. I uh I there's only like one or two conversations I've gone into where I'm like, okay, that like either was what I expected or worse. Like more often than not, I'm like, that's what I needed. Like a week, like we're recording on a Friday. It's like the end of day. I'm like, this is what I needed to energize me out of everything else. So this has been amazing. Stoked. Um lots of good stuff coming out of Nomadic. We we do have apparel, currently a small line. We're coming out with some more apparel products um in October, like a soft shell jacket, this polo, lung sleeve, a really new custom fabric for us for hoodies. Um, we're working on some more bags, and then just yeah, expansion and and product and just trying to you know get the best product out there to people because our product is the best. I mean, just I've yet, like I said, I mean, I've yet to have anybody say they like, oh, I got the bag wasn't for me, or I didn't like this. Always people like become obsessed with it. That's cool. Um, but want to wrap up with the two questions I always ask everybody at the end of each episode. Number one, if you could have someone on the podcast and hear more about what they're up to in their story, who would you want to hear from? Here in Salt Lake. Uh yeah. Some more related to Man, there's some legends here, bro. Like because of again, a lot of like early mentors for me that changed my life, live here. Uh Benny Pellegrino, please have him on. So he was Milo Sport, then he's now I think he's doing Nitro and Autumn Headwear. Got it. Legend. Yeah. I mean, Milo, Milo alone is the most like like one of the iconic spots. Yeah, Benny on. Bro, okay. Like, text me if you want him on, I'll I'll intro you. Benny is a shit. Lizard King would be great too. Oh, I'd love to talk to you. Lizard is hilarious. Like, I I've like host I've mc'd like events and contests with him. It is the funnest shit you'll ever get. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, dude, honestly, I mean, there's so many. Like Jared Smith, too, local mural artist. I mean, man, there's so many, so many. But Benny's a good one because he's he's came from the East Coast. He was a skateboarder and a snowboarder. Milo, I mean, what's happened in the snowboard industry? Like, a lot of that's on Benny's back. Yeah, right. I mean, those are the people that built it when it was showing up in Salt Lake, and it's like these customers short owners, like, all right, I guess the core dude, the ones doing it. And now he's doing you know, these other brands, like you know, the local, local big brands. Um, Lizard comes back and forth all the time from LA where everyone, including Benny and anyone in Salt Lake, has been trying to convince him to move back to Salt Lake for years. He wants to, he wants to. So those two, I I would say you should definitely have them on. Yeah, they're both legends here. You know, obviously, in the business world, different lizard is a Utah legend. Oh, exactly. He's in a video game. If you if you go to any kid at a skate park or anybody holding a skate, we're like, oh, like, you know, Lizard King, and they're like, you're like, throw that away, yeah. They don't remember my name anymore. I'm too far away, but Lizard they remember. Well, because like even growing up, like rollerblading and going to skate parks all the time, like I knew who people were. Like, I would never, and like, yeah, like skate parks were so much like a therapeutic thing for me that I'm never like, no, uh, what's your name? But I'd be like, oh yeah, there's like Lizard, or like the one, the name that a lot of people talk about right now is skating and stuff, like is like Tyson Bauer Bang. Tyson's awesome. Yeah, so good. And so it's like fun to see that there's still kind of this like passing of the guards happening where you saw old heads like Lizard King still comes around and still these kids are still coming up and do shit. But like on the on the on the building business side and like in in part of that community here, like Benny Pellegrino and Jeff Richards. Okay. So Jeff started Autumn Headwire. Okay, but he was like at Milo for a while, snowboarder too. But they're they're building businesses here. Yeah. I I mean everybody grew up, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, and then you know, obviously, like within the other business world, there's so many. Yeah, I mean, there's there's four great people. The thing about Utah is there's so many killers on here, bro. Like it's entrepreneur capital. Like literally, I thought of two businesses just walking here. I think it's just because of in Salt Lake. The energy a hundred percent. It's wild. I don't disagree. Yeah, there's a lot of like Alex MacArthur is just hanging out with him. For he's you know, purple Kizick now over at to follow. He's local. Yeah, I was thinking like skate snow world, but now when I'm thinking business world, I'm like I don't pigeonhole in anything. I like has Mike been on Mike Clark? No, I want to. He would be a great one. He's on Spawn. Uh, there's a couple other ones, Casey Jarvis at Black Diamond and Dan Rowe on the product side. Great. Casey just moved back. He was the chief design officer at Under Armour. Yeah. Now he's the chief brand officer at Black Diamond. Crazy. He'll be a great one. People are killers. Dude, text me. I can send you a list. Too. Yeah. Uh, and then lastly, if people want to follow you or and then also if people want to find nomadic, what's the best place to keep in touch with Black Dicks? I mean, easy place for nomadic, follow us on Instagram at nomadic. Um, follow me. I don't post a lot. I usually just reshare stuff from my wife. So if you you know, you can follow me at on Instagram, it's um at underscore K-N or on LinkedIn. Cool. Yeah. So just James Hacking on LinkedIn. Yeah. James. This has been phenomenal. It's been fun. I love hearing all the stories. I did talk a lot and I did brain double up. It's a potty ass. Are we not? Yeah, yeah. Let's get potty. Yes. Exactly. Don't be the don't be toddy for the potty. Yes. I would rather take people that I can listen to instead of try to pull words out of their mouth. Yeah, we kind of crammed a uh a bit in there for a little bit. Yeah, we could honestly probably go for two more hours. Oh, I I that's the thing with me is I can talk for uh for people about anything forever. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for having me. No, this is awesome. I uh yeah, I always love when it goes from like, hey, I think you should be on a podcast to like, and here we are. Yeah, yeah, totally. Uh we're here. Yeah. Small lake pod. Awesome. Let's go. Shh, dude. So good.