Thankfully, a clever marketer called bullshit.

It was right after World War II ended.

Men were returning home from Germany to pick up their jobs in the factories.

They found themselves in a workplace that had changed considerably.

While the men were off at war, the women served their country by taking up jobs in the factories.

And, they got good at these jobs. Damn good.

But, when the war ended and the men returned, they were paid quadruple the amount that women were.

Employers shrugged off the blatant inequality as…

“Men had families to support.”

*cough* “BULLSHIT” *cough*

Long story longer, women got fed up and sparked a movement…

“Equal pay for equal work”

(Sounds like a slogan, huh?)

The above campaign gave way to a movement.

And, while we still have a ways to go with gender equality, this story shows the power of marketing…

Legendary marketing doesn’t just make the cash register sing…

It changes the world.

Call me a dreamer, but I think legendary marketing could fight the blatant police brutality and racial inequality going on in the world today.

It could, if done well, ensure that George Floyd did not die in vain.
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For more on how marketing drives social change, press play.

Merriam-Webster defines a Tweetstorm as: “A series of related tweets posted by a Twitter user in quick succession.”

So then what exactly is a Podstorm?

“A Podstorm is a series of related episodes posted in quick succession by a podcaster.”

In May 2020, we launched the first-ever #Podstorm with my marketing podcast releasing a new episode each day for our loyal listeners.

The intention here is to provide immediate, helpful insight at a time when the world needs it most. Instead of waiting to release episodes each week, a #Podstorm felt like a more relevant way to dive head-first into the conversations business owners and marketers were having all across social media about how to keep their businesses alive through the economic downturn brought on by COVID-19.

Here are the benefits of launching a Podstorm, and why this will become a powerful new marketing mechanism for podcasters.

For the listener, a Podstorm is a way to consume rapid-fire content from a podcaster they love, on a topic (or set of topics) they believe are important.

If you think about traditional media, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc., when these outlets publish a series on a topic (say, entrepreneurship), the series would come out slowly over time. There would be a very high level of quality control. Demand would be manufactured by hoping audiences tuned in every Monday for however many weeks in a row. And while the final product might be great, it forces the reader, listener, and customer to wait.

This approach only works for timeless content.

When it comes to timely (or extremely timely) content, elongated series’ like these don’t work. They aren’t effective at engaging with communities in the here and now.

A Podstorm, on the other hand, is rapid-fire. If you care about a topic (or in this case, if there’s something massive happening in the world—like a recession), then you aren’t going to enjoy waiting for new pieces of content to come out once a week. As a listener, what you want is content and insight right now. You want to know you aren’t alone, and there are resources out there to help you.

For example, we decided to do a Podstorm because we realized our audience, or at least a component of our audience—marketing professionals, business leaders, CEOs, etc.—were starving for content around how to navigate a recession.

Instead of letting content trickle out, a Podstorm allows us to jump on the problem. We’re saying, “For 30 days, you can count on us for fresh new content to spark ideas, creativity, and solutions in these difficult times.” Some episodes might suck. Other episodes might be some of our best episodes ever. What matters is the consistency of volume, in a short amount of time, related to the timely needs of our loyal listeners.

For a podcaster, a Podstorm is a great way to provide maximum value for minimum time, against a topic that has some urgency associated with it.

We are living in a time where authenticity matters more than arguably anything else.

If you are a podcaster, then you need to realize you have a responsibility to your listeners. Especially the ones who tune into your show day in and day out, you are one of the first people they are going to turn to for help when shit goes wrong in their world. They want to know how you’re handling whatever is happening in the world, too. They care about you, and more importantly, their relationship with you. They want to know you and them are going to be OK.

Personally, when COVID-19 started, there were certain media personalities and fellow podcasters I wanted more from. I wanted to hear from them. I wanted to know what they were thinking and feeling about what was happening in the world. Instead, a lot of podcasters steered away from talking about the coronavirus. What could have been a terrific moment of leadership, turned into an excuse to distance themselves from their audiences.

A Podstorm is your opportunity to lean into the moment and create new demand for your podcast category.

In return, your listeners will see you as more engaged, radically generous, and connected to the needs of your listeners in the present moment.

by Guest Blogger Navin Chaddha

• The coronavirus pandemic has upended the way venture capitalists and startup founders interact, meaning that to raise a round, entrepreneurs need to adapt.
• These are his top five tips for building a successful company amid and after the outbreak.
• Show strong leadership, make a playbook, try an all-remote culture, assume your starting capital is zero, and adjust your marketing plans.

I’m a serial entrepreneur who founded three successful companies from 1996 to 2003. I have been a venture investor since 2004 and have helped entrepreneurs navigate through downturns. As the leader of Mayfield, a firm with a 50 year history of investing in over 500 companies — 117 of which have gone public and over 200 which have been acquired — I have seen many scenarios play out.

And as we navigate the post-coronavirus reality, entrepreneurs who want to build iconic companies should consider an altered launch path.

This downturn is like no other

Our current situation is fundamentally different from prior downturns. I anticipate that the new normal of a work-from-home culture and some form of social distancing is likely to endure for a while. In addition, the economic impact of the necessary lockdown has severely constrained startups’ access to capital. While this was true in the aftermath of the 2008 recession as well, the additional lack of in-person meetings limits the ability of investors and entrepreneurs to engage in their natural back and forth.

Another factor that is different is that the solution this time is not clear — and in the hands of the government and health authorities, not business. So the lack of predictability coupled with anxiety is higher, because lives, not just livelihoods, are at stake. Going forward, I believe that companies should assume distributed teams as the norm, not the exception; they should build superpowers around virtual versus in-person engagement; and they should make sure their value proposition is a must have, and that they are capital efficient.

I have always believed that company building is a marathon, not a sprint. Last year, I was a speaker at Stanford University’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leader series, where I provided advice to entrepreneurs by sharing five insights which have guided my 50-plus investments:

1. Mission and values are critical
2. Startups die of indigestion, not starvation
3. Innovation happens across the value chain
4. Painkillers sell; vitamins don’t
5. Embrace a people-first philosophy

I believe those are still relevant and will serve as the foundation for building iconic companies. But given that we are in unprecedented times, I think entrepreneurs should develop new guidelines for building lasting companies in our new normal. Here are five that came to mind:

1. Remember that an officer never runs

This is an insight from a top Silicon Valley coach in our network, John Baird, who has worked with scores of startups as well as leaders from Apple and Nike, among others.

He quotes an old Marine saying, “an officer never runs,” meaning that in times of crisis, the officer always has to stay calm: If a leader panics, their team will panic too.

Leaders have a huge impact on the overall mood of their organization, so maintaining a sense of calm in times like these is essential. This is especially relevant as you try to raise initial or follow-on capital for your startup. While this is a tough fundraising climate, remember that people-first investors will align with your success. So don’t agree to onerous terms which may come back to haunt you, but do hold out for investors who are aligned with your values and are looking for a win-win.

2. Thriving in a crisis requires a playbook

I am a big fan of John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco, who has successfully navigated several downturns. He points out the importance of playbooks, especially in uncertain times, which help guide your actions.

One playbook that he successfully used in the 2000 downturn was to make deep cuts in the first 50 days, ensure that existing customers such as those in the automotive industry were successful, and lean into new markets such as China when competitors were frozen. This allowed Cisco to emerge as a leader out of the down times, a position they never relinquished.

Many legendary leaders are sharing their playbooks through webinars and blog posts such as the Resilience Spotlights series we are hosting with Silicon Valley Bank.  In addition, there are leaders in your own network who have walked this path before and who can share actionable advice that will help you today.

3. Build a remote-first culture into your DNA

We have seen firsthand how our company HashiCorp, which was built as a distributed company, is successfully navigating these times. All their processes are remote — product development, sales, marketing, customer service, finance — so they have simply conducted business as usual versus having to transition to a new way. The company believes building a distributed team has to be an intentional process, versus simply adding a new mode of interaction to an existing structure.

A couple of key tips for best practices on remote engagement include:

• Learning how to host remote meetings. Steven Rogelberg, author of “The Surprising Science of Meetings,” advises that you set an agenda that asks questions instead of topics; actively facilitate engagement (especially on Zoom calls with multiple participants), and set the emotional tone of the meeting as a host.
• Remember that some people learn better through live chats and meetups, others through long-form pieces or Q&As. Define a formal method of communication for the group and then follow it, and know that this communications system could include multiple channels. Successful communities often have a chat system, forum system, email, and even video.

4. Develop a zero-based plan to get you to profitability 

VCs typically look at runway timeframes for startups in terms of their existing capital. One of our alumni CEOs, Jake Winebaum, is the founder and CEO of Brighter (acquired by CIGNA) and cofounder of the eCompanies incubator in the late 90s, which resulted in successful companies like Business.com, Boingo, and Jamdat. He says that the discipline of building a zero-based plan, in which you assume the capital in hand needs to get you to profitability versus modeling scenarios for better times, is a necessary and useful exercise.

Here is how you can get started on building a zero-based plan:

• Assume your capital is limited to what you currently have in the bank.
• Be super conservative on revenue assumptions, both dollars and timing. Just like you, your existing and potential customers will be cutting costs which makes growing or acquiring new customers very difficult.
• Build your expense base from zero, eliminating all costs not directly contributing to growth and maintenance of the core business ensuring, at the same time, that you are continuing to invest in R&D.
• Audit your entire team and identify the key personnel directly related to the core business. This is the core team to get you through the crisis. If you need to do a reduction in force, do so in one action immediately.
• As soon as your move forward plan is complete — in days, not weeks — review with your board for approval. Don’t sugarcoat or set false expectations.
• Present the approved plan to employees in an all-hands meeting by being completely honest and transparent about the strategy and rationale for the plan.
• Finally, and most importantly, demonstrate empathy while executing the new plan.

5. Downturns are times to lead through brand and category marketing 

Christopher Lochhead, a three-time public company CMO and top podcaster, has some counterintuitive advice which resonated with me. He says that legendary brand marketing in bad times can drive the agenda for an entire category and position your company to gain meaningful share through the downturn — positioning you to jam the throttle when the eventual upturn comes. He recommends you claim category ownership on your terms.

Here are two tips on this topic I find useful:

• Make yourself needed. In downturns, you need to ensure you brand your product to a must-have urgent problem, not a nice-to-have one. Most of your competitors will cut the spend and time on branding. That will open the door for you to grab the category and point of view leadership. You want to lead that conversation by doubling down your efforts here.
• Show trust and generosity. Trust is your only currency. Employees and customers will remember the companies that did right by them. So while there is much about our current reality that you cannot control, taking steps to build and manage your reputation during tough times will serve you well in good ones also. One principle that Lochhead points out is that of practicing radical generosity, doing good to help the community. An example he points to is that of Zoom giving away its software to schools, which impacts their bottom line, but will also result in incalculable uptick in their brand and category awareness.

With these guiding principles, and with the courage and conviction which is inherent to entrepreneurs, I believe that crisis can be an opportunity for the bold, so it’s time to lean forward into shaping our future together as fear is the only thing that limits one’s potential.

________________________________________________________________________

Article originally posted on Business Insider 

Navin Chaddha is the managing director of the Mayfield Fund and a serial entrepreneur.

Business leaders have rightly focused on the most urgent issues regarding Covid-19, such as the safety of their employees and customers, and the security of their supply chains. The critical next step is to try to keep cash flowing by managing near-term revenue and expenses.

History teaches us valuable lessons for managing cash during a nasty downturn. Companies that successfully navigated prior crises pursued near-term cash-flow strategies that were both radically generous with customers and partners — and thoughtfully aggressive with near-term revenue and expenses management.

These may seem like opposing ideas, but in reality, these two ideas perfectly balance the empathy required to cajole customers to help while ensuring the economics of the business remain sound.

To achieve this balance, leaders can take five complementary actions:

1. Secure near-term sales by taking risks with warranties, guarantees, and return policies.

Companies can secure near-term revenue by reassuring customers who are nervously navigating a ton of uncertainty. Taking a risk with generous warranties and return policies can both calm nerves and close sales.

Hyundai demonstrated this successfully during the 2008 recession, with their Hyundai Assurance return program and their breakthrough 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty program. The marketing campaign promised that if you lost your job after recently buying a Hyundai, the company would buy it back from you. Hyundai’s market share grew in the first 10 months of 2009 from 3.1% to 4.3%, and their sales grew nearly 24% the following year. They are reprising a similar version of their program today.

2. Implement new revenue/pricing models.

Companies should test new revenue and pricing models with their “superconsumers,” many of whom will gladly jump at the chance to secure goods and services they know they will want and need at a meaningful discount. This may require alternative revenue/pricing strategies, like gift cards and subscriptions, as opposed to traditional transaction-based models.

Blaze Pizza, one of the market leaders in fast-casual pizza, recently launched a #BlazingItForward gift card campaign on social media and via their 2.4 million email member list. Under this promotion, someone who purchases a $20 gift card gets a free pizza on their next purchase. Daniela Simpson, general manager of digital growth and head of marketing at Blaze, noted gift card sales have exceeded expectations. Gift cards can be tricky from an accounting and go-to-market standpoint, but remember that Starbucks has 25 million mobile users who pre-load cash onto their rewards cards as an interest-free, negative working capital loan. In aggregate, this provides Starbucks with more than $1 billion in working capital. Other companies can try this, too.

Gift cards may seem like a retail specific idea, but it is a tactic more companies should try. The travel and leisure segment can offer their best customers ways to secure their elite status for next year by forward-buying travel in bulk at a discount.

Remember that superconsumers have a shared interest in your survival. While the revenue must be recognized over time, this does have meaningful cash flow and balance sheet benefits, as well as forecasting benefits too. For categories and companies that have toyed with the idea of migrating to subscription pricing, now is the time to try it. Companies that successfully make the transition to subscription pricing may see their valuation multiples increase once the market stabilizes, given Wall Street’s current affinity for subscription and “X-as-a-service” business models.

3. Accelerate innovation.

Launch near-ready innovations in the pipeline now. Most companies are risk averse regarding innovation, but just as generosity begets generosity, empathy begets empathy. Customers who may typically nit-pick new innovation will now be grateful for new and improved products/services — even if they’re released before all the kinks are worked out. They likely will help you identify problems and fix them before a broader rollout.

This is what Tesla is doing effectively with its auto-pilot software. The software is not finished, but they know that the best way to improve it is to gather actual driver data from Tesla owners using it in the wild.

Others are simply moving up launch dates sooner to both help consumers hungry for distractions. ESPN, for example, is accelerating the launch of its highly anticipated Michael Jordan documentary from June to April. Many Hollywood studios are making the mistake of delaying launches to maximize mass market revenue, missing the opportunity to launch these as high-priced, pay-per-view events.

4. Cut “sacred cow” marketing costs.

Take a swing at marketing costs that are suspected to not pay back but are too politically difficult to cut during better times. These are often hard to measure marketing costs and/or are geared towards motivating distributors/channel partners more than consumers.

A good example of this is when back in 2009 Anheuser-Busch InBev cut a number of sports sponsorships (e.g., Manchester United, exclusivity on the Winter Olympics) that motivated distributors, but had little evidence of customer awareness or impact.

5. Engage in new kinds of customer acquisition.

Finally, companies should seek to proactively acquire customers during this crisis. One of the best ways to do this is strategically sampling to acquire new customers. This is especially true of companies that sell intellectual property, like software, training, and services, which have low marginal costs.  Zoom has generated a lot of attention by offering its services for free for K to 12 education. These investments now not only enhance their category and brand long term, but they often will convert into paying customers six to 12 months down the line.

Another way to drive customer acquisition is via M&A. Valuations are as low as they’ve been in a while, so companies with the means should be aggressively shopping for acquisitions that bring over new customers, cross-selling opportunities, or new business models and categories. Consider The New York Times, which just acquired Audm, a subscription-based audio app that offers long-form journalism read aloud by celebrated audiobook narrators. Given that print is migrating towards podcasts, this is a great time to make a bet on the cheap for the future.

Companies need to resist the temptation to stay hunkered down on defense during these difficult times. Instead, go on the offense by using radical generosity and thoughtful aggressiveness as guiding principles. Dark times are when legendary companies and leaders are forged.

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Respected retired military leader shares ideas for business and government leaders grappling with the public health and economic crisis.

Today #1 charting Apple podcaster and #1 bestselling Amazon author Christopher Lochhead released a new episode of the award-winning “Follow Your Different“ podcast with retired Four-Star General and leadership coach Stanley A. McChrystal.

During a wide-ranging, unedited podcast dialogue, General McChrystal — a decorated serviceman best-known for his command of Joint Special Operations Command in the mid-2000s — shares his unvarnished assessment of:

–  the current COVID-19 healthcare and economic crisis.

–  seminal leadership strategies for business and government executives, and;

–  specific advice for U.S. President Donald Trump.

On the U.S. federal government’s response:

• “In a word, it’s been pathetic.”
• “We’re losing Americans that didn’t have to die.”
• “There’s just no excuse for us letting it get out of our control as we have in the United States.”
• “We went into a level of denial and there was senior leadership saying, ‘No, it’s not really a problem … And so that slowed everything else down.”
• “One of the most dangerous things we could have is getting to the point where people are contemptuous of their own government.”
• “We’ll have investigations about what happened. … We’ll drill into certain things that fell, fell way short of what we needed. But the question is, will we hold people accountable?”

Advice for President Trump:

• “I would tell him: Start by telling the truth. Be straightforward with people. The challenge now is there is a percentage of America that doesn’t believe anything.”
• “Don’t surprise them each week. … I think that transparency is critical.”

Suggestions for business and government leaders:

• “I think first we need to make an assumption that this is going to last for a year to year and a half.”
• “It will wax and wane, but it will be in our lives until a vaccine is here, and then there’s the threat of other pandemics.”
• “I think the governor(s) should be talking every day. Every governor should get in on a 20-minute call in the morning of video teleconference roll in there and they say, what’s happening?”
• The general declares: “Business leaders have a social obligation.” He further encourages business leaders to “take a longer-term view.”
• General McChrystal also warns: “We say we’re saving the jobs to the workers, and to a degree we are, but (in) reality, there’s been some corporate- level behavior that I think is difficult to defend. I personally have a problem if a government bails out a company where the senior leadership of the company is making multimillions of dollars.”

On the need for shared digital networks:

• “If we connected them all, connected them enough in network … so that everyone had real-time connectivity, getting clear information … then they could leverage all of the work that’s being done in the entire network. Suddenly we’d be dramatically more effective because you wouldn’t have to rebuild redundantly capability in each of the states and municipalities.”

On leadership:

• “We’re going to have to be able to let data drive us much more rapidly … and we’re going to have to make some pretty major course corrections when suddenly the data tells us something different from what we had thought.”
• “The leader’s got a role to first give people a sense of direction. And that sense of direction begins with the leader standing up and the leader accepting responsibility for their role. The leader has got to be visible, even if it’s virtually, the leader has got to accept responsibility.”

Listen to the podcast:

Apple Podcasts

All other podcast players

About Four-Star General Stanley McChrystal

Stan McChrystal is best-known for his command of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the mid-2000s, where he was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq.

His last assignment was as Commander, International Security Assistance Force; and Commander, United States Forces in Afghanistan.

General McChrystal was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by Army Chief of Staff General George Casey and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

General McChrystal founded McChrystal Group in January 2011 to deliver innovative leadership solutions to businesses globally — helping them transform and succeed in challenging, dynamic environments.

As founder and partner, he advises senior executives at multinational corporations on navigating complex change and building stronger teams.

He is also a best-selling author and educator.

About Christopher Lochhead

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 charting Apple podcaster and #1 bestselling Amazon author.

His two books “Play Bigger” and “Niche Down” and two podcasts “Follow Your Different” and “Lochhead on Marketing” have won countless awards and become cult classics for entrepreneurs and marketers.

After getting thrown out of school at 18, Lochhead became an entrepreneur, three-time Silicon Valley, public company CMO (Mercury Interactive, Scient, Vantive) and an investor / advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups.

The Marketing Journal calls him “one of the best minds in marketing”; NBA legend Bill Walton calls him a “quasar”; and The Economist calls him “off-putting to some.”

Former Navy SEAL and president of McChrystal Group, Chris Fussell, says: “There’s not a more forward-thinking leader out there. Chris is always driving the right conversations.

Photo courtesy of The Military Times

Marine Corps combat veteran. Ultra marathoner. Nonprofit entrepreneur. Akshay Nanavati finds his nirvana in worthy struggles.

Don’t demonize stress and anxiety, he advises. Learn how to control your emotional response to them instead.

“I believe that the most important skill to master in life is the ability to develop a positive relationship to the experience of pain and suffering,” he told me during our conversation on Follow Your Different.

Without fear, there can be no courage. Without struggle, there can be no reward. Out of the presence of inexplicable evil will rise “inhuman good.” All three ideas are central to Nanavati’s eye-opening book, “Fearvana: The Revolutionary Science of How to Turn Fear into Health, Wealth and Happiness.”

Inspired by his battle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after serving in Iraq and his frustrations with traditional counseling, Nanavati’s book is part confessional and part scripture — one endorsed by both the spiritual leader Dalai Lama and motivational speaker Jack Canfield.

His mission: inspire readers to earn their life. “It’s not about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself,” Nanavati told me in this life-changing episode.

An Unlikely Marine

In a world full of people who claim to live on the edge, Nanavati’s backstory — survival tale, really — is a stunner.

After immigrating to the U.S. from India as a young teenager, his addictive personality led him into a lifestyle of drug addiction and self-mutilating behavior.

A series of events flipped his switch: the death of two high-school friends related to drug addicition, the events of 9/11 and the movie “Black Hawk Down,” which he binge-watched before binge-watching was even a thing.

Another inspiration: The incident at Hacksaw Ridge in World War II, in which an Army medic saved 75 men — without raising a gun.

“What kind of human beings would knowingly put themselves in a situation like that and sacrifice their lives for somebody else?” he recalled during our conversation. “I hadn’t really been exposed to courage of this capacity before this, really.”

Determined to serve his chosen country – The United States, Nanavati — who stands just 5’ 7” and then weighed maybe 160 pounds — enlisted in the Marines, ignoring the advice of doctors who told him his genetic blood disorder, flat feet and less-than-Marinely physique made his chosen path a real danger to his health.

As in, he might not survive boot camp.

“It took me about a year-and-a-half to take in all these medical waivers, but that was the turning point,” he says. “That is why I wanted to join, to serve an institution where the good of the group matters more than you, the well-being of the group. You serve for the people next to you and everything is your men and the mission and that’s beautiful.”

Addicted to Extremes

For Nanavati, seven months of combat in Iraq where he was a specialist in finding improvised explosive devices (a.k.a. IEDs) became an addictive experience — so much so that he trained as a journalist with the thought of becoming a combat photographer after his service.

Back home, he struggled with survivor’s guilt and depression, falling back into the bottle — he was later diagnosed with PTSD.

Dissatisfied with traditional treatment, Nanavati turned to extreme activities meant to push his limits — from climbing mountains in the Himalayas to scuba diving in underwater caves.

He once dragged a 190-pound sled 350 miles across the second largest icecap in the world in sub-zero temperatures and just a few months ago ran 80 miles around 0.2-mile-long track. Just because.

A life goal: Run across every country in the world.

For Nanavati, “Fearvana” is “the bliss that results from engaging our fears to pursue our own worthy struggle.”

All the proceeds from his book are being donated to the Fearvana Foundation, dedicated to helping communities in need “transcend their own suffering.” One of the named projects on the foundation’s website is a school in Liberia, the fourth poorest country in the world.

Wise Beyond His Years

Nanavati hasn’t hit 40 yet, but I think you’ll agree he sounds kinda like a 103-year-old monk. Not that I’ve met one, but you know.

Our conversation was sobering, exhilarating, mesmerizing and mind-altering. Here are 6 moments that really stuck with me:

1. Embrace dualities. Only by living in the dark will you be able to really see the light. Likewise, you can’t have courage without fear. To continue the analogy: “If you seek out easy, your life will be hard. If you seek out hard, your life will be easy.”

2. Guilt is an expression of love. Reconsider it through that lens, and it will rewire your thinking. ‘Nuff said.

3. Don’t deny your emotions. Rather, study what triggers certain feelings and learn how to step into them. “There are no good or bad emotions. There are just emotions, and every emotion is part of the human experience.”

4. Go back and reread Viktor Frankl (or read him, if you haven’t): The Holocaust survivor’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning,” is a Nanavati must-read, and he channels it often. A favorite quote: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response, and in our response lies our growth and freedom.”

5. You gain confidence by failing and falling and picking yourself up. Go out take some risks. You can’t be a legend without being a loser.

6. When you can’t change the situation, change you. When faced with danger or some sort of pain — like a person’s death, an unexpected life event, what Buddhists call the “first dart” — every human will have a primal, visceral response. That’s natural. How a person reacts afterward — by overreacting or overanalyzing — is far more important.

You really need to listen for yourself. Here’s the complete podcast. It’s very real. And very different.

Nearly four decades ago, a seventeen-year-old coder living in Boston, Massachusetts with $400 to his name packed his bags, climbed aboard a Green Tortoise Bus and high-tailed it 3,000 miles across the country to San Francisco, California. 

There, my buddy and podcast guest, Big Ben Rewis would spend the next thirty-eight years of his life as a trailblazer in big-tech, leading the way for titans like Visa, JP Morgan Chase, and First Data as they underwent large-scale digital transformations. 

One of the things I love about Ben is unique compared to other technology strategists, as he often finds himself occupying two wildly different worlds: both the digital and the physical. 

When Big Ben isn’t coaching leaders of massive digital initiatives for Fortune 1000 companies or founders of digital-native startups, he’s climbing mountains, sailing and surfing around the Tasman Sea or hiking the world’s deepest canyons. In 2019 he was honored as Fellow Royal Geographic Society Fellow (FRGS), an honor he shares with Charles Darwin and Sir Edmund Hillary. 

It’s this dress shoe on one foot and hiking boot on the other that has allowed Ben to perceive data and technology more like a cohesive ecosystem rather than simply numbers on a screen. 

But, more than this, Ben’s passion has brought him to the realization that data and technology can not only make companies copious amounts of money… but they can help change (and hopefully save) the world, too. 

Inspired by Jake Burton, Big Ben was an early pioneer in Snowboarding and rode some of Jake’s first boards in Vermont. He was a competitor taking 17th overall in the first world championships for snowboarding. He even got to write an article about it for Thrasher magazine. 

He was 17 when he realized the connection between technology, entrepreneurship, and nature. In many ways, Ben’s life has been a quest to live at the center of those three things ever since.

A lesson learned in the waves. 

Ben Rewis caught his first wave at forty years old somewhere along the coast of Santa Cruz, California. After that, he was hooked, spending the next decade and a half surfing waves both right in his backyard and thousands of miles away in New Zealand.  

It was Ben’s love for the ocean (and getting fed up surfing alongside trash) that attracted him to Save The Waves Coalition, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting coastal resources. 

Like so many of the companies he had advised over the years, this non-profit on a mission to save the ocean one surf zone at a time was missing out on huge opportunities in both technology and data. 

Ben volunteered his expertise in data and technology to work alongside Save The Waves to create a mobile application called The Endangered Waves App that would go on to “make waves” in both the non-profit and technology sector as a whole… winning an X-Prise award for best conservation app. 

Big Ben’s strategic thinking behind Endangered Waves was to design it so that it would function on crowdsourced data. While Save The Waves is a global non-profit, they can’t be everywhere at once. 

So, the application encourages beachgoers and surfers to monitor their coastlines easily by taking a picture of a threat they see, selecting an issue that most accurately defines the threat (like erosion, sewage, oil spills, etc) and then tagging their location. 

This then propagates onto a large scale map working as a living breathing data set for Save The Waves and the agencies they advise, allowing them to make better faster decisions on a global conservation level. 

One might think of Pareto’s Law where 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. To put it in terms of business, generally speaking, 80% of a company’s revenues come from either 20% of their customers or 20% of their products. 

So, a short-cut to not only efficiency but large-scale growth and impact are doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on this 20%. 

While Save The Waves eventually hopes to eliminate ocean threats, a huge win would be to eliminate 80% of threats. And, if Pareto’s Law holds true… this 80% is coming from 20% of the world’s beaches –– the application allows Save The Waves to pinpoint this 20%.

Data equals Money.

Back in 2017, there was a study done that estimated the worldwide surfing industry to be worth a staggering $50 billion a year. On a more micro level, the city of San Clemente, California brings in an estimated $8 – $13 million a year from surfing alone. 

Naturally, if one day surfers have to worry about running into metal oil drums, plastic containers, fishing nets, and sewage whilst doing the thing they love, it’s safe to assume they’ll take their boards elsewhere, somewhere far away from San Clemente. 

This is a real-life example of where data can directly equate to money. 

While Save The Waves is on a mission to clean up the planet’s waters, professional surfers, surf brands and beach towns all around the world should be backing them because their success will be a huge contributor to the ongoing financial health of the surf industry. 

This is a congruence Ben has seen in the private sector, too… that data often times equals money. 

But, in order to capture this data and ultimately make decisions with the data being captured that can either be monetized or cut costs, organizations must have the right digital business. Otherwise, they’ll end up like the semi-recently extinct Radio Shack and Toys R. Us. 

Where technology, data, and nature collide. 

Artists, engineers, philosophers, and thinkers spanning a variety of different crafts and industries have found tremendous success pulling inspiration from nature. 

Leonardo Da Vinci gained an in-depth understanding (centuries ahead of his time) of aerodynamics by watching the flight of birds. 

Georges de Mestral, a Swiss electrical engineer, thought up the idea of Velcro after a hunting trip in the Alps where he noticed the way burrs from burdock plants attached stubbornly to his dog’s fur.

Lenovo, one of the world’s largest technology companies, is constantly designing their products with nature in mind –– their laptop fans are shaped like owl wings and their computer stands are similar to the stem of an orchid. 

Big Ben takes the same approach when helping companies through a digital transformation by applying Biomimicry to the digital businesses he’s creating. For those who are not privy, Biomimicry is the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems. 

Big Ben views digital businesses in the same light –– that if data is eating the world, it better be putting out more data. He’s isn’t afraid to get granular though, either. 

How businesses can begin on their journey towards Digital Transformation today. 

When businesses or nonprofits like Save The Waves are making the push to go digital, here are a few tactical pieces of advice Big Ben always passes along. 

1. Design with the user in mind. Bring the customer and the user into the design process. They’re who is paying you, after all.

2. Understand the existing ecosystem. Ask yourself: Am I disrupting, creating a new category or product, or improving on something existing?

3. Design for scale and sustainability. Ensure the technical and business architecture of what you’re building can scale and can ultimately be sustainable for years to come. 

4. Be data-driven and use data as a flywheel. Today, data is more valuable than cash. Data should be leveraged to power further innovation, explore new revenue streams and cut costs. 

5. Use open standards for innovation. Open data, open integrations and innovation will not only enhance team communication and even patent creation but it will 2x your speed to market… make sure they’re working cohesively. 

6. Reuse and improve. Bundle features into a series of Minimal Viable Product releases, and reuse the things that work and improve the things that don’t. 

7. Address privacy & security. You can build insanely great stuff and ignore privacy and security, but don’t. It’s as simple as that.

8. Seek out leadership themes/best practices. There are common organizational themes across people, processes, and tools in both small and large new digital businesses. Be very aware of these themes.

9. Have fun building your digital business. You’re going after a lucrative, cost-saving opportunity. It’s exciting. Treat it as such. 

10. It’s good to use a catalyst. A catalyst is someone that’s able to help businesses, both big and small, create a data-generating digital business or tool.

PS For more with Big Ben Rewis you can enjoy our podcast dialogue here.