David Smooke: Hello and welcome to David Walks. I’m here on the corner of Bush and Montgomery with my friend Jeff of Litterati.
Jeff Kirschner: Hi David.

David Smooke: Good to have you here.

Jeff Kirschner: Likewise. Can I just say David Walks is such a great name? I didn’t really think about it until just now. Just a simple …

David Smooke: Yeah. My name’s David and …

Jeff Kirschner: I walk.

David Smooke: … I walk places …

Jeff Kirschner: Good.

David Smooke: …And record the conversations.

Jeff Kirschner: Nobody’s going to have any trouble understanding exactly what you do.

David Smooke: Tell me about Litterati.

Jeff Kirschner: We have a vision to create a litter-free planet, and …

David Smooke: Very admirable.

Jeff Kirschner: Thank you. It all started on a walk in the woods with my two little kids. My four year old daughter said she had noticed a plastic tub of cat litter in a creek. Pretty gross. She looked at me. She goes, “Daddy, that doesn’t go there.” I know this sounds like a cliché, but that honestly was the eye opening moment for me. I’ve lived in the Bay Area for 20 years. This place that prides itself on being ecologically responsible, and environmentally progressive, yet everywhere you look there’s trash.

When my daughter said that to me it reminded me of when I was a kid growing up. I used to go to summer camp in upstate New York, and on the morning of visiting day before they’d let our parents in our camp director would say, “Quick, everybody. I want you to all go out and pick up five pieces of trash.” Essentially at 200 kids each pickin’ up five pieces within ten minutes we had a much cleaner camp. We were basically crowd-source cleaning the camp long before that term meant anything to anybody. My idea was why can’t we apply that model to the whole planet? That was the inspiration for starting Litterati.

David Smooke: Sweet. Take a picture of that litter right there?

Jeff Kirschner: Sure.

David Smooke: What do we got? We got a coffee cup …

Jeff Kirschner: We got several things within a ten inch radius.

David Smooke: That’s a good shot.

Jeff Kirschner: Parliament cigarette, Marlboro cigarette, Styrofoam … Some sort of coffee cup.

David Smooke: It says enjoy your coffee. Pretty dirty. Say here’s something around here works. Do you frame the shot?

Jeff Kirschner: Sometimes. It honestly depends. On a litter-walk, and I’m picking up 150 things …

David Smooke: No.

Jeff Kirschner: No. If I am doin’ somethin’ like right now to look a little nice then yeah.

David Smooke: I kind of like the idea of glorifying … Not … I mean it’s a little bit of glorifying. That’s not quite the right verb, but it’s whatever. It’s like, “Hey. If you make this piece of trash a good picture now does that mean more people in the future will pick up trash?”

Jeff Kirschner: It’s interesting you should … Let me tell you what I just did. The way Litterati works today is we built it all on top of Instagram.

David Smooke: Good idea.

Jeff Kirschner: Thanks. It was not by design. I’d love to tell you that it was but it wasn’t.

David Smooke: I played around a little with photos and geo-location. It’s just so much to build. The more you can just be on top of someone else in terms of leveraging their tech for good it’s a good way to live.

David Smooke: It’s a great way to test.

Jeff Kirschner: Which is exactly what we’ve done. The way Litterati works is you find a piece of litter, you photograph it with Instagram, you add the hashtag #litterati, and whatever you’re picking up … coffee cup like we just did …. Starbucks, Pepsi, bottle cap, Coke whatever, and then you throw out or recycle the litter. It’s literally that simple. What’s interesting is that through that process we’re actually capturing a huge amount of data.

An easy way to think about (Litterati) is who, what, where, and when. We’re able to understand just from the photograph who picked up what, what brand, what product, where because every photo’s geo-tagged, and when because every photo has a time-stamp. Our belief is that we can do a lot with that data to become smarter about a problem that frankly plagues the entire planet. In a way that can lead us towards data driven solutions. Rather than just picking it up week, after week, after week, and nothing ever changes. It’s like … What’s that old definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result? That’s essentially what we’ve been doing with litter.

David Smooke: That’s a good definition of insanity. Tell me a little more about the name. How did it arise? It has litter in it, but you also have the ending. What is it … What’s the take away from the name? Is it … It is one thing that I was … That struck me from afar before we met. It’s like Hey, just on a very simple level there’s 135,000 pictures that have used this hashtag. That’s like … It’s like a … There is a nice brand quality behind it, but I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the story behind the name.

Jeff Kirschner: It’s interesting you brought that up. Right now the Litterati community … Let me give you some framework. When I took that walk with my kids I came across a cigarette butt, and I took a photograph using Instagram just because. It just happened to be there, right?

David Smooke: You don’t have to go far in the city for that. Cigarette butts per block. That could be an interesting way to judge …

Jeff Kirschner: We have …

David Smooke: … Real estate value.

Jeff Kirschner: We have …

David Smooke: Do real estate value versus cigarette butts per block.

Jeff Kirschner: That’s a really interesting idea.

David Smooke: That’d be a good data one.

Jeff Kirschner: One of the … As we build out our platform we’re looking to create an API that allow other data sets such as real estate value, or …

David Smooke: I’m takin’ a picture.

A photo posted by Smooke (@smookewalks) on Jul 20, 2015 at 9:54am PDT

Jeff Kirschner: Good catch. [inaudible 00:05:51]

David Smooke: [crosstalk 00:05:54] A Very scenic city. Everyone wants to take a picture here, so we got to clean up the litter.

Jeff Kirschner: Cool. The pride alone of how we treat our environment. Anyway I took a picture of this cigarette butt, and I took another picture, and another picture, and another one. I noticed two things happening to me. I was never an active environmentalist, and I’m certainly not a good photographer, but the first thing that I noticed was Instagram made litter really approachable. It went from being this blight on the ground that I either didn’t notice, or worse didn’t want anything to do with to, “Oh, that’s a cool photo opportunity.”

The second thing that happened … In fact the thing that was much more impactful was after a couple of days I had … I looked at my camera roll on my iPhone, and I noticed that I had taken 20 or 30 photos, and I had picked up, and thrown out, or recycled every single piece that I had photographed. I realized that I was effectively keeping a record of the impact I was having on the planet. I had no clue what I could do with that information. I just thought it was cool.

David Smooke: Once you take a picture then it’s like, “I have to pick it up,” for sure. [crosstalk 00:07:14] There’s a … Definitely that behavior much more so than look at it for a moment, and then you think about it for a very short moment, then you take your next step.

Jeff Kirschner: Exactly. If you’ve already stopped for a picture, it’s like, “Now that I’ve stopped, and I looked at it, what is this? How do I make it better?” Right. It enforces the decision a little bit. It does and it almost brings you closer in a way to your own environment.

I didn’t know what I could do with this information, but I knew intuitively that it translated into some sort of quantifiable good. That’s 20 less pieces that you might see, or she might slip on, or some animal might digest. I just started tellin’ people what I was doing, and what started out as one cigarette butt has now become … Today I think we’re crossed over 143,000 pieces in 50 countries.

David Smooke: Wow.

Jeff Kirschner: This community has been boring, and everybody’s contributing to the same common, greater goal.

David Smooke: [Wild 00:08:18] Back to the brand name.

Jeff Kirschner: Right, I’m sorry. I just …

David Smooke: How did it come about?

Jeff Kirschner: I used to teach … I’m a writer by trade.

David Smooke: Me too.

Jeff Kirschner: [inaudible 00:08:28] I used to teach a class on story. I had this experience in the woods with my kids, and came up with this idea for Litterati. I brought it to my class and I was like, “Hey. What do you guys think about this?”

David Smooke: That’s the focus group?

Jeff Kirschner: Exactly. Exactly the focus group. It was a bunch of creatives. One of the students was … I had horrible names. I hadn’t come up with the name Litterati yet. I had horrible names like Litter Camera. Exactly. Trash 101. Terrible. Just terrible. One of my students was like, “What about [Litterazzi 00:09:15]. You got the camera, you got litter.” Then another student was like, “I don’t know that makes me think of the Nazis.” I was like, “We’re definitely not doin’ that.” Then a third student said, “What about Litterati?”, and it just stuck. It’s been … I think it’s been a good brand identity from day one.

David Smooke: Were many people using the hashtag before you started using it?

Jeff Kirschner: To be honest I hadn’t done … I haven’t done the research, but our data would suggest that no. If you look into …

David Smooke: I mean that would be an off the cuff type of use as opposed to before the movement, essentially.

Jeff Kirschner: Exactly. That’s a good way of putting it. I think it would be people who misspelled the traditional literati like those involved in books, and authors, and reading, but no not really. I think that’s part of one of the reasons it spread is that people were noticing … Instagram’s got what 350 million people?

David Smooke: I think, yeah. At least. I know. Yeah.

Jeff Kirschner: People were seeing this random word on all sorts of photos. A snickers bar, a plastic lid, a Burger King cup, and starting wondering, “What is this random word that keeps surfacing on different types of photos?” When you think about that we’ve been very lucky. We’ve gotten a bunch of press, and I’ve been speaking, and then people just starting to do it. This word just keeps surfacing, and that’s one of the reasons why Instagram has been such a great platform to essentially test a minimum viable product. I had no idea if we could convince anybody to pick up anything. Before I …

David Smooke: Let alone hundreds of thousands.

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah. Before pouring time and resources into it, it was a great way to really leverage something that had already been built, and see if we could pull out what was valuable about it.

David Smooke: The story itself, the eureka moment … I don’t have any kids so I don’t fully understand it, but it does remind me of a story my mom told me about my dad. It’s essentially going to the store with my older sister, and she points to the cigarettes, and she’s like, “Those are for Dad,” and that was the moment my Dad quit cigarettes. It’s kind of like, “Yeah. I’ve been seeing this my whole life, but suddenly my daughter says it, and it’s like wait a minute. [crosstalk 00:11:52]. How am I tolerating that?”

Jeff Kirschner: You can. That … I think you articulated what happened to me. I [inaudible 00:11:59] ask you. We’re in …

David Smooke: Nob Hill.

Jeff Kirschner: Right?

David Smooke: Yeah.

Jeff Kirschner: Pretty nice place in San Francisco.

David Smooke: Yeah. Really [inaudible 00:12:05] homes.

Jeff Kirschner: Just take a look, okay?

David Smooke: Wow, this is like a little corner. This is like they made a makeshift trashcan here. It’s almost like should there be a trash can here?

Jeff Kirschner: You would think.

David Smooke: This little corner.

Jeff Kirschner: If we walk … Just watch this. We’re going to walk … what 20 feet maybe? 25 feet? Just see if you … Just start counting, and see if you can …

David Smooke: This bed of plants is really getting hit.

Jeff Kirschner: Check out this bed. What’s interesting to me almost from an archaeological perspective is this will tell us about the people that are in this area. It can tell us about the stores and commercial operations that are in this area.

David Smooke: People still using plastic bags even though it’s illegal here. [crosstalk 00:12:50] What type of cigarettes are made.

Jeff Kirschner: What type of cigarettes are most often smoked?

David Smooke: One shots versus full bottles of liquor. Chipotle might be nearby.

Jeff Kirschner: Somebody clearly had a cough. [crosstalk 00:13:03]

David Smooke: What a lemon, huh? Starbucks, Marlboro.

Jeff Kirschner: Right here, two of the most commonly found brands, [crosstalk 00:13:14] Community, Marlboro Number One, Wrigley’s is probably nine or ten right now.

David Smooke: Starbucks was on the list I saw.

Most commonly found #litterati: 1. #Plastic 2. #Paper 3. #Cigarettes 4. #Can (source = @litterati) pic.twitter.com/DUzs2kl8KC

— David Smooke (@DavidSmooke) July 12, 2015

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah.

David Smooke: Menthol that we saw back there probably called Newports.

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah. Newport’s probably number five for us. By the way, two things that I find really fascinating. One is this is just what we can see. There is so much that over time has just gotten lower to the ground covered with debris and leaves. Things like that. Number two is every city has a litter profile. San Francisco has one, Oakland has one, Tokyo has one. They don’t know what they are, but they all have them. A litter profile is essentially the what, the where, and the when of litter. Understanding what you’re finding on the ground, what are the most commonly found products or brands, where you’re finding them, and you can imagine like in San Francisco the litter you find in the [Castro 00:14:10] is different than the litter you find in Chinatown, is different than the litter you find in Pacific Heights, is different than Noe Valley. Then the when … You know what we saw a ton of the first week in November? Candy wrappers because of Halloween. This past week we saw a ton of patriotic stuff, because [crosstalk 00:14:29] July 4th. Our belief is that …

David Smooke: You go there after the Chinese New Year in China Town … So much … The firework remains are crazy.

Jeff Kirschner: Everywhere [crosstalk 00:14:38].

David Smooke: The whole street is completely filled.

Jeff Kirschner: Everywhere. When the warriors won the title there was so … there’s still … It’s been … I think the parade was … I think it’ll be four weeks ago …

David Smooke: At least three.

Jeff Kirschner: … This Friday. Maybe three, whatever. Call it a reasonable amount of time.

David Smooke: You call it.

Jeff Kirschner: If you go to downtown Oakland right now, and we’ve got the data to show it, there’s blue and yellow confetti still everywhere. What happens is it gets caught. It gets caught in storm drains, or it gets caught in tree beds, or in the bushes. Our belief is that this is a global pandemic, and strangely one that has virtually no information. The only information that exists today is … lacks specificity, it provides little to no insight, and it’s collected with pencils and clipboards. If we can provide a solution that can offer a much richer level of analytics, so that we can be more informed and insightful about the problem, we could actually come up with solutions based on some intelligence, rather than just [inaudible 00:15:54] pick it up again. That’s the idea behind Litterati.

David Smooke: Small [use 00:16:00] case example that’s coming off the top of my head. It’s … If Starbucks is considering opening the next … Taking the next place that’s open for rent – it’s like wait a minute – If Starbucks has a larger cost than the local community, because it produces more litter, should that means it has to pay more to rent that location?

Jeff Kirschner: Great.

David Smooke: That one’s where it’s like Hey, you reward businesses that produce less externalities on local society. The other thing I was thinking about on the walk to come meet you today. It’s kind of like looking at … The time-stamp and the location they’re very accurate. Whenever tagging the brand names they’re accurate if the person decides to do it.

Jeff Kirschner: Exactly.

David Smooke: It’s not facial recognition, but if you have Google images and you drop an image in, and a lot of times it recognizes that the word is Marlboro. I’m sure that you’ve thought about this problem, and I don’t want to have you give away anything that’s in secret, but where do you see how much can you make … identify what the image is, and add the tags on it’s own?

Jeff Kirschner: Quite a bit. We’re starting to do that now. Instagram … Wonderful platform for us to test. Clearly not the right platform from a long-term perspective. There are things we want to do both from the data-analysis side, and probably more importantly from the data collection side that really require us to build our own application.

David Smooke: I would just be wary of … It’s so easy for people to upload photos to Instagram. You don’t want to lose all that movement.

Jeff Kirschner: You’re right. You’re absolutely right.

David Smooke: Instagram’s always going to be important to your long-term growth.

Jeff Kirschner: We will never shut that off. Frankly, if people are contributing by taking one beautifully artistic photo once a month, or somebody’s picking up 50 things a day, and the Litterati community has both those types of individuals, our belief is: Great, whatever you want to do that contributes to this greater good that’s awesome. One of the things we’ve heard is Litterati has started serving as this unifying umbrella. Traditionally if you picked up a bottle cap in Seattle, and I picked up one in Sydney those were isolated, quiet acts, right?

David Smooke: Yeah.

Jeff Kirschner: I don’t know you exist. You don’t know I exist. That can feel daunting. It’s like, “What difference can I possibly make here in Sydney?”

David Smooke: I love it from an inbound marketing perspective. It’s just like, “Hey, what I’m doin’ is just naturally going to attract people that are also doing it.” It’s very much speaking to why you would post the status update on anything.

Jeff Kirschner: Exactly.

David Smooke: Why would you post any public information. It’s ultimately to meet other people that are doing similar things. Jeff Kirschner: We are social beings, right?

David Smooke: Yeah.

Jeff Kirschner: By you picking it now, if you pick up one in Seattle, I pick up something in Sydney, Litterati makes that act social and share-able. I know you exist. You know I exist.

David Smooke: What’s up?

Jeff Kirschner: We know … Exactly. We’re not in it alone. There’s thousands of other people around the world doing the same thing, and that’s empowering. That makes it feel like, “You know what? We can solve a global problem. It’s going to take a village, but I’m not alone.” It’s that same thing like people who don’t believe that their vote makes a difference. It absolutely does, but people feel overwhelmed.

David Smooke: You talked about where the village is at now you mentioned some people are taking 50 multiple pictures a day?

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah.

David Smooke: How many of these … How do you look at who is a power user, or power member of the community, and how many of these really dedicated people do you have?

Jeff Kirschner: We haven’t done any analysis on x person took y amount of photographs, and that defines a power user. I think for …

David Smooke: I think that would be a great page [crosstalk 00:19:59] site. We’re looking at who’s doing it a lot. It’s warning those people, and having them build communities around them. Jeff Kirschner: Totally.

David Smooke: That’ll really take another step.

Jeff Kirschner: You’re hitting the nail on the head. We actually have this whole Litterati Leaderboard. We haven’t published it …

David Smooke: Really?

Jeff Kirschner: … We have all the data. David Smooke: You already have it? That’s great.

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah, because we know … Back to the who, what, where, and when. We know who’s picked up what, where, right? It’s interesting. There’s certainly an … Actually that might not be true. There’s maybe, there might be an opportunity for [gamification 00:20:33] adding external motivations to Litterati. Pick up ten things you get a digital badge, or you get a …

David Smooke: You don’t want to make it corny. You don’t want to make it corny. You want to get … Incentivize people, but it’s also … It’s already incentivized people naturally. Which is much more appealing.

Jeff Kirschner: It’s also in my belief a much more strategic long-term goal, because the external rewards are maybe a great way to jump-start people and get them going, but it’s the intrinsic reward you feel for [playing 00:21:09] a greater good for the planet that is really going to keep you going. It’s like this … There’s a great book called Drive, by Daniel Pink where I got this idea, and I firmly agree with his thought, which is if you’ve got a ten year old son, and you pay your son five dollars to take out the trash every week that’s his reward. Two things are going to happen. One, you’re always going to pay him five dollars to take out the trash, and two after a while five bucks isn’t enough anymore. Then suddenly the action …

David Smooke: Inflation …

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah.

David Smooke: You got to save up for college.

Jeff Kirschner: With Litterati how do you continually make sure that the action itself is the reward? Once the reward isn’t worth it to somebody you’ve lost them.

David Smooke: That’s a great learning. Are you writing any longer form … The video’s great that you have on your site. The digital … What do you call the digital … Digital trash bin?

Jeff Kirschner: Digital landfill.

David Smooke: Digital landfill. That’s a good name.

Jeff Kirschner: That was another name a student came up with.

David Smooke: Yeah?

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah.

David Smooke: Man, look at you. Talking to your students. The student becomes the master, or master learns from the student? J

eff Kirschner: I hope so.

David Smooke: Builds website.

Jeff Kirschner: I …

David Smooke: Creates movement to eradicate litter from the world.

Jeff Kirschner: There’s a great quote from the Venture Capital from Benchmark Capital, who I have the utmost respect for. They talked about meeting people who are learn-it-alls. I certainly don’t know …

David Smooke: That’s a great phrase.

Jeff Kirschner: Yeah. I want to be a learn-it-all. This is an area that I had no experience, no knowledge of before getting into it. The more that I can learn from the community, the team, the better off. I’m just the guy at the front of the line tellin’ the story. You had that great idea about property values and data. At some point if we’re fortunate enough to raise the capital, I would love to bring a data scientist on, or a social psychologist. What we’re really talking about at the end of the day if Litterati is truly successful, and you can define that however you want, but it’ll mean that we’re starting to transform the way people think and behave. I know this sounds lofty, but we’ll transform consciousness. Instead of … I mean how many pieces if litter …

David Smooke: It’s not tolerating a piece of litter.

Jeff Kirschner: Right. How many pieces have you and I walked by in the 20 minutes we’ve been talking? Thousands?

David Smooke: You go to Singapore you can walk blocks without it. It’s not like something humans are not capable of. There’s places in the world where this doesn’t … it doesn’t work like this.

Jeff Kirschner: I’ll tell you a story that happened not five blocks from here, and I’ll send you a photograph. It was a Friday afternoon, rush hour. It was at the corner of Fifth and Market, and there are people crossing in every which way. In the middle of the street was a Red Bull tin that had been flattened, because it had been run over by a car. Nobody picked it up. I don’t know even if anybody noticed it. At the back of the group there was an older man. He was the lagger of the bunch, and he had a cane. He was walking pretty slowly. You know how canes have a rubber mallet on the bottom?

David Smooke: All right.

Jeff Kirschner: His mallet went onto the Red Bull tin and he skidded. It just went out, and he buckled, and he grabbed for his back, and hobbled along the rest of the street. I just sat there, because I was going to take a picture of it without it. I sat there thinking, “We don’t have to live in a world like that.” Imagine a world where every single one of those people would’ve stopped and picked it up. An action that might take two seconds. Why? It’s just the right thing to do.

David Smooke: Yeah, and you’ll never have gum on the bottom of your shoes again.

Jeff Kirschner: Exactly.

David Smooke: It’s the little cost of inconvenience. I mean good thing that guy didn’t fall over.

Jeff Kirschner: I would…

David Smooke: He probably still could be injured.

Jeff Kirschner: I would imagine at the very least the next morning he woke up with some soreness. I believe that, maybe not in your or my lifetime but, maybe in our kids’ lifetimes, or their kids’ lifetime we could actually live in a world where that’s just what you do. The same way today you just leave your house with your phone. A thought that was so far in 10, 15 years ago. I don’t know much, but I can tell you two things about Litterati. There’s 140,000 plus pieces that are no longer on the planet, and two litter kids, mine, will never litter as long as they live. If that’s the legacy I’m cool with that.

David Smooke: That is a good success. What’s next? What’s the big step for the company? I would already call the movement a success, but what’s like … We talked about what we want to see in the long-term future, but what about the one in the two year future?

Jeff Kirschner: The immediate next step is to try and go raise the first round of [Angel 00:26:29] funding. The purpose of that money is three-fold. One: To build out the dedicated team. Two: To solidify the platform. To start to do some of the things you and I talked about. Number three: To really find what the long-term revenue model’s going to be. Essentially to commercialize the operation, because my belief is that while the non-profit world is wonderful, for Litterati our intention is to become a B Corporation.

David Smooke: Great.

Jeff Kirschner: A social enterprise. I don’t believe that the right way, especially in this town, to attract talent, to attract patient capital, and to create a long-term impact is to go the non-profit route.

David Smooke: Just to function … If you’re real goal is to grow as fast as possible a corporation can move and grow faster than a non-profit.

Jeff Kirschner: Right.

David Smooke: When you’re for profit you can … If you’re … Whatever direction you choose to move you can move that way faster.

Jeff Kirschner: That’s right, and potentially with more efficiency. Start-ups are an incredible risk, but this is a big problem, and one that has really changed the course of my life. I’m committed to creating a solution that at least is a step in the right direction, and I think we’re well on our way to doing that.

David Smooke: Cool. Thanks for taking for me today, and I hope the next time we do this again we’ll see less litter.

Jeff Kirschner: David, I appreciate you taking the time and listenin’ to the story. Thank you so much.

#litterati Tweets

Schaeffer : Right here, we’re on the 10th floor. We had 14 people in our office. It was literally the new company that took the spot is 6 people and they fit there comfortably. We were all smashed in like sardines.

David: Funny when people cut corners.

Schaeffer : This guy was paying next to nothing to stay there. Took everything we had basically getting to 16 people for them to say, “We literally can’t fit in here anymore.” Another funny story about that co-founder I’ll leave nameless. One of the employees wanted a keyboard for an extension off of his laptop. He didn’t like typing on the laptop keyboard. The co-founder said, “Hey, I could get you this, but then I’d have to get everyone else a keyboard, too.” My buddy just kind of sighs and goes on with his day. Two days later, the co-founder comes in. He’s got this keyboard. He’s like, “Look what I got for you.” He’s like, “Here you go.” Hands it to my buddy. It’s got hair and dust and coke stains on it and everything. My buddy just kinds of looks at him ands like, “Thanks a lot. This is really nice of you.” He was like, “Where did you get it?” My boss was like, “Down in the alley. It was just sitting there. I came in, plugged it in and it works. Can you believe it?” My buddy’s just sitting there with a look on his face, shaking his head and internally is like, “What is this guy doing?”

David: Welcome to David’s Walks. Today, we’re going to talk about finding satisfying work. I’m here with Schaeffer. You’re kind of in a cool spot in your career right now where you’re looking for … More about satisfaction and purpose. You’re in a transition.

Schaeffer : Transition to say the least. I just left my job about 5 weeks ago with really no plan other than to take some time off to travel. I was doing sales at a food startup. Basically, a middle man that connects vendors to business clients, corporate clients that are feeding their employees lunch …

David: Middle man sounds so negative.

Schaeffer : Middleman’s good. Business is good. I mean, it’s very flourishing. We were doing good work for the vendors side, I think especially because these are vendors that come from countries that … They really just want to put their recipes on the table and get them in front of people. They really don’t have the business background so we kind of accelerate their sales and marketing for them. That aspect of it was really fun. The other …

David: Yeah, cool market right now.

Schaeffer : Very cool. I’m kind of in the midst of … I just got back from a 2 week stint where I went to Ohio, Dallas, Boston and Oklahoma City for various reasons. Wedding, golf, catching up with friends and in about a week, I’m going to be heading off to Africa. We’re going to go to Cape Town, and then Tanzania for a safari. The main thing I wanted to do on this break was interact with animals. For whatever reason, it just makes me really happy. Quitting your job can be so depressing at times. When you wake up and don’t have anything to do …

David: Do you have a dog?

Schaeffer : No. No animals.

David: No Animals?

Schaeffer : The landlord doesn’t allow that.

David: Have you considered the secret pet?

Schaeffer : They are around too often for us to get a dog. I think it would get noticed …

David: Maybe a turtle?

Schaeffer : That’d be a good one or a hamster. Wants to spin around in his wheel.

David: I don’t like animals that have to stay in the cage.

Schaeffer : No? Where do you put a turtle?

David: I think you just let it roam around your … It has a cage, but you can just let him roam around the apartment for a while.

Schaeffer : That’s true. They can’t get very far.

David: Yeah. What did you do the day after you quit your job?

Schaeffer : I slept until about 10 o’clock. I think I watched every Marvel movie up to Avengers 2.

David: I saw the new one.

Schaeffer : It’s pretty good.

David: Yeah, it was solid.

Schaeffer : Pretty action packed.

David: Hopeful entertainment.

Schaeffer : I did that for about a week, actually. Just relaxed. Felt the joy of … Not going into work and doing the exact same thing over and over again. Literally, catering to people who are upset if their food’s 5 minutes late. That just seemed a little too high maintenance for me. I want to do something that either gives back more or has a purpose behind it. Other than having bratty, corporate clients, make sure their food is 1 minute on time or 2 minutes ahead of time.

David: People are hungry, man. They’re not rational. You’re going to that industry knowing there’s a irrational customer. You know, they have a need. If it’s a few minutes late, it’s not the same as the person buying food or waiting in line on their own.

Schaeffer : Completely different.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : 300 hungry engineers lined up and there’s no food in front of them. They’re all like …

David: They get like group think. 

Schaeffer : Super pissed.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : It’s a really cool industry to be in. It’s growing like crazy. It’ll be really interesting to see where it goes in 5 years because I didn’t think it would ever be where it is now, whenever I first started, 2012. It’ll be really interesting to see how they incorporate wellness, giving back.

David: Yeah. We had a good talk today about [C-dot how chow 00:05:03] …

Schaeffer : Chow!

David: Chow! What are you gonna do when you get off the plane in Africa? What’s the first thing?

Schaeffer : There’s a little beach about 45 minutes south of Cape Town …

David: You want to go to [Em-bark-ah-day-oh 00:05:19]?

Schaeffer : Let’s check it out, yeah. There’s a little beach about 45 minutes south of Cape town where you can actually see penguins.

David: Oh, that’s wild.

Schaeffer : That’s going to be my first destination.

David: What’s the temperature there?

Schaeffer : It’s weirdly not cold enough for penguins but this is a different type of penguin. It’s actually called a Jackass Penguin. I was looking it up the other night on the internet.

David: That’s the official name?

Schaeffer : Yeah. It’s one of the official names. It’s the name I’m going to go with.

David: Oh, Postmates right in front of us.

Schaeffer : Ah, I didn’t recognize …

David: Little bike.

Schaeffer : I talked to a guy the other day, jumping off that topic of the penguins, who made all of his money doing Lyft, until he made 100 bucks a day.

David: Uh-huh.

Schaeffer : Then he did Postmates till he made 100 bucks a day. He did that everyday, all day, every single week. He was making between 75 and 80,000 a year doing that. Just think about how mind numbing … If that was your full time gig, you’re probably going to meet a lot of cool people …

David: Well, how many hours do you have to work to get those rates?

Schaeffer : On the Lyft, it’s like 2-4 depending on how long because if he’s down here, where we are right now, downtown San Francisco, one ride is going to be 20-30 minutes given traffic. If you’re out there into Sunset, you can do way more in the same amount of time. I signed up to be a driver. Actually, I haven’t even given my first ride yet. I just did all the orientations stuff. I did my driver test, test run. It was super, super easy. I actually signed up when they were doing the $1000 promotion. It was, give one ride in one week, get $1000, no questions asked. They had 15,000 people sign up in one day, which is basically meant … I think it was a $30,000,000 commitment because they had to pay the referrer and they had to pay the person signing up.

David: Did they referrer also get a grand?

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: Wow.

Schaeffer : They’re in a class action lawsuit right now because there was a bunch of people, specifically, the one example I read about, in Miami, FL, that literally canceled their weekend plans. They also carpooled down to Miami from wherever it was that they lived, because Miami had Lyft and wherever it was they were, did not. They booked a hotel, stayed there …

David: I admire this little group of people.

Schaeffer : I do, too. Then, Lyft couldn’t deliver on all of the promises that they made. I didn’t get my thousand dollars because I didn’t get signed up in a week. It took them too long to go through the 15,000 people it had signed up. They did extend it a week, but it still didn’t matter. They didn’t have enough time to get that many people signed up so these people are in a class action lawsuit …

David: That’s a bit of of recruitment marketing nightmare. I understand what they were going for but …

Schaeffer : It backfired.

David: Yeah. They did not estimate how many people would do it, the capacity volume. I’m sure they hid something in the fine print. The guy pitching the campaign was like, “This is going to get you so many leads, whether they become drivers now or later. It’ll guarantee x amount of drivers now to meet your need that’ll continue … Get through the rate and continue being a driver but that sounds like a nightmare. From what I’m hearing from you, it sounds like they’re not going to win that case.

Schaeffer : Probably not.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : In retrospect, I think what would’ve been cool is if they did something like, a thousand bucks to the first x number of people to sign up. Then, $500 for the next tier and kind of cascaded it down that way. That way, people weren’t completely upset if they missed the thousand, they got 500. If they miss 500, they get 250 …

David: Especially if you ran it all through Facebook ads. The moment you hit your number, you just drop the ad.

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: Something you can control the ad as your going and not have it … I guess people would pick up the ad and republish it elsewhere as an offer.

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: I don’t know. That’s a pretty crazy use case. Whenever you get back, how are you going to start finding satisfying work?

Schaeffer : I’m going to continue doing what I’m doing now. As I was telling you earlier, taking some free courses on Udemy, Code Academy. Refining some skills that I, frankly, do not have yet. Taking the lead from sales, account management into what I would like to do, but I think at least right now, what I would like to do, which is some type of product manager. Where you get to kind of quarterback a product or a set of products. The sales is fun, it’s very lucrative but you’re someone’s bitch all the time and that aspect of it has worn on me. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday because of the money. I do like interacting with people. I’m a friendly guy. I generally get along with all types on personalities. We will see. My intention span changes, it seems each month. Maybe next month, I’d want to be a safari guide after this African trip. Who knows what it’ll be. The plan is to keep learning and apply what I learn to the next job interviews.

David: Do you think you’ll be a good safari guide? First of all, are you going to touch the penguins when you get there?

Schaeffer : If they allow it, absolutely.

David: Who’s this they? Can’t you just … I thought the whole point of going over there was your on the same plane, there’s no cage.

Schaeffer : Yeah. I don’t want to break any rules and go up and be that guy petting the penguin and have someone …

David: Did you get shots and stuff?

Schaeffer : Oh yeah. I’m taking Typhoid right now. Just took my first dose two days ago. Made me really dizzy. Very stomach ill. We gotta start …

David: The cost of meeting penguins.

Schaeffer : The cost of … And cheetahs and lions.

David: Oh shit.

Schaeffer : That’ll be in Tanzania. We’re going to go scuba diving in Tanzania, Zanzibar specifically. Then, we’re going to go to central Tanzania for the safari. There’s an option to pet this cheetah at the place we’re staying at Zanzibar. Part of me is like, “That sounds really fucking cool.” The other part is, “What if this guy is in a bad mood that day?” Decides to snap at me.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : Then I lose my fingers.

David: Well, that’s a good story.

Schaeffer : Well, it would make for a good story.

David: Yeah. You’d probably use the keyboard less.

Schaeffer : No more coding.

David: Yeah. Well, I mean, if the keyboard comes from an alley way, what’s the point?

Schaeffer : I don’t want to touch it. The less fingers I get on that thing, the less chance of a disease.

David: Yeah. Do you think when you come back, you’re going to have … [inaudible 00:11:46] traveled a bit. I was kind of hoping for a new perspective when I traveled in February and a little bit in March. You get some of that, but it’s … Once you get back in the environment, there is a level of you are who you are. You get here and it’s like, these companies pay me for x. I keep doing x. Let’s make it to the water.

Schaeffer : Yeah, it’s going to be interesting because I think … Clearly, that’s what I want to get. I want to get a fresh perspective. I want to come back and have some vision or some new idea about what it is I’m meant to do or suppose to do. I don’t want it to be a disappointment if that doesn’t happen. I kind of need to leave with the focus on, regardless of what happens on this trip. This is what my 60-day, or 90-day plan is for my return. Certainly not eager to start working again immediately when I get back. At the same time, I don’t want to jump in to something too soon. If it’s been 3 months and the only thing I can find is sales jobs, at that point, do I take it and be miserable again or do I just keep the search going? That’s the trade-off, right? Financially responsible, I need the income. I got to pay for my rent. At the same time, does happiness have a price?

David: Yeah. I mean, not to sound too harsh, but it certainly does. If there was no money and you had no consequences, would you be doing exactly what you’re doing today? Maybe some of it.

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: I’d probably still walk around. Do some podcasts. I’d still write. Would I hit the same deadlines? Would I be negotiating as hard? It’s like, no. Maybe for the principal negotiations it’ll get fun, but it’s also like, you know, you’re putting lines in the sand for certain monetary reasons. Putting value on your time.

Schaeffer : What’s the San Francisco’s housing market? If it wasn’t so insane, it’d be nice to stop paying rent and start paying a mortgage, just for the sake of …

David: Oh yeah. Ownership. Longevity.

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: Yeah. You got to strike it big on one, make a down payment and then you’re good.

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: You know. You got to get one big hit in there. Maybe you’ll be the guy who takes the most remarkable picture of the penguin and it’ll get licensed by Disney. Did you see that new monkey movie? You can do your own version with the little penguins.

Schaeffer : Here’s my jackass penguin.

David: Yeah. Maybe you can make a famous internet meme. I heard that makes a lot of money.

Schaeffer : I’m going to have plenty of content, for the memes.

David: What are your content tools? What are you bringing?

Schaeffer : Actually, after this, I’m going to go look at cameras. There’s a place on Kearny that sells cameras. I need a lens and a camera. I’ve never bought a camera before, do you have any advice for me? When I’m looking, is there a minimum money I should be looking to spend? Is there a number I shouldn’t go over because …

David: One of the first big decisions is whether you spend big on the body or the lens.

Schaeffer : Okay.

David: This is from my YouTube experience, watching, not making. We did, at my last job, I did buy about a thousand dollar video camera. Did some research but essentially, getting SDR … No, LRD. There’s a special type of lens that’s kind of like a barrier.

Schaeffer : Okay.

David: You buy a bad-ass lens and you can get away with a little cheaper body.

Schaeffer : Okay.

David: The body’s a lot more with stability. The lens is real clarity of the shot.

Schaeffer : Okay.

David: In terms of which way to spend money on … Helping people out. You still get to cross the street. Yeah, she’s a stroller.

Schaeffer : I wonder how she didn’t notice that.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : Oh, the San Francisco Ferry Building.

David: You’re not buying data there, are you? You’re giving up the cell phone, right?

Schaeffer : I’ll have a cell phone, no access to my phone calls. Unless I’m on a WiFi, which probably isn’t … Is promised, but in my experience, when they say free WiFi, it usually doesn’t mean the best signal.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : Kind of back in the day, all the little motels along the highway would promote free HBO and that would be the winning ticket. Oh, this one has free HBO. We’re going to stay there, for sure. One channel.

David: Times have changed.

Schaeffer : Yeah. I wish this was the Ferry Market Dave. Looks like there are some vendors up here though.

David: Any chance you drop out of tech entirely? Do you think …

Schaeffer : No.

David: It’s just like the past?

Schaeffer : Yeah. I mean, when I think about dropping out of tech, I think about what it was like living in Louisville. Not that there is no tech in Louisville, but the industry is much smaller. You have to take more of a traditional, I call it traditional because when we were young, these were like the job in Kentucky growing up or in the mid west. Maybe even where you’re from in Pennsylvania.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : You thought yourself a financial advisor, financial analyst …

David: Doctor, lawyer, finance …

Schaeffer : Yeah, more traditional paths. Then San Francisco just opens your eyes up to … I can do literally whatever I want or go work for whoever I want because all the ideas are being spawned up here.

David: Oh yeah, I can write about whatever I want, you know? Everyone needs things written about.

Schaeffer : Macaroons.

David: Macaroons. Pretty good. Let’s see what else we got.

Schaeffer : Juice bar. 4-5-0-5 Cheeseburger. If you’re ever in the mood for a cheeseburger, I don’t want one now, you have to try their cheeseburger.

David: 4-5-0-5.

Schaeffer : Yeah, the best. It’s incredible. Yeah, it’s called the best damn cheeseburger for a reason. [why sons 00:17:38], I am volunteering at their booth at Outside Land.

David: With the last company I was with, we did a video with (Wise Sons) hiring people.

Schaeffer : Oh, nice.

David: There’s a shot right here shaking hands. Want some?

Schaeffer : Those pastrami fries.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : They have them on the menu today.

David: What are you doing with the volunteering with them?

Schaeffer : At Outside Lands, it’s pretty much, any vendor will do this, if you volunteer for 4-5 hours, then you get a pass for the rest of the day.

David: Oh, that’s a good idea.

Schaeffer : I volunteer from 10-4:30. Then I …

David: You hang out. You serve food. Eat a sandwich. [inaudible 00:18:07] enjoy the music.

Schaeffer : Hell yeah. Better than paying $150 for the day.

David: Yeah, that’s a good idea. I should get in on that. There’s probably a fun way to do it, too.

Schaeffer : I can send you the Google doc.

David: Yeah. How hard is it?

Schaeffer : It’s actually fun. You can do front of house or back of house. Back of house, you’re composing the fries. Front of house, you’re just making the sale.

David: Composing?

Schaeffer : Yeah. Literally fries, pastrami sauce, pastrami, seasoning, boom, pass it up to me. Then I get to be all, “Pastrami fries! Who had the pastrami fries?”

David: Yeah. The front would probably be more fun.

Schaeffer : Its a blast.

David: Yeah. Should I put in my application right now? I know you want a Google doc, but here’s my card.

Schaeffer : Call me.

David: Ready to volunteer, what is it, August 23rd.

Schaeffer : Yeah. See Elton John.

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : Elton John was actually the first concert I ever saw in my entire life. I was in 8th grade and my mom wanted to go see Elton John across the river in Evansville, Indiana. We rented a limo. I saw Elton John sing the song about Princess Diana. Forgot what it was called. It was basically a rendition off of one of his existing songs. It’s blanking me right now. Makes for a bad story.

David: Well, everyone remembers the first concert.

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: Well, parts of it anyway. You know, titles, whatever.

Schaeffer : Everyone was holding up their lighter or candle whenever they sing the Princess … That’s really the only moment I remember. Interesting to see him again, 20,30 years later.

David: He’s basically doing Paul McCartney this year. That’s what Paul McCartney was.

Schaeffer : Yeah. I don’t know if …

David: Kind of like headliner aging but absolute legend roll.

Schaeffer : Yup. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was last year.

David: The coolest part with Paul McCartney was when he did foxy lady by Jimmy Hendrix.

Schaeffer : Oh my god.

David: He threw it down. He was good. He’s 72 and was still just like …

Schaeffer : He played for 3 hours up there …

David: Yeah. He’s a machine. There’s musicians now that won’t do that, you know. In their prime, like 35 years old. Ready to fill out Madison Square Garden, they’re not going to play for 3 hours.

Schaeffer : Yup. He was incredible. He had some girl come up on stage and he signed her arm. She must of been 20 years old …

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : I don’t even know if she knew who was signing her arm.

David: Did you have a good spot? Did you get up front?

Schaeffer : We were in the mid section. I forget where we were coming from before that. It was okay. It was good enough. They had the big screen up there, you can pretty much see Paul McCartney pretty easily.

David: Yeah. Any closing advice on someone else trying to make a transition? There’s a lot of people out there who are like, “Hey.” You know, they’re not really enjoying the fresh air or walking around. They have a job where, yeah, it pays the bills. You know, there’s a lot of this sense of, this isn’t the job I want to be doing.

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: You know. It takes some balls to move forward. What would you say to that next person?

Schaeffer : Well, I know a few of them right now actually. When you don’t just up and quit, then you feel when you get off work, you don’t want to go home and do your job searching. Nothing really ever gets accomplished. If you really want to leave, unless you’re doing it on company time, which I may or may not have done, a little bit. I would take the leap because if you just stay there and you’re unhappy, you’re going to be unhappy. That’s one negative. You’re not going to come home and do the job searching or put forth the time to learn a new skill.

David: When your committing like that, it’s hard … Thinking about new opportunities while you’re committed to something else …

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: The type of person that’s looking for more purpose, they’re not generally someone who half-ass things.

Schaeffer : Right. I was reading an interesting article yesterday about this counselor, who every year takes a group of 14-16 year olds, about 15-20, in the Appalachian mountains for a hike. He compared that hike to what it’s like to feel lost. He let’s these kids … Literally, they have to get from A to B. It’s almost like survivor, on The Discovery Channel. If they’re going the wrong way or if they’re not using the compass and map properly, he doesn’t say a single word. He just let’s them screw up because he knows telling them the right way or telling them how to do something isn’t going to teach them what they need to learn about …

David: Yeah.

Schaeffer : About life, frankly. It kind of relates to me in that, no one can tell me what I have to do. I kind of need to get lost and figure it out for myself. It’ll be so much more rewarding at the end of the day or whenever that does happen.

David: Yeah. I know this is probably a bad comparison but it reminded me of basically, Phil Jackson, NBA coach, would treat the regular season … He wouldn’t call timeouts when they’re in trouble.

Schaeffer : He just let them figure it out. I remember this.

David: He was notorious for the style. “Oh, they went on an 8-0 run, so what? I’m going to need you guys to figure this out for the playoffs.”

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: “Don’t have time in the regular season to tell you how to change, how you’re messing up, stop the momentum. No. Just keep riding it out. Keep riding it out.”

Schaeffer : When you got guys like Kobe and Jordan out there, they were usually pretty good at figuring out how to diffuse the problem.

David: Oh yeah. Yeah. He was very smart about taking jobs that had the best (co-workers).

Schaeffer : Yeah.

David: “Oh yeah, I’m retired. Wait a minute, Kobe and Shaq need a coach? Maybe I’m not retired.”

Schaeffer : One of his former players doing that right now with the Warriors, Steve Kerr.

David: Oh yeah.

Schaeffer : Up 3-2. Hopefully they can close it out in Memphis.

David: He took the Phoneix job as GM. Went on TV for a while, just waiting for that right opportunity. Then the Knicks and the Warroirs offer him a job and he’s like, “Okay!”

Schaeffer : Steph Curry. Carmelo Anthony.

David: Versus. Well, I guess at the time, they had J.R. Smith, but Carmelo’s bulky knee.

Schaeffer : The criticism that comes with working in New York. It doesn’t sound very exciting to me, but some people like that lime light.

David: It’s all about finding good, telling people to take the lead. There is a level of … People are just scared. You have an inertia to what you’re doing every day. You’re looking back at it and it’s like, “Hey, you know, yeah, I don’t like this 20% of my job.” That’s the cost of having a job. They call it a job for a reason. How would you shove them off the edge?

Schaeffer : Well, I should caveat this whole thing with I’m not married and I do not have a kid. I think those things would lead to a very different type of experience for me. I probably wouldn’t have just up and quit had I have a kid or a mortgage payment I was making. If you’re in my boat, it feels good. You have to be okay with being lost. You have to be okay with being out there and not knowing what’s next. If that makes you really, really uncomfortable, gives you lots of anxiety, it’s probably not a good idea. I was open to that. I hadn’t had that feeling in a while. Actually, before I moved out to San Francisco.

David: That’s a good feeling.

Schaeffer : It is. It does feel good. I always tell myself, things have always worked out for me. I hope it hasn’t been mostly for luck, which I really don’t believe in. I think you kind of create your own luck. I have a feeling things’ll work out. I’ll figure out what it is that I need to look for and that I need to be doing. A year from now, if we’re talking, I think the discussion will be very different.

David: Cool. Well, I’m confident in that. I am. It’s been a pleasure. Let’s wrap it up. Have fun in Africa. Thanks for walking with me Schaeffer.

Schaeffer : For sure. I’ll share some good photos and I’ll have some Jackass Penguins.

David: Oh cool.

Schaeffer : To meme. Sweet.

David: Cool.

Schaeffer : Nothing like being on live mic. Oh, we’re still recording?

David: I couldn’t hit the – 

David Smooke:         Hello and welcome to David Walks. Today we’re going to talk about recruitment marketing with Chris Murphy, CEO of Zoomforth. Hey Chris.

Chris Murphy:            Hello, hello.

David Smooke:         Why are you doing what you’re doing?

Chris Murphy:            Talent marketing. There are 2 things that stick out to me about the current state of talent marketing. One, our fundamental job as recruiters or recruitment marketing professionals is to develop relationships with candidates and introduce them to the environment in which they would be working in order to reach out to them.

Two is that the tools we’re using to do that are far behind any of the tools we use to communicate in the consumer space or even a lot of other professional realms. There’s a huge opportunity to better connect with candidates.

David Smooke:         I agree. I’ve seen the idea of this job ad that’s written like here’s 300. 500 words of text, you know. Why don’t you talk to me? It’s like I don’t want to read all your text. That’s not what interests people about companies.

Chris Murphy:            It is what’s easy.

David Smooke:         Yeah, it is easy.

Chris Murphy:            We just decided to take for granted that that is how we connect with candidates. That’s too bad. It just leaves a tremendous amount both of just information and detail about a company and then also an ability to create a relationship. You know, it leaves that aside.

David Smooke:         We’re about to go up to the rooftop at 16th and Mission. We’re about to go up to the roof top. We’re going to take a quick pause here so we don’t disrupt the yoga studio.

David Smooke:         Hello and welcome back. We’ve made it to the rooftop and it’s very, very beautiful.

Chris Murphy:            And extremely sunny.

David Smooke:         Yeah, extremely sunny. Chris, what kind of mistakes do you think startups are making right now in term of how they’re marketing the opportunity to work here?

Chris Murphy:            I think conceptually startup appreciate the value of talent. Because every additional employee means that much more necessarily when you are fewer people.

David Smooke:         Oh, yeah. When your 5th hire is a 5th of your company.

Chris Murphy:            With that said, I think startups don’t often enough scrutinize both what make them unique or how they can be unique to other candidates. With a bunch of groups of let’s say, 5 or 6 people companies you should have a tremendous diversity of work experiences and generally you do. But there is basically a … There’s almost a hilarious marketing rubric for startup marketing. Which is, you know, our dog is one of the 6 and we have a ping pong table which we – We do too.

I mean it’s a bunch of stuff that becomes almost clicheé. I think, one, it’s really worth scrutinizing why you are unique. What your values are. What you do that’s different. But two, the thing that by default makes you different is who the people are. And so I think that needs to be featured a bit more in order to stand out from the noise. Because you haven’t had the opportunity to sink into, often times your own beautiful office space and create an environment. And have designated people working on culture. You’re just a group of individuals so feature who those individuals are.

David Smooke:         I’m a huge fan of this. It’s putting the hiring manager forward. It’s your leader in this area is going to attract the new person. There going to come to the office, they’re going to work with these people. The brand is the brand.

Chris Murphy:            Yep.

David Smooke:         If I’m joining a 5 person company or I’m going to spend time with a 5 person company it’s like, “How good are these people?”

Chris Murphy:            Totally.

David Smooke:         And can I f*ckin’ tolerate them. If they pass both of those tests, especially high on the first one, how good are these people? How talented they are. Because if you want to reduce risk, you just bet on talent.

Chris Murphy:            Yep.

David Smooke:         I was having a discussion the other day and they were like, “Well, you know, when you get to 100 person it’s a big company and that probably means you have a decent product.” And I was like, “Well, if you get to 100 person with a shitty product that mean you really have some remarkable people.”

Chris Murphy:            Yeah, or great marketing. Somebody on your team is doing something right even if others are doing something wrong. Yeah, or you just raised too much money.

David Smooke:         You’re hiring a bunch of roles right now. What kind of challenges are you running into? As you’re like, “Oh we’re hiring a salesperson, [SDR 00:05:06], marketing person.” More developers, more designers. It’s kind of like, you’ve built a strong initial team but now you’re going into phase 2. Where you’re- It’s beyond the initial team. How are you finding the experience?

Chris Murphy:            First and foremost it’s fun, right? We’re still small enough that every additional person means a lot bot to, in terms of executing capacity but also in terms of culture. That’s a really fun challenge. It is, it’s a huge challenge though, right? You’re in the most competitive environment.

David Smooke:         You notice how the wind picked up when you said that?

Chris Murphy:            Yeah. [crosstalk 00:05:46]

David Smooke:         You’re going to hear the wind going.

Chris Murphy:            I have a symphony of natural effects. [inaudible 00:05:53] We’re in the most competitive hiring environment probably in the world.

David Smooke:         Yeah.

Chris Murphy:            We’re also, not only are we competing and this is sort of the standard startup to big company [inaudible 00:06:09] and there’s a huge spectrum in between. But not only are we competing against serious A, serious B, serious C companies and then like Google companies that the larger you get the more up front benefits are big.

People who are risk averse there’s a bigger barrier to jump over with that. And they have much larger, much bigger brands. But you’re also competing with other startups in the richest startup environment in the world, with the most talented other folks in the world who also have their own brands that they’re coming in with. It’s an extremely competitive environment. Again, I think what that means is you need to figure out, there are base level things. How do you really sell the opportunity of a startup versus a big company? How do you sell the opportunity of your product? How does that resonate with somebody else?

David Smooke:         Yeah.

Chris Murphy:            I think a huge thing to sell is who are the folks you’re working with. There are a lot of visceral reactions that evokes that I think help get people past a lot of those barriers.

David Smooke:         When I look at hiring early stage startup people I think a lot of it is it does attract a crowd who wants ownership and who has a sense of independence. The people bring them in, but then it’s also what they’re looking for is, they don’t want to be one of a thousand building this small product. Essentially the thing would be mostly the same without them.

Chris Murphy:            Yeah, [crosstalk 00:07:41] which is a good filter.

David Smooke:         Yeah.

Chris Murphy:            I mean, we’ve found folks who are extremely talented and who, either up front or through the interview process we discover are not zealous about jumping in and owning something. And managing both the growth and volatility that’s just inherent in a startup.

David Smooke:         Yeah.

Chris Murphy:            And so it’s great, we’re looking forward to keeping in touch with you. We want to continue this relationship, now is not the time to bring someone onboard. It’s a good filter, as well.

David Smooke:         What’ else have you been seeing lately? Any tends from the Mission area that have impacted your business as we look around here?

Chris Murphy:            I leverage our spot in the neighborhood a lot to candidates. There are 2 things worth noting about that. One, is we have an amazing office. Sort of uniquely so for a company of our size. It’s in the heart of San Francisco, right next to a BART stop. Bunch of just interesting and awesome stuff around. [crosstalk 00:08:58]

David Smooke:         I mean it’s an iconic place, 16th and Mission.

Chris Murphy:            Totally.

David Smooke:         Where do you work? Oh I work at 16th and Mission.

Chris Murphy:            Yep.

David Smooke:         It’s clean, you know?

Chris Murphy:            Totally. The second thing that I think is worth noting about that is that if indeed we are really leveraging this spot we have, it confers a responsibility to be part of the community as well.

David Smooke:         Yes.

Chris Murphy:            You know, I think too often companies will say, “Oh yeah, we have the coolest location ever and we’re around this interesting taqueria, nice mural or whatever.” Well, somebody made those. Somebody invested a lot of time in that. I think it’s fun having, and we want to have employees that are excited by this as well. The degree to which we’re here and leveraging that requires that we reinforce those things that we value. In sum, I could not feel more privileged to be working where we are and being able to invite candidates in.

And you can see candidates sort of glow when they come into our office and they’re like, “Yeah, this is the iconic startup environment.” It’s fun.

David Smooke:         Were you talking to a candidate about painting a mural?

Chris Murphy:            I was talking to, yeah this is somebody we might bring on as an intern, he is an amazing videographer and artist and he’s been doing some murals over in the east bay. We’ve had, I’ve had a vision for a while now … Again going back to you have these clicheé kind of startup tropes that are often in offices. One thing we want to do is bring in some local muralists along with out designers, folks on the team and create a piece of art in our office. I don’t know that this will end up being put on the wall but my vision was to have a bunch of people salsa dancing. I’m a bog salsa fan and there are a lot of great studios and areas in this area to go salsa dancing. And then in the middle of it, have stand up desks with people typing on their desks. I think it would be hilarious and also speak to an interesting dynamic that’s happening here, where we are.

I think it would be funny. I think 60% of the people I tell that to get a really good laugh out of it. I’m not sure if that passes the threshold to stick it on a wall.

David Smooke:         I think it’s solid.

Chris Murphy:            Thank you.

David Smooke:         It does make me think of, but there is a danger because if you bring in a good [crosstalk 00:11:28] artist, they’re going to say, “Cool idea, Chris. I’m going to go do my thing.”

Chris Murphy:            Right, right. Exactly.

David Smooke:         Oh yeah, you’re on board. I saw [crosstalk 00:11:40] That’s a funny one. Do you know who David Choe is?

Chris Murphy:            No.

David Smooke:         He’s a great, legendary artist. He’s the guy who did the Facebook wall. I saw his documentary, and there’s a raw video clip of … Sean Parker brought him in to do the wall, and David shows standing next to his wall he’s like, “I’m done.” And Sean was there kicking his feet, looking down. He’s afraid to defy the artist. He’s kind of giving his things of how he wanted it to be and hope he could do more and change it. And he’s just looking at the ground scared to tell the artist what to do. It just settles with like, “Okay.”

Story goes, he get a bunch of stock and that’s one of his big money makers.

Chris Murphy:            Yep.

David Smooke:         Was painting the wall.

Chris Murphy:            Yep. I mean one of the things we’ve done, in advance of, or meanwhile, thinking of what to put in the office is just find creative ways for people to create the more expressive office. We just have a bunch of paint pens. At happy hours we’ve had people paint random walls, paint bathrooms. It’s both a nice way to give yourself an environment that is specific to you and also it’s sort of cathartic.

David Smooke:         Yeah, the Cascade SF event this week at Event Bright, they put out – You know the kid’s table at restaurants where they put the, on top of the table. They just basically created this doodle section. They didn’t tell anyone to do anything, it was just, this whole table you can write on. By the end of the day, the whole table is filled with designers making little pictures.

Chris Murphy:            Yeah, that’s great.

David Smooke:         You just give people the tools, they’ll just do.

Chris Murphy:            Yeah, and sometimes they’ll do it in a really ugly way, like if you give me the tools but other times people will make stuff magnificent.

David Smooke:         It was nice testing out the Zoomforth tool by like, “Oh, what if I put a blog post in this tool?”

Chris Murphy:            Yep.

David Smooke:         It was kind of playing around with the tool and “Oh, wow I just controlled page layout while writing and it’s way better than just having a list in a WordPress form.” It was a nice experience.

Chris Murphy:            We’ve prioritized user experience. I think toward the point we were both just making, I think we’re probably the most powerful tool on the web to mix different forms of media into something specific. We make it extremely easy and it’s extremely flexible. As we move forward, we want to create more and more templates so people who don’t have the perfectly intuitive design sense are making stuff immediately and beautifully.

And folks who do have that design stuff aren’t limited, design [scence 00:14:29] aren’t limited in their ability to distinguish their creation from others and make something beautiful.

David Smooke:         Yeah, it’s going to be exciting when we start getting more artist designers in there showing their templates and its just like the Squarespace or the WordPress community.

Chris Murphy:            Yep.

David Smooke:         You really don’t need that many. It starts with not that many because once you get that diverse group in there …

Chris Murphy:            You start seeing different possibilities that you could not have anticipated.

David Smooke:         Yeah. All right, well, we should probably keep working today, right? [crosstalk 00:15:02] It’s really nice outside though. I could just stop and play basketball. Like, “Good to see you, Chris, I gotta get going.” [crosstalk 00:15:08] Yeah that would be cool.

Any last thoughts on recruitment marketing?

Chris Murphy:            I don’t want to take up your, and your listener’s Fridays. But, thank you, this was fun.

David Smooke:         Cool. Later, Chris.

David Smooke:         Hello, and welcome to David Walks, episode 23. I’m here with my buddy, Lumen.

Lumen Sivitz:             Hey, David. Good to see you, man.

David Smooke:         Good to see you too. We’re on Columbus Street, just past Little Italy, San Francisco. Today, we’re going to talk about the growing number of bad business ideas in the world and what that means for …

Speaker 3:                 Hello.

David Smooke:         What that means for businesses. Yeah, this restaurant that has everything outside? We’re like right next to everybody. She’s video chatting, working on that selfie. All right. Let’s focus.

Lumen Sivitz:             I founded a start up, and something that happened a few years after that is people now come to me [crosstalk 00:00:51] when they want to talk about their [certified 00:00:53] cost. They want to discuss it because I’ve done it before. It’s nice. I like talking to them about it. Often these are people who have never tried to execute one of their own ideas. What’s happened is that I find myself often talking to these people and trying to help them understand why parts of these ideas are … they’re some sort of kind of illogical path they’ve gone down, in thinking there’s a demand for something, or there’s just some sort of a central flaw. It’s not … that’s the case when I think of most ideas is that they’re full of flaws until you kind of massage them until they turn into some sort of diamonds.

David Smooke:         Yeah. I mean if they were perfect or if they were very, very profitable, it would already be happening. Not that that’s like a real barometer, but you have to understand why they’re not happening now, and what can be different to make them happen.

Lumen Sivitz:             Totally, right? It’s an iterative process. What’s interesting is that I’m talking to these people who are unaccustomed on … to iterate on their own ideas. They have an idea, they talk to you about it, but they’re almost as if it’s set in stone for what that idea looks like. What’s interesting to me is that we … I feel like we see just a growing number of entrepreneurs and a growing number of people who are believing they can have an idea that can be impactful. What’s [crosstalk 00:02:18]

David Smooke:         I think we should start calling them Barbie Doll ideas.

Lumen Sivitz:             Barbie Doll ideas, why?

David Smooke:         The Barbie Doll is like the perfect girl. Here she is with her hair, and thin waist, and big tits, and you’re like, “this is how people are supposed to look, and this is what sold, this is how we perceive what sold before.” How’s that comparison? Do you think we can get it going?

Lumen Sivitz:             Well, I … It’s interesting. I guess one of the problems here is these ideas don’t look like Barbies. They look like Barbies, that have perhaps been run over by a truck.

David Smooke:         Maybe we should call them Ugly Pets? We can call them Ugly Pets. They’re your pet, you love it, you think it’s perfect, but really …

Server:                        Thank you.

David Smooke:         You’re welcome.

… this pet is really ugly.

Lumen Sivitz:             Okay. Well, I’m into it. I think that one of the key things about this discussion I think is that these things have to be able to change. Even if it was an Ugly Pet to start with, or if it’s a beautiful Barbie, it is going to at some level, it’s going to have to go through a process of iteration, as you begin to work on it.

David Smooke:         With all of that … the Pinocchio moment?

Lumen Sivitz:             Sure.

David Smooke:         Poor Pinocchio becomes a real boy.

Lumen Sivitz:             I guess …

David Smooke:         I’m rolling today.

Lumen Sivitz:             Loving it, loving it. The thing that is most interesting to me about this is how good of it … How important is it that when these ideas are surfaced to the world in friendly conversations that there is a dialogue about validity? Is it good that you can just have ideas and you can act like you’ve got some great solution for a monumental problem even though your solution doesn’t work, even if the problem did exist? Or is better that we have this really open, frank dialogue and people become just more equipped at an early stage of their lives to understand what a good idea is, because we’re going to see a greater proliferation of entrepreneurship as time goes on because the tools to create powerful ideas are more readily available.

David Smooke:         Yeah, and just the sheer volume of the population. There’s going to be a lot more ideas. There’s going to be a lot more markets. Just this week, an idea that … Someone told me this at a bar – which is where he came up with the idea, you’d say it’s really dumb. His idea was to pick up rocks, put them in a package, and sell them to people as people’s pets.

Lumen Sivitz:             Uh huh.

David Smooke:         Pet Rock sold millions of rocks as pets. If you would have told this to someone in 1977, the year before he came up with the idea, people would be like, “Dude. Go back to the bar. Have one more drink. Then go to sleep and forget you had this idea and work on something else tomorrow.”

Lumen Sivitz:             Yeah. Let’s talk about that. Is that a bad idea? Or was it just … is it a bad idea that succeeded in spite of itself? Or is it … was it a timing factor that made it a good idea, or perhaps …

David Smooke:         He was hitting on some kind of big human need that you don’t really think about as this being able to solve it. Humans want to take care of things and they also think it’s like … if the thing makes them smile, like a cute puppy, like a Chia Pet would be the next generation of Pet Rocks, which that actually had a little tech behind it. What I’m getting at is this one, I don’t think it’s a bad idea, and I think the proof is the adoption they’ve had for it.

Yeah, we can keep going down Columbus.

Lumen Sivitz:             Yeah, okay. I think that you bring up a really interesting point, which is like … How … Is there such thing as a bad idea at all? Or is it all the framing of the idea, or is it just a dangerous practice to label things as bad ideas because everything looks like a bad idea until it is a good idea?

David Smooke:         Yeah. Until it has adoption? I’d say adoption is the validation point, adoption and money. If people are willing to use it and pay for it, spend time with it.

Lumen Sivitz:             I think that is one of the things. I think there’s kind of this … I think having ideas and not trying to validate the opportunity for adoption or validate their ability to be adopted is toxic.

David Smooke:         Yes. Especially when people are like, “Oh, yeah. I want to meet with you about my new start up idea,” and I’m like, “okay. Great. What is it?” They’re like, “No, no. I have to tell you in person.” It’s like, “Dude, get your shit together.” Who’s going to steal your idea, number one. If they do, it’s validation, number three if the person that actually built it, that made the idea and if they go out and they test your idea, and build it and validate it, you know it works and you could spend more time on it and make it better. I don’t know. What I’m getting at more than any of that is the reservation of people to talk about their ideas. It’s like you have to figure out … That’s like the first step towards if you can test it. You have to be able to talk about it at some level to …

Lumen Sivitz:             I think this goes back to the issue …

David Smooke:         … go out in the world.

Lumen Sivitz:             … of people working under an assumption that their idea somehow was born perfect. The idea that you’re not going to talk about it almost means … I’m going to just unveil it at the right moment and everyone is just going to fall in love. Which, if you’ve ever done it before, you know it’s completely insane.

David Smooke:         Who knows? They could have found the cure to cancer. I don’t know.

Lumen Sivitz:             Yeah. No, but they …

David Smooke:         I mean, that’s the level of ridiculousness.

Lumen Sivitz:             This is the fear that drives people to knock off the better stuff, right?

David Smooke:         Yeah.

Lumen Sivitz:             … is that they think that they have been … they were the one to stumble on the cure for cancer, and that they’re going to miss out on greatest opportunity of their whole life if they start talking about it.

David Smooke:         It’s like, in the mean time, we’ll test to see if it actually does cure cancer.

Lumen Sivitz:             How do you maybe help people overcome this? Would it … have you just done a crazy disservice if you basically tell someone no, you have to test all of your ideas for people to validate them. Get them out in the world. Talk about them. Then they do and someone steals what is ultimately a perfect, a born perfect idea, and makes a mint, a fortune, off of it. I guess on some level, I like to believe that it’s possible that that happens, and that makes me scared of kind of making a platitude that it’s always a good idea to talk about your ideas.

David Smooke:         Yeah. I get it. Look at McDonald’s. What? They, the Ray … The McDonalds brothers have like five burger shops before they sold to Ray Kroc. They didn’t become a giant company because of how good their burgers were in those five burger shops. It’s Ray Kroc, changing the whole assembly line, making the cost of employee go to nothing, making the franchise model take off, getting people to buy the franchises. It’s like what they actually built as these … I mean, it’s a little bit of a sad story, because they didn’t a large … they didn’t get that large of a payout from making the biggest restaurant in the world. At the same time, it wasn’t their ideas that built the biggest restaurant in the world.

Lumen Sivitz:             Maybe the thing is that even if you have the Barbie Doll idea, or the perfect idea, or whatever you want to call it, it’s ultimately the execution that’s going to make it successful? If the [first 00:09:39] of execution is validation. You’ve got to validate your ideas.

David Smooke:         Cool. All right, we made it to 901 Columbus Café, one of the best places to work. Thanks for taking a walk with me down Columbus.

Lumen Sivitz:             Been a pleasure.

David Smooke:         Welcome to David Walks episode 22. Today I’m with Derek Bernard, musician of, his band is Haberdasher. Haberdasherband.com. Today we are going to talk about music marketing. I will let Derek get it going here. Introduce yourself.

Derek Bernard:         Hi my name is Derek. As David said, I’m with the band Haberdasher. I’m the lead singer, [technique 00:00:32] rhythm, and lead guitar. With a group of fellas and one lady by the name of Dave Walsh, Malinski Olinski, Michael Michael we call him, Sam Hertig on the bass, and then Liz Irby singing harmonies. We’ve done this music project now, I guess, this iteration of Haberdasher has been fully together since January actually, with the addition of Liz. The rest of the crew we were together for about a year, a little bit more than a year now. We are working towards … it’s more acoustic, we have a cajon and percussion elements. We are working on shows that emphasize the spirit of consciousness. Where we from start to finish we try and dip into that stream and stay there all the way through.

David Smooke:         Today we are walking to The Devil’s Teeth in the sunset. It has really good egg sandwiches I’ve heard. Is that what they are?

Derek Bernard:         Yes they are. Delicious.

David Smooke:         The girl in the Uber next to me was telling me all about it. She was like, “Make sure you get the special.” I don’t know what that means.

Derek Bernard:         Well that’s going to be …

David Smooke:         I’ll say the breakfast sandwich special.

Derek Bernard:         Nothing short of magnificent would be the word to use. Yeah she knew what she was talking about, the Uber driver.

David Smooke:         This was the lady in the Uber, the designer.

Derek Bernard:         Oh that’s right.

David Smooke:         I’m doing Uber pools as part of my recruiting strategy.

Derek Bernard:         Smart.

David Smooke:         Go in there, ride with some other smart peoples. Just take Uber pools all day.

Derek Bernard:         Those start ups.

David Smooke:   Anyway, so we are trying to market the band. I met Derek actually on Craigslist like all great friends. Meeting you on Craigslist I was looking for a music teacher to start learning the ukulele. Now we trade services, marketing for music. He teaches me music. I apply these B2B marketing techniques and see if they work. There’s been some learnings. Because it’s a lot different to market a band than a software.

Derek Bernard:         The approach is singular I would say, like with the marketing and everything and just sort of seeing all the different facets and how to reach out to different outlets and audiences.

David Smooke:         It’s a cool media to market because basically if you look at content around softwares, it’s like trying to get your content to all these different readers who could be potential buyers, but with music a lot of times just consuming the content is the goal. It’s trying to make some rich media, like right now we’re doing audio, trying to do some video because you can … I don’t know, it’s cool. Like if you watch a video to sell a product, it’s like watching the video isn’t really a win, I mean it’s kind of a win, you know you are widening the top of the funnel.

Derek Bernard:         But there’s exposure in that.

David Smooke:         You need X + 1 to watch it to get X, to convert. But here, there are similarities there with tickets and sales and gigs, but also first it’s like, “How do I get any type of content about the band in front of eyeballs who could become potential listeners and ears?”

Derek Bernard:         Absolutely. Then have them come up to shows hopefully and maybe that would be the win. Build the audience because they’re interested.

David Smooke:         Yeah, it would be in terms of paying.

Derek Bernard:         Hopefully they’ll charge you for their shows a little bit. Something, we are trying to earn something.

David Smooke:         What are your goals? What do you think the band … What’s it needs in marketing? Think backwards. Start with what you want the band to be, and then what steps do we need to take? Like you were talking about finishing an album.

Derek Bernard:         That’s definitely one of those many goals that are in there. That seems to be part of the canon of musicians, or a career as a musician. It’s just one of the things you do.

David Smooke:         Redoing the walls back there.

Derek Bernard:         I think a good … like starting it from the end, I think a career making maybe, I don’t know, $50,000 a year for everybody in the band. You know? Some sort of four year touring around and …

David Smooke:         So you got … wait six or five?

Derek Bernard:         Five.

David Smooke:         Five? You need to gross … well you need to net $250,000.

Derek Bernard:         Right. Exactly. That to me would be a nice goal.

David Smooke:         Okay, so then how are we going to get $250,000? You know there’s … well they say millionaires have seven flows of revenue. Seven flows of income revenue is the average.

Derek Bernard:         So like merch …

David Smooke:         I forget how they …[Crosstalk 00:05:32] Yeah exactly. Shows. You’ve got your bars, if you get into corporate events, I don’t know if that’s the path you want to go, it’s like mellower, but … Basically you want to keep playing in bigger rooms for more money. It’s regardless of where the rooms are. I mean it obviously matters but to grow you want to just keep playing bigger rooms. I guess it’s a little bit not creative, but it is like a milestone.

Derek Bernard:         It’s like it conflicts with the artist’s kind of vibe.

David Smooke:         Oh it absolutely does.

Derek Bernard:         It’s a weird, it’s like I’m always, sort of skirted around all of that, but it does seem to be a necessary piece of the do-it-yourself musician.

David Smooke:         Yeah I mean it’s … yeah. You see the crazy thing like even all the way to the top, how much crazy shit they do just to get in the news. All the musicians doing crazy shit, and sometimes it’s their personality, but other times it’s just like …

Derek Bernard:         Stunts basically, right?

David Smooke:         Some stunts I think and also it’s just part of the game, even if it’s a small thing … Yeah you’ve got to watch shit. It’s good to be out in the sunset though because it’s not human shit. When you’re in the city and you see shit, it’s probably human shit.

Derek Bernard:         I was down around 7th Street I was walking up to the courthouse to pay a traffic ticket and there was this big pile of shit right in the middle of the sidewalk! I knew it wasn’t a dog.

David Smooke:         The sidewalk, right in the middle?

Derek Bernard:         It just had a nice rich orangish color. You could tell it was fresh and it was just, man.

David Smooke:         I used to work off the side streets in SOMA, and even down there I just saw people squatting literally between two cars just taking a shit in the alley because it’s a side street.

Derek Bernard:         That’s where I would go to.

David Smooke:         Yeah I guess. We could also … iTunes, so online music sales is potentially. I don’t know. I mean you want to give a lot away.

Derek Bernard:         Revenue stream.

David Smooke:         Another site that’s growing, Patreon is good. They get people to basically subscribe to someone. You get someone to pay you like $2 a month and they get three videos from you, like whatever you upload kind of deal. It’s like you’re going to content outlet where it’s not quite, it’s not public. They are protecting basically content and you can only view it if you’re logged in and subscribed. They’re growing, there’s less one-ways … It’s tough because you have to grow … It’s like you widen it on YouTube, then you go to Patreon to release exclusive content.

Derek Bernard:         It’s like we’re finding the online presence more and more, more, more. First it’s like YouTube and that’s the major platform, but then there are all these other outlets that can show exactly … but I guess you have to keep up on all that then, right?

David Smooke:         Yeah, I’m just bringing it up as one business model to go. I don’t know if it’s the right one. Because, I always lean towards … You want the largest audience as possible, and then from that audience other things will come that generate your income.

Derek Bernard:         It’s almost like it would be nice if there were a need for that before you did it.

David Smooke:         Yes.

Derek Bernard:         As opposed to doing it and then …

David Smooke:         Yes, so then the natural order I think would be you grow a presence and then you open the channel that’s paid.

Derek Bernard:         Yeah I guess that makes sense. Otherwise why would anyone pay for it?

David Smooke:         Yeah, then you would have to convince people to pay for something that they don’t know what it is.

Derek Bernard:         Who wants to convince anybody anyway? It’s like, just listen if you want to listen.

David Smooke:         But, what are you listening to? I don’t know, it’s paid.

Derek Bernard:         I paid a dollar for it so …

David Smooke:         Which way are we going here? How do you say this street? No-ree-guh?

Derek Bernard:         Nor-ee-ay-guh.

David Smooke:         Nor-ee-ay-guh?

Derek Bernard:         Noreaga. Did you get all that?

David Smooke:         What challenges, what else … What other revenue streams are there actually? I’m still kind of … I mean there’s ads on videos, there’s shows, there’s events, private parties would be part of events, merchandise.

Derek Bernard:         I like the [crosstalk 00:09:43] party idea. I also like the house party idea.

David Smooke:         Oh shit. I just broke my glasses. This is like a $10 … oh look I’m just going to … I lost a screw.

Derek Bernard:         Toast.

David Smooke:         Yeah, broke my shades. I think they were ten bucks. [inaudible 00:09:59] Yeah they were one of those, [inaudible 00:10:01] Yeah I guess. Still kind of sucks.

Derek Bernard:         Right? Now you’re sunglassless for the next.

David Smooke:         Yeah I think I can put a little screw in there and connect this frame again. Is this it? Okay cool. All right well thanks for walking with me. Any …

Derek Bernard:         Should we resume when we walk back?

David Smooke:         We could, yeah. All right, I’ll hit pause.

_________________________________________________

Live.

Derek Bernard:         (singing) Rollin down the streets smokin indo, sippin on gin and juice.

David Smooke:         (singing) Laid back.

Derek Bernard:         (singing) With my mind on my money and my money on my mind.

David Smooke:         Welcome back to part two. David Walks. Today, Derek’s had some gigs and some cool places and I was just wondering how do you get your first couple of gigs?

Derek Bernard:         I would say the very first step is to get some sound recorded of what you sound like and put it up on a website, so you can send them somewhere. Facebook, Reverbnation, Bandzoogle is what I use to create my website. Then send some clubs an email and say you’d like to get on.

David Smooke:         Do you just go, like the places you want to play? How often do you think they respond?

Derek Bernard:         The challenge with that approach is that it’s just you, right? It’s just your band, and you’re just saying, “Hey I want to get on a bill.” Nowadays it seems like the people at the clubs like it when you approach them with an entire bill for the night. Like three separate bands.

David Smooke:         Oh wow, so they want you to do like the packaging together, finding everyone else, like getting the audience of three different bands?

Derek Bernard:         That’ll get you gigs.

David Smooke:         Yeah, so that’s an interesting idea. Maybe how would we start? We’ve create this little network of all the local bands.

Derek Bernard:         Get around and start to interact with people, go to open mics and see who you like and …

David Smooke:         Yeah and who you can actually play with and get along with and organize with.

Derek Bernard:         All of that stuff I would either say secondary.

David Smooke:         Secondary, you just got to find other people who got the talent?

Derek Bernard:         As long as they’re not … well yeah that’s huge. As long as you put together a really good show, it seems like that’s a pretty important.

David Smooke:         Things will take care of themselves. You know, people will show up, not show up.

Derek Bernard:         Generally if you’re just starting out, it’s probably not refined very much yet. It takes maybe a year or two to really get something like … practice all the time.

David Smooke:         It’s so ’90’s on the street. That’s cool.

Derek Bernard:         Yeah this guy was setting up this morning when I was out here.

David Smooke:         Do you think? Oh yeah? Little pop-up shop or are they RVCA? [crosstalk 00:12:29]. Maybe one technique would be whenever you send your email, then you have two other people send the person the same email. Like, “I really wish ‘X’ would play at your club.”

Derek Bernard:         That way you don’t [crosstalk 00:12:49]. You already did all the legwork though to get those people to coordinate, to get those people to send those emails out though.

David Smooke:         Yeah, I’m just saying, so you send them a message and if they get followed up with like four people requesting the band there.

Derek Bernard:         Oh!

David Smooke:         You know what I mean? You send to the manager or whoever.

Derek Bernard:         [I hope that work 00:13:07]

David Smooke:         I think it could work.

Derek Bernard:         I could see that.

David Smooke:         Every time you want a new gig just follow up with this little crew and every day they just send them, one a day, five at once, you could try it out.

Derek Bernard:         Because an important piece of it is head count. [Crosstalk 00:13:21]

David Smooke:         You’re showing an initial headcount and your also just showing an excitement. I’m sure that most people that reach out to them for music don’t get five emails that follow up from five different people.

Derek Bernard:         Right, probably not. The timing on that would be good. Because the challenge I find, especially when you’re first starting out is, if you’re trying to put a bill together, you have to find the headlining act that’s willing to headline on the specific night and all that stuff. If you could get added on to a bill I think that would help.

David Smooke:         Yeah, then they would do all the work.

Derek Bernard:         It would also help you with … I think build an audience. Because I think they put you in hopefully with bands that are similar sounding to you.

David Smooke:         It’s really a top-down thing, where the headliner drives things.

Derek Bernard:         Yeah, oh for sure. Usually the headliner is the one organizing the show, unless you are trying to book a headliner of some kind, in which case I don’t know.

David Smooke:         Then if you do all that work and book a headliner, you played with a better band. Like is that, you’re part of a better show? Like, part of the motivation, if you’re not the headliner, then it’s like you’re moving.

Derek Bernard:         It ups the prestige. Until you get more exposure too to their fan base which hopefully will have similar musical sentiments as your band.

David Smooke:         Where is the best place to play in the city?

Derek Bernard:         That’s a good question.

David Smooke:         Then follow-up question, where was your favorite show in the city that you played?

Derek Bernard:         Brick + Mortar was a pretty great show. I like that one a lot. The Red Devil before it closed was pretty good. Café de Norde before it closed was pretty good.

David Smooke:         What’s with everything closing? You old?

Derek Bernard:         Yeah, it must be it. Damn it! The Elbow Room is closing down. I don’t know, it’s all this gentrification, but maybe that’s beside the point.

David Smooke:         That would bring us down a new topic. Oh I’m not ready for that today.

Derek Bernard:         There do seem to be people moving in and pushing out venues. But, the venues are probably also aren’t making that much money. It seems like the market out there is not so thriving, in a way, for live music, in San Francisco anyway. I don’t know why that is but …

David Smooke:         I want to do, I definitely want to do a first marketing event with live music. Someone completely advised me against this, but …

Derek Bernard:         Why? What was their rationale?

David Smooke:         Basically one time he hired a jazz band, that was a good group, decent payout, and they were too loud for the area, and the people weren’t ready, and everyone basically funneled together or grouped together in the room that didn’t have the jazz band. It created this awful environment where the music was too loud and didn’t quite fit and everyone went away from it was supposed to be your biggest asset. Part of what’s adding to this, essentially happy hour, drinking type of event.

Derek Bernard:         But it was too much. It was too much volume? Is that …

David Smooke:         The volume, and also, he was for whatever reason, the fit, the people didn’t like it and they went to the other room. He was a little traumatized.

Derek Bernard:         Yeah that would be humiliating.

David Smooke:         He’s done a ton of events so it was like … He may be right on this one, because he says it always just messes up the noise, the balance. If you do a panel or a corporate talk of some kind, and then the music, or music before … I don’t know. He was against it, but I want to try it out just to see because I think it would be super fun. Because if there was music playing anyway, why not make it real live music?

Derek Bernard:         Somehow you would have to strive for a delicate balance between background music and performance.

David Smooke:         The other way is that it’s after. It’s like, “Hey we have this talk, if you’re into it you get there early, if you’re into the subject matter. If not, you can still kick it, it’s basically a happy hour and a live band after. You split it more like …

Derek Bernard:         That way people could leave if they wanted to.

David Smooke:         Yeah exactly, and the people that are into it now get to celebrate and have a drink.

Derek Bernard:         If you could somehow mix the … I don’t know if that would work, but mix some of the people there would be some corporate people and some regular people. Maybe that would help.

David Smooke:         Yeah, I like that divide of the world, there’s some corporate people and then there’s some regulars.

Derek Bernard:         Civies we’ll call them.

David Smooke:         I was thinking the event would be a lot of people I work with, like, “Oh what does it take to be a start-up founder?” Here are four start-up founders I work with. Hang out here, learn from these guys, then grab some music.

Derek Bernard:         A lot of them are going to be young too right? Music hasn’t left their life.

David Smooke:         Part of what I want to do is grow this massive network of marketers. There’s people I can work with on projects and people I can just learn from and they can learn from me, and people that are just doing what I’m doing. That’s also part of the appeal. You host an event, you’re basically putting all this effort to drive in people you want to do business with.

Derek Bernard:         Somehow you could tie together the music community, it seems like that might be interesting. Because, there’s a pretty big music community out here, with some pretty talented hosts.

David Smooke:         I’ve heard it’s some smaller groups, but the community doesn’t seem that united. I also don’t know it well enough.

Derek Bernard:         I don’t know about united, but I do know it exists. There are a bunch of different little groups like [inaudible 00:18:45] community is one of them. Sort of a couple others, I don’t have them at the top of my brain, but somehow tying all these hubs together might be an interesting way to bring together music with whatever other functions might come up. That might demand it.

David Smooke:         Like a musical incubator.

Derek Bernard:         Yeah there was this one gig that my housemate did, Kerry, it was for a marijuana app, because he’s in a reggae band, it’s more like Hawaiian reggae, but they had this whole line-up of reggae bands throughout the whole day. They had a nice turnout, people came out to check out the app and also check out the music and there was a nice balance.

David Smooke:         That’s a good idea. I would like to go to something like that. That just sounds cool. It’s more like … it’s a pick and choose you know? Offer, if you’re into this subject, there’s a time of day that will be good for you. If you’re into this subject and it’s just a panel, you may skip it. If you’re into this subject and it’s just a happy hour, you may skip it. But by putting them … I think it’s good for… if you’re going to put in the time to throw an event, or put together a show, you want to … It’s better if you get a big show, a longer … it’s a lot less work to get a panel than to get a whole do panel and happy hour, but that more work at once I think pays off, because what am I going to two little shows or two little events? No, I’d rather have one big event.

Derek Bernard:       Bring all the people you need and [crosstalk 00:22:28] or something like that?

David Smooke:         Part of it is getting to those milestones. The comparison here, it’s if you’re a big marketing firm you have had one awesome event. If you’re a good band, you have played with a certain level of people, or certain venue, you know? You have had a show that had 3,000 people or whatever, maybe not quite numbers, but it’s like … as opposed … Early in a business, I think it’s better to put a little more eggs into one, make a splash with a big one than go for two small ones.

Derek Bernard:         There’s a higher risk involved in that [crosstalk 00:21:11]

David Smooke:         I don’t know if I’m going to think the same way tomorrow.

Derek Bernard:         Okay fair enough.

David Smooke:         But right now I kind of …

Derek Bernard:         In the moment.

David Smooke:         Yeah, I like that approach. Just because events are already a pain in the ass. If you’re going to have to do it, you may as well do it big once and less often.

Derek Bernard:         One big [crosstalk 00:21:26]

David Smooke:         Part of it is a selfish motivation of how I want to do business or how I know I behave.

Derek Bernard:         If you did, I don’t know if you’re going to be into doing events or whatever, but if you could segment the different businesses, or maybe categories in business you could do them more frequently and still get higher turnouts and still have more people coming and [crosstalk 00:21:49] networking. That way you could do it every month or something like that. Because, you have three different distinctive things, I don’t even know if the market is split that way.

David Smooke:         All right. Well we went pretty deep on that one.

Derek Bernard:         Yeah we did.

David Smooke:         We just walked like a mile. All right so we’re walking by Ocean Beach.

Derek Bernard:         Me met up on Rivera.

David Smooke:         Yeah, not too much going on today, just wanting to finish your music video we recorded last week, did some editing.

*Update: Here is the music video, “Cry Baby Cry Beatles Cover”

Derek Bernard:         Played a little ukulele.

David Smooke:         Yeah, played a little ukulele and I guess that’s pretty much all for today. Any …

Derek Bernard:         Productive day.

David Smooke:         Yeah, pretty productive.

Derek Bernard:         Final remarks?

David Smooke:         Yeah final remarks. Do you have a sign off line?

Derek Bernard:         No. Is that required?

David Smooke:         I don’t know.

Derek Bernard:         I’ll have to come up with one.

David Smooke:         Well what do you say at the end of a show?

Derek Bernard:         Thanks for coming out, it’s lovely to see everybody.

David Smooke:         Cool, thanks for listening.

David:             You ready?

Laura:             Go for it.

David:             Welcome to David Walks. I’ll let you two introduce yourselves.

Laura:             This is Laura.

Melissa:        And Melissa.

David:             What do you do, Laura and Melissa, in life?

Melissa:        I teach Yoga.

Laura:             I work in a startup….

Melissa:        That’s so big.

David:             So …

Laura:             I like it. I like it big.

David:             Why? You got to market yourself.

Laura:             It gives an air of mystery.

David:             Yeah, but then how are they going to follow up?

Laura:             Well [crosstalk 00:00:25].

Melissa:        We don’t need to follow up.

David:             All my readers.

Laura:             Someone’s going to contact me and be like “Hey, you’re so awesome, let’s hang out.”

David:             Then do Yoga together?

Melissa:        Yeah. Oh, yeah.

David:             What do you think of Jerusalem?

Melissa:        It’s beautiful.

Laura:             Many things.

Melissa:        It’s beautiful and heinous at the same time.

Laura:             Yeah, yeah.

Melissa:        It’s quite amazing.

Laura:             It shows an ugly side to people.

Melissa:        For sure.

Laura:             And a beautiful side.

Melissa:        As well as the architecture and everything. Amazing, beautiful, and then there’s architecture that’s just decrepit and falling apart.

Laura:             Bullet holes.

Melissa:        Just like [crosstalk 00:01:10] there are places that are very clean, very well-kept and then there are places where literally somebody just throws their trash right on the floor, like in front of you. We were eating lunch yesterday, right? And fucking some guy walks by, he puts sunflower seeds in his mouth and he spits it right on the floor next to us. He does it again and again and he just walked by, no worries, in the middle of a market.

Laura:             Euw.

David:             Umm.

Laura:             At least his [inaudible 00:01:35].

Melissa:        You’re right

David:             I like Old City.

Melissa:        I do too. It’s beautiful.

David:             I didn’t see too many people littering.

Melissa:        No?

David:             No.

Melissa:        You don’t notice, like we walked by and [crosstalk 00:01:51] hallways.

David:             I think I’m missing the littering. [Crosstalk 00:01:52].

Melissa:        Alleys.

David:             I saw the alley ways, yeah, I saw those.

Melissa:        Yeah.

Laura:             It was like San Francisco but without the homeless people. Exactly. [Crosstalk 00:01:58].

David:             Yeah, yeah, who’s doing the littering then? I’m like believing I got the shit out.

Melissa:        All these people.

Laura:             In the market place.

Melissa:        I saw a Hasidic Jew do the same thing. What? They’re supposed to have respect for the beauty and God [crosstalk 00:02:11].

David:             Did you go on the …?

Laura:             [Inaudible 00:02:13] humility, right? That’s what we learned at the [inaudible 00:02:15].

Melissa:        Yeah.

David:             I don’t know if they told me that one.

Laura:             Umm, yeah.

David:             They told me [crosstalk 00:02:24].

Melissa:        We had a very super hippie woman.

David:            He told me the most important drive was the sex drive.

Melissa:        Really.

David:             He was a Hasidic Jew.

Melissa:        That’s hilarious.

Laura:             Really?

David:             Yeah, yeah, he said it’s the most powerful drive in the world.

Melissa:        She told us that Judaism is the only religion that really seems to focus on the bond sexually between a man and a woman or whatever.

Laura:             That makes sense. I think Christianity kind of shames sex a lot.

David:             Yeah.

Melissa:        Exactly, especially Muslims.

David:             Yeah, that was good to hear. He can be very religious and have a very active sex life.

Laura:             Well, half of the month is gone though, right?

David:             Yeah, yeah, you have your 11-day [crosstalk 00:03:02] 12.

Melissa:        12 days without touching [inaudible 00:03:08].

David:             Yeah, no touching at all must be a little tough. Like you can’t even touch her hand or her shoulder or her hair. [Crosstalk 00:03:15].

Laura:             It’s part of the appeal though.

David:             Yeah, yeah, building up the desire.

Melissa:        Which I find interesting.

Laura:             What’s that movie with Josh Hartnett when he doesn’t have sex for like forty days.

Melissa:        Yeah, yeah, forty days, that’s it. Forty days and forty nights.

Laura:             And everyone’s … all the girls start to come on to him.

Melissa:        Yeah.

Laura:             Interesting.

David:             Maybe that’s the way it works. You’ve just got to focus on other things and be yourself and then it just creates the man.

Melissa:        I’m doing good with that.

David:             Do you have any tips to share with me, how I can do it?

Laura:             How you can abstain?

David:             No. Yeah, I want to create more demand for myself.

Melissa:        I don’t know about that demand but I can tell you that the abstaining part can be difficult. It takes a lot of mental restraint, as well as physical.

Laura:             No physical restraints, not yet. Not til the 12 days are over. But the men, they wear, what do you call it, the ropes?

Melissa:        Yeah, what are those things around their waists?

David:             I don’t know. I didn’t wear one.

Laura:             That’s bondage.

Melissa:        That’s serious bondage.

David:             Did you see the dark bondage in that museum? There was a whole black room and it’s like this Nazi person. They would mess with dolls and they had this video and it was borderline torture in the museum.

Melissa:        No, I did not see that.

David:             It was a really small little black room [crosstalk 00:04:44].

Melissa:        You could probably go on sexing. It was like oooh …

Laura:             Getting some ideas? No, that sounds terrifying.

Melissa:        Yeah, why [crosstalk 00:04:51]?

David:             Oh, it was creepy.

Laura:             So, was it a live one?

David:             Yeah, live video and then these dolls on the floor. Yeah, and then the whole room was painted black.

Laura:             What do you mean, live video?

David:             Oh, not live, sorry. Just video, rolling.

Laura:             Like live action?

David:             Yeah. [Crosstalk 00:05:10]. Did you make any friends today with locals?

Laura:             With locals?

Melissa:        No not today.

David:             Yeah. I think we stopped the people who were running the bamboo.

Melissa:        Oh, we definitely did.

David:             What were they doing?

Laura:             They wanted to charge shekels to walk in the bamboo thing, which is cheap.

Melissa:        There’s a big bamboo exhibit that you could … They had these crazy paths that you could climb.

David:             Was that the one outside?

Melissa:        Yeah.

David:             Oh, cool, yeah I didn’t get to that.

Melissa:        It was ten shekels to climb it.

David:             Uh-huh (affirmative).

Melissa:        So at first, we just started walking up it like we didn’t care.

David:             Yeah.

Melissa:        They got mad and then we came back and we came through the side that’s not, wasn’t the actual entrance. We moved a railing thing to get in. They were mad about that.

David:             Did you end up paying them shekels?

Melissa:        We tried and they were like “You got to go inside the museum and pay.” We’re like “Well, fuck that, we’re here right now with shekels. What’s wrong?” and they wouldn’t let us, so we didn’t bother.

Laura:             That’s how [inaudible 00:06:11]. That was cool though. She has a [crosstalk 00:06:19].

Melissa:        I now, they tell you on the next day and when I’m in Costa Rica, after the first five days, there for anther seven, and the first three days that I’m there, three were staying in a Tree house Resort.

Laura:             That’s [inaudible 00:06:37]. Are you serious?

David:             That’s going to be cool.

Melissa:        I’m so excited.

Laura:             Show me.

Melissa:        I’ll send you pictures.

Laura:             Yeah.

Melissa:        Yeah.

Laura:             My God.

David:             You’ll be like a little kid.

Melissa:             With my friend I do Akro so I might send you pictures of us doing Akro in a tree house in Costa Rica.

Laura:             Oh, my God.

David:             Did y’all have a good night last night?

Melissa:        We did.

Laura:             It was awesome.

Melissa:        Last night was crazy.

Laura:             Every night, just better and better.

Melissa:        Right. It gets crazier and crazier. We bond so much.

David:             Yeah, I don’t know if we’re going to top it though. We’ve got to top out, right?

Laura:             I don’t know.

Melissa:        [Crosstalk 00:07:08] You better knock on wood.

David:             Where’s the wood? [Crosstalk 00:07:11]. There’s no wood in this city. It’s all …

Melissa:        Right there, there’s a tree.

Laura:             What do you mean, there’s no wood?

David:             I guess there is…

Laura:             [Inaudible 00:07:20] Jews are horny.

Melissa:        There’s lots of wood. [Crosstalk 00:07:27]. I always do that if I can’t find any wood around.

David:             Thank you for not hurting me.

Melissa:        You’re welcome. Oh, man.

Laura:             What is that structure over there?

Melissa:        That is a bridge.

David:             No, it’s not a bridge, is it?

Melissa:        Yep.

David:             It looks so short. Oh, a walking bridge.

Melissa:        Yeah [crosstalk 00:07:47]. It’s a walking bridge. That big structure?

David:             Yeah, hey guys.

Melissa:        We have a matching one in Denver.

Hagai Gov:              The suspended bridge, or strings?

David:             Yeah, that one right over there.

Hagai Gov:              It’s at the entrance of the city, the main entrance, and it’s made by a Spanish architect.

David:             No, no.

Hagai Gov:              By a Spanish architecture called Santiago Calatrava.

David:             Uh-huh (affirmative).

Hagai Gov:              Okay, he built a subway around the world, No, not around the world.

Laura:             Deer in the headlights [inaudible 00:08:22]?

Hagai Gov:              Yeah, anyway, so [inaudible 00:08:20]. Very classic in style, it’s very distinguished. When you see that, you know you’re looking good [crosstalk 00:08:31].

David:             Did you go in? Did you see the Israeli last supper in there?

Hagai Gov:              Yeah.

David:             That was so good.

Hagai Gov:              You know, you know how much it was sold for? Did you stay over there?

David:             No, I’m going to guess 1.3 million.

Hagai Gov:              What?

David:             Dollars, oh, now this is a big one.

Hagai Gov:              No, it was …

David:             Shekels, I’ll go shekels since you said that.

Hagai Gov:              It was sold for around 2 million shekels.

David:             Two million shekels?

Hagai Gov:              Yeah, and it’s … The artist… ooh, nice car.

David:             What is it?

Hagai Gov:              It’s an antique. It’s an old Mercedes, cool.

David:             All right. Always good to throw in a good, the Hagai tour guide fact in the middle of your walk. Absolutely necessary.

Laura:             Is that a good Smooke type walk?

David:             SmookeWalks.

Laura:             SmookeWalk?

David:             Can you say it?

Laura:             SmookeWalk?

David:             Say it later.

Laura:             Later.

David:             Later.

Down the Snake Path of Masada, Hagai Gov tells the story of how the #1 expert of Herod, fell into Herod’s long lost tomb and died. How crazy is that?
*UPDATE [15 minutes later]: After this video I was running on loose rocks a bird eye’s view from lunch after starting the daybreak next to soldiers who were climbing through the night and right after confidently running on the loose rocks looking for a frisbee thrown down over the end by my tour guide, I lost my footing, and the iPhone 6 in an otterbox in my pocket hit the point of a rock.

**UPDATE [day I took phone out of otterbox]: Friends started noticing my phone.

A real life bent iPhone, courtesy of @DavidSmooke. pic.twitter.com/pl32t5fmIr

— Lumen Sivitz (@lumen) April 8, 2015