Matt Gregory (00:12) Morning, Pat. How goes it?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:13) Hello, Matt. Good, I have my tiny cup. You know the tiny desk.

Matt Gregory (00:20) you

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:22) It's hard to even.

Matt Gregory (00:23) I love Tiny Desk. Ugh.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:25) it's I've been getting back into it I had I was a little off it for a while I don't know they get a lot of they get a lot of great stuff well I don't want to be petty about it but Bob Bob Boylan was at one of our shows once and I think he was kind of like meh whatever and also the band that we were touring with which we really I'm wearing I'm wearing the t-shirt of the band that we were playing with Bombadil which is a reference to Lord of the Rings I know you were wondering and they're great

Matt Gregory (00:29) Are you? Why? And Wait, I actually know what's up. ⁓ nice. Yeah, Tom Bombadil.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:55) They're a great band and he was kind of like mad about both of us. And that's fine, but...

Matt Gregory (01:01) The name you said, sorry, the name you said is the Tiny Desk guy.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:05) Yeah, Bob Boylan. I think he might be retired or has stepped back in some way. ⁓ But I have been getting back into it and seeing some really great Tiny Desks recently. They get all sorts of ones.

Matt Gregory (01:06) My boy, on. And I mean, I feel like every Tiny Desk in the comments, it's like, "the audio mixing in this, the guy deserves a raise" because everybody's like, "it's so good." The audio is so good. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:29) I agree. It seems very simple and in the room and whatever, but yeah, I agree.

Matt Gregory (01:38) Yeah. What's going on for you these days?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:42) and I'm just getting used to living in Alaska now. It's where we live and actually now today, last today and yesterday it's been like pushing 30 and I'm like, this isn't even, I'm wearing a t-shirt. Yeah. 30 and cozy.

Matt Gregory (01:49) Yes.Yeah, yeah. And cozy. Erty and cozy. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, I've a shout out, ⁓ David Epstein. ⁓ he is a, ⁓ a weather guy in Boston that does, ⁓ like a two to three minute Instagram reel every day with his forecast. He's also the guy that does the Boston Globe forecast. He always does it walking his dog outside. ⁓ and,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:20) Mm-hmm.  nice.

Matt Gregory (02:28) I just like it's become my thing. Like I'm just referencing him all the time. ⁓ But it's been very cold and apparently so in Boston, it's like around the 50th coldest winter in the recorded history of 150 winters. So we're in we're in kind of a top third territory for coldness. So, yeah, it's cold given what we've been through recently.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:44). 50th, so top third of Colbust. top 50. That's pretty that's pretty cool.

Matt Gregory (02:56) ⁓ I did hear, think Heejin told me this morning that maybe that it's gonna be colder in Boston this weekend than it is in the Arctic. Which I don't have a lot of good feelings about.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:07) Yikes. It seems wrong.

Matt Gregory (03:12) That seems like things are not flowing the way they should.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:16) They're mixed up, up is down.

Matt Gregory (03:18) But anyway, here we are in Trail Map, the show where we talk to amazing people and get inspired on a semi-regular basis ⁓ about their lives and career paths. Today on the show, we have Paul Tasner, who I was just sharing with Pat. think he's probably been in the same room as. Paul is a really ⁓ good and old friend of mine, mentor, a former colleague.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:33) Yes.

Matt Gregory (03:48) from Two Degrees Food in San Francisco. He was like almost like a parent. and his his wife Barb were like parent figures to us when we lived in San Francisco. Wonderful human being. Unfortunately Barb passeed last year. He's had a big change in life. He now lives in NYC. He and Barb moved from Marin to NYC, to Stuyvescent town.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:10) ⁓Yeah, reacquainted. It's times in time where our friend Jeff used to live many years ago. Right. It's still there, even though Jeff's not there. It's wild. Right. Since Peter Stuyvesant. I think so. The Dutch. Yeah, I know all about it. I know everything. ⁓ Let's do it.

Matt Gregory (05:26) Paul, hello.

Paul Tasner (05:28). Matt, hello. Pat, hello.

Matt Gregory (05:32) Good to have you here. Thank you for joining us.

Paul Tasner (05:35) Thank you guys for inviting me. Probably the most excited I've been on a podcast in a long time.

Matt Gregory (05:44) ⁓ well.

Paul Tasner (05:45) It's not often that you get to know that you've known the host.

Matt Gregory (05:52) Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's ⁓ I think, you know, just starting this podcast, we've had a lot of people on that I know. And it's been really a wonderful excuse to like catch up with people.

Paul Tasner (06:06) Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it's a different kind of, it's a different mood, I guess, that's the right word, when it's, you know, a quote stranger, you know, someone you're having on because you wanted to have them on, but you, you know, you really don't know that much about them. Maybe you just know their work or something, but this is great.

Matt Gregory (06:21) Yeah. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Well, Paul, I guess for our listeners, wondering if you could introduce yourself.

Paul Tasner (06:40) Sure. The 25 words or less story, are we interested in or? ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:48) The elevator pitch?

Matt Gregory (06:50) Yeah,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:50) as much as you... Yeah.

Matt Gregory (06:51) as much as you want. like you might in like if you were walking into a bar and you wanted to introduce yourself to somebody.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:58) If you're walking into a bar and you were yelling at everybody to shut up so you can explain who you were.

Paul Tasner (07:04) That would be we'd be off on a great start ⁓ What well ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:07) Yeah.

Paul Tasner (07:13) Well, first of all, I don't know why I'm leading with this, but I guess it's become kind of a central issue in my life. So I might as well lead with it. I'm 80 years old ⁓ and glad to be doing anything, I guess, at 80 years old, much less being on podcasts and still having a business. ⁓ And that's the other thing is that I started a business. 15 years ago when I was 66. ⁓ Before that, I'd had a career in the corporate world, large companies and small companies doing mostly engineering or supply chain related things. ⁓ Some of which I was educated for, some of which I wasn't. ⁓ But I spent a good 40 years or so in the corporate world, in the on the supply chain side of life and then found myself without a job at the age of 64, actually. I was fired at the age of 64, the first time in my life. It was during the financial crisis or just after the financial crisis. And the company that I worked for didn't... didn't do that well. mean, they thought they were in a recession proof business, but it turned out they weren't. ⁓ they ⁓ fired the CEO, he was the captain of the ship, so he had to take responsibility. ⁓ And that was a gut punch because he was the gentleman that hired me and I thought the world of him. ⁓ And then it just got worse. They replaced him with someone that I didn't have a lot of ⁓ respect for. And I guess ⁓ not being a very accomplished poker player, he was able to read that. And ⁓ I found myself without a job shortly thereafter, along with a lot of other people too. ⁓ So ⁓ turns out it was the proverbial blessing in disguise. ⁓ I kind of bounced around for a few years doing consulting and things of that nature, but because I felt it was kind of my last act, I wasn't really satisfied with what I was doing. I didn't want this to be my swan song, so to speak. So I tried very hard to come up with a concept for a business of my own. It took me a couple of years to land on it, and then I did. ⁓ And that's the business that I still have today. ⁓The business is called Pulpworks and we design and manufacture ⁓ packaging ⁓ for all kinds of consumer goods, retail products and others. ⁓ But we use compostable and biodegradable and recyclable materials to create our packaging. So in other words, we don't use plastic. And if we do have a mission, it's to replace plastic packaging, not all plastic packaging, much of our plastic packaging is important and necessary. ⁓ Try putting a Pepsi into an egg carton and you'll see quickly why plastic is a better choice. But a lot of our plastic packaging is not necessary. can be accomplished with another material. And that's what we provide. ⁓ Turns out we were pretty early to the game and we really struggled to get folks to give us a try. But slowly but surely we got some acceptance. We're still struggling against the tide. mean, the bottom line is most companies don't want to make a switch unless they're really compelled to. They want to stick with their plastic. It's cheaper. It's been working for them for years and years and years. It's a uphill battle for sure. But recently we got legislation on our side. ⁓ There are in many states and in many countries, there's legislation around EPR, Extended Producer Responsibility, essentially means you as the manufacturer of that product, you, Mr. Coca-Cola. you're responsible for that bottle till the very end of its life. And the end of its life means it's either been recycled back as a usable plastic or it's in the ground somewhere. Previously, you were responsible for it just as long as it took for someone else to buy it. Then it was their problem. So EPR has been, it's brand new, brand new. And it's been adopted in I think about eight states so far. And it's been essential for us because now companies don't want to be responsible for that bottle till the end of the day. They want to find an alternative because the fees, the penalties for not using recyclable products or compostable products, they're pretty considerable. So ⁓ it's nice to have that wind that are back now for the first time in 15 years, know, legislation to help us. ⁓ persuade reluctant customers. And, ⁓ and I guess the latest development for me has been that my youngest son, Andrew, ⁓ who recently finished college, ⁓ has joined me in the business and has taken to it as they say, like a fish to water. And he's, he's been amazing. ⁓ best partner I ever had. And ⁓ Now I really, I really not satisfied with sort of treading water as I have been for the last few years with the business. I'd really like to accelerate our, you know, growth and success and everything, because now there's somebody else involved in it too. And so that's been a real motivator for me. ⁓ I guess that's kind of the Professional side of my world, personal side is ⁓ that ⁓ I've got two sons. ⁓ As I mentioned, my son Andrew and an older son Ben. ⁓ I had two stepdaughters and sadly my oldest stepdaughter Amy passed away a few years ago from ovarian cancer and that was hard.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (14:25) my God.

Paul Tasner (14:26) heartbreaking for all of us in the family and her friends. She was really very special. also my late wife passed away around the same time as Amy ⁓ few years ago. So there been some super challenges, but as a family, we've managed to get. past them and a lot of love and comfort going around between all of us. And I'm also very happy to say that in the last six months, I've met somebody else who's brought a lot of joy and happiness into my life, which was pretty unexpected, but I certainly am open and excited about it. things have a way of breaking, fixing, breaking again, fixing again. And it's just exciting to be part of the game, I guess.

Matt Gregory (15:36) You It's the trail of life.

Paul Tasner (15:44) The other trail of life, right. Anyway, so it's been quite a journey. But you're welcome. You're welcome.

Matt Gregory (15:48) Paul, thank you for sharing all that. Thank you for sharing all that. I watched Pat's reac- I know that all that story but I watched Pat's reactions and the ups and downs and you know there's you've been through a lot.

Paul Tasner (16:07) Yeah, I think it sounds inconceivable to somebody listening, you know, when they hear about tragedy. ⁓ But it is different when you're on the front line, so to speak, because you either curl up in a ball and just go in the corner or...

Matt Gregory (16:10) and

Paul Tasner (16:32) you just keep pushing forward, right? What's the expression about the only way through these things is the only way past these things is to go through them sort of, I guess. So yeah, it feels like that's what I've been doing just.

Matt Gregory (16:42) Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Tasner (16:48) I guess a bit of compartmentalizing along the way, that always helps. ⁓ But yeah, just pushing through. Just pushing through.

Matt Gregory (16:53) Yep, for sure. there's a lot to dig into there for us in this conversation. you mentioned that you studied engineering and I know you studied math And I have a feeling that the answer, like, so when you get a PhD in mathematics, like, are you even using numbers at that point or what does that look like?

Paul Tasner (17:04) Yes.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:18) It's Goodwill Hunting type stuff.

Paul Tasner (17:22) That's a good way to describe it. I don't think I've ever heard. That's a good way to describe it, Matt. I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe it. Are you even using numbers? Yes, yeah. Those pesky little numbers just keep showing up no matter what field of math you're studying just about.

Matt Gregory (17:23) spoken like an English major.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:25) True humanities, student.

Matt Gregory (17:44) so I believe you studied industrial engineering and math and like, I can see how industrial engineering might connect directly to packaging, packaging creation. Like, there a connection there for you in your mind?

Paul Tasner (17:47) I did, I did. Yeah.⁓ Yes, ⁓ certainly it would have an even greater connection if I were involved in some brick and mortar endeavor, ⁓ where I was intimately involved in the actual production itself. My brick and mortar involvement was ⁓ during my corporate career. I worked for companies that had their own facilities or I worked for companies that outsourced manufacturing to other facilities. So I've spent decades of visiting ⁓ brick and mortar facilities and being involved more or less in what was going on there. But I'm no longer doing that now. Our business model is pretty... ⁓ ⁓ I guess I hate to use up words that are, it's nimble. Maybe nimble's not a popular word anymore so I can start using it again. But it used to be in every other sentence. ⁓ But our business model is definitely, it's definitely nimble. ⁓ We have manufacturing partners. ⁓ But we're only involved in their.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:22) Bring it back.

Paul Tasner (19:33) actual brick and mortar facilities in as much as we want them to do a superlative job for us. ⁓ you know, they run their own businesses and we're fortunate we've had some good partners. ⁓ So, engineering would certainly have played a greater role in my life if I'd been more involved in the facilities themselves and the systems. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (19:57) Yeah. and the manufacturing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (20:03) give a sense of the scale of Pulpworks and the market? What type of competition are you dealing with in this space? Are there huge companies that are doing this type of packaging that you... I don't know if emulate is the right word, but I guess I just want to get a sense of where you are in this type of ⁓ packaging space.

Paul Tasner (20:28) Yeah, no, that's a great question, Pat. ⁓ There are some huge companies that do this kind of manufacturing, ⁓ but they're very specific. They ⁓ typically manufacture tableware, the things that you, the cups and bowls and saucers that you buy at the supermarket. and keep in your pantry or if you're a restaurant, all of your restaurant supplies, those paper plates and bowls and things that you use, especially if you're a fast food restaurant, it's the tableware. a commodity and they produce millions and millions of units in their facilities. ⁓ certainly don't, ⁓ it's almost like we're not in the same business. We make much smaller quantities and our targets are much different companies. ⁓ Our targets are the brand owners, especially if they've got a brand ⁓ that's got something special about it. Maybe the environment is their specialty, but it's brands with kind of a special feature about them. ⁓maybe it makes them even a premium brand. Those are the folks that interest us, especially if they're concerned about their environmental footprint. ⁓ So the folks that would compete with us for that kind of business, ⁓ well, almost by definition, they're all larger than us, but they're not huge by any means, ⁓ and they're all over the world. depending upon the raw materials that they use. For instance, I imagine ⁓ Apple ⁓ whoever is doing the packaging for Apple is undoubtedly in China where the manufacturing is taking place and is undoubtedly a very large company because Apple demands a lot of packages. ⁓Personal plug, we actually do manufacture packaging for Apple products, more through the back door. ⁓ We manufacture packaging for iPhones that are resold, refurbished and then resold through Amazon. So in a way, we're creating packaging for Apple products too, but I think Apple would snicker at the idea that we're in the same business that they're in.

Matt Gregory (23:21)⁓ I don't know.

Paul Tasner (23:23) But yeah, think most of our competition, so to speak, is relatively small to medium-sized companies. And some of them are our partners, I mean, we rely on companies in our category to be our partners. They have different customers than us. And we don't, what's the word? We don't swipe each other's customers, but they pretty much do what we hope to create. so why should we reinvent the wheel? They're very good at it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (24:07) Right, mean, you know, in business that's sort of mission driven, there's the twin goals, I guess, of you're trying to do business, you're trying to make a profit, but you're trying to move towards a world where it's much more common that just much more of the packaging is made in this way. And so I guess... maybe a lot, some of your decisions are less motivated by the bottom line and more motivated by like how do we become a part of this ecosystem, pun intended. Is that the case? Do you find more cooperation than you maybe would if you were just a cigar smoking CEO? CEO.

Paul Tasner (25:06) ⁓ I know what you're driving but ⁓ I don't want to disappoint you, but I don't think so. mean, much to my own disappointment too, ⁓ I'm still sad to say that it's still the rare company that really wants to embrace being more sustainable.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:16) okay, yeah, yeah.

Paul Tasner (25:35) ⁓ I mean, really wants to embrace it. There's thousands of them out there doing what's been, you know, now called for many years greenwashing. I mean, you'd think half the companies you see advertised on television are so concerned about the environment, but you put a package in front of them that's a penny more than what they're spending on their package and it's sorry, come back later when your price is lower.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:55) Totally.

Paul Tasner (26:05) So, but like I said, now we have the wind at our back now in many ways with these new EPR legislation and California being essentially like the fifth largest economy in the world. If you want to do business in California without paying huge penalties, you better shape up your packaging or it's going to be very costly.

Matt Gregory (26:06) Yeah. So I think

Paul Tasner (26:32) and no one's going to walk business in California.

Matt Gregory (26:35) So Paul, I want to switch ⁓ gears a little bit to talk about your personal path and what it's felt like to be Paul Tasner.

Paul Tasner (26:35) yeah, it's all about the numbers, right?

Matt Gregory (26:50) you know, working initially like let's talk about your time. You worked at a big company Clorox, ⁓ you know, and what was that like? What was that experience like for you?

Paul Tasner (27:00) Well, sure. ⁓ I was there 15 years. ⁓ And at first it was extremely exciting. I'd never worked for a large company before. I don't think anyone in my family ever, know, blue collar immigrant family from Eastern Europe. ⁓ I don't think anyone worked. I'm sure nobody did. mean, mine was the first generation to go to college. ⁓ So no one in the family, immediate or extended family ever worked in that kind of corporate setting. So that was kind of exciting. I really didn't know what to expect. I actually, ⁓ keep the snickers down to a minimum, please guys, but I actually harbored ideas of rising through the ranks. ⁓ and becoming the CEO of the company someday. I mean, I wasn't obsessed with it, but I thought sky's the limit. Boy, was I wrong. ⁓ I guess sky is the sky is the limit. If you're willing to do what it takes to get to the sky. But I, I found out I didn't have what it took to get to that sky box. And, and that, that was not. my bad, that was my good. ⁓ I thought the folks that I saw twisting themselves out of shape, know, ethically, morally, physically, to get that next rung in the ladder, I just could never identify with that. That just seemed like a horrible way to live. So I figured that out probably about five years into my time there. And then the next five years, think it was maybe what we'd call my plateau years. I reached a pretty good middle management position. I had a team of folks that worked for me that I really adored. They were just great folks. we were responsible for the outsourcing that the company did. we had kind of a niche at the company. No one else admired us because that wasn't the path to glory. You know, that was kind of the path to what's the word?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (29:33) stability

Paul Tasner (29:34) No, not even stability. was just like you were just kind of lost in the shuffle if you were doing what we did. just wasn't seen as a critical path to excellence in the company. Certainly not in the manufacturing side of the business. The truth of the matter is we had more fun at our jobs than the folks that were on the critical path. They worked in Clorox plants and You know, they all reported to several other people and had pressures galore on them. And we worked with outsiders, know, people that were mostly entrepreneurs who started their own businesses and were doing this subcontract work for Clorox. They were fascinating people. I think more than any group of folks, I probably learned as much from them about, ⁓ you know, the world that I was in and the world that I've been in. ⁓ They were fascinating people. And ⁓ so I think the joke was on everyone else. had, we have really plum assignments as far as we were concerned. So I kept at that for, you know, the next five years or more. ⁓ And then the last five years, you know, we're kind of rocky because things started to change. got a new boss at the company toward the end of my tenure and he just did not like me. He. ⁓ When he joined the company, I already had 12 years under my belt or something and all he heard about was how well I did my job and how well liked I was and that he could not stand that. He could not stand having anyone upend him. So he made life miserable for me. I'm really... ⁓

Matt Gregory (31:20) You Ugh.

Paul Tasner (31:29) I really enjoy telling this story. ⁓ I had a bit of an ace in the hole. I had a dear friend at the company who sat on a committee with this guy. ⁓ And my friend would tell me, Paul, this guy really has it in for you. He said, really. He doesn't even try to hide it. ⁓ So I said, yeah, I'm beginning to see that. And he said, but I got some news for you. don't do anything rash because he will do just about anything to get rid of you. And by just about anything, he meant pay you to get lost. mean, know, Clorox wasn't notorious for hiring assassins or anything like that. their way of getting rid of you was to, you know, just give you a big severance. So I said, really? He said, yeah, just hang in there. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (32:16). I'm That seems, seems preferable.

Paul Tasner (32:25) And so I did, I hung in there, it was humiliating. I kept getting moved to smaller and smaller offices, you know, in the corporate world, the size of your office is everything, right? ⁓ And I think I ended up in like a broom closet or something, but I hung in there and they kept making me offers ⁓ to, you know, take early retirement or something. you know, I respectfully declined and Eventually the offer got so damn good. I just had to say yes because I'd already been making my plans for my exit. So I was ready to go and I got almost a year's worth of severance. I mean a year's worth of severance. mean whoever, I know. I mean that's like CEO style severance or something. ⁓

Matt Gregory (33:12) That's amazing. They really hated you. must, they really wanted to get rid of you.

Paul Tasner (33:20) He did. You know what? I don't think he lasted much longer himself, to be honest with you.

Matt Gregory (33:25) Wait, so I'm curious, so Paul, when you first got to Clorox, you had this, your eyes on the prize of like this, you know, maybe someday I could be CEO. I'm wondering like how your vision shifted over the course of your time at Clorox and like by the time you left, what was your vision?

Paul Tasner (33:35) Yeah. Yeah.  good. Well, I realized, mean, I think I touched on it, Matt. I realized I didn't have what it took to rise to the top. It just took a personality that I didn't have, that I didn't even respect. you know, then my focus was more on personal fulfillment, I think, whether that was working, ⁓ you know, for a smaller company, like where you and I met years ago, or whether it turned out to be working for my

Matt Gregory (33:59) Yeah, yeah.

Paul Tasner (34:16) you know, myself, you know, creating something entrepreneurial, which I did eventually do. That wasn't my that wasn't my first intent. That was still a little too scary for me. ⁓ But ⁓ yeah, the focus was more on it was a healthier focus. I think it was more on personal fulfillment, you know, working working with folks that I respected and enjoying enjoying the work and, you know, finding, you know, finding a

Matt Gregory (34:22) Mm-hmm.

Paul Tasner (34:46) a niche that I enjoyed. you know, I think I found a bit of that where we worked, Matt.

Matt Gregory (34:53) Yeah. I'm curious, Paul, so you talk about kind of being truer to yourself, truer to, you know, that maybe working at some smaller companies Method is was, you know, as a brand is very environmentally oriented. was was that always a big priority for you? Did Method kind of introduce you to that? When did your commitment to environmentally focused stuff start to take hold?

Paul Tasner (35:27) ⁓ I would give Method credit for that. I mean, I wasn't really focused on environmental issues. I went to Method because it, it was like, ⁓ it was like the collection of people that hated working at Clorox. I think I counted at one time that there were, well, there weren't many consumer packaged goods companies in the Bay area. So you didn't have that many options if you were going to jump ship somewhere.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (35:45) misfits.

Paul Tasner (35:55). But I think at one time I counted like 28 Clorox refugees at Method. And I think we all kind of enjoyed that status too. But honestly, I would have gone to Method if they had developed the world's best hot dog. I mean, it didn't matter that they were in the environment. Well, it did matter. mean, I was proud of my association with them. They were, you know, they were. They were doing good things and good for the planet and elsewhere. ⁓ But at first, what drew me there was that it was a small company with a lot of my former colleagues and who were enjoying themselves enormously. And the fact that they were environmentally conscious as they were was just icing on the cake. But then I got bitten by the bug.

Matt Gregory (36:46) Yeah, but then you got bitten. You got bitten, man. I'm sorry. I don't mean to cut you off, but I know that like in 2008, you started the San Francisco Bay Area Green Supply Chain Forum. I, you you were, you were, you are, you were, you became a leader in this sort of green, you know, business, green entrepreneurship space, especially around packaging. And so I'm wondering, that's a big

Paul Tasner (37:00) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (37:14) big leap so you really got bitten.

Paul Tasner (37:17) I did, I did get bitten. It felt really good to be working for a company that had those, I mean, they weren't perfect. mean, they still put most of their products inside plastic containers, but they did the best they could around recycling and reuse, et cetera. I mean, it was very heartwarming while I was at Method that Clorox came out with a line of environmentally friendly products, but it was the ultimate in greenwashing. They gave it a green name and maybe changed a few ingredients, but it was the ultimate in greenwashing. it was pretty amusing to those of at Method. knew they were... We had been copied, which is flattering, ⁓ and copied by a real big player in the space, too. ⁓

Matt Gregory (38:11) Yeah. Yeah, after you show them that it's safe to do it and they can do it and make money, they're like, all right, guys, let's go. Let's do it.

Paul Tasner (38:20) Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:24) Right.

Matt Gregory (38:26) So then after Method, you consulted at a couple different companies, and you've referred to it already, but Paul and I met at Two Degrees Food, where I ran the operations team. at Two Degrees, I thought, organized themselves in a really cool way, where ⁓ the company was bootstrapped. It didn't have a huge amount of money. And so all of the functional leaders like myself were kind of paired with industry experts, people that had been in the industry a long time that we could never afford to like have on our full-time team. And so I really had this amazing opportunity to kind of learn from Paul and just like sponge, you know, try to learn as much as I could about running operations ⁓ from him, which was a really cool experience. What drew you to like working with startups? I know, you left Method and you were kind of looking around for your next thing. What was that phase like? And were you thinking at that point, hey, I might want to start something here.

Paul Tasner (39:39) No, I wasn't thinking, no, I wasn't thinking of wanting to start something myself, but I really liked the idea of a small company that needed a ⁓ sort of operations generalist like myself, know, someone who was familiar with packaging, procurement, logistics. And, and as you said, you know, maybe couldn't, maybe couldn't afford to have a whole team of people like that, but Maybe they could afford to have one person like that. So, you know, that was interesting and enticing to me.

Matt Gregory (40:18) And then, I mean, from that phase, you know, you were 66 years old, you started Pulpworks. Can you kind of take us through that decision to start Pulpworks?

Paul Tasner (40:34) Yes, yes. The. ⁓ Well, I seized on the idea of ⁓ packaging made from ⁓ waste ⁓ or molded fiber packaging. ⁓ And that fiber could be paper, corrugated agricultural fiber, which is primarily what we use in our business. We use sugar cane fiber. ⁓molding that fiber into packaging creates some really interesting packaging. I guess the granddaddy of all examples and not very interesting one is an egg carton that's molded waste paper fiber. ⁓ So that's sort of the, you know, the oldest ⁓ packaging of that type around still. ⁓ But, you know, as we talked about earlier, the iPhone is in molded fiber packaging.⁓ happens to also be sugar cane packaging ⁓ and countless other products are as well. ⁓ I like the idea of taking waste and turning it into a package instead of just whatever you do with waste, know, burn it, bury it, whatever. mean, here, you know, it kept its value going. So I really like that idea. ⁓I had a business acquaintance, a friend from my time at Method, who ⁓ he kind of ran Method's business in the Far East. ⁓ I'd say he was involved in sales, marketing, ⁓ operations. He wore a whole bunch of hats and ⁓ he was a British guy, but he was based in Hong Kong and he was a really ⁓ interesting and lively character and a bit of an entrepreneur himself. Well, actually ⁓ quite a bit of an entrepreneur because he started his own business. ⁓ And the business he started was what I just described to you. making packaging out of waste. ⁓ he used paper waste to make his packaging. And he had a business partner in maybe Shanghai or Ningbo, I think. He had a business partner. They had a plant, you know, a small modest plant, but they cranked out packaging of this sort. And ⁓ he said, he said, listen, ⁓ you know, most of our sales are here in Asia. said, you're, you're free and easy. Now would you consider representing our business in North America? And that sounded interesting to me, but, ⁓ not entirely, but it did sound interesting. It was a way to get into that business. And, ⁓ I, I got back in touch with him I said, I thought about it. I don't think it's really for me, but I have an alternate suggestion that you may find interesting. I said, what if I start a business like yours here in North America, except that I don't do manufacturing, you do my manufacturing for me there in China and ship it back to North America. And he said, basically that's kind of what I was asking you to do. So he said, yeah, that's.

Matt Gregory (44:31) You

Patrick Dyer Wolf (44:31) Well, great.

Paul Tasner (44:32) That's except, you I wouldn't work for him in this. The difference was I wouldn't work for him. I'd be working for myself. So there I had it. I had an outsourced manufacturer in Asia, a guy that I liked and respected and an opportunity to create that kind of packaging in North America, you know. And that's how we started. And then he introduced me to someone else who used different raw materials than he used. ⁓ And they became my partner also. ⁓ In fact, ⁓ he dismantled his business many years ago, and I found other sources for it. But the partners that he introduced me to are

Matt Gregory (45:05) cool.

Paul Tasner (45:28) are still my partners today, 15 years later. ⁓ So he did me an enormous service and I'll always be grateful to him for doing that. It's made a huge difference in my life. ⁓ in fact, our conversation here is a timely one because that partnership that I've had for 15 years with two particular companies in China, has essentially come to an end because of Mr. Trump. Because the tariff now on Chinese molded fiber products shipped into North America, shipped into the US is, are you ready? 540 % tariff. Not 25 or 40, 540%. It's essentially saying, you know, that's the end of your business.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:17) Thank

Paul Tasner (46:26) So ⁓ we, we being myself and my partner's son, Andy, we've had to scurry to find a replacement. My partners are optimists. They think it's, you know, somehow Trump and Xi Jinping will sit down and everything will go back to the way it was. I don't know if that's ever going to happen. And the way it was, was with tariffs of 50%. So that's not exciting to me either. ⁓

Matt Gregory (46:59) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:00) Do you have leads for alternatives and where are they? If so...

Paul Tasner (47:04) We have more than leads. We've been in deep discussions with two particular companies. ⁓ And ⁓ they are both in Thailand. ⁓ And the beauty of that is that the sugarcane waste that we use in China, it all came from Thailand. Our partners in China imported the sugarcane waste from Thailand.

Matt Gregory (47:25) Mm-hmm. for talent.

Paul Tasner (47:32) because they had a deeper sugar cane industry than South China, apparently. Whatever, I'm sure many reasons why, but that's where our raw materials were sourced in Thailand. Now we're sitting right on top of it. So far, these look like two wonderful companies. They've been really...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:51) There you go.

Paul Tasner (47:58) They're probably pretty busy these days with all of the refugees from 540 % tariffs. But they've been really marvelous to us and they've quoted on some projects for us. And I think we're off to a decent start. So that was a pretty dark day when the 540 % tariffs were announced. But we pushed through and thanks mostly or almost entirely to my son, we've been able to kind of

Matt Gregory (48:06) Yeah.

Paul Tasner (48:29) Regain our footing with two good partners and fingers crossed, you know, ride off into the sunset with them.

Matt Gregory (48:39) So I think there's a dangerous, ⁓ like we could end up talking about Trump for the rest of the show and I don't want to get sucked into that. ⁓ So, but I ⁓ do want to come back a little bit to your decision to start Pulpworks. ⁓ And like you, it seems like you had a lot of conviction around the idea and you know, I'm curious like how your family responded, like.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:49) All roads.

Matt Gregory (49:08) what your kids thought, what Barb thought when you decided to jump into this.

Paul Tasner (49:15) Um, everyone, everyone was supportive. Everyone, everyone. I mean, my kids, my, my grandkids, everyone was very proud of what I was doing. And, uh, Barb was a great cheerleader. Um, uh, I, I had, I had a lot of support. I didn't have to fight any oncoming winds or anything like that. I just had to. you know, hopefully create something successful. And I was really fortunate as far as, you know, being nurtured by my family to, you know, help me become successful at it.

Matt Gregory (50:00) So I'm curious, like, when you look back at starting this business, and you've become kind of a thought leader in this idea of starting a business later in life. Like, you did a TED talk about it. What advantages do you think you had starting your business at 66 versus in your 20s?

Paul Tasner (50:19) ⁓Well, as I said at the end of my TED talk, people my age bring whatever they were doing before they started their business. They bring all that experience to their business. In some cases, it's not real applicable or transferable.

Matt Gregory (50:35) Mm-hmm.

Paul Tasner (50:41) But in other cases, like in mine, most of what I did was applicable and transferable. ⁓ So I brought all that to my business, 40 years of that to my business. That had to help. I mean, it didn't prepare me for entrepreneurship and all the things that come with that. ⁓ And I don't wanna minimize that at all, because that's...

Matt Gregory (50:48) Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Tasner (51:10) That's a big difference from working for somebody. But in terms of the nuts and bolts of the industry and all of that, I brought all of that with me.

Matt Gregory (51:20) Mm-hmm.

Paul Tasner (51:27) You know, was extremely valuable to do it when I did it. I wouldn't have been able to fall back on all of that experience. you may recall Matt, that I, that I had a partner in the early days, ⁓ Elena. and, ⁓ we went out looking for investors because we wanted to develop something brick and mortar. wanted to build our own facility. and, ⁓ we met with angel investor groups all over the Bay area and beyond and Tahoe and Northern California. And, ⁓ we usually got a chance to sit down in front of them, which I guess is flattering in a way, cause they only pick a handful of people that they want to, you know, give that opportunity to, but we never got past the sitting down in front of them. They never, they never really showed any interest. ⁓ And what I often heard back was that I was too old, that they didn't want to invest in somebody my age, that it was a young man's game, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure that was true for many, if not all of them. But they also, if I'm honest with myself, they also had other wonderful opportunities for investment. I mean, they were in the Bay Area. They had all of Silicon Valley at their doorstep. So they could invest in the next Google or you name it. ⁓ Why invest in a company that's going to make packaging out of waste when you can invest in the next QuickBooks or something? we really were competing in a strange arena for getting people's money. was tough. But once you're in the business, and I can say this is still true today, no one, no customer, no supplier has ever brought up the subject of age. in certainly not in a critical way. I mean, perhaps in a flattering way or something, but even then pretty, pretty rarely. No one has ever said, I don't know if I want to do business with you. You're so old or, you know, can I count on you for five years of supply?

Matt Gregory (54:02) All right, well, in case you're wondering, there's been some costume changes and facial hair growth here that the YouTube audience knows about. had some technical difficulties And actually today, we're in the middle of the blizzard of 2026 here. So Pat is...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:04) We're back. I just wanted to be authentic to what I was just doing before we got on. And also I wanted to highlight our regional, fierce regional rivalry that we have going on.

Paul Tasner (54:31) Hahaha

Matt Gregory (54:31) Yeah.

 Yeah. Well, I did see the Celtics clean up the Lakers last night. So I'm feeling.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:37) Well that's good and you know the Knicks eeked it out against the Bulls which is less of a thing but...

Matt Gregory (54:42) Yeah, well, you know, ⁓ it's an interesting season and the Knicks are crushing it. So I'm excited. Yeah. See you there.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:49) We'll see you the playoffs. See you in the playoffs. Also, I think we're cultivating this thing now here. Do you ever listen to the interview, the New York Times thing, where they come back a few days later? That's what we're doing.

Matt Gregory (54:57) Yes. Yeah. I think that there's a lesson in here around resilience, around stick-to-it-iveness that I see you as a three-dimensional friend of mine, not a lesson, but I think that ⁓ there's something in that in sort of what I've learned from you in my career just around

Paul Tasner (55:17) Right.

Matt Gregory (55:27) you know, taking the challenge that's ahead of you and facing it and getting through it. And I have no doubt that you will continue to get through it with Pulpworks and with everything else that's thrown your way. And I guess maybe to wrap up, I'd love if you could share. Yeah, of course. Well, I'd love to hear, you know, for people that are listening,

Paul Tasner (55:48) By the way, thanks for that, Matt. That was lovely.

Matt Gregory (55:57) like that and are interested in learning more about pulp works. Like where's the best way for them to learn about it or to connect with you?

Paul Tasner (56:05) maybe take a peek at our website and see the kind of work we do. think there's a contact page at the end, you know, ⁓ with an email, info at pulpworksinc.com. So, Pulpworks Inc. ⁓ But yeah, check out our website, see the kind of work we do. We primarily use sugar cane as our raw material, sugar cane waste, I should say. ⁓ But we do use a few other agricultural waste products for raw materials. And we have a lot of examples of the kind of work we do in different industries that we've served. So, yeah, I'd say send them to our website.

Matt Gregory (56:50) Awesome. thank you so much for taking the time with us on two days to share your journey and a bit about, you know, especially recently you're building Pulp works. ⁓ And yeah, it's been really wonderful to connect with you this way.

Paul Tasner (57:08) Me too, it's been great guys. You've been wonderful hosts and interviewers and got me to talk about things that I hope will be meaningful to three or four people in your audience. Yeah, excuse me.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:24) that as a baseline. ⁓

Matt Gregory (57:24) I'm sure. I'm sure. That is our entire audience, so I'm sure.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:30) It's been great to me and I definitely have products from your earlier career, Clorox, Method, and now I just need to get more Pulpworks products.

Paul Tasner (57:36) Right, right.  And I need to honor you ⁓ during your next appearance in New York City or nearby. ⁓ Yeah, get on that. ⁓ So ⁓ good luck. Good luck. Good luck with the series, guys.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:46) Yeah, well we gotta have one.

Matt Gregory (57:50) Get on that pad. All right, Paul. Thank you so much.

Matt Gregory (58:01) it. It's been fun because I feel like every conversation we have reminds me of somebody else who I think could be an interesting conversation. ⁓ But yeah, think Paul's story,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:10)Yeah.

Matt Gregory (58:14) I feel like, you know, there are lots of ups and downs and you know, it takes a lot of resilience to, to start a business and to keep it going. You know, a lot of the times in the type of business that I do or that I've been involved with historically, like they're founders that, you know, get a lot of outside. venture capital money, and then there's like an expectation that you like build the company really quickly and then sell it. And I think the type of company that Paul is running ⁓ is inherently a lot more connected to his life And and and then you think about like over the course of a lifetime all the stuff that you deal with you know has recently lost his spouse and you know, it just like there's just a lot that you have to get through

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:03) Yeah, I mean, I just, love this, you know, we've definitely touched on this in the conversation, but just love the story of him starting it as like a third act in his career and just like, now it's been going for 15 years and they're still, like they're not stopping even in the face of all this stuff that's going on.

Matt Gregory (59:14) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:23) I was gonna say before when you were talking about his personal journey, like I think it was interesting to me from that perspective paired with how just he's a two man company, him and his son, so plugged into all these global factors. Like just everything is intertwined, even if you're a tiny business and everything affects everything else and like never has that been more apparent or true, I think.

Matt Gregory (59:34) Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really well said. And I think that's just especially true of supply chain type and manufacturing type jobs. They're connected to everything. They're influenced by everything. So.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:05) Right, and you know, this is to say nothing of like, the people who work for that company in China, the people who work for that company in Thailand, like, how are they feeling about all this? Like, it must be crazy, you know?

Matt Gregory (1:00:16) Yeah, it is. Yeah. I mean, that's another whole episode. But yeah. Well, great conversation. And ⁓ I will talk to you soon, my friend.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:18) Yeah. Matt, always a pleasure. Good luck in the Blizzard.

Matt Gregory (1:00:33) Thank you, you too.

Matt Gregory (00:13) Hello, Pat. Here we are back at the map, Trail Map. How's it going?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:18) Hello Matt. The map with an apostrophe.

Matt Gregory (00:20) The map. Yeah. Yeah. This is that podcast where we talk to people about their circuitous paths to amazing destinations.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:34) Yeah, but the destination, you know...

Matt Gregory (00:36) The destination is the path.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:38) That's right. You got it.

Matt Gregory (00:41) Yeah, I'm excited today we've got Kirk Wallace on the show, who is an illustrator based in Maine and really talented guy. I know that he yesterday had the film crew from the Boston Celtics at his studio. So he will get into that but cool, cool guy. So excited for that chat.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:46) Yes. Yeah, wild. sounds,

Matt Gregory (01:07) Yeah, so how's life going for you?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:12) Pretty good. got some disease going around. I'll try not to cough on you or anything. You guys have experienced some disease, haven't you?

Matt Gregory (01:16) Okay. Yeah. God, Yeah. Trying to hold out for are you next week is school vacation week. Are you going anywhere? Are you going to be home around home?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:29) ⁓We got Mary's parents coming up. We're going to ⁓ Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania next weekend. You ever heard of it? It's a cute little town. That's the place. Look it up.

Matt Gregory (01:40) Nice. I've never heard of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. That's a place? Wow. That's cool. That's, that's, ⁓ I'll have to go there at some point.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:52) You don't have to, but it's cute. You should check it out.

Matt Gregory (01:54) Okay, okay. We're going down to ⁓ Wonderful Florida. ⁓ We will be in Orlando. Heejin's mom has a place down there, so we're gonna visit her and we're gonna do a couple days, do a day at Hollywood Studios and a day at ⁓ Universal.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:59) Classic. What part? Heard of it. Wait, what's Hollywood Studios?

Matt Gregory (02:23) It's one of the Disney properties. And that's a fun one because my son, Will, is a massive Star Wars fan. And so ⁓ we'll be going to the Star Wars experience. It'll be really fun. We've been already, but it's a second go. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:26) ⁓ Sure. That's going to be great. Okay, we have not been with the kids. Only, only... It's, it is, is it ever.

Matt Gregory (02:47) It's a thing. It's a thing. It's a thing. Yeah. Well, I'm sorry about the disease. hope you guys feel better soon.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:56) Thank you. I hope you remain well.

Matt Gregory (03:00) Yeah, thanks. have been, Will and I have been holding down the fort this week. Heijan traveled out to Seattle. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, it's your friend. ⁓ yeah, shout out Jess and Pat. Another Pat. No, they're out there in Seattle. ⁓ So anyway, I guess let's jump in and chat with Mr. Kirk Wallace.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:07) Ooh. Love Seattle.⁓ I thought you were... Yeah, nice.

Let's go Kirk.

Matt Gregory (03:34)

Kirk Wallace, it's great to have you on Trail Map. Thank you so much for spending a little time with us this morning.

Kirk Wallace (03:41) Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Pat.

Matt Gregory (03:44) ⁓ so I know, ⁓ you know, we've talked a few times, I know you're, you're up in Maine, right?

Kirk Wallace (03:50) I'm up in Maine, I'm in the woods. I'm not in Portland like everybody else is. I'm about a half hour west.

Matt Gregory (03:53) Nice. Nice.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:56) was gonna ask, you, half hour west of Portland, okay.

Kirk Wallace (04:00) Yeah, it's a quick hour. It's just a little, it's an easy one road to get over there and it's nice. Uh, but it definitely is, uh, I'm in the woods. I am out in the back of a barn. Um, and I've refinished it to be a studio and it's, uh, today's a warm day at like 30, 40. I'm, I'm nice and toasty in here, but you know, sometimes it's tough, but, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:24) I mean, I'm in New Jersey and it's like 30, 40 degrees sounds like t-shirt. It's just this winter has been...

Kirk Wallace (04:30) Yeah, dude, was like this negative seven stuff is like not fun.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:35) Yeah, especially when it's like negative seven and then the feels like negative 20 or whatever. It's like, I don't know. It's like they send Frank out and it's like, Frank, what does it feel like? Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (04:39) Negative 100, yeah. They need to stop with this feels like stuff. Yeah, the feels

Matt Gregory (04:47) Yeah

Kirk Wallace (04:48) like thing is just like a slap in the face where it's like, I'll let you know what it feels like. I just, it's fine. Like I just tell me what it is. It's weird. I'm not like going to the weather channel to get an opinion. I agree. There's, I have a hard stance on that.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:53) Yeah. Right.

Matt Gregory (05:00) I can feel it myself. ⁓

Kirk Wallace (05:02) Yeah, what the

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:03) Yeah,

Kirk Wallace (05:04) hell? And like, yeah, that's a very subjective way to do the weather. And it seems really weird that that is the way it is. But ⁓ yeah, it's been cold. There are days out here where if it's cold enough, it's like I'm burning pellets and it's not, I'm like, it's pointless. Like it's just not getting up to temperature. Anyway, today's a very good day for all of those things.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:04) I'll tell you.

Matt Gregory (05:22) Yeah, we're happy to catch you on a good day. This interview could have taken a really bad direction if, yeah.

Kirk Wallace (05:24) Yeah, you don't want to see me otherwise. Yeah, it'd be bad.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:29) mean, anything can happen, we'll see.

Matt Gregory (05:30) Yeah, it's true. It's true. Hopefully we won't screw that up for you. Well, yeah, it's great to be in touch with you. I know you're an illustrator and animator, ⁓ and you run a studio. And I believe the studio part is called Bone Haus but maybe you can sort of fill us in. What is Bone Haus? What do you do? Tell us a bit about yourself.

Kirk Wallace (05:51) Yeah, yeah, Bone Haus is really well, it's evolved but I've been I left my full-time job in 2015 so I'm ten years deep at least and Bone Haus at first was just sort of a studio moniker for myself just so that I didn't have to feel like everything was about me and it was just nice to have like a brand that I could kind of hide behind less for the posturing of like pretending I'm a larger organization but more just because You know, the same way we like to invent stories and worlds and cartoons and stuff like that. It was just fun to kind of have a brand making a logo of a Bone Haus rather than a Kirk Wallace logo, which is more exciting to me. And I think over the years it has evolved a little bit into just I've worked with friends as much as I can. And so I think if there's a studio aspect to it, it's just the ability to work with different copywriters, photographers, 3D designers, animators ⁓ and another. Illustrators and all that type of stuff. So yeah, I mostly do commercial work mostly whimsical playful kind of character driven stuff in in the advertising and branding space probably most often And yeah, and I think the work is if if I had to describe it, it would be probably delightful and kind of charming and whimsical But usually kind of grounded in reality and intended to sell a product usually.

Matt Gregory (07:19) Yeah, well, mean, I think Kirk, I know you're a humble person, but like you've worked with some amazing big companies, know, Adobe, Apple, Google, Disney, big, big companies. ⁓ So it's clear that like, ⁓ you've been found out for your skills. And Boston Celtics, yeah, you had some Boston Celtics folks with you yesterday, we understand.

Kirk Wallace (07:40) I'm

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:41) Boston Celtics. Can I say that? Is that secret?

Matt Gregory (07:49) That's very cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:51) Can we do an Easter egg thing where we have to mention the Boston Celtics once in every episode? We're good for this episode.

Matt Gregory (07:58) As a Celtics fan, I'm good with that.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:58) We did.

Kirk Wallace (08:00) Yeah, easy. And I, someone that won't be on the future episodes too often, I would love to throw that into your court to have to deal with.

Matt Gregory (08:06) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (08:07) Nice.

Kirk Wallace (08:10) Yeah, I've been really lucky with the career so far. I think a lot of that has to do with timing and all of those things and all the other stuff that I don't like to mention of hard work and that. But yeah, I often do think about starting a career today versus starting a career in 2010 is just such a different world. And I'm, I think, happy to have already done it and not have to start it off the ground today because that is scary.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (08:39) Can you say what, I mean I know generally what you're referring to, but can you talk a little more about that? What does that mean?

Kirk Wallace (08:46) I think things like in my world, like social media and getting your work seen in maybe 2010, 11, 12, even, you know, 15, 16 was just such a different world than getting your work seen today. And for context, so much of the work that I receive is just from basically me sharing my work online, twiddling my thumbs, and then waiting for someone to email. And it has worked historically, again, because the snowball. has been rolling for so long because those early days of getting seen, I think were easier to get your eyes on work. And today I think it's also equally as beautiful and amazing that you can get discovered algorithmically, that you can have zero followers and pop off and then Nike sees a piece that you did and they can hire you. But at the same time, it is just so much more noise online and just such a crowded space that... ⁓ It's just a topic that I think and talk about a lot because students often are asking because they see my story of like, I just posted my work online and then, know, Patagonia came along and it's like, it's not that easy. ⁓ So yeah, that's kind of what I mean around it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:56) Yeah, I think it's similar in the music world. It's like there's democratizing technology where it's like easier to get your feet off the ground, on the ground, get off the ground. But then it's how do you distinguish yourself and make yourself ⁓ stand apart or get into the mysterious algorithmic superhighways. I agree is.

Kirk Wallace (10:09) your feet off the ground. Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:24) It's

Kirk Wallace (10:25) Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:25) both exciting and daunting. Frustrating.

Kirk Wallace (10:29) Exciting and daunting is exactly what it is. And for those that see success with it, it's even more exciting, but it's easy to lose track of that. It also to me, know, whenever I talk to Matt around like my strategies with business and stuff, I'm like, I don't think it's a scalable, like, you don't want to be a flash in the pan that just pops off on TikTok and then all of a sudden, and great, maybe you can parlay it into something, but also like there's definitely something to be said about slow and steady. And I think I'm in this weird world where I'm a little bit slow and steady, but I'm also very much a product of like earlier internet. And you know, when people ask me like, how do you like what do you use your outbound marketing or your email? Like I'm like, I don't I don't know. I don't know. And I would never advise anyone to take this path because I'm just like hacking it together and hoping for the best and waiting for an email to come in. And then when they don't come in, I'm like, I don't know how to reach out to people because I've never had to do it yet.

Matt Gregory (11:24) I think I'm sure right now, Pat, so Pat is ⁓ in a band. ⁓ He's one of the two founders of this band and I'm sure you can relate, Pat.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:38) Big time, mean like, yeah, we, I think we're, I don't know, we appear similar in age, I don't wanna, I think, oh well I'm 40 so, one day you'll know what it's like to be old, to be old, I've got 38.

Kirk Wallace (11:46) Yeah, I've got 37. Okay. 38. Sorry. I'm there. was born in 88. I feel like also, sorry, I feel like we didn't just say our eight, like the future needs to say the age of the year that we're born. Cause that never changes. Why do we anyway? So I was born in the eight.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:01) Yeah. Right. 80.

Matt Gregory (12:04) That's a good move. Yeah, we could just change, forget the number. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:04) 85. I'm 85. Right. Right.

Kirk Wallace (12:08) Yeah, right? Like, why are we chasing a number when we have like a static number?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:11) Right. Yeah, we had, I guess, some luck in the same time period you're talking about. I agree that starting now, I think I can see both sides of it because I have music of my own that I'm trying to put out into the stratosphere. it's just not doing, I assumed like, oh, it'll just, some people will see it. And it's like, no, not necessarily.

Kirk Wallace (12:37) No, no, can just absolutely not happen.

Matt Gregory (12:37) Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (12:39) Yeah, there's like.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:40) I was also talking to my first piano teacher actually who in his 40s moved to Montana and started the media arts program at the University of Montana in Missoula. ⁓ We should have him on the show ⁓ to talk about his path, he ⁓ spent the second half of his career at a university and his third act is trying to ⁓ sell his media, music, and web savvy to clients. now he's 70, and he's like, I've never had to cold call people, and it sucks. And it's like, ⁓ yeah, regardless of the industry, I think it's...

Kirk Wallace (13:21) Mm.

Matt Gregory (13:38) an uncomfortable, uncomfortable feeling.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (13:40) Yeah, it's uncomfortable and it's just like, it feels like dead end city. you don't, know. Yeah, I'm scared of it too.

Kirk Wallace (13:49) Yeah, I'm scared of it. I'm scared of the like right now like and part of me is I think trying to do a little bit of that lately with like shifting slowly to more content like me being more of the product of courses, the Skillshare classes or YouTube videos or partnerships with brands. And that's scary because it's a new thing and like I I know I can do the one thing well and if it's already working well, then why change? But then like my passion is driving me towards something that's maybe a little bit even more independent, like maybe more artist rather than designer or something. And ⁓ I'm taking baby steps because to take like a large step just seems scary because yeah, you might try to upload a YouTube video and then literally zero people can see it. Like there's a perfectly normal world where you upload something and no one sees it you're like, Yeah, I guess I'm starting over here. And then you're like, maybe I'll just go back to doing what I was doing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (14:46) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (14:46) I just want to pause here for a sec, right? Because both of you guys have made it, right? Like both of you guys are, yeah, absolutely. No one told you?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (14:54) Read ahead.

Kirk Wallace (14:56) Right. I do agree, Matt, because I would never want to play coy with privilege of like, yeah, I am very fortunate. And I do feel like in many ways I've arrived. I'm still terrified every single day. But yeah, I think it is important context for the listener of like.

Matt Gregory (15:07) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, no, I think it's important to acknowledge that stuff, but also to recognize that these questions, these feelings of insecurity, imposter syndrome, like, ⁓ I gonna cold call? Am I gonna put a YouTube video and get no views? They don't go away. So it's not a good measure of whether or not you've achieved anything, because here are two people that are both doing creative things that have made it.

Kirk Wallace (15:22) Hmm. Hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:32) Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (15:41) Yeah, and it's scary every single day. And I know that like Grant Morrison, like these like incredible comic book artists that are just like the same thing every time they get down to the table and they start drawing, they're like, I have no idea. I don't think this is good. I'm not doing good. And it's like, you literally are the capstone of what comic books are. so, yeah, and I think musicians probably same sort of situation, like every musician and probably most creatives and artists and stuff. just like. satisfaction. That's why I think it is important communally for us all to celebrate and appreciate that Matt and happy to see Pat sort of take some of that in of like yeah it is good to celebrate it sometimes because we won't celebrate it alone in our studio that's for sure.

Matt Gregory (16:20) Yeah, no way. All right, well, take us on your career trail map journey, Kirk, because I know you graduated with a degree in computer science, and that's not what you're doing now. So what were you thinking when you were on the sort of computer science path?

Kirk Wallace (16:42) Yeah, I mean, you're like 12 years old or whatever when they ask you what you want to do for the rest of your life, right? You have to like, I still think about like applying to colleges and getting like student loan. Like I had no idea. And my parents, unfortunately, like, you know, bless them to hell. it like, they just didn't know. Like none of us, we didn't know, like we didn't have money. We didn't know how to apply to things. And just I remember getting through college and I can't believe that I like I'm actually in. So, yeah, so I'm going point.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:06) Rest them to hell is a great phrase. I'm gonna save it.

Kirk Wallace (17:08) Yeah, yeah, just I had to balance it out because there's no blessing anyone ⁓ It was I I liked computer games and I figured okay. I'll do computers. I'm told this is 2000 2004 or five kind of world where it's like, okay, let's do computers. I like computer games. I guess I'll be a computer engineer and started that and went to a pretty, local school that just so happened to have a really good computer science program, but that was total happenstance. and it was at the end of that career that we had to do a web project where it was really supposed to focus on like database design and like the nerdy part of websites. And I spent all my time like making the colors and the buttons and the fonts and being like, I think that's probably what I want to do. I really like graphic design. And then I think just like I shotgun graphic design at like right after I graduated, I started going to some of these ⁓ events like markets, art markets and just like learning about Adobe Illustrator and like the different ways that you can do it. And I just got obsessed with it. And I think And I can pause there because there's more to that story, but that was kind of the transition period right after college. It like, oh, I'm really obsessed with this. Now how do I go all in? I do remember the mindfulness of like, I want to do this. I'm going to figure out a way to just get obsessed with this. I want to be the guy that has my pictures at the art market selling them for 20 bucks. And obviously I've pivoted many, many more times from that. that was a point when I was like, whatever, 22 or 23 or something where I was like, that's what I want to do.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (18:45) This could be a boring or irrelevant question, but I'm just always curious. What has been your path of software that you use and devices that you use and technology? Do you draw things and take a picture of it? Do you use a little stylus? Do you still use Illustrator? Just what things have you used?

Kirk Wallace (19:04) Yeah, yeah, no, that's I think it's a great question. ⁓ So I yeah, I've all the other thing is like I had a Wacom stylus way before I had any business having one because my brother worked at Best Buy and could get them 50 % off. And so I was like when I was like in a bird playing Counter-Strike 1.6 on a four by three aspect ratio Wacom screen. And you know, this must be 2002 or three or something. And like, I hardly drew on it, but I just like, I like that I could draw on it sometimes. So I've been with them forever. ⁓ so yeah, I, I still draw on a big tablet that's here on my desk in front of me. ⁓ but I'll also draw on an iPad. Like my sketching usually happens wherever it needs to happen. And then, yeah, I'll take a picture of it or scan it and get it into the computer. And then I work a lot in Adobe Illustrator, which for anyone that doesn't know it's, ⁓ like a vector based software. So you're. It's very shape driven and it's infinitely scalable. You can zoom all the way in and it kind of for me ends up being like cutting pieces of paper and arranging them around almost like on a refrigerator or on a whiteboard. And you can move them and rotate them and assemble them like Legos. And then I'll bring them usually into Adobe Photoshop where I do a lot of like digital painting where I can add a lot of the texture and shadows and lighting if I want to do that. And then if I am animating it, it'll usually go into After Effects or sometimes they'll get just frame by frame animated in something like Photoshop. ⁓ So yeah, that is the, and that's been the same forever. And every once in a while there's a new program that comes out and I'm like, damn, I should try to learn Moho. And then I'm like, I think this is when I realized my age comes in or I don't know if age is synonymous with busyness, but anytime I try to learn something new, I'm like, damn, I'm not as good at learning new things anymore lately. ⁓

Matt Gregory (20:51) Totally.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (20:51) It's just that now you're so adept at the Adobe Creative Suite. It's like anything else is just quicksand. ⁓ God.

Kirk Wallace (20:56) Yeah. yeah

Matt Gregory (20:59) But Adobe has done, I mean, a pretty remarkable job of staying relevant across a lot of different software platforms, right?

Kirk Wallace (21:05) Yeah. Yeah. 30, 40, 50 years or whatever too, right? Like they've been around. ⁓ Yeah, and I'm happy to have them be, you know, replaced and they will and they do, but it's just like, yeah, it's working. It's working, it's working. And I'm at a breakneck speed where I'm like, I don't have a ton of like, I gotta get things done.

Matt Gregory (21:12) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They tried, I mean this is, ⁓ we don't need to spend too much time on it, but they tried to buy Figma too, right? And they didn't end up acquiring Figma, right? Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (21:34) Yeah, with a monopoly. Yeah, the European Union basically marked it as a monopoly and didn't allow it to happen. ⁓ Yeah. One thing that was happy that like at least Europe showed up for that. can we stopped buying things, like do we need conglomerates to just like have one monopolized entity to own everything? Like when can we stop? So thank goodness.

Matt Gregory (21:41) Yeah, interesting.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:43) Yeah, the European... Yeah, right.

Matt Gregory (21:59) Totally. Totally. in addition to like your like going out and learning things about these software platforms, like it sounds like you also, you know, would put a lot of your artwork out there. And I guess I'm curious first to ask about like developing your sense of style artistically, because like if you go to Bone Haus even though you're working for a lot of different clients, It feels very cohesive in terms of the types of work you tend to do. I'm just curious about your, did you always have that sort of aesthetic or is that something that's sort of been developed?

Kirk Wallace (22:41) It's elusive. It's yeah. So like you said, the next step was learning a bunch of stuff and then sharing a bunch of stuff and posting it. And there's that next part of the story. I, know, it's fun because you can look back at 2011 or 12, like my first post on Dribbble and Dribbble for anyone that doesn't know, it's just like a social media. It was like Instagram for designers a long time ago where you would kind of share what you're currently working on. it was really

Matt Gregory (23:05) ⁓ Three B's, right?

Kirk Wallace (23:09) Yeah, exactly. And it was really geared toward like designers, designers, designers, instead of just like you weren't getting pictures of pets on there kind of thing. so I don't know, the style is really one of those things where it's just like the less you think about it, the better off you are. I really just can bluntly put it that way. ⁓ You know, we're inspired by the things that we enjoy growing up, whether it be hardcore music or skateboarding or this, that and the other thing. the wider you can go and then you put it through your lens and when you start your copying and stealing without really fully realizing it and then you just hope that you continue to like authentically craft whatever that looks like. And I will say only because everyone says it now do I believe it but I never really, I always worried where I was like, man, I feel like all these pieces are looking fragmented and look different from each other and I have like four or five different things. ⁓ And so. you know, I think it's one of those things that's really hard to see other than, you know, I've been told that enough for me. Yeah, I guess I've got a pretty consistent style. And I think as I've evolved, I've just become more of a curmudgeon where I'm like, this is what I do. And this is all I know how to do. So I'm just going to keep doing that. And it seems to work. also find that the more I dive into specifically what I want to do, sometimes it takes a year or two, I'm starting another story. And so I'll stop it a little bit. But it's like. Yeah, the more you narrow into what you enjoy, I have found that you usually get rewarded for that authenticity and uniqueness. But that's scary too. Scary is the theme of the day.

Matt Gregory (24:38) Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (24:40) People know what to expect maybe and they seek it out at a certain point.

Kirk Wallace (24:45) I think so. And I think the world is big enough and the internet is vast enough that you can get hired. You know, as I always say this, I've like, look, there's people that like want to look at pictures of feet on the internet. And like, that's like, you know, that's a narrow lane. And but like, you know, there they are. And so I don't think I'm. Yeah, right. Well, yeah. And there's create like clown feet. Like you can just keep going narrower and narrower and you will always.

Matt Gregory (25:03) Maybe not that narrow.

Kirk Wallace (25:10) And same with, know, genres of music and stuff like that. And I think similarly, like I'm not making anything that extremely out there where like I can pretty much stay in my like wide, narrow lane. And there's always an opportunity for a brand to want to pay me to do it. I think also because commercially the world has gotten a little bit different where Nike can hire you, even though you might not fit their big brand aesthetic, you might be hitting great for they might be doing a kids camp in, you know, Boston or something. And they want something really whimsical. that needs to be 20 % Nike, but also it can be really whimsical and childlike, even though that doesn't reach their larger corporate brand, I guess.

Matt Gregory (25:48) Sure, yeah. It seems like there's like ⁓ this relationship between like you as an artist putting stuff out in the world online through these different platforms. Like we talked about Dribbble, ⁓ I think like even earlier like ⁓ Tumblr and you so you put that stuff out in the world and then you've been discovered that

Kirk Wallace (26:07) Tumblr.

Matt Gregory (26:14) I mean, that's we talked about this a little bit before the episode started, I think, but there's sort of a push and a pull situation.

Kirk Wallace (26:22) Yeah, it's been frankly the only way that I've been discovered has been just sharing work online and I can pinpoint certain projects to certain like, you know, certain personal pieces that then ended up becoming large projects. And then those large projects I know, you can track it like a web of like when I did this three months later, they saw it and they hired me for this. then that project was a flagship project for me that got me four other projects. And you can kind of almost string them along. all the way from like 2012 to today where like the project I'm doing today kind of still feels somehow connected to a personal piece I did in 2012 or whatever.

Matt Gregory (27:01) Yeah. So part of that is relationships, right? mean, building relationships with people and companies and

Kirk Wallace (27:04) think so. Yeah, yeah, people especially. I think I'm, yeah, I'm always on the edge of like, you know, we have a mutual friend named Adam Danielson, who is a fantastic designer, who I think is on the other end of the extreme where he's like people, people, people, people, and he doesn't share much online. And I would feel like I'm almost on the opposite end. So compared to someone like that, I feel like I'm not a connections person, but I think I am a community person. But I don't know that I'm like, I'm not as handshaky. And I don't know that I work with this. I don't know. Also, it's changed. The last couple of years, I've really dived into having good relationships with clients, and it has rewarded me a lot. think the first 10 years I was doing this, I was just more of like a hired hit man where I would like do a thing and then probably never work with them again. And so I've tried to consciously, yeah, be more of a people person.

Matt Gregory (27:57) Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I think, again, I think.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (27:59) schmoozer.

Kirk Wallace (28:00) Of course. Big time.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:03) All right.

Matt Gregory (28:03)⁓ schmoozing. I feel I have such mixed feelings about it because a lot of people will be like, Matt, you're so good at connecting with people. But like my hell is like a cocktail party where I don't know anyone. I'm like, just like, I don't want to be here. Like, it's too uncomfortable.

Kirk Wallace (28:20) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:22) I think there's

Kirk Wallace (28:22) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:23) some kind of yin and yang thing going on with that because a lot of people I know will say that they really hate that type of thing but are good at it. It's the burden. It's the cross.

Matt Gregory (28:32) Yeah, yeah, they're motivated by crippling, crippling anxiety or something. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, and I think again, before we started recording today, we were talking about how much the illustration landscape has shifted and like how much harder it is to get discovered. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:40) Yeah, some cocktail of emotions and skills.

Matt Gregory (29:00) today. So I guess just for somebody that's trying to build an illustration career today, what would you recommend? What would you say to them?

Kirk Wallace (29:13) I think certain things change come and go, right? Trends come and go and even communication styles come and go. And I think there are certain things that are consistently solid that don't go out of style. And I think that's authenticity. I think that's transparency. I think that's trying to have some sort of a value, whether that be, you know, you're the person that's really loving and sweet or really, you know, humorous with the way that they present their work. But there is a meta level to the way that you share your work that is very important that people don't want to participate in, which is totally understandable, right? Because we all think our artwork should speak for itself and be hard for itself. But I think if we liken it to music, right? Like the live performance has always been a huge component of what makes a band something that people love and become diehards for and become sticky and viral or whatever the term that you want to use for is. Like the way they look, the way they perform, the way they do this, the way they do that, the live show versus the studio recording. And I think similarly with visual artists, everybody wants to just be able to just say, this is my art and that's it and hide behind the art and that's admirable. But yeah, I think stepping in front of your work is really important. Not only from a, it's just a huge amalgamation of like, it makes the work more interesting, therefore it gets more likes, therefore it gets in front of more eyes. But at the same time, I think it also, helps show art directors that you can work and you're personable and that you're fun to work with and that you can take direction well and just like the more thoroughly and richly you can share your work, I think the better off you are. Cause just images are everywhere. It's just like, forget about it. Like it's just a no, it's just like all we do is see images all day. So, and again, I'm not saying like, here's how you stand out like from like an advert by like having a bright color. or even, I'm not even really speaking, I think to a brand necessarily. It's just more just like people wanna connect with people. And I think that has changed over the years in how you do it, whether it be TikTok or Tumblr, but I think the through line is definitely authenticity. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (31:20) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:21) I to me, one of, I love that answer, one of the clear follow-up elephants in the room is like AI is now here. I'm just curious how that's affected you and how you think about it and yeah.

Kirk Wallace (31:35) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mostly don't pay attention to because it doesn't interest it doesn't excite me in any way. It can only depress me if I want it to, obviously. And it Yeah, totally. No, and I wasn't trying to bail out of the answer. But I'm like, ⁓ I mostly ignore and I agree. It's think it's doing a bunch of things. I think it's making people level up, right? It's eliminating a lot of low end jobs of if I were like a

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:54) Sure. Or like, it threatened your work? Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (32:13) you know, respectfully photo retoucher or ⁓ somebody that just did technical packaging to, you know, get it preflighted to be able to make sure it prints really well. Those things are more in danger. So I think it's made everybody chopping out a little bit of that lower entry stuff. It's making people kind of like choke up on their bat a little bit, get more creative. Those things are probably good and healthy. Maybe, I don't know, but ⁓ it is a thing. At the same time, I do think I'm barely ahead of whatever that quality wave is of like I'm still riding the like I'm kind of bespoke or artisanal or you know those types of things and I can I think I also have ideas about how this will end up rolling out ⁓ but I think pricing, you know, is a harder thing now too, because people are more willing to spend, you know, 10 bucks for a chat GPT thing. And so it's disturbing. I think I felt the disturbance of it, particularly 23, 24 a lot. then again, I'm a tiny little, I don't need a ton of money to be successful for myself. Like if I were running a studio with 10 employees, it's scary, but I'm just like. I need a couple clients that are gonna pay me enough that I can get lucky with it. ⁓ This is kind of a non-answer all around, but like, I think it's affecting it. ⁓ And I think at the same time, I don't know if it's today or in five years or sometime, but it's gonna have that same sort of vinyl swing of people wanting to get back to, know, people are gonna want more with humans more than ever. People are gonna wanna see the imperfections more than ever. And people are gonna wanna like connect with humans. more than ever. And it's not it's not going to take us long for people to be like, wait, this is actual hell. And the other thing is like, no, I've never heard I have not heard a single man maybe it's because I'm in a really small like echo chamber. I've never heard anyone be like stoked on AI. And like, that's really I love just prompting chat GPT for images. And like, know, that's happening. Yeah, I guess there are people out there. But I'm just like, I guess I'm so insulated from them that I'm like, I really don't feel the threat of it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:09) The people are out there.

Matt Gregory (34:18) Wait, Quick pause here. Vinyl swing is, did you just coin that or is that something that...

Kirk Wallace (34:25) I don't know. that's that's like, I find it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:26) Yeah, I mean, we, okay, I love that. And also, are we in the like 80s moment of like new synths? And then people are gonna be like, wait, no, no, guys, like we need guitars and drums. And then it's gonna be like, but the synths are cool. And then it'll be like vintage AI, you know, techniques or something, I don't know.

Matt Gregory (34:29) because I

Kirk Wallace (34:35) Right. There's total potential for that to happen. Yeah. And yeah, I think I was taking pendulum swing probably and then thinking about vinyl and connecting with Pat a little bit as well. Maybe it vinyl swing came in. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (34:55) I love that. I love that term. I love the vinyl swing. Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (35:03) mean, there's always like reinvention and reinterpolation of styles and genres and things. Like there's a sine wave thing and then there's like a bigger wave and there's irregular waves and things are always being mashed up in different ways to create like what is happening now. And I think it's just in most, if not all industries, it's just kind of an intimidating time for, as you said, the lower echelon of people that work. in whatever industry you're talking about, but also just the like, it's never been at this point for like, you know, creative, the creative industries, like lawyers, doctors, it's just like, you know, it's the, and this has been.

Kirk Wallace (35:44) It only comes with creatives. Like, why can't we just replace lawyers or some or like CEOs? Like, which

Matt Gregory (35:51) I mean, lawyers are in trouble.

Kirk Wallace (35:51) robot is going to be a CEO? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. That's fair.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (35:53) They are. are. it's like, you know, there's, it's just, I don't know. It's, it's just an interesting slash frightening slash I don't think we thought it out that well time, you know, like, yeah.

Kirk Wallace (36:07) Yeah, that's for sure. We haven't thought it out. It is I think breakneck speed is the biggest fire component of it of like it is it is too fast for it to be mindful and when you don't have mindfulness, it's usually not good.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (36:17) Yeah. Right.

Matt Gregory (36:19) Yeah, I think there's just so much personality and I think this actually segues really well. I'd like to talk a little bit more about what influences you and your style. And like, I'd love to hear more about like where you're sitting right now, like the physical studio space where you're working in Maine. Could you tell us about it?

Kirk Wallace (36:39) Yeah, sure. Yeah, I so I used to be in a big space in Lowell, Massachusetts. There was like an old paper mill that they converted and it was shared space and it was really lovely and big windows and I liked it, but it was not my own. And when we moved, we were my I was a hawk for any time when we were looking at a house, we looked for years, years, years. We looked like in the worst time, you know, pandemic type of thing. ⁓ And every time we'd go to a house, we'd look and I'd be on a hawk mission, like Hawkeye to find a studio. And when we came into this, there was this big, beautiful barn and I really loved it. And then there was this room in the back. this is like tat, this is like, there's a hayloft above me. And then this is kind like a built-in space under the hayloft. ⁓ And I looked, I took one peek in here and I was like, we'll just throw a match in there and just burn. Like it was such a mess. It was a disaster. And I didn't see a vision for it at all. And then I started chipping away at it in the middle of November when we moved in. I was like, wait a second. started ripping up the floors, started pulling all this stuff apart and seeing it and understanding that there was maybe bones to make something. And ⁓ I have before and after photos. I'm really proud of what I did because I'm not handy traditionally at all. I never knew we grew up in a condo where I wasn't allowed to put a tack in the wall. Never had a hammer. Never did not do any of stuff. And so I learned how to insulate the whole space. I put the ceilings up. I put the lights in. I did everything to it. And I'm like so stoked on how it came out and

Matt Gregory (37:55) Wow.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (37:57) Dang. Did you YouTube it or what was your approach?

Kirk Wallace (38:02) I did, I like hardly document. I have a bunch of like random, ⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah, gosh. It just was YouTube. It was just YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. And even I probably should have leaned into like friends more because it turns out a lot of people know how to do these things. Cause they all grew up with at least ⁓ a, I call a screw gun. And apparently other people call it drill of just like, I'm like, that was, but it was, it was awesome. And it was very much like a good meditative time. It was freezing, but. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:05) No, no, mean to learn what to do. Yeah,

Kirk Wallace (38:31) It was nice for me to really like fully cleanse this space and have it be my own. And the roofs are not, the ceiling's not as high as it was in Lowell. And I really missed that and the big windows. And there's a lot that I miss about it, but there's like no denying that this space is very much my own. And the other irony is that like, I basically just work on a laptop on a desk like all day. Like I'm not like an artist where I'm like throwing paint all over the place. It's like mostly just the space to like feel inspired, I suppose. ⁓ And also tinker and like. Every day I'm out here, I'm like, you know what, maybe I should do this or that and like start messing with things. So it's, I think it's just sanctuary kind of thing. And you know, there's books and toys and stuff all around me that I've just collected for many, many years. ⁓ But yeah, it is funny because I am basically just on a laptop all day clicking on a mouse.

Matt Gregory (39:20) Yeah, it is interesting, like the modern office, like the laptop is such an anchor. ⁓

Kirk Wallace (39:24) Yeah. And like it's more important to put the fun things behind you than in front of you because you're going to be on calls so much. You're like just trying to impress. It's more for them than for you.

Matt Gregory (39:31) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I want to talk. I do want to talk to about like all the different content that you record there. ⁓ Because I think that that's that's interesting. But like before we leave your style, like you mentioned skateboarding. I think you also have a dog. Right. So tell us a little bit about like Kirk outside of work. Like what are you what are you into?

Kirk Wallace (39:54) Okay. Yeah, yeah, I grew up in the skateboarding world and like the kind of alternative, like hardcore punk scene, ⁓ which I think also brought me to a lot of like, you know, political activism. And I also grew up with three older brothers that were 10, 11 and 13 years older than me, half brothers. So, and they were all very, you know, so they were right in that world of showing me, I got to skip a lot of. cringey stuff because they'd be like, no, no, no, no, you're gonna listen to this instead of that. Which also robbed me a lot of some of the cool naive stuff when you're a kid too of like, you should be able to enjoy some of these less cool things, but it's never been a big problem for me. they fast tracked me a lot on style and influence and like, and I just so happen to have one brother that was really into hardcore music and then another that was really into hip hop and then another was like.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (40:30)Thank

Kirk Wallace (40:52) really into ska and so I got this like perfect triangulation of like multicultural experience inside of one very white family which was really good for me too and and then skate you know that comes with skateboarding comes with ⁓ all of the things that just I think added up and I had really great loving parents like those things I think are so important to feel fostered and loved and the ability to just like kind of play around and do whatever I never felt pressure to have to go be.

Matt Gregory (40:59) Yeah

Kirk Wallace (41:20) a doctor or anything like that. And I think that's a very irreplaceable, unteachable skill to give a child is to like let them fully kind of do whatever they want ⁓ and figure it out. And almost to a fault at times now that I'm getting older, like I have a harder time looking far ahead of like, what do I want to do? What do want to be? Because I've always just been like playing every day. And that's very much of how I try to craft my career is like, I don't want to do things I don't want to do. So I just play and I really loved working luckily. I also like, I will work really hard, but I don't want to have a job. So I think all of those things just like add up to like whimsy, like very whimsical life and very working class, like grew up poor kind of thing, which I'm like also very grateful for in its own way, but in a small loving household in. with struggles too of like my dad died early and like my dad was diabetic growing up and my brother was an addict and like it's like all these crazy things that yeah, I'm so grateful for in their own like tortured way, I suppose. Balance, I think is probably a good key word out of that, know, good and bad.

Matt Gregory (42:31) Yeah, and sort of a mentality to keep playing, I guess. Like there's a playfulness that I feel like I see in your work. I'm wondering about ⁓ Skully ⁓ which can you tell us about Skully

Kirk Wallace (42:49) Yeah, I'm wondering if I have a Skully thing around me, but Skully is started as just a logo by a friend named Richie Stewart, who I think is probably the best designer alive. Like, I think he's so smart and he did all the Bone Haus branding and he just had this idea of like, I'm gonna like, and he pretty much did that. was like, I'm gonna put like skateboarding and hardcore music and what I think is Kirk and also like Casper the friendly ghost and like all these like playful energies and compacted them into this like logo mark version of Skully. that I then was so excited by and I took and started, was like, okay, I wanna do a full illustrated version of him. And now he's very much kind of a muse, also for context, he's my logo when we talk about Skully, but mascot, brand representative, and just again, been a good way for me to like, is the analytical strategist to the business that will make sure that we actually are gonna sell the beer can that we're designing for. And then Skully comes in and kind of like torches it on fire to make sure that it stays like unique, interesting, fun and exciting and surprising. ⁓ Yeah, there's the balance. It really is like it's the balance and it's also the creative muse of if I'm gonna make ⁓ a wooden toy, there's no question. I'm already learning how to carve wood. Why think about what I'm gonna make? I'll just make Skully. I wanna do stained glass. I'm gonna do Skully. Like he's the creative muse where I just get to learn things up against.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (43:50) There's the balance.

Kirk Wallace (44:14) And he has a cool story of like his head can flip out. He's insecure about his bones because he's a skeleton. So sometimes his head pops off. And one day he realizes like if he puts his head back on upside down, he see things from like a different perspective. And it's all about like meditation and this idea that like you can like always step back and look at things differently and your insecurities are actually your strengths. And so he's just this like full ball of fun. inspiration that I can pull from if I ever need to be like, what do want to draw today? Or like, what do want to work on? It's like just dive into Skully World.

Matt Gregory (44:48) Do you have a do you have like a physical Skully in your in your space that you're interacting with?

Kirk Wallace (44:52) I definitely have to have it.Where's my toy? Skully. I have this really wonderful wooden toy that I've I've sold a couple different runs of. I have a all painted version of him here, but it's not gonna be as expressive, but he's a. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:06) I mean, it strikes me as like a modern secular version of like, you know, Renaissance artists are like, what should I paint? it's just like, you know, like Jesus or like Jesus and Mary. Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (45:16) Yeah, Jesus. Yeah. So this is Skully in all green version just because I did a full green. I'm obsessed with this like sage green color lately. But the idea is that he can he's a stackable wooden toy and he tips over on your desk every once in a while. And you can always like it's that's like a friendly reminder of like, maybe you need to take a step back and like take a breath and then like you can rearrange him and stack him in a different order. And just like it's just like all these different little ideas that are just purely nuggets of an idea that I'm like, eventually I could like swap

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:25) Nice.

Kirk Wallace (45:46) Normally it's like a yellow shirt with little bones on it. He's got a sneaker and a hat and I'm like I could do different faces and different like types of shirts and different boots and like a skateboard that he could stand on you can almost like purchase like Extra parts like Lego, you know, it's all about playing and building and I also just love like things that can fall over and physics and just like things that like tumble I'm just like really into that

Matt Gregory (46:07) Dude, I think there's something really interesting here that's like a nugget that I wanna pull out that's like for people that are solo entrepreneurs, like you have to be a lot of parts of the business. You have to do the billing. have to be the creative force. And it's not just solo entrepreneurs. It's also small companies. Like you have to wear a lot of hats. And I think there's something really interesting about like something like Skully ⁓ to remind you of. like that inspiration, the sort of quirkiness, you ⁓ know, how alive your work is probably has a lot to do with Skully.

Kirk Wallace (46:44) Yeah. Good reminder.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:47) Also just as like something, I don't know if limiting is the right word, but just something coagulating about inspiration. There are these after school programs that I was just signing my kids up for and there's one about filmmaking. And we had just made like a family movie at home as a.

Kirk Wallace (47:07) cool. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:13) present for my wife's mom and it was super fun. Like we had the kids all involved in everything. And I was like, oh, to my son, was like, Eamon there's a movie making one. And he was like, nah, I don't wanna do it. Like, I don't know what I would do it about. And I was like, why? I know it was probably just like some kind of excuse in his brain or something, but like.

Kirk Wallace (47:37) sure

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:38) to have something that you're like, don't know what to do a thing about, like I'll do it about this is like very grounding, I think. And just like the limit is the freedom.

Kirk Wallace (47:48) Yeah, right, mean, similar to music or anything, right? It's like, if you walk into a studio, you have every access to every instrument, or even just, I think, digital tools, right? I recently got a teenage engineering ⁓ drum machine, and I've known nothing about music, period. I like music, that's the extent of it. ⁓ And the first, everyone's like, just plug it into the computer. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm staying on this screen only because I don't want it, one, I don't want it to turn into computer work. But I just, need it to be limiting and so that, and because I, to your point, I think I say often like, think constraints breed creativity or whatever, right? If like, if you have access to everything, then you don't know what to do. But if you just are put in a room with four tools and one idea, it will always end up being more fun and challenging and cool. So I totally agree. And that's why I think, yeah, I Skully is a good like, if in doubt, it's not like I could do anything. It's like, nah, I gotta, I have to somehow involve these four shapes.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:45) Yeah, I love that.

Matt Gregory (48:47) cool. ⁓ Yeah, so and I think this is maybe a bit of a new subject, but you you've done an incredible job of building a business that's multifaceted. So you've got like client work. You've got merchandise. I know you've been like a top Skillshare teacher. You've got your own YouTube series that you're working on. You're doing speaking gigs. Like there's a lot of different pieces. I'm wondering about how you think about that.

Kirk Wallace (49:24) I'm following my nose is what I've been saying. When I get excited about something, I go pretty heavy on it and it usually is not. Like the thing that keeps me most financially successful is, know, freelance illustration, art direction and stuff like that, of course. But then there's this weird thing where like a YouTube video, like, no, I'm not monetized, I'm not making a bunch of money off it, but like. then somebody sees that video and they wanna hire me for another thing. And it just, it's so much of a web of all these different things that just lead up to, ⁓ you know, you don't, I don't know what, and I don't pin it down either, right? I don't document like, well this came in, therefore I got my ROI and maybe people should or shouldn't. That's where I'm like, I just don't know what I'm doing, but I just like follow my nose and make a bunch of different stuff and find that in general people, I would say the curve over ⁓ year over year in general, my work is more fun. I'm generally compensated better for it. And I'm generally less stressed out. And I'm, yeah, I'm feeling creatively fulfilled more like, you know, on a, you know, there are months where I'm like, screwed, but like, if I zoom out, I'm like, yeah. And so I basically just keep following my nose doing things that pique my interest when they do, and then hope for the best and like,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:27) Sounds great.

Kirk Wallace (50:43) you know, history has said that that's a good idea for Kirk to do. That's why it's like, we're like, Kirk opens a business school and like, that's the advice. And I get shut down immediately because they're like, this is terrible advice.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:53) and Are you doing in-person speaking, speakings?

Kirk Wallace (50:59) That's what I really want to do more of this year specifically. I did my first couple last year and it was, it's, I did a workshop that was so fun at a convention called Crop down in Texas and it was a sold out workshop. was my first one I did and I loved it so much. And then I did, I spoke in Berlin around the Skully toy. ⁓ at an event called Picto Plasma, which was so fun. And I just wanna do more of that, because I also frankly am a little bit frustrated with when I see some of the people speaking and they're just kinda out there flipping through their work. And I'm like, yeah, I can go to your website. I want a story, tell me a story. And I think that's so much of what I hopefully bring unique to it is I wanna inspire a photographer, a poet, a writer, an artist, an illustrator. I want anyone to be able listen to what I'm saying and take something home from it. So that's a strong focus that I do need to get serious about if I want to start reaching out to the same of these places and speak more in person. I think that's my year thing. like, want to try. I also just want to travel and I want to be warm all the time. So I'm like, how can I like, maybe if I can get to like South America in like North America's winter or something, like I've got to be able to like, it's got to be a way I can dodge some of this cold by just traveling and speaking, I think.

Matt Gregory (52:05) Says the guy who lives in Maine.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:08) Yeah. Especially at this point in February, like, alright, let's... Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (52:16) Yes. I'm ready. I'm like, is there not like something in Mexico happening in February that they need me to speak at? Yeah, get me out there. It's yeah, today's a good day. Today's a one.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:24) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (52:24) Hey guys, the snow's melting. I feel hope.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:28) Is it melting? Nice. Okay. All right.

Matt Gregory (52:30) It is here. That's awesome. And it feels like you're following the energy. I think that one thing that we find at TrailMap is that we have lots of different disciplines of people that we talk to about their lives and careers. And whether we're talking to a fusion scientist about developing nuclear fusion for energy, or we're talking to you about illustration, like... there's definitely like common themes about ⁓ pursuing your interests, following your energy. At a sense, at a level, it's like it's a design process, right? Like it's like a, it's an iterative process where you're like, you're taking a measurement of like, how does this make me feel? ⁓ And then you're tweaking it based on what results you get back. So.

Kirk Wallace (53:24) Mm.

Matt Gregory (53:29) It's really cool to hear that you've been able to build something that works for you. And I guess, you the reality is you're a super talented illustrator too. So you have that benefit. ⁓ I'm curious, like, you know, for people that have creative interests or aspirations, maybe they've got like a day job. ⁓ Like, how do you, like... I guess the drum machine might be a good analogy. Like how do you take things on that aren't like your sort of core bread and butter that also give you energy?

Kirk Wallace (54:08) Yeah. Yeah, man, I think there's like a lot of people that are working a job that they don't super duper mega love, which is totally fair. And they I think I speak to them often when I when I speak at an event or whatever, a lot of people come up to me because I always just assume I'm speaking to other versions of me. And then I realize most of the people that are going to those are people that are at a job that they are fine with or they hate. And they want to. And but they're like, man, I really love painting or, I really love this, that other thing. And they just don't know how because it's very hard, very scary. And also there's a ton of, you know, things that make it harder, families and kids and, you know, fucking car payments. So ⁓ my methodology has always been slow and steady. And I think I like, and it's a skateboarding of like, there's people that skateboard that just, they have no business going down that flight of stairs yet and they huck themselves down and they will figure it out and learn it that way. And that's amazing. And for me, I'm two stairs, three stairs, four stairs, and I'll keep doing the same trick down, down, down until I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure like, I'm probably not going to totally get wrecked on this. It's going to be pretty calculated. And I think with that, with what we're talking about, it's like, ⁓ there's tipping points. And for me, the thing that I, my superpower is I have a high tolerance for work. I will, if I had, you know, when I had a full-time job, I would just work that job and then I would just keep working at night and I would just keep going and keep going. And my plate would get so full that a certain point I was like, I got a feeling if I dropped this eight hours of the day job, my plate is already still full that it would all kind of still work instead of like people always talk about like the leap into faith with like freelance. it's like, for me, it was never like this big scary thing. It was ⁓ very calculated. So I think, you know, the thing that I would hope people have is like, if you want to do it, you just got to put a ton of extra hours in because you can't just quit. Or for me, I'm like, you know, don't want just like quit your job and try it. Or I wouldn't want to. ⁓

Matt Gregory (55:47) Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (56:03) And if you're super excited about it, think it's easy for those night hours to get gobbled up. We're like, shit, I'm like spending a lot of time doing this because I'm really having fun with it. ⁓ Yeah, so I think it's that. think it's just like, unfortunately, you need to to your plate a lot for a certain amount of time. And that's easier at certain times of life too, of course.

Matt Gregory (56:25) Totally, totally.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (56:26) I got my wife a sweatshirt that says, ⁓ it's like a, it's a picture of somebody doing an ollie and it says, I don't skateboard. I'm afraid I'll fall down and get hurt. I did.

Kirk Wallace (56:44) That's a great shirt.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (56:46) not really related to anything, I do have an unrelated question. Can I do that, Matt? What is your relationship, if any, to fonts? ⁓ So my musical partner, Avi, his wife is a graphic designer. Her superpower, she's fantastic and she's many skills and she works with all kinds of crazy clients. Her superpower that we always...

Matt Gregory (56:51) Yeah, yeah.

Kirk Wallace (56:56) ⁓ yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:16) say is that she can identify a font on sight We've used this superpower. Do you think about fonts a lot? Are they kind of an afterthought for you?

Kirk Wallace (57:32) They probably were early on. It's one of those things where it's like, gotta learn color theory. You gotta learn, like, you gotta get good at a couple of things, of course, so that you don't look like a fool. And then you can probably disregard them pretty quickly. I think for me and my school of thought overall is just like, it's weird, because I'm like a very technical person also. Like when people have questions about Illustrator and all that, like I am very technical, but I think I'm just not interested in it. And so like, I... think I have a plethora of information could tell you all about x heights and bowls and cross lines and all of that. And I just don't care now where I'm like, I think it's also just like, it's again, like this transition from like designer to artists where I'm like, now I just draw everything like I hand letter everything. ⁓ And so I'm just like, yeah, I'm like, I don't. Also, I think admittedly, when you're in the world of graphic designers that are like these nerded like, you know, just like tattooed bearded men that are just like, I like coffee and bike rides and fonts. You're just like, don't give a fuck about Baskerville or have I like, I don't care about your fonts. so when you get like, because I, you know, I was so obsessed with it for so long, and then I got a distaste for it. So it's, you know, when you get over, it's probably I think there's tons to tie in with that with music too, just like, when you're so entrenched in it, you start rejecting it and be like, I want to be like these nerds talking about fonts, stop.

Matt Gregory (58:54) you

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:55) Yeah, yeah. There's a font of like, like word numbers on houses around here. I liken it to like grandma's houses that I can't identify. And I like, I think it's like, I'm not, you know, I'm not a graphic designer or a...

Kirk Wallace (59:08) Hmm. Hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:19) Like, so I haven't had that like rejection moment. I'm still a little bit fascinated with it. But I guess, I guess my follow up question to this is like, you mentioned your superpower is like, ⁓ you just work a lot. Do you have another, do you have another superpower that you ever cite or, know, that you.

Kirk Wallace (59:23) Yeah. I'm told that my shape language is really strong and that is again because of a weakness. don't if I'm if I'm drawing a horse. I don't know how to draw its muscle definition. I don't know how to make hair look more coarse or more thin like I can't render things really well with shadows and lighting and like making something look really realistic. So I have to focus on shape. And so as a result I think it's a survival mechanism but I think it could also just be a strength of mine. I love shapes that are unique and interesting. therefore, again, if you relate it to graphic design, it's like it should hold up. If you can squint at it from far away, you want to know that's a horse. No matter what, the silhouette should be strong. And so I think probably if I had like a tool that was my sharpest, technically, it's probably shape language, you know, as opposed to my colors. Fine. My, you know, typography and font composition, probably bad. ⁓ But I think Attention to detail like small surprises attention to detail and then shape language are probably my like my best ⁓ tools in the belt Yeah

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:45) Shape language is great phrase.

Matt Gregory (1:00:48) Well, Kirk, think we're coming up on time here, I guess, before we wrap up, like, just wondering where, if people are interested in your work, where they can find it, where they can contact you, what's the best way to get in touch?

Kirk Wallace (1:01:03) think if you are looking to learn from me and follow along, it's Instagram and YouTube, which is both just Bone Haus, B-O-N-E-H-A-U-S. And then I think if you're looking to work with me in some capacity, then it's probably, ⁓ thanks, Pat. It's B-O-N-E.H-A-U-S is my website, or just probably Googling Kirk Wallace Bone Haus kind of situation. And yeah, I think those two things are very much. the world of like follow along and hang out and maybe learn or subscribe to YouTube and stuff. ⁓ Or if you're busier than that and you just want to see the work that I do, then my website has lots of it to offer. ⁓ And as always, my DMs and my email are very open to thoughts and questions and chats and all that sort of thing. And I think information should be free. So however I can always help with anybody, I'm always happy to do so.

Matt Gregory (1:01:56) Yeah, I think there's a real generosity of spirit and of like giving your time to help other people on their paths, which is super cool. ⁓ And yeah, I admire it. So ⁓ thank you so much for your time today, Kirk. It's been really ⁓ inspiring and fun to have you on the show.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:01:56) I'm out.

Kirk Wallace (1:02:10). Thanks Matt. been pleasure. Nice to meet you, Matt. ⁓ Nice to you, Pat. Nice to see you, Matt. There's something there. Like the Matt-Pat thing is cool. I'm sure I can't be the first person that's watching it, but yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:02:23) yeah, we probably should rename the Matt and Pat hour. Yeah,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:27) map map map

Matt Gregory (1:02:29) everybody comes on the show, they're like, Pat, good. ⁓ yeah, yep. All right.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:32) All

Kirk Wallace (1:02:33) It was a pleasure. I loved it. Thank you guys.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:35) ⁓ Am I allowed to ask as a CODA question what you're working on with the Celtics or is that top secret?

Kirk Wallace (1:02:41) ⁓ I'm good on Celtics is open and public. I can talk about it. wait. wait. What am I doing? Celtics is resident artist for the year, which basically, among some other things is ⁓ six months, six posters. So once a month I do a poster ⁓ and they give them away in game. I think they print like five or 10,000 of them. I think it's like a first come first serve sort of situation.

Matt Gregory (1:02:46) What is it? What do you work?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:47) What is it? What are you working on? Yeah.

Kirk Wallace (1:03:11) and they're usually based around, like we just did All Star was the thing and know, February will have its own theme. So each one's kind of themed a little bit differently. Yeah, you know, there's just all sorts of like fanfare videos and like hanging out with the kids, doing a workshop, teaching them how to paint at a museum in Boston and some of that stuff. But the core of it is basically just making posters for the games that they're giving out. ⁓ And it's been pretty cool and pretty like I keep waiting for them to reject an idea, but they're like, no, sounds great. Good. You're good. Keep going. And I'm like, are you sure? Like the most recent one I threw out ⁓ is like a little bit avant garde. And I'm waiting for a response to be like

Matt Gregory (1:03:40) That's so cool.

Kirk Wallace (1:03:48) I don't really know if anyone's gonna really understand what you're doing here, but I think it's so sick and I think it's gonna be cool, so I'm hopeful that they're just gonna do the thumbs up thing is my hope.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:56) They're not rejecting it, they're alley-ooping it. Slam dunk.

Kirk Wallace (1:03:58) Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:03:58) There you go.

Kirk Wallace (1:03:59) ⁓

Matt Gregory (1:04:00) There you go. All right, Kirk. Well, ⁓ really nice to have you on and look forward to staying in touch. All right.

Kirk Wallace (1:04:09) Thanks guys.

Matt Gregory (1:04:13) Well, that was fun. I love that with Kirk.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:14) really yes that's great he he lived up to his name I have to say Kirk Wallace

Matt Gregory (1:04:21) Kirk Wallace. Yeah, so much energy and so inspired by the way that he follows his energy. ⁓ And I loved what he said about getting out in front of the work. Like there's so many images and I feel like, you know, while he recognized the enormity of AI, it just felt like he was saying like there's no way that could replace what he's doing because there's so much of him, so much human in what he does.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:53) Yeah, I mean it's a super hopeful approach and also I hope all those photo retouchers can get jobs.

Matt Gregory (1:05:03) Yeah. Yeah, it feels like it's gonna really restructure our whole job economy. ⁓ yeah, I mean, I was just having a very different conversation with some scientists in Boston about how grad student work is not really needed anymore because of AI. ⁓ And ⁓ so it's definitely shifting, but I think there's...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:15) Yeah. Yeah. Really?

Matt Gregory (1:05:34) There's hope in all of us being able to do more interesting work. That would be cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:39) I hope so, I hope so too. I hope so too. I mean, this isn't an AI podcast per se, but we can. I yeah. I loved what he was saying about the way, or a way ⁓ that you have to, creative people all want their work to stand on its own, and they wanna just be like, here it is, it's good.

Matt Gregory (1:05:46) Well, I'm a robot.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:08) people will want it, but you have to also present yourself, present your personality, show how easy and fun and engaging you are to work with. ⁓ Create a style that people can recognize. It's not just do good work. You have to present yourself and your... I mean, brand is just like a word that I'm like, eh. But like, just your style, your thing that you do.

Matt Gregory (1:06:44) Yeah, don't really buy the whole like personal brand thing. I don't think it's about a brand. think it's, you know, it's who you are. It's a human thing. It's not a brand thing. Brands are completely different. ⁓ And I think that that's like what you see. you know, there's something that I think about a lot, you know, personality is such a beautiful thing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:55) Yeah. personality.

Matt Gregory (1:07:12) And it's hard, like, you even with my consulting business, like I try to like, try to convey myself in words and images, and it's very hard to do. And so I really admire when somebody like Kirk, like knows himself super well. And then you go to his site and it's like, ⁓ I actually can get a a get a sense for this guy just by like reading his words and seeing his pictures. He's just that he's just so good at it. So ⁓ it's a real it's a real talent.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:07:36) Yeah. Yeah, like the, you know, he was describing too, like the, even in his time being on the scene the last 10, 20 years or whatever, like the digital landscape has changed and like he's, you know, grateful that he wouldn't have to start now, like it's changing around you. But like what we're describing, like you kind of just have to carry that through like whatever the environment is.

Matt Gregory (1:08:04) Yeah. Yeah. mean, I think somebody who's in their mid thirties, by virtue of the fact that they're in their mid thirties, they don't want to start again. Right. But there's a next generation of, I don't know, I don't wake up with quite the same pep in my step, but

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:08:14) Sure, yeah. Just the biological thing that happens, yeah. But like, you know, I mentioned briefly that my first piano teacher who moved like when he was 40, just like kind of started over. Like you can, you can start over. You just have to, and you know, some of the people that we've been talking to recently have, you know, not a hundred percent started over. It's just like you're using what you've learned and re, you know, applying it in a different place, in a different way, which can, you know,

Matt Gregory (1:08:31) Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:08:52) can change your environment pretty significantly, but it's just always about taking what serves you and leaving the rest. I don't wanna be too cliche, but it's.

Matt Gregory (1:09:04) Totally. No, no, but it's like it's it's it's ⁓ it's almost like building a like an electrical circuit like you're carrying the energy forward and like it's you know somebody like Kirk like you can see that he's he's operating so intuitively ⁓ you know so he's he's so connected to like what motivates him and and that's just a really a beautiful thing so yeah. I enjoyed that chat a lot and excited to share it with our audience. As always, ⁓ if you haven't yet, please subscribe, like the show on YouTube, ⁓ and share it with your friends. I think we're all about that human connection here. So there's nothing like that referral of the podcast that you've been enjoying listening to. So thanks so much. Slow and steady.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:09:39) Yeah. Slow and steady, slow and steady.

Matt Gregory (1:10:02) building something cool here. And yeah, thanks, Pat. Great to chat. Talk to you soon. Have a good one. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:10:08) Always great to chat, Matt.

Matt Gregory (00:13) Hello, Pat. Here we are, Trail Map. We're back.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:14) Woo! Hey Matt, we're back. Mappin' our way through the snow.

Matt Gregory (00:22) Yeah, yeah. Seriously, the snow is there like these little ant trails around our town. just walked, ⁓ walked down to the gym and we're like ducking into doorways of stores to let people pass. And it was, was pretty awesome. There's a lot of snow.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:44) It's a, ours is a little bit icy, crusty, because it's also very cold, I assume it's cold there. It's like you can't, you could maybe if you're, if you weigh the weight of a child, try to walk on top of it. But then all of a sudden you plunge into icy depths.

Matt Gregory (00:49) cold here too, Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's that's I've had that experience before this the snow in Boston right now is still pretty even though it's cold It's getting harder, but it when it fell initially it was like very very very fluffy ⁓ We still have a bit of that ⁓ Anyway, here we are in Trail Map the show where we talk to people about their paths through life and We have an exciting one today with

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:15) Yeah

Matt Gregory (01:29) who I've gotten to know a bit in the last six months and she is building a cool business. So we're going to talk to her about that business. It's called ANU. A N U. She gotcha. And yeah, I think it'll be a good conversation. It's.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:41) Can you spell that? Bet that's not what you thought, listeners.

Matt Gregory (01:55) It's helpful to talk to people that are in the midst of building something new, just inspiring. it's lot of work. So we appreciate her taking the time to chat with us.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:05) from whole cloth.

Matt Gregory (02:07) from Whole Cloth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I actually have my new, where's my camera? I have my new neck warmer here. I'm gonna let her explain the concept because it's, I am planning to reveal it to her in the middle of the show. Maybe I won't even announce that I'm putting it on. I'm just gonna take my headphones off and put on the neck warmer.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:11) ⁓ you have one? Okay, are you gonna model it for us at some point? You don't have to do it right now. Okay. good, okay. Just put, just do it silently. Put it on.

Matt Gregory (02:37) which is made of cashmere.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:37) This is how we draw people to YouTube from the streaming services.

Matt Gregory (02:41) Yeah, these kinds of ⁓ this great hot content. ⁓ Yesterday, I talked to ⁓ another guy who's going to be on the show in a couple weeks. ⁓ Kirk, who's an illustrator. ⁓ And he he's he's deep in well, he's actually just restarting his work on YouTube. ⁓ And what he does is teach illustration on YouTube and talk about his illustration projects. He's just doing a project right now for the Boston Celtics. ⁓ But he's worked with a lot of big brands, a lot of small brands, and he's an incredibly creative force. And his YouTube videos, I think he got 16,000 views on his video when he put it up, which is just like, I'm like, man, we need to learn from this guy. So we'll get there. Yeah, no kidding.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:11) Cool. Whoa. What is, I'll have what I'll have what he's having. Can I just say, Matt, that on your behalf, I have been really impressed and a little bit, not a little dismayed with how well the Celtics have been doing this year without Jayson Tatum. They've really pulled together. Jaylen Brown has been very impressive and just the whole thing. I think a lot of people are surprised.

Matt Gregory (03:47) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's funny, know, obviously like the stars sell tickets to these games, but team sports have teams for reasons. And when you have a team of professional athletes, you know, and I think the Patriots are another example of this. Like, you know, you don't have to be the best at everything. And if you, but if you play well together, you can beat a lot of other teams. ⁓ And ⁓ I think the Celtics, you know, yeah, I think a lot, you know, there's a lot going right for them in terms of the chemistry and like the, you know, the coaching and I kind of feel the same way about the Patriots. So it's a good, another good, I know it's annoying for non-Bostonians, but it's very entertaining for us.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:43) I mean, here they are again. In the bowl. The super bowl. This is a sports podcast.

Matt Gregory (04:56) It's a sports podcast. we, I watched the game on, on Sunday night when it was, I mean, it was snowing hard here. And then at one point in the, in the game, they showed like a split screen between Gillette stadium, which was getting completely like dumped on with snow. And then they showed the, the stadium that the game was happening in Colorado. And at that point, the storm hadn't started. But by the time the game was over, I mean, it was just like a complete whiteout. And like neither team could really effectively play the sport.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:35) Yeah, it's ridiculous that they're just like, yeah, we're still going to do it. To me, I don't know.

Matt Gregory (05:41) Yeah, I don't I kind of love that though because it's like It I mean as long as people aren't like getting injured like it brings everybody down to the same level in some ways

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:43) No it is, yeah it's cool. Right, I mean you don't know if somebody's gonna get injured until they get injured.

Matt Gregory (05:55) Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:57) I should also note by the way, it is a little, I'm sure this has been noted like a bajillion times, it's just a little comical to me that the Patriots quarterback Drake Maye is a Tar Heel, where Bill Belichick now resides at the helm. It's just funny. And in the wake of being snubbed by the Hall of Fame voters.

Matt Gregory (06:11) I know. I know. Yeah, it's... Yeah, Balachek did. I didn't actually read that. I didn't read that now.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:21) Belichick, you hear about this? He will not be a first ballot Hall of Famer because of politics? I don't know.

Matt Gregory (06:25) Yeah. He's I Have to say he's pretty unlikable. I try I really try to like him But I don't know but he's is I mean it's hard to argue with his coaching record. So This is funny. It's become a sports podcast ⁓ But anyway, it'll be good good chat today with Cristina and let's start that now

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:34) I think, yeah. Right. It is. Sorry. That's what we're doing today.

Matt Gregory (06:56) All right, here we are with Cristina. Thank you so much for coming on.

Cristina (07:00) Thanks for having me.

Matt Gregory (07:02) I guess maybe we could just start with a quick introduction of who you are, including maybe you can help us pronounce your last name, because I stumbled over that before.

Cristina (07:13) Yeah. All right. Well, I'm Cristina Marcalow rhymes with Buffalo. And I am the founder of ANU And you can remember how to say it because it's spelled A-N-U just by remembering it's better than new because we upcycle cashmere and turn it into athletic garments for the winner, primarily at this point, neck warmers.

Matt Gregory (07:19) And with

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:39) What a time. ⁓ look at Matt.

Cristina (07:41) ⁓ there's one. ⁓ Matt's got one.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:43) Everybody pop over to YouTube, see Matt. He's stylin'.

Matt Gregory (07:48) ⁓I love this thing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (07:51) Man, you look cozy. Where's mine? I need one.

Cristina (07:51) you I gotta get one to you!

Patrick Dyer Wolf (08:00) Here, just pass it right over.

Matt Gregory (08:00) ⁓ Awesome. Well, so I had to take my headphones off. So I kind of don't really, I can imagine what you said, but I don't really know ⁓ to get this neck warmer on. ⁓ what led you to ANU?

Cristina (08:17) Yeah, I... I came to ANU I'll just rewind a little bit before actually starting ANU to the point of where I was deciding to leave my other career path that I was on. ⁓ And... I had been in product management for a few years at that point. knew that I really loved the job, but I was really hungry to do my own thing. And hungry, I could feel a sense for myself that I wanted to be building something for myself and wanted the experience of being an entrepreneur. And my dad got unexpectedly sick with pancreatic cancer. And that just put a, my. threw my life into chaos in a lot of ways. And then I also had my second kid. And so there are all, all this upheaval kind of going through my life and kind of through those moments, I felt like I had an off ramp that like this is through this change and upheaval, like I can actually change the course right now. and so I, I left my job and I started thinking I want to start something and I had all these ideas for different businesses that I could start that I believed in. They were all connected to something that I truly believed in would be good for the world, good for community, and something that I could focus on. ⁓ And I was kind of stuck in this analysis paralysis phase for a while and feeling pretty overwhelmed. I had a young baby. It wasn't exactly clear how I was gonna move forward or which idea I would choose, which one was actually viable in the market. ⁓ And I ended up spending a day with a friend of mine who was also a young mother or mother of a young child. And we were just talking and spending the day together kind of more in a co-parenting way and talking about different business ideas. And I was also talking about how I was personally kind of going through my house and thinking about ways to reduce my own family's exposure to various toxins or just things that we could be doing in our household to kind of clean things up and that I was in a process of changing over some of my athletic wear to natural fibers. I was like, oh, I'm just getting into like, oh, I can actually run in a wool sweater instead of my polyester fleece. I was really excited about it. And I happened to be complaining with her about how I had this like secondhand sweater. It didn't fit quite right. And I couldn't find sports bras and there wasn't really a lot on the market. And she was like, well, take that sweater off. And she just cut into it and made me a sports bra. And I was like, .

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:55) Whoa. What?

Cristina (10:55) in 15 minutes with two babies on the bed, you know? So I like holding both the babies and she's sewing and then she came back, she was like, put this on and I had a sports bra and I ran in it the next day and I was like, amazing, I was on fire.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:08) Did she do it like the Grinch cuts out his Santa Claus suit just like right there? Like do do do do do do do do.

Cristina (11:14) Basically, yes. was, she, yes, she basically just cut out like, you would think like someone would draw a cartoon picture of a sports bra, she just did that. And then sewed it together and she's a phenomenal.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:23) Right.

Matt Gregory (11:24) Wow.

Cristina (11:28) sewist, a fashion designer and had worked with in upcycling before and so we actually had several conversations together after that and we started ANU together and we started making baby clothes kind of with the passion of natural fibers and upcycling and we started making clothes for babies and to toddlers ⁓ and it was really exciting to start this with her ⁓ and it kind of got me out of that analysis paralysis was like, well, I have energy here. I have someone to do this with. And so we went on that path together. And after our first big push, production push, and we came to market, and we kind of did a pause and a reflection, it just became clear to her that it wasn't going to kind of work for her and her family to keep going down the path. And so we were just going to close up shop. It was something we built together, our baby that we loved and made together. And through that,

Matt Gregory (12:15) Mm-hmm.

Cristina (12:26) process of close it, of deciding to, okay, this might not work well in this iteration. I just realized, I could feel inside me, I was like, I actually want to keep going here. The only problem is I don't know how to sew. And once I got myself, oh, it took me a minute to go, oh, this is just another problem, like any other problem, and I can solve for it. And once I got over the...

Matt Gregory (12:40) and

Cristina (12:50) roadblock thinking I could never do it by myself. ⁓ I realized our conversations changed from closing ANU to me buying ANU, buying her out and then kind of continuing on in my own fashion. And so that kind of led to ANU changing from a baby clothes brand. And then I went through a whole internal process of like, well now what am I doing and how do I sew and what product am I making? ⁓ And eventually led me to. neck warmers and making it more of an outdoors brand rather than ⁓ a kids brand.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (13:23) I love the amount of wordplay available with the ANU It's just always, it brightens up every sentence. I gotta say, you nailed it with the branding.

Cristina (13:33) And that was a product of our partnership. Nova and I drove around and had conversations, just brainstorming ideas. And at one point it clicked. I can have a very vivid tactile memory of the moment where we both went, that's it. And it's when we decided that we didn't have to spell it A-N-E-W. Something about spelling it A-N-E-W didn't feel quite right, but we were like, we can change the spelling. And it all of a sudden felt more like a brand name that we can inhabit and make our own.

Matt Gregory (14:01) So you've had to learn how to sew. What did you know how to do that's been helpful as you've been building this? Like you mentioned product management. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (14:11) What products were you managing, I always wanted to ask.

Cristina (14:14) Sure, my background is in EdTech. And so I came from EdTech roles in product management. And then my last role was managing the social studies portfolio at McGraw Hill. ⁓ And so that was more publishing, but across print and digital. ⁓ So very much not the garment industry or textiles. But in that role, I could feel how I loved my job as product manager. because I was getting to wear so many different hats and play a little bit of marketing and then step in and talk to the sales team and then go over and work with the content production team and then ⁓ go and talk to instructional designers and kind of step into all these different roles and I really loved that and I loved building relationships with all those different teams and being an expert in almost all of the domains as I managed the product. And I had the sense, was like, I think this is what being an entrepreneur is, is doing all the things. But instead of there being a team on the other side, it's just you. But you kind of have to do a little bit of everything. And so I think the training as product manager helped me. That's a skillset that I bring is being a jack of all trades and master of none. But now I'm having to be like, okay, have to master.

Matt Gregory (15:36) Yeah, I can relate.

Cristina (15:38) all these ⁓ pillars here, but I've dabbled in all of them. And before McGraw Hill being at the smaller ⁓ ed tech startups, actually did, there was nobody to write the marketing email, so I was writing the marketing email. ⁓ And so at those smaller companies, I actually did execute at more of the other functions beyond product manager. so I feel myself pulling on a lot of those skill sets, including the skill set of just sitting down and being like, I don't know how to do this exact thing, but I can learn and I can move forward without feeling entirely, ⁓ like I'm trained for it, but I can get there and make mistakes and learn from them and iterate at small cycles of iteration and get better and better.

Matt Gregory (16:24) Yeah, I'm wondering, and I don't mean to push you back to think about a sad time, but I'm wondering about like the moment of, you know, dealing with, both, you know, the intensity of being a new mom and also, ⁓ you know, with your dad's illness, how, how, how are those things motivating to you to like think about how you were spending your time?

Cristina (16:49) Hugely, the fact that they really overlapped so much. And I actually lost my mom not too long prior to having my first child. So between 2018 and 2024, so relatively short number of years, I lost both my parents and had both my babies. So a lot of birth and death, which just pushes you to think about, what are we on this planet to do?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:09) wow.

Cristina (17:17)⁓ At a time at a stage in life when we're not necessarily confronted. We're not always confronted with death so so much in our ⁓ 30s and our early parenting times, but it really made me think about how am I spending my time and life isn't all that long. I don't know how long we don't know how long we get and so it made me think a lot about how I was spending my time and what I wanted to do with the time that I have. ⁓ Specific, you know, that's what. Sitting with the death will bring what it brought to me. And then having kids layering on there, I wanted to show my kids how to be courageous and believe in yourself and enact that. I had a lot of fear leaving a very stable career path, one that was very comfortable. And there was nothing wrong with it. I loved my job, I loved my coworkers. There was nothing there that was explicitly wrong, except that it wasn't what I wanted to be doing on this planet Earth. And making that big jump was a challenge, but it was something I wanted to show my kids that I had the courage to do. And as they grow into themselves, I wanted them to know they had a mom that did that. And I don't know where this path is going, but I wanted that to be a part of our family story and to be able to show that to them.

Matt Gregory (18:42) Yeah, thanks for sharing that with us.

Cristina (18:45) Yeah. Thank you.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (18:46) I don't want to insert myself too much, but I relate so much. I lost my dad to pancreatic cancer just 10 years ago, last week, this week. And also had my first kid that year in 2016. yeah, mean, I think, if anything is going to make you reflective.

Cristina (18:57) I'm sorry. ⁓Wow.

Matt Gregory (19:16) Ha

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:16) It's that. ⁓ Just kind of think about like. how you wanna use your energy and how you want to be an example. And ⁓ I think it's really inspiring what you're doing with that moment.

Cristina (19:38) Yeah, well first of all, I just wanna say I'm sorry for your loss and also, you know, just empathize so much with you with, yeah, having the birth and your loss of your father happen at the same time. It's just a big thing, so thank you for sharing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:52) Yeah.

Cristina (19:53) I went through a process of learning how to sew and then figuring out what I was going to make and ended up with upcycled cashmere neck warmers. I was really, I'm going to double down on this and I decided to focus on this one product. And then went through a process personally of designing that product. What is it going to be? What is how, what are the patterns? So I ended up making like four or five different patterns.and then started doing a process of myself doing a couple production runs. What does it mean to make five of these in a sitting or 10 of these? How can I start doing this not just as one-off crafts, but as a scale?

Matt Gregory (20:36) Can you tell us a little bit more about your product decisions? ⁓cashmere, like why cashmere? Why neck warmers? How does it work? Tell us how it works.

Cristina (20:48) to work.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (20:48) And where'd you... How does it work? And where'd you get all the sweaters?

Matt Gregory (20:52) Yeah.

Cristina (20:54) Let's get to that piece. I'll answer, how do you get to cashmere neck warmers? Because it did feel like I was a crazy person, alone. Then I was like, what is ANU now that I'm by myself? I spent hours alone in the studio and just, you go into your mind, your mind just goes places. But that process ⁓ led me to realize that... I love my children, I love my identity as a mom, but that selling baby clothes was not probably something that I wanted to do with longevity. It didn't feel like an eternal part of me. I didn't want to be selling baby sweaters 10 years from now. And the core part of who I am, or one core part of who I am, something that has persisted over years for me, is that I'm an outdoors athlete. I ski, I... run, I rock climb, I mountain bike, whatever it is I'm doing, I'm outside, I'm pushing myself in the wilderness. that's how I came to natural fibers in the first place, was I was trying to replace my polyester Patagonia fleece with a wool sweater. And that's how I got there anyway. So I kind of went back to that, which was the core for me around being an athlete. So I thought, how can I bring natural fibers into the athletic space? This is a place that I feel natural in. I feel comfortable imagining myself going into gear shops because I know these people, I know these spaces. This feels like a place I can step into comfortably. And also I feel responsible for this community. This is a place where I feel like I can contribute something and contribute to the conversation and the culture that we're building as outdoors people. So that answers kind of the outdoors question. Now, neck warmers, that was almost a product of...well, what can I sew? And really you take a rectangle and you fold it and then you sew the tube together and you flip it inside out. It's a fairly simple sewing project. But once I thought about that, then it actually had all these other production benefits to it. It's a one size fits all product, which makes it easy for retail and for online sales. ⁓I also can, it is a standard, because it's one size, it's standardized and I'm taking all these non-standard inputs from my cashmere sweaters and I'm trying to make a standard product. So having a very standard product is actually helpful to rein in the chaos that is upcycling. ⁓ And yeah, so neck warmers just seem like a natural fit. It's also a place where natural fibers matter. ⁓ If we're thinking about.our personal exposure to microplastics and there's a growing body of research telling us that we might want to consider that exposure more than we have in the past. ⁓ But it's right by our respiratory tract. So we that benefit as well. It's where we're like up next to our nose and our mouth. We're breathing through the garment often. So I had all these cascading benefits once I was like, ⁓ I can sew it and there's all these other things that make this a really good product to focus on. So I dialed in. on neck warmers. ⁓ And then why cashmere? ⁓ Cashmere is a natural fiber and so similar to wool, it wicks moisture, it stays warm when it's wet. The thing that I love about it for this product is it's ⁓ also thin. So the wool products that I was looking at in the upcycling space were coming in a wide array of thickness, like thin. ⁓ really chunky vintage wool sweaters. The cashmere upcycling supply tends to be a bit more uniform. They ⁓ vary in thickness, but the variation is much less. ⁓ And because it's so soft, it's just an incredibly soft fiber. It's actually known in the marketplace as a luxury fiber because it is so soft.It's just great around your face. And that's what made it great for baby clothes as well. You want to put your baby in a cashmere sweater and you want to put cashmere around your face, it just feels fantastic. But it has all the qualities that makes wool a really high performing ⁓ athletic fiber ⁓ as well. And we just aren't used to seeing cashmere in the athletic context, but it works just the same. This thing will like shed ice.

Matt Gregory (25:06) ⁓

Cristina (25:16) ⁓ bead up moisture and repel it. It just feels really great in a winter storm capacity. It's really a high performing fiber ⁓ and it's just so soft. It's amazing.

Matt Gregory (25:25) Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's good.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:26) It's low yield per goat I'm reading here. That's what lot of what leads to the... Well, it's very soft, but also it's expensive because it's relatively rare and you don't get a lot per goat that it comes off of. It's hard work to get the cashmere.

Matt Gregory (25:37) softness.

Cristina (25:39) with a luxury.

Matt Gregory (25:49) I was gonna ask Cristina where it comes from. I did not know that it came from goats. That's cool.

Cristina (25:53) Yes.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:54) That's what the internet's telling me right now.

Matt Gregory (25:57) ⁓ I just want to quickly ⁓ add, like I'm not paid by Cristina to make these statements, but it is very soft. I mean, everybody knows cashmere is soft, but I will say since I spoke with Cristina about this initially, like yesterday or two days ago, I did a lot of shoveling at our house and I wore a cashmere sweater as like a layer under my jacket. And it's like phenomenal.

Cristina (25:57) Yeah, and go ahead.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:08) Yet.

Matt Gregory (26:27) ⁓ as a layer and even as you get sweaty, it keeps you warm. ⁓ And so it's kind of magical. this neck warmer I've worn a lot running and it's been really a good, it's worked really well.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:45) This

Cristina (26:46) Awesome.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:46) is so applicable right now too because it's like five degrees out in the Northeast and I've been walking my kids to school and being like, I should have gotten like a scarf or something or like even like a COVID mask can do something. like, I need to get one, And also I was just telling Matt before we started that I, ⁓ no, sorry, I was telling my brother-in-law before this.

Matt Gregory (26:50) Yeah. Yeah.

Cristina (27:04) Thank

Patrick Dyer Wolf (27:15) I've been in a real purge mode, I think, since even before the new year of just getting rid of so many clothes. ⁓ And it's easy to go down a whole rabbit hole of what do we do systemically? But we're such a disposable society. We're like, ⁓ we're done with this thing, let's throw it out. ⁓ And I think...

Matt Gregory (27:22) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (27:44) This is just such a nice, maybe tri-ven diagram of things where it's it's really functional, it's really soft, it really does the job, keeps you warm. It's not plastic, it's natural, it's an organic material and it's reusing something that's come to the end of its use. ⁓ And I think few things are that. I don't know.

Cristina (28:15) That's awesome to hear you say, wanna join my marketing team? And I struggle actually with those overlapping value props, if you will, because which one do I focus on? Where do I emphasize? And even like designing the packaging, it's a process. What is the font that's the biggest? What word do I put in the biggest font here? Is it upcycled? Is it cashmere? What do people care the most about?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:19) Sure. Hmm.

Cristina (28:44) And I'm learning people care about different things. so I'm still not sure how to answer that question. But yeah, there are all these different ways to come at and interact with a product, which is part of why I love it. I love all the different angles here. So let's make it go.

Matt Gregory (29:00) Cool. So you take these, this goat, well, first of all, you're not going to the goats, you're going to the thrift stores, right? What does the sourcing look like?

Cristina (29:06) That's right. right. I didn't, I didn't go back to the sourcing question, right? So, ⁓ Nova and I drove around the thrift stores and bought sweaters that after a couple of days, we're like, this is not going to work. It is time consuming. We even thought about how to offload it, like pay somebody, like, is there a way in which we're paying somebody to do this? And the math would not support that. ⁓ and so we started looking for different, ⁓ supply lines and

Matt Gregory (29:18) Mm-hmm.

Cristina (29:39) So I work with a textile recycler and it might be interesting to know that a lot of the donation boxes that you see in parking areas and like parking lots or like at small businesses, you might see them around your community. Those get rounded up and collected and then brought to like a central sorting place. And then that place has a team of sorters and they're going through.

Matt Gregory (29:43) Mm.

Cristina (30:06) all the various inputs they receive from those boxes, much of what has reached the end of its functional life, some of which is very high end garments that people have thrown out. So they have a team of people sorting and then those get kind of distributed out into different parts of the economy and the world. So they'll, from that central location, kind of get.

Matt Gregory (30:13) Mm-hmm.

Cristina (30:29) put on container ships and shipped elsewhere around the world to be sold as clothing or as inputs for a manufacturing process. ⁓ They get sold to thrift stores, they get sold to ⁓ soundproofing panel makers who chop up, you know, really worn out cotton t-shirts and make soundproofing material, things like that. I, that's where I go.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (30:44) Cool. I need some of that actually if you could put me in touch with those people.

Cristina (30:55) It's really an interesting world to step into, but one thing they serve for is cashmere, and so I'm able to buy cashmere ⁓ from that supply line.

Matt Gregory (31:05) That's cool. ⁓ And then, yeah, and obviously that ⁓ reduces the amount of like, you know, going and hunting in thrift stores for sweaters that you can use.

Cristina (31:18) Correct, it also puts me, it gives me 100 % cashmere as opposed to the thrift store route. I was looking for, it's hard to find one standard product. You're sorting through so much at a thrift store and a lot of what you'll come across is a blend of even mohair and cashmere and wool. That's an awesome sweater. That's personally one of my favorite sweaters is it includes a blend of natural fibers and I love it. But in terms of creating a standard product, now the fiber contexts are different.

Matt Gregory (31:29) Yeah. Yeah.

Cristina (31:48) So that supply line really gave me ⁓ the consistent supply, but also the fact that it's all 100 % cashmere has turned out to be really helpful and meaningful.

Matt Gregory (31:58) Yeah, yeah, cool. So I guess maybe to switch gears a little bit, like to what it looks like for you to actually run this business. Like, can you tell us like how you're spending your time right now? And I know you're balancing this with your life. So I'm wondering like what that looks like.

Cristina (32:08) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm wanting to spend a good amount of time with my kids. And so this is a balancing act ⁓ between letting the business grow naturally as it fits in my life and also being clear about, okay, this is a day that I have with my daughter and I'm gonna be present and focused on it. ⁓ But when I have, when there is a ball that I can move forward on one of those days easily, like running to the post office quickly with her doesn't detract too much from the day. ⁓but I can otherwise be present with her, but I'm not on my phone all the time. So yeah, that's a balancing act and knowing where to draw the line, the boundaries between personal and family life and work life is a, you know, it's something I'm constantly thinking about. ⁓ But functionally, I'm working in the studio Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and my daughter, both my kids are in childcare those days. ⁓ And so those are studio days and then. As needed, I am also taking, since those are the only days that I have ⁓ no children at home with me, those are my days to do sales missions as well. So today I had to go restock a shop in Vermont, and so I was out on the road, so that's time when I'm not actively in the studio ⁓ taking photographs of product or pushing the production system along.⁓ And then when I'm able to be there, kind of doing the things that I need to do to make things go and then using that time wisely to do the sales missions. I found that being in person is huge in terms of ⁓ that sales job. My attempts at cold outreach did not work. Nobody wants to like talk to you on the phone or answer an email. so I know that it's worth it for me to get in the car and drive and just walk in and be like, look at this awesome product that I have and that that's really working for me. So yeah, it's just about balancing ⁓ all the needs of the business and the family. And obviously I pick up the slack for our family if there's a snow day.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:01) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (34:23) Mm-hmm.

Cristina (34:23) It just is what it is, and so I have to kind of consistently kind of reaffirm my mindset that the business will grow as it's able to within the context of my family. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:35) So your kids are young. How old are they?

Cristina (34:37)

One and a half, I have to stop saying one and a half. She's going to be two in April, almost two. And, ⁓ my eldest is just about to turn five. His birthday is next week.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:42) Hoof. Yeah. wow, that's great. I have a friend, we have a friend, ⁓ I forget what, this is probably a long time ago, articulated this way, but just like having young kids and trying to do your thing also. It's like when you have, it really brings into focus the, when you have available time, it's like, okay, I have to do the thing now. And you're like, just. You know rather as opposed to like if you just say lived alone and you woke up and you're like, what should I do? It's like no now I have to do the things that I need to do And that that can be like having less time to do things can be motivating in that way even though it's limiting and I guess I'm always I'm curious to always to understand how other people structure or like go at their available time in that type of context. Personally, I've recently been mapping out my day like they used to structure high school. Like we're doing math here, we're doing social studies here, we're doing this. But I'm just curious if you have a specific method, like do you have one big to-do list? Do you have like a few and you pull from them? Like how do you go about filling that precious available time?

Cristina (36:20) Yeah, have, my brain wants the schedule you're describing. It wants to be like, this is when I exercise and this is when the morning routine happens. And this is like, I want the block schedule for my life. We can't do that as a family. My husband's an architect and his work will give him a lot of flexibility some days and then not other days where he'll have to be gone for several days in a row for like work related things. so I can't nail down a week schedule. but from that becomes, think, I feel like right now our family is in a great place of, moving through that flexibility, ⁓ and carving out time for all the things that need to happen, but it is not on a set schedule. is it by on a day by day basis. I think what's been helping me in terms of the work context is thinking. Having a theme for. beyond a particular day, like a month type time span where I'm like, my focus right now is sales. The holiday push, right? I was like, I need to get as many neck warmers out into the market as possible and I am not picking my foot off the sales pedal. ⁓ And it was production, so.

Matt Gregory (37:22) Hmm.

Cristina (37:41) going through Thanksgiving, because I didn't have ton of, I didn't have stacks going into Thanksgiving and Christmas season. We were making them and selling them. And so it was just like hardcore, focusing on production and me driving and selling as much as I can around Vermont. ⁓ And then coming back, it's been now taking my foot off that pedal and thinking, okay, how do we refine production processes? How do I find new sales channels? And that's kind of a focus for the next, you know, that's been my focus for the next month and a half. And I've, so that has led me to prioritize Instagram ads and I'm learning about that and spending my, but I'm choosing to spend my time more on that than I am on driving around. I'm not continuing to drive around to different ski. I learned a lot already from driving around to ski shops. I know how that sales channel works. Now I'm learning about how the Instagram sales channel works. ⁓ so I think just having like a bigger focus. helps me prioritize things. ⁓ And then I use to-do lists. Yes, I do use to otherwise, because something, even though it might not be directly related to the exact, the bigger focus that I have for whatever month I'm in, there are certain things that invoice still has to go back out or I still need to like restock the person who ran out. So I do use to-do lists to do that and have my own like organization systems to like rein it all in.

Matt Gregory (38:43) Mm-hmm.

Cristina (39:07) I don't know, did I answer your question?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (39:09) Yeah, I mean, we could probably have a beer about this for like two hours, but yes. ⁓

Cristina (39:14) Thank

Matt Gregory (39:14) Yeah, I think it's interesting though. Like, I mean, I think if you work at a big company, there's a whole process and at least in the bigger companies I've worked in, like there's a whole process of like every year you go through the strategy planning process where you're thinking like three to five years out, what are the things we're going to do? And then right after that, you go through the operating plan process where you're like, okay, in the next year, how are we going to, you know, do the pieces of what we need to do in the in the three to five year process. And I think what I'm hearing from you, and I feel this exact same thing in my own life right now, like ⁓ your strategy plan, like you've got, you've got like some constraints, not, they're not even constraints, they're commitments that you've made to like your children, to your husband, to your family, to your, you know, exercise, like whatever those things are. And then you've got, And depending on the person, like those are those are negotiable or not. And then and then you've got like, you know, the the rest of everything that you want to be doing and you're filling your time doing those things. You're prioritizing like on a monthly basis. OK, this is the focus of the month. Yeah, so that's all feeling familiar. I think I guess one thing that I've been thinking about lately is like when you step back from that, you're really busy like Do you have like a an articulation for yourself of like what success looks like? Like what do you what do you have to do to know that this is like going to work for you?

Cristina (40:48) That's a great question. guess the zooming out beyond the month to month focuses that I've been talking about, think my broader goal for this year is to learn as much as I can about each pillar of the business. So production, can I scale up cycling? ⁓ And so focusing on that, that was kind of. October, let's say September, October, ⁓ working on coming up with those systems. So that's a pillar. There's the production pillar. There's the sales pillar, there's marketing and there's, operations. And so by changing my focus, ⁓ kind of with each little chapter, I'm just hoping to build up the body of knowledge that I have around the business. And then my, my success.

Matt Gregory (41:41) Mm-hmm.

Cristina (41:45) Like, I be, like, it'll be successful to me if, let's say by March, by the spring, early spring, if I can take everything that I've learned from all of those pillars and all of those focuses and say, is this a viable path? Is this continuing to feel viable or what will make it viable? ⁓ Because we're still so early. So getting to the point where I can,

Matt Gregory (42:09) What does viable mean?

Cristina (42:11) Yeah. Understand like, the numbers really work? Am I going to be able to scale this to the point where I'm not just making, pulling money for myself, but able to grow the business and operate at a place where I have a couple of employees, you know, you don't set, you have to sell a lot of this one product in order to make the business work in order to fund the studio and, and, and, ⁓ you know, make it work. So. If by the springtime, that's kind of the success that I'm targeting towards at this moment, ⁓ is yeah, to just learn as much as I can to be able to confidently answer those questions and be like, it, am I gonna go through another cycle? Am I gonna kind of keep going down this? Am I gonna reinvest and kind of pursue this?

Matt Gregory (42:43) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:58) When did you start?

Cristina (43:00) About this time last year, Nova and I were getting started. We had already gone through the like magical sports bra making moment. Oh, by the way, I didn't even mention this. When she did that, she then took the scraps from my sweater and made my baby pants. So I went home with a sports bra and baby pants from one sweater. You guys, was a magical moment. It was so cool. Okay, but yeah, she's so skilled. So there's that, that.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (43:17) Bra and a pants? Wow.

Matt Gregory (43:21) Wow, to have real skills.

Cristina (43:27) And then we were actually getting started about in January of 25.

Matt Gregory (43:31) Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (43:33) Okay, got it.

Matt Gregory (43:35) So I guess, like, because this podcast is focused on, like, ⁓ life paths and life choices, like, I'm wondering, like, I know, I get that there's a whole business viability question, but in terms of, Cristina's life, like, what does ANU do for you?

Cristina (43:54) man, that's a, so in terms of success and, like feeling like, is this the right path or does this feel right for me? ⁓ I had a moment in the fall where I came back from one of those sales missions and I had gone into the several ski shops and it's not, those are not easy conversations to go and be like, will you buy the thing that I made to somebody who's just, you know, running their ski shop? but I came back from that and I felt so energized. I was just like, I love my product.

Matt Gregory (44:00) Yeah.

Cristina (44:23) I love talking about it. really believe in it. I feel good about being in this space. And I texted my husband and I said, I want to, this is my job. I want this so badly to be my job. And I have felt that in the studio too, just like working out kinks in the production system.

Matt Gregory (44:35) Yeah, yeah.

Cristina (44:43) and prototyping new products or just getting down to work and like, and laying out the designs for 50 designs. And that feels good as well. So I'm feeling for me, I'm getting that sense of varied, a varied work life where I get to use a lot of different muscles. I get to be creative. I get to be precise. ⁓ I get to dabble in a lot of different modes of thinking and being. All of that really works well for who I am as a person. ⁓ And days when I'm working, I, on the whole, feel just energized and good about it. And I knew that from my experience as product manager that I would love that type of work, because as a product manager, that's kind of what you're doing. And now that I'm layering in the fact that I truly, 100 % believe in my product, it does everything that I personally would hope for and want.

Matt Gregory (45:26) Yeah.

Cristina (45:40) for from a job.

Matt Gregory (45:42) That's super cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:42) Do you ever, ⁓ I don't know if exactly miss is the word I'm looking for, but do you ever yearn for the sort of like structure or lack of total personal accountability that your old job had or elements of it?

Cristina (46:02) Oh man, sure there are times where it's the fact that somebody else was managing or responsible for the financial tracking, right? Somebody else owned that and I would participate in that. The weight of the responsibility was distributed.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:23) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (46:30) Mm-hmm.

Cristina (46:30) in a bigger context and so yeah, so that ⁓ now the weight is feels really on me and that feels like a lot of pressure. I also miss, I don't have thought partners always. And so a friend might just ask me how I'm doing and then it's like, actually 20 minutes later you didn't mean to like, now it's a board meeting. I actually just needed a CEO session, thank you. So yeah, there are times when I, ⁓ yeah, they're

Matt Gregory (46:48)

What do you know about marketing?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:53)

Yeah.

Cristina (46:59)

things that you just miss when you're not a part of a bigger company. All hands meetings that are like a thousand people big and you're anonymously on a Zoom call and can just bang out an hour's worth of dishes. That was really nice. I don't get that. Yeah, I just like positioned the laptop so I can see whoever's screen sharing at the time and just scrub away at my pans. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:16)

Yeah. You're like, I'm at work right now.

Cristina (47:28)

No, I don't get to do that anymore.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:30)

So you do,

I mean, obviously, you alluded to, you do do the bookkeeping and all that kind of stuff, everything, or have you outsourced any of that?

Cristina (47:42)

outsourced to QuickBooks. Yeah, I'm responsible for that. I'm not working with an accountant. I do have some people who can advise me, ⁓ but yeah, it's on me right now.

Matt Gregory (47:43)

Hehehe.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:45)

Yeah.

I,

yeah, I gotta say, so like I, for our, I'm a musician, and for our band I've been doing, I'm the QuickBooks guy. I gotta say it's really interesting to me now, accounting, and just like thinking about any business situation now, I'm thinking about like, nah, I'd really like to get a look at their books, just to see. I think it might just be that I'm 40, like.

Cristina (48:02)

Nice.

Matt Gregory (48:07)

Mm-hmm.

Take a look at the P&L, that old P&L.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:20)

It's just interesting to me now to think about it through that lens, because I've had to do it now for years. it's kind of boring from 30,000 feet, but it's really like, it's kind of everything. How does it all fit together? ⁓ I don't know if you feel that way, but that's how I feel.

Cristina (48:41)

Absolutely.

Yeah, well, I'm waiting for the moment where I'm gonna be able to, I haven't even really had the head space to dive into the numbers from November, December into January, but I'm waiting for the moment to like dig in, because to your point, that's where the story is. ⁓ And so ⁓ I'm looking forward to taking that time to really spend a lot of time with the numbers and see what story they're telling. I also developed a sense of cogs over the summer.

⁓ cost of goods sold. ⁓ that was theoretical. I was like, that was back of the napkin and I've just been running with it. And I actually feel like it's fairly good. ⁓ it's fairly close, but I got to .... I need to, now I have so much more data at the time. It was like how much I could spend so much time analyzing cogs, but I actually haven't made more than 20 of these things. Now I've made.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (49:16)

cost of goods sold.

Matt Gregory (49:27)

Evening.

Cristina (49:42)

several hundred and I can really go in and figure out how much cashmere is being used, how much time is being spent on each step of the process. And so now going through process of refining that, comparing that to cost, I'm really excited to dig into those numbers. It takes time. In companies, that's like a whole job is to do that work. So I need to carve out that time and make that my focus for a minute. And I'm looking forward to doing it.

Matt Gregory (49:49)

Yeah.

I also think that in my experience with launching products, you really don't want to look at the numbers too quickly because the beginning is just expensive and it's not really reflective of where you can get. And I think for you, there's an emotional... You need to maintain the emotional momentum too that you've got going. And so... ⁓

Cristina (50:32)

Hmm.

Matt Gregory (50:35)

You know, early in the conversation, you talked about like self doubt and, you know, questions like that. And honestly, the vibe that I'm getting from you in this conversation is that you're, you're, you're got, you got some good momentum, but like, how are you dealing with the, emotional side of like keeping going?

Cristina (50:53)

Mmm.

Yeah, I feel excited to keep going. ⁓ Do you mean, yeah, the kind of identity as like CEO or like self, yeah, like kind of questioning myself, that kind of thing? ⁓ Yeah, there are times where ⁓ that voice can come in and ⁓ say various,

Matt Gregory (51:13)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Cristina (51:25)

negative things to me from within myself. ⁓ What a jerk. Including that these are just neck warmers. Who cares about neck warmers? But then I go into a ski shop and I'm like, there's actually a lot of neck warmers here. This is a product in the market. But there's so many places and times I can doubt ⁓ myself, including I'm not a sewer. What am I doing making a product that requires sewing? And then I remind myself a ton of business. This is

Matt Gregory (51:28)

at church.

Cristina (51:52)

an odd business in that it ⁓ is built on a craft, but the lady who started Swell Water Bottles was not like at her home being an expert water bottle maker and then started the water bottle company. I'm sorry, I can't remember her name off the top of my head. ⁓ But she figured out how to get it manufactured and then brought it to market. Are you saying her name? Do you know it? I listened to her How I Built This episode. ⁓

Matt Gregory (52:10)

Sure.

I said I'm sure she's lovely.

Okay.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:19)

nice.

Cristina (52:20)

But I just have to remind myself it's okay that I am not a lifelong sewer and that I'm going down this path. So ⁓ I do have those voices coming in and I have to sit with them and ⁓ talk to myself about them. But I truly believe so much in the product and in ⁓ the broader idea of just pushing on

cracks in the dominant culture that says we need more plastic stuff, and in particular that we need new synthetic garments to be outdoors, I get excited about pushing and introducing little cracks into that mindset. And I'm not here to say that we ⁓ don't use synthetics ever and we don't buy new products ever, but can we consider ways of

introducing new ways of thinking into the outdoors industry. And that really fuels me and keeps me going. It's a little bit of a rebellious streak, frankly, that kind of ⁓ will help me overcome some of those moments that are a bit more wobbly.

Matt Gregory (53:29)

Yeah, that makes sense.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:30)

I love

that mindset about creating cracks ⁓ because thinking about a huge issue or about ⁓ trying to change something big can be very frustrating and like where would you even start? There's no way we're gonna get rid of synthetic materials or whatever but it's just like...

introduce an alternative, see what happens. ⁓ And I think it's, you a lot of people might have an idea like that and just be like, well, it would never work. And it's like, well, maybe. And I think you can apply that to a lot of different situations, not just selling products, like, you know, kind of talking to myself here too, but just like, you know.

if you're up against something ⁓ that seems like it couldn't be changed, it's always good to remember that things are always changing and will continue to change. the way they change is up to how we change them.

Cristina (54:47)

That's right. And the scale of the problem is so big. the fact that the amount of products coming into this country every single day on container ships makes me nauseous. I think about that when I go to the recycling place where I get my cashmere, I stand there and I look at everything in the waste stream. They're receiving 50,000 pounds of textiles a day.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:02)

Crazy.

Cristina (55:15)

And I said that the volume of just that waste stream is nauseating. It's awesome in the biblical sense of the word. And then I think about the warehouses that are receiving new products. that scale is so big. to think about affecting any sort of change on an individual level with a problem that is so massive is debilitating.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:24)

Right.

Cristina (55:44)

but finding ways that we can make impact. And then even noticing that even if it's just with this for me, having the neuroplasticity at this age in my life being like, I don't have to wear, I've been running in polyester fleece for decades. I can change that. Like I can think about something differently with my brain and like introduce a new way of thinking that in and of itself is a win.

And then the fact that it's incrementally better for the planet at a scale that has no actual, that doesn't make any difference. It doesn't matter. It did change how my brain is thinking and how I perceive the world and helps me step outside of a ⁓ marketing message that I received from the world. I grew up into the outdoors world being told you have to have synthetic materials to be safe outside.

Matt Gregory (56:32)

Mm-hmm.

Cristina (56:40)

⁓ And then questioning that and going, I can step outside of that. I can question it. can, that even just has a personal impact on me. And then the broader, the impact on the broader ⁓ culture is, there as well, but getting caught up in the scale, it's, it can be overwhelming.

Matt Gregory (57:00)

Yeah, I think the cracks are great metaphor ⁓ for what you're trying to do and trying to change big things. And it's very exciting. And I think, know, as somebody who's aligned with kind of the mission of what you're trying to do and seeing, you're delivering like a product that actually delivers on because there are I think there are a lot of examples of better for the planet products that suck.

⁓ you know, from a usability perspective. ⁓ And so it's exciting to see something that checks a lot of those boxes, but actually also delivers on quality from a customer user experience perspective. You know, just in the interest of trying to like distill things that could be helpful for listeners to the podcast, like, what would you tell someone else who's thinking about starting something, you know, mission driven or starting something like like what you're doing with ANU ?

Cristina (58:01)

Yeah, I think you mentioned time, that product development takes time and at first costs money. And I think just allowing yourself some space to explore ideas and prototype ⁓ and knowing you're not going to get to the right. I felt so much pressure to make the right neck warmer quickly and then they're all coming out weird at first. It's like deep in the depths of despair. But I think just

acknowledging iteration and ⁓ giving time ⁓ is important.

knowing that each step along the process feels totally, it feels like a crisis. Like how will we ever get, how will I ever be able to like get production scaled or how will I ever get this product to hang on a shot? How am going to get a hang in on the shop in the market? It felt like a crisis to create my cardboard packaging, but moving through each.

Matt Gregory (58:56)

Which is so nice.

Cristina (59:00)

thank you. Yes, the cardboard

packaging really brings it together.

Matt Gregory (59:03)

You crushed the packaging, unboxing

experience. I should do an unboxing video of ANU.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:08)

I gotta see the cardboard packaging, because I wasn't already admiring how you put them on the rocks. The rocks are good.

Cristina (59:14)

That was

another one, photographing the product for the website. I was like, getting product photography, getting the white background to be uniform, getting the product to have the light on it. All of, every single step along the way felt so hugely impossible at the start of it, but then working through. ⁓

Matt Gregory (59:17)

Yes.

Cristina (59:36)

you'll just unlock the doors. The doors will unlock with time and effort. And if you know how to use your resources, whether it's the internet or a friend that you can call up, I called up a friend who knew how to do product photography and he helped me and I still, my photo studio is still literally duct taped together. It's not, but he gave me enough that I needed to get the product coming together, the product shots coming together.

But use the resources you have and let yourself make mistakes. ⁓ The doors will unlock even if they feel totally, totally closed to you at the moment. There is a way to unlock each door and just keep knocking. Yeah, keep trying to find new ways to open the door. If it's not the internet, then a friend. If it's not a friend, then just trial and error and prototyping, but there is a way. Yeah, I think that's what I got right now.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:29)

You can.

can phone a friend, it's one of your three lifelines.

Matt Gregory (1:00:36)

Absolutely. ⁓ Cool. Well, Cristina, thank you so much. And I guess before we wrap up here, can you just share where people can find ANU if they want to check one out or buy one?

Cristina (1:00:36)

you

Great. My website is made-anu.com. M-A-D-E-A-N-U.com. I'm also on Instagram, anu.social. ⁓ So check us out.

Matt Gregory (1:01:05)

Hmm. Cool. And then you've got some

retail locations that are like we talked about the one in Vermont.

Cristina (1:01:10)

We do, yes. So if you're in

the Northeast, ⁓ I'm at ski shops kind of around Vermont. I'm at, at Berkshire East, which is in Massachusetts. There's a few shops. ⁓ The Norse House is by Stratton. ⁓ Mount Snow Ski Works is a great new ski shop at the base of Mount Snow.

I'm at a couple snowboard shops, Invasion Snowboards, also at the base of Mount Snow, and Darkside at Killington. Basecamp is a backcountry ski shop at the base of Killington. They also carry ANU. I'm not getting everybody on the list. The Boot Pro at Okemo they ⁓ were one of the first people to actually respond to an email, and I was like, okay, I can, this is a door I can go through.

So shout out to Boot Pro. ⁓ So yeah, different ski shops around outer limits here in Greenfield is my favorite show.

Matt Gregory (1:02:11)

Wow, that's awesome. You've

got a real network starting to grow. yeah, as in ANU owner, I say get one. Like they're warm, they're really good. And I have worn it skiing too. It's also just a phenomenal ski season. So there you go.

Cristina (1:02:15)

Yeah.

Get one! ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:29)

Matt, I like

Cristina (1:02:29)

It

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:29)

the...

Cristina (1:02:29)

is, it is such a good ski season. we are so lucky.

Matt Gregory (1:02:31)

Yeah.

Yeah. It's snowing.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:33)

finally is snowing again.

Matt, you look dignified in the ANU. I think it's your new vibe. Some people just wear a scarf casually inside. I think this is you.

Matt Gregory (1:02:38)

⁓ thank you.

Yeah, yeah, we, we are big neck warmer fans in our family and ⁓ Will my my seven year old son he's in second grade he like he does not take his neck warmer off like all winter. So, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's comforting. Yeah, then you're like god I I need to, I need to close my neck.

Cristina (1:03:01)

It really is a cozy feeling. Once you get used to having it, you want your neck held.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:03)

living that cozy life.

Matt Gregory (1:03:12)

⁓ Cool. Well, Cristina, it's been such a pleasure to have you on. I think you're such an inspiration. I'm psyched for you about what you're doing. ⁓ And I think it's just, you know, keep going.

Cristina (1:03:20)

Thank you.

Thank you, thanks for having me. This was really fun to talk with you guys. I really appreciate the opportunity and the chance to just sit down and chat with you. It was really nice.

Matt Gregory (1:03:28)

Yes.

Yeah, for sure. Cool. All right.

Well, that was such a pleasure having Cristina on. I feel like she's in the thick of creating something new and ANU, and she's doing an amazing job with it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:46)

She's doing it. think she, it's like at a really interesting phase, because she's only a year in. So she's like totally up and running. mean, her web presence is fantastic. She's selling products, but it's just been a year. It's like still, it was just born. And so, I mean, it's really exciting, inspiring, I don't know, whatever other words.

Matt Gregory (1:04:03)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I've worked so I've worked a fair amount in like consumer goods and mostly the companies that I've worked for have been companies where like the company will contract with the manufacturer and the manufacturer build like, you know, thousands, hundreds of thousands of a product. And I think there's like a new wave of consumer goods companies that's coming out now that's ⁓ much more

⁓ constrained in terms of scale. It does its own manufacturing ⁓ and that have founders that are deep into the product that are like really like geeking out about the product. And I think it really benefits product. It also really benefits ⁓ the way that you can do sourcing. You know, when you're when you're producing something at like a massive scale, you have to like buy, you know, ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:48)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:05:11)

Commodities, know, you don't you don't buy like, you know upcycled products Typically, ⁓ and so it's it's cool that it's cool that she's doing it at this scale to start I think it really you know, it allows her to do a lot

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:26)

I mean, I don't know how many of you out there have read the Lorax, it sort of seems to me like ⁓ maybe we shouldn't have progressed into multinational corporations. Overall, I don't know exactly how to unwind that totally at this point, but it's hard for me to think of an example of something that has gotten better.

Matt Gregory (1:05:42)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:56)

when it's super scaled to the point where somebody can't be personally involved in the business. ⁓ And I think, obviously, the quote downside of that for the consumer is the stuff is going to be more expensive. I think that's why people resist it.

Matt Gregory (1:06:03)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:15)

is because now we're used to going to H &M or Target or whatever, and we're like, oh, a t-shirt costs $8. Right? That's tough to undo in somebody's mind to be like, well, no, I'm going to pay three or five, two or five times as much for something than I used to for these reasons, which I might agree with, but I'm on a budget. It's tough.

Matt Gregory (1:06:22)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:44)

And you

know, whatever sector you want to talk about that in, food, whatever, like...

Matt Gregory (1:06:47)

Yeah,

I think about this a lot and I, I, unfortunately I think it's one of those complicated things where it's not, there isn't like one answer, ⁓ because like we rely, you know, we rely on medicine that's created at scale We rely on, you know,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:58)

No.

Matt Gregory (1:07:10)

A lot of people rely on very cheap food and, you know, some for a percentage of the population, even cheap food is expensive. So it's and it's nutritionally devoid. So it's like it's a real it's a real challenge. Like I think there's benefit in industrial scale. But, you know, it's cool. It's cool that companies like ANU exist and that those of us that can afford to buy, you know, a nice

neck warmer able to support ⁓ the kind of cracks that Cristina is creating in that system. So I thought it was, and I really enjoyed, you I think on Trail Maps so far, we've had a lot of people that are like, are established in their careers, have done amazing things. And it's just really fun to have talked to somebody who's in the thick of it and building something new.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:08:03)

Yeah, in the thick of it and having recently done a pretty big pivot away from something she was good at. I like how she described her previous job fit her brain pretty well in terms of being able to do several things at once. Which I think is kind of, I think our brain wants that. Our brain wants to do a few things. It doesn't want to just do one thing.

Matt Gregory (1:08:29)

Yeah, I mean, that's certainly the way my

brain is too. Yeah. And I think back to our episode with Steph, which has been one of my favorite episodes, the landscape architect. ⁓ And landscape architecture is another one of those multidisciplinary fields that you're drawing from a lot of different types of expertise in doing the work. I don't know. For me, those are the coolest jobs because you're...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:08:31)

Yeah, maybe not R, I shouldn't say R. I think a lot of people's brains work.

Matt Gregory (1:08:57)

you're just getting to do a lot of different types of things.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:08:59)

Yeah, there's, I've, yeah. There certainly are people who are experts at one thing. I mean, it kind of was the case when we were talking to Nathan and talking to scientists who specialize on one particular thing. I, he, you know, he was a fisherman. I think, I don't know, I'm going back to my original thing. Our brain wants to do different things. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:09:06)

Yeah.

Yes.

I buy it. buy it. buy it.

⁓ Well, Pat, it's been ⁓ wonderful to have this convo and looking forward to our episode next week and get yourself and your family an ANU neck warmer. Goes really well with the Trailmap sweatshirt, ⁓ also available. ⁓ And yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:09:39)

I was

gonna I'm gonna be so cozy I was just gonna say I don't know what kind of shipping is available on her website if I am hopefully I can get it for the next episode so we can just be we're not even gonna comment on it we're just gonna be wearing her yeah but we're at this tip we're at the tip of the spear we're at the crest of the wave

Matt Gregory (1:09:51)

Just very warm necks our guests are gonna be like, what are those guys really cold? What's going on?

That's true. That's true. All right. Well, have a good one.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:10:08)

alright brother see ya

Matt Gregory (1:10:09)

See ya.

Matt Gregory (00:13) Hello, Pat. How's it going? Welcome back, you've been on tour, man. How was the tour?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:20) Yeah, it's great to be back. The tour was great. We spanned Colorado. through Idaho, Montana, up to the Northwest. The Pacific Northwest is so beautiful, so verdant. I mean, all those places are beautiful in their own way, but for my own sinus and skin situation, the Pacific Northwest really suits me. It's just like, I am a creature that's living among other creatures and plants. Yeah?

Matt Gregory (00:37) my god. It's funny that you bring up sinuses. Is that just like being in your 40s thing?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (00:57) It might be, for me it's been all decades. I love all different regions, but when I'm in the dry ones, the rocky mountain zone, various zones, the desert, it's rough for me. It's a very dry time.

Matt Gregory (01:10) Yeah. Sure, yeah, it's a dry time. This podcast is not sponsored by anyone, have you used any of the sort of neti rinses?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:30) I've done some neti-ing and various saline sprays. There's a bigger one that's slightly too big to bring in your carry-on luggage, so you need to be checking a bag.

Matt Gregory (01:35) Mm-hmm. We're big fans in this family of the Neil Med Sinus Rinse Bottle. So, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:48) NeilMed I think I might actually have had some experience with that. I'm trying to do some visual recall. So your whole family is a fan of that? Yeah.

Matt Gregory (01:57) Yeah, well, the three of us, my immediate family. So that's so cool. And I feel like you get to see this country in a way that most people don't.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:01) Sure. Right. I feel very lucky about that, yeah. Sort of get to go bop into all these little ecosystems that are just humming along in parallel to our own ecosystems. ⁓ it's, you know, I think it's a nice balance of ⁓ like us being rewarded by people saying nice things and like having a good time and

Matt Gregory (02:27) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:43) people being rewarded. I think people have a great time when they come. And it's just a nice moment of stepping out of routine for them and for just trying to do the best of what we've been trying to do for a long time for us. It's a nice coming together of those two things.

Matt Gregory (03:05) Yeah. it's cool that you have a career where you intersect with people, with other people in a moment of them enjoying life. Listening to music, being with friends. There's a lot of people like...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:17) Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Matt Gregory (03:27) I mean, I'm just thinking about all the careers that intersect with people when they're stressed out.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:31) Right, there's a lot of that. I mean, are, it's super usually pleasant in that way. At showtime, I should say, there's a lot of garbage, logistical nothingness that goes along between those. yeah, you trade stability and health insurance and retirement contributions for nice interactions with people. It's a pretty good trade.

Matt Gregory (03:32) There's a lot. Sure. Sure. ⁓ Yeah, well, you know, and I would describe myself. I've mostly worked with small businesses in my career. And today on the show, we have somebody named Penny Finnie who's going to be our guest. And Penny is an entrepreneur. ⁓ And I think she has a really unique ability.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:11) Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (04:27) I would say to connect it to what you were just saying, I don't think Penny has had a feeling of stability in her career. She has always gone after things that have been sort of at the frontier of new things and built new things through the companies that she's created. And so I'm pretty excited to chat with her because I think

Patrick Dyer Wolf (04:42) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (04:51) whether you're a musician or whether you're an entrepreneur building new things, you're making a real choice to have so me more vulnerability, less stability, to do something that can be pretty magical at times.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (05:05) Yeah, I mean just reading about her, she seems very impressive. She seems of the Renaissance, would you say? She's a Renaissance gal?

Matt Gregory (05:13) Yeah, it's funny that you say that because she's also a painter. She's a very, very capable painter. So yeah, she's got a lot of different skills. And I think for me, she's been somebody who's really, without like sitting me down and being like, Matt, this is how you do entrepreneurship. Like just being around her has been very inspiring for me and has kind of taught me about how to... create businesses and how to be part of that ecosystem. And she is, Heejin and I got to know Penny out in San Francisco. So you were talking about the Pacific Northwest, a little bit south of there, the Bay Area. Penny lived in Oakland for a long time and is just a super creative and lovely human being. So I'm excited to have her on the show today. yeah, so I guess with that, I think we should just dive right in. All right.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (06:12) Let's do it.

Matt Gregory (06:17) All right, we're here with Penny. Awesome to have you on the show, Penny.

Penelope Finnie (06:22) Great to be here, Matt and Pat. Yeah, it's really fun. Looking forward to it.

Matt Gregory (06:28) Yeah, cool. Can you introduce yourself for our listeners?

Penelope Finnie (06:33) I'm Penny and ⁓ I live in Massachusetts and I'm the CEO of a company called Egal and we make period pads that are on a roll and that's my current job. I've been doing that for the past five years and I met Matt, ⁓ I can't remember, 15 years ago? He was an intern of mine and I, yeah. So back in the Bay Area.

Matt Gregory (06:58) Penny has had a pretty awesome career path ranging from being an early employee at Ask Jeeves, which for maybe some younger listeners who might not know it, was an early internet search technology and really, yeah, one of the major ones. So we'll get into that a bit. Penny started a chocolate cafe in the Bay Area called Bittersweet Cafe, where I had the opportunity to intern and learn a bit from Penny about chocolate and about entrepreneurship. She also worked in the cannabis space at Merimed. Again, we worked together in the respiratory health space at Sensory Cloud during the COVID pandemic and now is working on menstrual equity issues, at Egal and I know that you're also a mom, you know, a wife, you've got a lot. going on in your life. I guess specific to the professional work, like, you've done a lot sort of at the frontier of creating new things. And I'm just wondering, I know this is sort of open ended, but like, any thoughts about that? is that something that you seek out?

Penelope Finnie (08:08) It's funny, I realized that maybe about five or six years ago, maybe a little longer. I think, and then I started sort of wondering, well, what was that about? And I think, and when I went to college, I thought I was gonna be a doctor, because that was the only kind of, ⁓ my father was a doctor, my grandfather was a doctor, all my parents' friends were doctors, so was like. And I thought, my father was a neurologist, so thought, the brain is pretty fascinating. But I got to college and I realized I was spending all my time in the studio art classes. Like, any time I had any free time, that's where I was. And so was like, well, maybe I should rethink this plan. But I think the being an artist piece of it is kind of the... It's never conscious, but it's like, it's that creating a new genre or a new type, you know, going into something new that hasn't been done before. then, you know, sometimes I get down on myself like, oh, God, you should be painting. That's what you went to school for, blah, blah, blah. then I'm like, but no, building businesses is really creative too. So it's kind of that combination of things of like, something that's never been done before, that creative act, and then building a business, which is a creative act. So that's where the startup piece comes into it, I think. But I'm the least ambitious person I know. When I was in college, oh God. Career, all I wanted to do was paint and teach, and that was it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:47) Really?

Penelope Finnie (10:01) And so, you know, even having children wasn't really on my radar. Yeah, was just paint. know, teach so I could paint. And that was it. So teach art. Yeah. That's what I figured I'd do. And I did do that for like two years, I think.

Matt Gregory (10:13) Mm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:14) Teach art.Yeah.⁓ Was it your own, you know, it was just your own business? were used to, or did you work at a school? Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (10:30) No, so I taught at Georgetown Prep, which happens to be where Kavanaugh and Gorsuch went. So that was, I was the only female teacher, well, there were two female teachers in the entire school. One was 60 something, she was the English teacher, and I was 25. I was always getting in trouble for, like, I wore clothes to teach art in and.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:37) right, right.

Matt Gregory (10:50) Wow.

Penelope Finnie (10:56) Anyway, and then at the same time I taught at a school called the Field School, ⁓ which is in Washington DC, still exists as well, but it was the opposite of Georgetown Prep. It was the sort of, at the time it was at DuPont Circle and a very open-ended school. And then at night I taught at George Mason University and I taught a course called Visual Thinking there and that was interesting because... At the time, George Mason was the fastest growing university in the country. ⁓ And I think there was a lot of government funding going into it. And most of my students were ⁓ Army brats.

Matt Gregory (11:41) Is there something, so I saw you kind of shudder a little bit when we were using the word career. I'm wondering if like there's something deeper about like the choices that you've made professionally that's like, it's not really about a career.

Penelope Finnie (11:58) Yeah, no, that's a really good point. It isn't about a career. It's about... Because I don't think I've ever made a decision like, this is the smart thing to do for where I want to go, because A, I don't know where I want to go. Still trying to figure that out. And I'm 66, almost 66, by the way. So... So I don't know where I want to go. And it's more about what's interesting.

Matt Gregory (12:34) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (12:36) So is that sentence kind of the answer to how did you get from teaching art to working at Ask Jeeves? like how did that?

Penelope Finnie (12:45) when I was teaching art, we were living in Washington, DC and Baltimore. But then I also started doing film work ⁓ in Baltimore when our daughter was about a year and a half years old. I did wardrobe and that kind of thing for film. And so I was in the union, and I thought, ⁓ this is really fun. It's kind of episodic. Each day is different. You don't know what show you're working on, or what ad you're working on, or what movie you're working on. ⁓ And so we moved to California during that. And I thought, I'll just transfer my union membership. Not an option. I can't remember what the issues were in the union. So I thought, well, I could paint. But I knew one person in all of California. And I thought, well, if I start to paint, I'll still only know one person in all of California. So. ⁓

Matt Gregory (13:27) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (13:45) My husband, this was 1990, he was a multimedia analyst. And nobody really knew what multimedia was at the time. I didn't. ⁓ And ⁓ it was the year that Photoshop, Illustrator, Macromedia Director, which you guys may or may not have heard of, ⁓ Avid, digital editing, ⁓

Matt Gregory (14:10) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (14:12) It was the year that all those came out because it was really the year that images became available on computers. so 1990, 1990, 1991. So I went to my husband's boss and I said, hey, if I take, cause it was the Bay area, if I take classes in Photoshop, you know, I'll kind of tell Charlie, my husband,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (14:18) What year was that? 1990.

Penelope Finnie (14:38) who's taking these classes and why they're taking these classes. Because nobody understood what Photoshop would be used for. Desktop publishing did not exist. all design, which I had done when we lived in New York, you used the straight edge and you used a wax machine and you printed things out. It was all cut and waxed to do layouts. ⁓ So I understood all of that piece. So I had enough background to understand what you're actually doing with these tools, but digitally. ⁓ So they said, sure, take these classes. ⁓ I just became, and I really never touched a computer before that. I think when I was teaching, I used a word processor, you know, but that was it. And so I brought, my husband had an Apple at the time. one of those boxes that had ⁓ the giant floppy disk thing. Yeah. And ⁓ he wasn't using it. So I brought it home and started playing around with it. because of somebody he knew, Bill Gross, Bill Gross went on to become a huge name in the internet space. But he was developing children's software. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:39) Yeah, I remember those.

Matt Gregory (15:41) We had one, too yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:42) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (16:05) called Knowledge, the company's name was Knowledge Adventure. So I went and I worked for Knowledge Adventure from the Bay Area, it was based in Los Angeles, and developed Art Adventure for them, and then ⁓ Jumpstart Toddler.

Matt Gregory (16:17) Mm.

Penelope Finnie (16:20) I mean, we really didn't have email, so I would go down there, you know, once every three weeks and everything was kind of done on paper and then we had artists there that would design it. at the time TED was just starting and it was invitation only. So you had to be invited to go to TED. And I think it was the second or third TED was in Kobe, Japan. It was the only time that they ever tried to do one outside of Monterey when Richard Saul Wurman ran it. And so Charlie was invited because he was a multimedia analyst. I went with him. And remember Jane Metcalfe, who started Wired Magazine, was up on stage. And she was talking about getting online. I remember writing in my little notebook.

Matt Gregory (17:01) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (17:08) get online, question mark, you know. And how do I do that? And I came home and got AOL and got my little 56K modem, probably was slower than that, but,

Matt Gregory (17:09) I'm gonna do that.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:10) ⁓ How do I get there?

Penelope Finnie (17:28) and I remember coming back to Bill Gross and saying, so what are we doing about the internet? How are we going to make these products connect to the internet? And he looked at me like I had five heads. ⁓ But I started going to Internet World in San Jose. And Internet World, I think, was in one room that probably held maybe 200 people. I mean, it was tiny.

Matt Gregory (17:52) Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:52) Is that your term, Internet World, or is that, was that a thing? ⁓

Penelope Finnie (17:54) No, it was a big show. At the time, it was tiny, but it became a huge show. And ⁓ I met Hank Duderstadt there. Hank lived in Oakland, and ⁓ he was a programmer. And so he had started the Berkeley Cyber Guild. And so we started meeting at the

Patrick Dyer Wolf (17:59) ⁓ Okay What a name.

Penelope Finnie (18:24) at the Berkeley Marriott down in their lobby because we just needed a place to get together. Of course, there was no Wi-Fi. There was nothing. But anyway, we started teaching one another how to ⁓ code for the do HTML.

Matt Gregory (18:41) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (18:42) and what FTP was. And he would bring me, here's the floppy disk for FTP. Anyway, but I had started this little company in my house called Jack of All Trades, and we were doing interactive laser disks. That was one of the things I learned how to do, which was the size of a record. ⁓

Matt Gregory (18:48) you Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:06) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (19:10) because I did a class, how to do an interactive laser disk and had started this program called Children of the Crane ⁓ about the bombing of Hiroshima. And, ⁓ and so I'd been doing that, but then we, I had like, two other people working with me and we were doing stuff for Hartford and we started doing, and we started working for The Well. The Well was the first ⁓ online community, I suppose, and it was based in Sausalito. And we were the web developers for The Well, I guess. Any? Yeah.

Matt Gregory (19:50) Penny, I don't want to ⁓ make you lose your train of thought because this is a fascinating story. But one theme that I'm seeing already is it seems like you've put yourself in a place where you've just gotten a ton of opportunities through being curious, being open to new things. Is that like... Is that tiring for you at all or is it just energizing to like go after one thing after the next?

Penelope Finnie (20:24) a little bit of both. But I think at the time, when there's no pressure, and I've often said this to my kids, it's like sometimes from the outside, you can see things more clearly than you can from the inside. And so if you were a programmer-programmer and you're at Internet World, it could have felt...

Matt Gregory (20:31) Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (20:49) felt overwhelming, because you're like, wait, is my whole world changing? How do I respond to this? That kind of thing. But for me, was like, huh, this is new. And it felt like magic to me.

Matt Gregory (21:01) Yeah. the creativity that you brought in as a painter, as somebody who ⁓ liked that sort of creative expression, it seems like you found that in lots of other places too, like in technology and all these different companies. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (21:17) Exactly, Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:19) I I forget what word you used at beginning. You said you were the least ambitious person. I don't know. I mean, maybe it seems like you were way ahead of the curve in many ways and just at the forefront of a lot of things, but also just in the old mid-century...

Penelope Finnie (21:24) Ambitious. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:45) concept of a career was like, you get your job and then 30 years later you get a watch. that is not what you're doing. In the first transition piece between being an art teacher and working at Ask Jeeves, you said like 15 things. It's like you're not sorry. I'm just saying like it's, you know.

Penelope Finnie (21:52) All right. Right. Yeah, sorry, it's been, like wah wah wah.

Matt Gregory (22:04) No, no, it's awesome.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (22:10) I don't know if ambition is the right word or whatever, it's just you're so... You seem to have an indefatigable spirit or something about you that's just finding the place where you're... Yeah, combination of creativity and whatever else can be applied.

Penelope Finnie (22:32) Well, I mean, I really did think the internet was this kind of, you know, when I started looking at it and being like, I remember the first, when we were at TED in Kobe, Quincy Jones. was playing on the stage, And there was this amazing jazz musician in Tokyo. And they were doing a concert together. And everybody thought, this is unbelievable. You know, and they, because they could hear one another and we could see both of them. And now that just seems like, what? But when you started seeing those kinds of things, it's like,

Matt Gregory (23:02) Hmm. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (23:12) wow, this could really change everything. And I remember when I started sending my first emails back and forth and being like, my gosh, this is incredible. it was like, this is gonna change the world. So there was an excitement there. ⁓

Matt Gregory (23:30) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (23:32) I then did start, I mean, I went to my husband's. investment bank, we actually made a video about this, you know, I to my husband's investment bank and it was like, would you like a website? And they were like, why would we want a website? And then I think it was the Mill Valley Film Festival asked us to do a website and they were going to be the first film festival in the world to have a ⁓ website and we did that for them. ⁓

Matt Gregory (24:00) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (24:03) Stanford University, the business school, we got hired to do the business school website. And I asked them later on, I was like, why did you hire us? And they said, well, as far as we can tell, there's 25 web developers in the country, and you were the closest one to us. So it was early days. So the ⁓ Ask Jeeves how that happened was I are The school had an auction ⁓ and I decided, well, I can auction off a website. And so I did. Nobody knew what one was. so, but there were two VCs that, you know, who had kids in the school and they both bought the website. So I ended up doing their businesses websites, ⁓ the companies they'd invested in. And ⁓ One of them, Garrett Gruner, called me one day and he said, have you ever designed a character? And I said, this was 1995. I said, no, but I am an artist. part of, I think the one thing I really enjoyed about doing websites at the time was try to make a website that doesn't look like an engineer did it. ⁓ And well, that was hard when it was only text, because in the beginning, websites were only text. And then they had color.

Matt Gregory (25:25) What does that mean though, Penny? Like, is that like more human or more like, what do you mean when you say an engineer didn't do it?

Penelope Finnie (25:31) Well, oftentimes the colors they would use, like, you can't be serious that those are the colors you've chosen to put, or that that's the font that you chose. You have terrible taste. Or is that the font, you know, because in the beginning you couldn't even put pictures there. So it was just even, or you really couldn't lay it out. you know, so, ⁓ yeah, so trying to make it maybe more human and just have a better design sense, bottom line. And so.

Matt Gregory (25:35) Hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:37) You have terrible taste. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Gregory (25:59) Yeah. Got it.

Penelope Finnie (26:03) So he asked if I'd ever done a character and I said, no, I haven't. But I'd love to try." And he said, well, I want to design this ⁓ website. He said the internet search is going to be a big thing. ⁓ That's the only way people can find things online. And I would like to create a friendly means for people to do that where people can actually ask questions. Because people aren't going to understand the whole thing of doing search words. for most people, that's going to be ⁓ a problem. So he said, I'd like it to be a butler and I'd like the butler to be named Jeeves because that's kind of the most famous butler. And so because of PJ Woodhouse's books.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:47) Are you a fan? I love those books.

Penelope Finnie (26:50) I knew of them. I'd seen this. There was a show that and so I was like, okay, it might be a little problematic because I'd learned all of this in my, I don't know, whichever classes I'd taken. was like, the licensing of Jeeves. But I said, let's, yeah, well, yes. But I said, you know, let's.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:54) Yeah, yeah. public domain.

Penelope Finnie (27:14) Let's make Jeeves be 55, 60. Let's make him be a little, because the real Jeeves in the books was 35. Let's make him a little paunchy, which the other one wasn't. Let's make him bald, which the other one wasn't. All those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. So.

Matt Gregory (27:29) Totally different guy. No relation.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (27:30) Yeah, it's just different, different Jeeves, different Jeeves.

Penelope Finnie (27:35) did not draw Jeeves. I then went out to find, I was like, OK, this is what we need. I went out to find an artist to do it. artist after artist couldn't find anyone. I was beginning to think, well, I am going to have to draw Jeeves. And then one day a friend said, there's a guy named Marcos Sorensen. Marcos has been doing, he does cartoon characters. But there were more kind of Martian-y kind of things. He had just done a swatch, watch? ⁓ And anyway, I emailed Marcos and told him what I wanted. And at the time, I was on AOL and he was on CompuServe or something like that. And the reality was you couldn't send images between the two. ⁓ And so he faxed me.

Matt Gregory (28:22) Crazy.

Penelope Finnie (28:25) the Jeeves, I still have that original fax. And it came out of the fax machine. I looked at it. was like, oh my god, that's exactly what I had in mind. And so no notes. Yeah, no notes. Seriously, no notes. And that was 1995. Jeeves didn't start until 1997. And I was hired at that point.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (28:34) No notes.

Penelope Finnie (28:50) And Marcos wasn't, and they've been trying to kind of copy. ⁓ like when they were doing the decks and everything to start the company, they tried to kind of copy. And Jeeves was just getting, I have some t-shirts that they designed from, know, and I was like, nope, that's not it. But I, so I started coding the main website, And yeah, worked, I can't remember my various roles, ended up as a chief creative officer there. But we started with four of us. And this, okay, this is how early it was. was a, Debbie Chen was there. And Debbie, so every day, so we. For those who don't know, you would ask questions. You would say, know, what's the population of London or whatever. And we actually

Matt Gregory (29:38) you

Penelope Finnie (29:41) hired editors who, you know, there was one person who focused on music, one person who focused on restaurants, one person who focused on movies, TV, etc. And they would, as the internet was growing, they would literally be finding all of these websites, you know, and so we'd have a compile at the end of each day where we would ⁓ take, you know, take it all and put it into the search engine and do a compile. But Debbie would then take the hard drive and put it in her backpack pack and drive it, ride her bike to our ISP. Because if we had tried to upload it, it would have taken like a week. So every day the hard drive was taken, put it in the backpack pack and driven up to the ISP to be uploaded.

Matt Gregory (30:23) be too much.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (30:33) so manual and hands-on it sort of evokes like a just like the internet was just a few tubes. A few pneumatic tubes you know like in a bank or something.

Penelope Finnie (30:41) It totally was.

Matt Gregory (30:45) What strikes me though is that it's from a user experience perspective, like the way you interact with like an AI agent, it's the same sort of thing, right? That you guys designed with Ask Jeeves.

Penelope Finnie (30:46) What? Yeah, well, I mean, there was an article in the Atlantic, like a year ago, it was like, was Ask Jeeves the first chat GPT? And, you know, and, you know, I think it kind of was. But you know, it was imperfect. mean, we had all kinds of natural language. We had all these linguists that worked with us, you know, and we started to understand slang and all those kinds of things. And it would feed in and try to decipher what people were saying and try to bring back the right answers. then we always had a search engine beneath it. So.

Matt Gregory (31:34) Yeah, I'm going to try to distill something right now and I might completely miss the mark, but I'm to try. So Penny, I think I was starting to get here with an earlier question that I asked. You're at the birth of something huge, right? Like you're in midst of something big and it seems like you've done this many times. So there are all these different emotions that come up, I would imagine, in a moment like that. Like there's a curiosity, there's an energy.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:40) Let's go.

Matt Gregory (32:04) There's, you ⁓ and you've already said like, you're not like, ⁓ again, what was the word? Ambitious. You're not ambitious. For some reason I'm having ⁓ some blindness to that. I'm wondering like, are other, like having been involved in creating other things, other businesses myself, like there are other emotions that crop up like imposter syndrome, fatigue.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (32:11) Ambitious?

Penelope Finnie (32:11) Ambitious.

Matt Gregory (32:31) you know, ⁓ comparison, like all these different things that are like not really constructive, right? They're not really helpful when you're trying to do something new or put yourself in. Do you have those feelings or do you just like, is it just like you're just so driven by curiosity that you just hop in?

Penelope Finnie (32:49) Well, one thing about doing something that nobody's ever done before is, ⁓ Having imposter syndrome doesn't exist that much. And I did know, I mean, we would hire people from like, Procter & Gamble and stuff, and all these big brand people. And I'd be like, they don't know very much. Because nobody knew anything about the internet. But there's also this thing, and I've thought about this a lot, which is like,

Matt Gregory (33:16) Yeah. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (33:24) I brought in our CEO, Rob Wrubel he, Rob had been, I think the COO at Knowledge Adventure, the company, the ⁓ children's software company. And I would call him literally every day and say, Rob, gotta, this is it. You gotta come be our CEO. And it meant he was gonna have to move his whole family from Los Angeles to Berkeley. ⁓ And, but it never, and you know, of course he had a lot of anxiety about that, you know? Like, I've got to uproot my family, I've got a pretty good job here, why would this internet thing, is this internet thing gonna, is it real? You know? ⁓ But, but in my mind, it was like, this is gonna happen. It's just gonna happen. And there was no, it was oddly like no doubt in my mind that it was gonna happen.

Matt Gregory (34:00) Yeah. Yeah, but I've

Patrick Dyer Wolf (34:18) Hmm.

Matt Gregory (34:19) seen you have that confidence in other and we're going to get into other ventures that you've worked on. And so I think that it's a skill that you have that like, you're able to like see those things and have confidence. And I'm wondering like, for people that are listening that are founders or entrepreneurs that are trying to create something new, like there's just like this natural curiosity and energy that you have that I think is, is really that leads like if, if you think about it, like the experience that you developed with Ask Jeeves, like it really isn't that different from, you know, what it's like to ask a question to an AI agent. So like there's something like very intuitive and creative about what you did to create that, you know, many, many years, many years before open AI and all of these, you know, ⁓ AI agents. And, and so I, I think that there's something powerful here that like, want I'd like to maybe leave for other entrepreneurs. Would you encourage entrepreneurs to kind of put their blinders up or try to forget about their resume? How can they tap into this curiosity and creativity? Is that a hard question? It's an impossible question, I'm sorry.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (35:35) Be born that way.

Penelope Finnie (35:37) No, but I do think, no, but here's the thing, and this is, I liken this back to painting. If you start a painting and you know what the painting's gonna be, it's gonna suck as a painting.

Matt Gregory (35:53) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (35:53) It really is. It's going to have no life to it. It's going to have no energy. It's going to be dead on arrival. ⁓ And I learned that in college and in graduate school. But if you go to the blank canvas and just go, let's see what happens here, it's going to come into life in a different way. And I think.

Matt Gregory (36:00) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (36:20) And this is going to get very woo woo, but I think there is this channeling that happens and you have to kind of follow the things that are offered to you and not prejudge them, think. Not kind of say, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (36:36) Hmm.

Matt Gregory (36:36) or yourself, Like prejudged them, prejudge yourself. There's this openness.

Penelope Finnie (36:44) Exactly. And yeah, and not everything is going to be a positive experience. That's for sure. But it's going to open some things that are... I was on a podcast, I was talking about it a couple of weeks ago, ⁓ called Live Into Your Brilliance, and they asked for a ⁓ quote.

Matt Gregory (36:45) That's super cool. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (37:11) And I think my quote was something like, we think we're in control, but we're not. Which is that same kind of thing, which is the things that are happening are out of our control, you know, but the way we respond to them is in our control, you know, and, ⁓ and so, but you get, you're given these kinds of amazing opportunities all the time. It's whether or not you see them or not.

Matt Gregory (37:40) Yeah,

Penelope Finnie (37:41) You know?

Matt Gregory (37:43) yeah. Pat, I'm wondering, that resonate from a music perspective with you? Like in terms of your...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (37:50) yeah, I mean I was hesitating to jump in and just relate everything to music, but yes, totally. It's like, you know, I feel like it's not always a leap into the total unknown when you're songwriting or creating music. It's like finding the right balance of comfort and unknown. It's like, you know, so people can follow the path with you. You're like, see, there's, this is, you know this, you know this, but now look at this. And it's always finding that bridge. ⁓

Penelope Finnie (38:14) Exactly, yeah. No, it's like, and what it sounds like you're saying, Pat, is like when I used to do a painting, I haven't painted in a while, but you do one, it poses questions in a way, a painting may pose questions, then so there's that continuity. The next one you're sort of trying to answer those questions, but it poses more questions, and it's, you know, there's that action and reaction, and it sounds like maybe music is that same thing.

Matt Gregory (38:45) Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:48) Totally. I mean, it just seems like you have been able to, in a multi-polydisciplinary way, apply these things, apply these wisdoms to, you know, other, I mean, should we get to some of the other many items on your resume here? I don't know.

Matt Gregory (39:03) Yeah, yeah, we should. should. Yeah. I guess I'm wondering like what

Penelope Finnie (39:04) ⁓ god.

Matt Gregory (39:07) I was actually going to ask. So from a transition ⁓ perspective, like what sparked you to think about leaving tech and going into building a chocolate cafe?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (39:19) Obviously.

Penelope Finnie (39:19) So that happened. obviously. my, you know, startups oftentimes take a lot longer than you think to get them where you need to go. No other executives stuck around Ask Jeeves as long as I did. They kind of came and went and came and went and came and went. But ⁓ I was like, I got to get this to being profitable. And we hit profitability and... ⁓ I think around 2002, and that was just the most insane, you know, I mean, we went public in 99, you know, within six months, the stock was at 108. Anyway, it went from 70, we were priced at $14. At the end of the day, ended at 70, it opened at 77, I guess. By the end of three months, it was at 185. And then, at the end of that year is at 85 cents. So I mean, can you imagine what that was like? So a lot of people, I was like, But yes, I was like, let's get this thing to profitability. We did that when we added ⁓ Google AdWords, I believe. Overnight, we became profitable. And ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (40:35) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (40:39) But I was pretty exhausted at that time and had been doing a lot of traveling because, you know, the UK version of Jeeves, we always had to keep, you so was going to the UK a lot, worked with Michael Ovitz because he was Jeeves' agent. And so I'd go down to LA and hang out with him. were trying to do, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a big show at the time. We wanted to do a Jeeves show. So we were constantly talking to studios about that.

Jeeves was the mascot, not the mascot, sponsor of the Lakers. Anyway, there was all this stuff with the Lakers. Yeah. Anyway, but so I was pretty exhausted and we went to France with our kids for spring break and we were in Southern France in Saint-Rémy and we went into a chocolate shop that somebody had recommended. Joel Durand was his name. And

Matt Gregory (41:15) I remember that actually.

Penelope Finnie (41:39) It was, I didn't like chocolate that much. But, and this guy made this amazing chocolate, really simple, not truffles or anything like that. But he had, you know, he would put saffron in it or he'd, or he would say like, this is from, you know, Venezuela, Venezuelan chocolate versus Madagascar chocolate and all of that. I was like, hmm. So I bought a bunch and, but it was so kind of cozy and cute. And as we were leaving, I said, that seems like it would work well in Berkeley, don't you think? And ⁓ of course, the kids were like, yeah. And ⁓ they were like, let's start a chocolate shop. And so I went back and I mentioned it to the friend who had recommended the place. And she said, well, then you have to meet this guy named Seneca. He knows more about chocolate than anybody in the world. So we started talking and we were like, would be kind of cool to create like a wine shop for chocolate. Berkeley seems like the perfect place to do that. And at that point, you know, I'd spent so much time either on a plane or in front of a computer. And I was like, it'd be really nice to do something that is in the community, you know, that's not, not virtual. ⁓ So that was the original plan.

Matt Gregory (42:54) Mmm.

Penelope Finnie (43:05) And I was like, okay, I'll help design, let me get back to my art roots, I'll help to design the stores, or store, it was just gonna be one. And I'll help with the business plan, but I'm not running this thing on a day-to-day basis, because that's done. I need a break. And so, you know, there were some younger people than I that were involved, and one of them wanted to have a, she was like, let's bake everything. Okay. So it started growing, you know, and it was like, well, we have to do drinks. I was like, okay. You know, so started to evolve, we've got the whole espresso coffee thing going. We've got the whole bakery thing going. We've got the whole wine store for chocolate thing going. And that was kind of. gonna be it. And we, it was a very, I wanted it to feel like it had always been there. So it felt kind of like an old log cabin. And Matt, you were at the original one. And it, yeah, and it did feel like it had been there a long time.

Matt Gregory (44:07) It really did. It was such a magical place. And I feel like you get a little snapshot of Penny's artistic sensibility behind her, but it just had like a very cozy, well-designed feel. ⁓ So totally had that experience.

Penelope Finnie (44:22) Yeah, we wanted you to feel like you'd even I think we made the floor so that when you walked in from the from the sidewalk it had a I wanted it have that old grocery stores wooden floor sound you know ⁓ so you feel like you kind of step back in time a little bit. Anyway

Patrick Dyer Wolf (44:41) Sounds like the anti-corporate, ⁓ just like the anti-chain store. ⁓ And even, you know, there's a lot of coffee shops that aren't necessarily big corporations or chains that are just like kind of hard surface, ⁓ glossy, not a place where you want to spend time. This sounds like the opposite. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (44:48) Totally. Very glossy.

Penelope Finnie (45:03) Spend time. was, which was a bit of a problem because you didn't have people that would spend time, like way too much time. Actually one of our beloved guests who would come when he was, he seemed to be filming a lot in our.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:09) Spend time. Ha ha ha.

Penelope Finnie (45:26) area was Philip Seymour Hoffman. And he used to come and ⁓ sit there for hours, know, ⁓ doing his whatever he was doing there. ⁓ We actually had a drink that we kind of named after him. It was a triple espresso, ice triple espresso was what it was. We called it the PSH

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:33) Sure.

Matt Gregory (45:45) Mm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:46) Nice.

Matt Gregory (45:47) The other thing just quickly to paint a picture of Bittersweet, the smells in this place were just insane. It smelled so good. It was just like chocolate, baked goods. Bittersweet had an amazing array of baked goods, which probably led to some financial troubles for the...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:48) PSH.

Penelope Finnie (45:50) Yeah, PSH.

Matt Gregory (46:13) cafe because there was just so much complexity. Coffee, but it was just it smelled so good in there. My and just like a quick menu item to call out to they had a chocolate Thai iced tea. There was ⁓ chocolate with jasmine tea iced. It was on a hot day in the East Bay. It was an incredible, incredible drink.

Penelope Finnie (46:16) There's so much complexity. ⁓ my god.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:40) I'm gonna have to tell my wife about this so she can travel through time and space too.

Matt Gregory (46:46) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (46:48) Well, and Matt came in, well, just one other thing briefly. ⁓ We worked with Blue Bottle. Blue Bottle coffee at the time was ⁓ in a little shed behind a Mexican restaurant, ⁓ like a few blocks from us, and they roasted their own coffee. So this is, it was the beginning of the whole third wave coffee. ⁓ So, they did a roast for us called Bittersweet.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:59) yeah.

Penelope Finnie (47:21) And it was at the point where we were spending, I think, $9,000 a month or $12,000 a month just with Blue Bottle. You know, we were like, maybe we should start roasting our own coffee. they were, you know, their status was changing, evolving over time. And so they sold us their old roasting machine. And we, you know, we did start roasting our own coffee. Around the same time, Scharfenberger got bought by Hershey's. And Scharfenberger was based in Berkeley. And so we hired Albert Abrams And Albert had been Scharfenberger's main... chocolate maker and so we brought him on so we started he and Seneca started doing our bean to bar chocolate so we were doing that so one of the things that we you would smell was us roasting the beans you know And then we evolved, we ended up with five cafes over time, which was insane because they were like, and you had five different health departments you had to deal with.

Matt Gregory (48:29) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (48:29) Anyway, the person who never wanted to run the place ended up being the person who ran it with a woman who came in to help Diana Mckfessel ⁓

Matt Gregory (48:39) I just have a question. We talked about Ask Jeeves and being at the creation of something like that that ended up scaling and becoming a technology that's familiar to all of us. Then Bittersweet in some ways is the polar opposite. It's hyper local. ⁓ I remember all the challenges and you just talked about some of them with staffing, with just the insanity of trying to create all these different products every day.

Penelope Finnie (48:56) it.

Matt Gregory (49:09) Like, what did that feel like for you? Like, that energizing? Was it hard? Like, what was it like being in your shoes at that point?

Penelope Finnie (49:19) That was really hard. we did a book when we were at Ask Jeeves. We did a whole series of children's books. ⁓ And I remember when we had to get the books to the bookstore, and I was like, God, ⁓ moving things is a pain, like real things, because doing something digital was so easy. And then you've got chocolate and it melts and you know, it's like wait, what has happened to my life? Everything has a shelf life and the days in Oakland when it would hit 80, which aren't that many, but when it did or 85 and you're like, we don't have air conditioning and we've got, you know, $10,000 worth of inventory here and you know, what do we do about that? Of course, we had all these ideas of, you know, not going to be minimum wage and we're not going to, our tips will go to a charity and all. And then you realize, ⁓ my God, you know, I often wanted to do ⁓ a map for the government, Let's show you how much money we make. Let's show you how much profit we make. Let's show you what each department of the, know, we're California, you know, takes, thinks that they deserve. And there's beyond nothing left at the end of it all. And I was like, does... Has anybody ever shown you guys what all of this does to a small business? It made me almost become a Republican. yeah, so it was, and Matt, you saw it firsthand. was just like, but, and I think.

Matt Gregory (51:02) How much?

Penelope Finnie (51:15) being in the Oakland store where you spend a lot of time at the downtown Oakland store, and you'd see what it did for people, just the community. was such a, ⁓ people loved it. And people loved the drinks. And Matt came in ⁓ to help us figure out, was there a way, to commercialize the drinks, the chocolate Thai ice tea, the chocolate chai, you know, all of these amazing, the coconut, chocolate coconut. And you worked at that for a while, just, and it was, it was really challenging.

Matt Gregory (52:01) Yeah. Yeah, I think. Yeah, So we were looking at whether we could bottle those products and sell them at retail. And at the end of the day, we both we tried like taking what they made the magic that they made in the cafe and putting it into a packaged product, which requires processing and all that stuff. And then we also looked at like the financial reality of it. And I actually think we made the right decision not to do that. I think that like the quality of the drinks went way down when you put it in a bottle. And I think that that's something that like really ⁓ rings true for me with food is like, obviously packaged food isn't gonna go away. Like a lot of people rely on it ⁓ and it's just not gonna.

Penelope Finnie (52:31) I think so. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (52:53) not going to go away, but I think like there's magic to food that you can create in person. And I think that you like at a smaller scale, right? And I think that you really created that with Bittersweet. We had a conversation in our last episode with Rahul Kapkar, who's a chef in LA, a ramen chef in LA. And, you know, he's just so worn out from the reality of running these businesses.

Penelope Finnie (52:59) in person. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (53:20) But he's been making the same, you know, vegan ramen for 10 years in Grand Central Market in LA. And it's like phenomenal ramen. But it's you can see what the hospitality business does to you. just like it's a tough, really tough business. And the other the other piece that I want to bring up is like, you know, so I worked at the back of Bittersweet and then also in the back of David Edwards restaurant. When we when Penny and I together were at Sensory Cloud in Cambridge.

Penelope Finnie (53:24) Mm-hmm. Yep.

Matt Gregory (53:50) And the people that work in the hospitality space, and I said this in the episode with Rahul, work so hard. There's some amazing, amazing people in that space ⁓ who put up with so much and who don't get paid enough. ⁓ And I'm so glad to have had that experience. And I guess I'm wondering, Penny, like, before we switch gears ⁓ to kind of your next chapters, like, is there anything from the experience of running Bittersweet that still informs

Penelope Finnie (54:04) my God. Yep.

Matt Gregory (54:19) how you build companies and how you lead.

Penelope Finnie (54:24) That's a really good question. I think ⁓ the, and you saw this, the passion that people have for food ⁓ is unmatched almost. I mean, you've been to the Fancy Food Show, I I didn't know it has a different name, but I'm always just blown away. But people just are so passionate about.

Matt Gregory (54:32) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (54:47) you know, what it is that they do and what it is that they've been, the flavors they've managed to get and all of that. And it's so important and they, and I think passion, I used to say this about Jeeves. Nobody has to pay me to do this. I would do this for free. And so I think the passion piece is so important, but in the food world, you really see people that care so   much about what it is that they do, so much about the quality, and they get paid so little. But it is the passion, I think, that carries them forward. So you could call that mission, but I'm not sure it's actually, it's not necessarily mission-based, but it's just...

Matt Gregory (55:18) Mm-hmm. It's like a purpose. It's more of a purpose, right? Like of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Penelope Finnie (55:30) It's a purpose, yeah. Yeah, it's a purpose and a love, you know, and that drives them. And I think that's been true, you know, I know it's true with what we do right now, that really was brought home to me because yes, was, it's one thing when somebody's being paid over $100,000 for what they do, it's another thing when they're being paid $15 an hour for what they do.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (55:59) I you know just saw updated figures on what the poverty line could be and it's now you know $130,000 for a family of four so I you know the creation of a space, like what it sounds like the Bittersweet Cafe is, ⁓ almost to me, rings of like a public good. Like it's something that people appreciate so much. there could be a realignment sort of like an economic realignment that like, that I don't know exactly all the forms it would take, but that would more support, mean, small businesses is often the object of a lot of people's support and admiration, just ⁓ something that would more encourage and support ⁓ spaces that are special and valued by a community. even the word utility also comes to my mind. Ask Jeeves is also like, A lot of what the internet is and what these services are, it's just like a utility. It's the tubes, it's the mail, it's the phone, it's the whatever. Well yeah, right, let's go to that.

Matt Gregory (57:18) It's the menstrual pad Yeah. I mean, I think we should, I think we should go there. I, I completely agree, Pat, with, with where your head is going with this. And I think as somebody that, works from home, most of the time, you know, I, I often wish that there was a place, you know, in the neighborhood that I live in, that I could go sit at and do work at comfortably. Cause everything is, you know, it's the real estate is so expensive. the spaces are so small and there's outside of the house to really be ⁓ in a community. I think it's just such an interesting, knowing that a lot of workforces have shifted to hybrid or fully remote situations, there's a ton of real estate open. So it's just a weird moment that we're in.

Penelope Finnie (58:13) one thing we would joke about, not really. I mean, I was kind of half serious. Like, what if we claimed ourselves to be a nonprofit? I mean, because you're right, the whole public good thing is like, know, I sometimes thought about that. Like, what would that look like? Or is that even done? Could it be done? Yeah.

Matt Gregory (58:21) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:33) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (58:37) Yeah, that's really interesting idea. So ⁓ I guess while we're on the topic of kind of ⁓ more utilitarian ⁓ technologies and things, I'm curious if you could tell us about EGAL ⁓ and what you're doing with that. I know you're the CEO.

Penelope Finnie (58:56) Sure. So ⁓ well, Matt and I worked at a company together called Sensory Cloud. And Matt was the COO there. And while there, I met a person named Tom Devlin. And Tom was our inventor, in-house inventor at Sensory Cloud, and ⁓ had gone to MIT. So we were in Cambridge at the time. We had moved east at this point. And ⁓ my husband and I, during the time at Sensory Cloud, I bought a farm down in Massachusetts, on the coast of Massachusetts. And so Tom turned to me one day and he said, hey, I've invented this product. I filed a patent for it and it was like, OK, what's this? And he said, it's period pads on a roll. And I was so puzzled. I was like, what? Why has Tom invented this product? It was really confusing. At first, I thought I'd misheard him. I was like, what are these pads for? he was like, period pads. And so then he explained to me that his wife Stephanie ⁓ wrote for the Boston Globe, which I knew, and that she had written an article about period poverty. And in it, an activist had said ⁓ period. ⁓

Matt Gregory (59:52) You

Penelope Finnie (1:00:19) period product should be as ubiquitous as toilet paper. And Tom told me he was like, when I read that article, read that line, I was like, huh, I wonder if anybody's tried to make ⁓ a period product that ⁓ was like toilet paper. And so I was like, OK. And so he showed me the patent or ⁓ the design of it. And ⁓ And so I was like, OK, and kind of went away, kind of forgot about it. then a few months later, he contacted me and he said, hey, these mandates, there's mandates in certain states, California and New York, like maybe 10 states at the time, maybe even fewer than that, had passed mandates, had passed laws saying that free period products had to be available in schools. And he said, you know, these mandates are going to start to go into effect soon. So why don't we start this company and I want you to be the CEO. We had just finished raising money for Sensory Cloud, so he'd seen me do that. so I thought, well, all right. Seems like an interesting idea. And I could do it from home. I wouldn't have to commute to Cambridge. it'd be an interesting thing to do. And I wasn't really sure it was going to have legs. I really wasn't. But the more I started thinking about it, And the more I talk to people, particularly young people about it, they were like, my God. So in a way, the energy came from talking to younger people, for me in this case.

Matt Gregory (1:02:01) Mm.

Penelope Finnie (1:02:03) in the space of, you we thought initially, A, that schools were going to be what we focused on and the U.S. was going to be what we focused on. And it's been interesting that, ⁓ yes, schools are still what we are involved with, but airports, Denver Airport called us one day. We met them at a conference and they wanted something for their employees.

Matt Gregory (1:02:32) Hmm.

Penelope Finnie (1:02:33) And so we have this program where we'll do a pilot for three months. This was at that time. And so we said, we'll do a three month pilot and there's a QR code on the dispenser and you can get the feedback from your employees. And then, you know, if the feedback is X, would you expand? And they were like, yes. So, you know, so that was the plan. ⁓ After two weeks, Denver calls us and they're like, we had no idea. This was so needed. ⁓ This is an oversight on our part. And if you've been to Denver, you know how far away it is from everything.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:10) It's very far away and the corridors are very long too. Unrelatedly.

Penelope Finnie (1:03:16) They are very... Yeah, no, but so you can imagine if you're an employee and you get your period and you don't have anything, what are you going to do? And so Denver said, we had no idea this was an issue. And they said, we think we need to try this for the actual travelers. So again, we were like, okay, we'll do a three month pilot and do the QR code, get feedback. Same thing. Two weeks later, they're like... We had no idea that this was such an issue. ⁓ We'd like to move this, yeah, to expand throughout Concourse B, which is their busiest concourse, and now it's throughout all of the airports, all of the concourses at Denver.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:49) Did- Fantastic.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:03) But it's kind of an interesting thing. A lot of facility managers are men. A lot of people making these types of decisions are men. They have no idea the MacGyvering that women have to go through.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:11) Right. Yeah, never considered it before, didn't it? I had no idea it was a problem or a need. Goodness.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:18) No idea it was an issue. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:04:22) But I think it's also like, yes, that's true about men. I also think women have put up with it for so long that there's no expectation that there could be a source, a new sort of source of support.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:33) yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:04:38) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:04:39) you're so right. well, first of all, it's not something even women like talking about very much. Younger ones may, but it's still, it's hard. And what I really noticed when I started doing this, people my age were kind of like, why are you doing this? And I still encounter that all the time, because they're like, this is your responsibility. You bring it with you.

Matt Gregory (1:04:46) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:05:06) I think the fact that it looks exactly like toilet paper really brings the fact home. You don't have to talk about periods. You don't have to talk about menstruation. It's just like, it's just another bodily function. Deal with it in the same way that we, the same reason we have toilet paper, the same reason we have this. Exactly. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:17) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:05:19) Well, I just... Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:21) It's there when you need it, in the place you need it, like, yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:05:24) I just imagine when there isn't toilet paper, it's not a good situation, right? And so it just seems so basic.

Penelope Finnie (1:05:30) It's no fun. It's stressful, right?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:32) Yeah. Well, you should have brought your toilet paper with you, Matt.

Penelope Finnie (1:05:40) Exactly. and what's so funny is the minute I would say we don't carry around to people my age, and they're like, ⁓ I actually never thought of it that way. Like I never thought of it as just another bodily function that should be taken care of when you're away from home. And ⁓ then certain facilities managers would be like, well, we have these boxes, they're out by the sink. And we're like, yeah, well, first of all, That's not where you need it. And they're like, well, you could get it on your way in. You're like, but you don't know you need it. And they're like, you don't? So there's a lot of education around that. And then it's like, well, has anybody actually refilled that thing in 10 years? Or does it require a coin? Or they're always jammed? So yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:10). Yeah. and... ⁓

Matt Gregory (1:06:25) Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So Penny, this,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:06:29) Yeah, these are expired.

Matt Gregory (1:06:31) this feels like one of those situations where this is like such a basic human need for a huge, huge portion of population. ⁓ and also like, there's like this, you know, people have been putting up with not having this forever. So I'm wondering like, what is that? What is the biggest blocker right now to you guys having this available in every public restroom?

Penelope Finnie (1:06:57) ⁓ It is just getting the decision makers, getting to the right decision makers and getting them to realize that it's necessary. Denver was amazing, know, did it so quickly. The NHS has started to realize, in the UK, yeah, we need this for our nurses. It really makes our nurses work better. ⁓ At the NHS, when we go to the NHS conferences, they've been amazing and allowed us to.

Matt Gregory (1:07:04) Mm-hmm.

Penelope Finnie (1:07:23) put our product in the bathrooms of the conference center so people actually see it. Because when people see it, they're like, duh. This makes so much sense. ⁓ The Association of Luxury Suite Directors, ⁓ ALSD, they're for stadiums and stuff like that. So they've been really promoting us and allowing us to kind of show. ⁓be where we need to be at conferences and we've gone into Mercedes-Benz, they wanted to be the first NFL stadium in Atlanta to have our product because the NFL is trying to get female fans and this is an easy, inexpensive way to do it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:08:07) They probably just open more bathrooms while they're at it.

Penelope Finnie (1:08:13) Mercedes has a ton, they have a thousand I think for women versus, know. Anyway, but ⁓ so it is finding that person that's like, that can be your champion, you know. And then you realize people are super busy. We're doing a pilot at Heathrow. I think our dispenser sat at Heathrow. for six months before they actually got installed. you know, so that oftentimes that is the challenge. You know, and we, we sell through distributors. So the traditional way, but one thing we've realized, you know, when they're selling toilet paper or paper towels, everybody knows what that is and it's easy for them. They don't know how to sell our products. So we have to do it with alongside of them.

Matt Gregory (1:08:40) installing it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense.

Penelope Finnie (1:09:05) And some distributors are reluctant because they're like, wait, are you going to take our account away from us? We're like, no, no, no, no, no. We're here to help you. We're here to make that happen. But that's another group of people that we have to convince that we're there to help, not steal the business from them.

Matt Gregory (1:09:24) It seems like once it's in place, you've got a lot of proof of concept. Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:09:30) Oh yeah. And, and there's that whole thing. Like now that people find us in Denver, you know, they make Tik Tok videos about me. It's crazy. Well, the way people feel respected, The way people feel respected and seen when they find the product is amazing. And it's why theft and misuse is really low. ⁓ And facilities managers are always super surprised by that because they're like, nothing's happening to this. And it's like, yeah, because you actually are taking care of people, they feel respected, they're not going to... misuse it as a result of that.

Matt Gregory (1:10:08) Right. So ⁓ I know we're coming up on time here and I just, ⁓ Penny, this has been a really amazing, far ranging conversation, which I just really admire you and the way that you have been open to so many different experiences in your life. I'm just wondering like when going through all this, like what are you feeling as you share all this with us? Like, how does it make you feel? Hahaha!

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:10:40) Sorry.

Penelope Finnie (1:10:41) I mean, in a good way. It is funny. Oftentimes you're just looking forward, like, what do need to do today? it is, thank you for having the opportunity to kind of look back at it. And this is an interesting thing. I'll say this.

Matt Gregory (1:10:50) Yeah.

Penelope Finnie (1:11:02) I, after Bittersweet, I was in the Bay Area and I went to breakfast with the former CEO of Ask Jeeves, a different one than the one I had brought in. And I said, hey, I really am interested in getting back into tech or back into work, you know, outside of the food business. And he said, oh, no, no, that ship has sailed. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, you're too old. And And I was like, at the time, I think I was 57 or 58. And I remember just leaving that breakfast so discouraged. And then I came east. And it was interesting how the East Coast was far more open than California was at the time to someone that was older. And I think that what I will say is, you

Matt Gregory (1:11:42) in

Penelope Finnie (1:12:01) you do learn so much from all of these different experiences. You know, one thing I will say about EGAL is most of us are over, not most of us, half of us are over 50 and the others are younger. Of course you need the younger people and they have the experience and the energy and different approaches to things. But having older people is also really ⁓ helpful in terms of having had all of these experiences. I mean, all the experiences that Tom has had in manufacturing. ⁓ are so helpful and you know it wouldn't if he weren't 60 years old we wouldn't he wouldn't have had all of those experiences and so ⁓ so i think that that's something that i've also really been ⁓ grateful for the opportunity to keep going you know after after California

Matt Gregory (1:12:56) I love that. And I love, I also have really enjoyed working on multi-generational teams. Like, I think that that like, is a really nice, and also just like, even in the friends that we keep, we like to have, ⁓ you know, we like to have a range of different friends. Like it's just a nice, it makes your life richer. ⁓ And also like, I think what you said earlier in this conversation around, ⁓ you know,

Penelope Finnie (1:13:02) Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:13:23) the nature of being at a frontier and that there aren't really those feelings of imposter syndrome or judgment in yourself and other people like that. What that CEO of AskJeeves is said to you, I feel like is something that happens after the first initial founders go away. It's something that people who aren't actually creating new things think. and, and I think that when you are creating new things, anybody is welcome because ideas come from everywhere. ⁓ and it just, it's just a really wonderful space to be in. And I think Penny, like, ⁓ just as like, ⁓ I thank you to you. Like, I feel like you've helped me see that space and I just, I really appreciate that. And I think I hope other people.

Penelope Finnie (1:14:00) That's a really good point.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:14:02) Hmm.

Matt Gregory (1:14:20) who are listening to this conversation hear about those opportunities in that space. Cause I think there's so much judgment that people put on themselves of like, I can't do this or that. Like that's not true. Like you can do anything. ⁓ and it's just like about like trying, you know, and putting yourself there and cause you're probably going to see it slightly different than other people. ⁓ and so I hope people hear that message and what Penny's saying and feel empowered by it. Cause it's, I think it's pretty exciting.

Penelope Finnie (1:14:50) That's a great way to kind of encapsulate it, Matt.

Matt Gregory (1:14:55) Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to share all this with us and ⁓ yeah, good luck with the Egal. If people wanna like follow along with the Egal and support what you're doing, like how can they do that?

Penelope Finnie (1:15:11) So ⁓ Instagram is a great place or LinkedIn. ⁓ Pads on a Roll is our Instagram handle. ⁓ either follow me on LinkedIn or Egalpads on LinkedIn, and Pads on a Roll on TikTok now. We only have 61 followers. But we just started there. ⁓

Matt Gregory (1:15:31) cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:15:33) Yeah.

Matt Gregory (1:15:36) Cool, sounds good. All right, well thank you so much. Appreciate your time again.

Penelope Finnie (1:15:42) Yeah, thank you, Matt and Pat. Take care. Bye-bye.

Rahul Khopkar Trail Map

​[00:00:00]

Matt Gregory: [00:01:00] Hey Pat, how you doing?

Patrick Wolf: Hi Matt.

Matt Gregory: How are things?

Patrick Wolf: Great, how are you?

Matt Gregory: doing well. We had a little bit of a COVID encounter in the last week, but everybody's feeling better and, yeah. Happy to be here with you.

Patrick Wolf: I'm very happy to be here with you. Sorry about that, COVID.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, COVID is back. It never left.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, it's true.

Matt Gregory: what have you been up to these last few days?

Patrick Wolf: I've been, been working on our album, doing some recording preparing for Mary's 40th birthday. This weekend.

Matt Gregory: Huge, huge,

Patrick Wolf: big stuff.

Matt Gregory: What are you gonna do?

Patrick Wolf: We're having a little staycation in

Matt Gregory: nice

Patrick Wolf: New York City.

Matt Gregory: Nice.

Patrick Wolf: Which is a [00:02:00] city near where we live.

Matt Gregory: Heard of it.

Patrick Wolf: And we're lucky to have the grandparents here.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. That's great. That'll be fun

Patrick Wolf: with the dog.

Matt Gregory: I was just in New York actually. That's where. Um, well, it's not where the COVID came from, but it's where we all got the COVID.

Matt Gregory: Oh. And, had a great visit in New York and then ended up having to head back home to recover. And, we were celebrating my father-in-law's 90th birthday.

Patrick Wolf: Wow.

Matt Gregory: and just had a, you know, we ended up having like over a week here with him which was a real gift.

Patrick Wolf: Nice.

Matt Gregory: He's 90 years at this point.

Matt Gregory: He's lived through a lot.

Patrick Wolf: And just think of it,

Matt Gregory: hearing his stories of the Korean War and stuff was just unbelievable.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. yeah. I saw you, you sent me some pictures. Looked like you guys had an awesome time. That's what you, for having an awesome time. You get COVID.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: When you've got COVID and no one wants to see you, you get to spend a lot of time. If you're lucky enough to have it with some people you love, get to spend a [00:03:00] lot of quality time with those people.

Patrick Wolf: That's the trick.

Patrick Wolf: That's the trick.

Matt Gregory: We did a lot of cooking.I'm really loving cooking right now.

Matt Gregory: it's just such a fun, creative outlet. the dishes part sucks. Heejin and I think often about your and Mary's "You Cook and You Clean" song.

Patrick Wolf: Should I do a verse?

Matt Gregory: Yeah, let's hear it.

Patrick Wolf: It's, well, we have two versions of it, but the original version was.

Patrick Wolf: It's like you cook and then you clean, and then you cook, and then you clean, and then you cook, and then you clean, and then you sleep, and then you wake, and then you cook, and then you clean. a counterpoint to that, my attitude that I always try to return to now about dishes is that it's a, can be a very mindful practice because you know exactly what needs to be done and there's a satisfaction in that.

Patrick Wolf: Sometimes it's unclear what needs to be done.

Patrick Wolf: And that's a whole other animal,

Matt Gregory: you mean in life generally, or with dishes? Yeah,

Patrick Wolf: yeah. In all sorts of other situations, but dishes, folding laundry, just yeah. Trying to take pleasure in those things. 'cause you know, it's [00:04:00] very, it's like walking purposefully, you know?

Matt Gregory: Today I feel like without, Intending to go there. Found ourselves in the kitchen here in this conversation. And today we've got a conversation with a chef, Rahul Khopkar.

Patrick Wolf: Yes.

Matt Gregory: who will let him introduce himself as we do.

Matt Gregory: But I'm curious about his relationship with doing dishes.

Patrick Wolf: Mm. Do you think he even has to do them anymore?

Matt Gregory: I don't think so. I think that's maybe one of the things that you achieve with a certain amount of culinary fame. Anyw who? yeah, so I guess let's move on with the episode. Huh?

Patrick Wolf: It's time.

Matt Gregory: It's time.

Introducing Rahul Khopkar

Matt Gregory: All right. we are very excited to have Rahul Khopkar here today. Calling in from LA. Great to have you here, man. I've known Rahul for a while. Met through a, a high school friend. so it's, yeah, it's great to have you.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah, it's great to be here. This is gonna be fun.

Matt Gregory: well, I guess to, to start things off, would you mind doing a little introduction of yourself?

Matt Gregory: My [00:05:00] name's Rahul Khopkar. I was born in Manhattan. I grew up just outside of Boston in Wellesley, Massachusetts. My mom is Korean, my dad's Indian. I took a somewhat circuitous route to end up cooking.

Rahul Khopkar: It's been about 20 years now. Started cooking in Wellesley. Moved to Los Angeles, cooked out here for a little while. Went to culinary school up in Napa Valley came back to LA and cooked a little bit, then cooked back up in Napa Valley for a little while. And then I went over to Europe and I worked in Denmark for a little bit and then came back here and in 2015 opened Ramen Hood.

Rahul Khopkar: And I've been doing that for the last 10 years.

Matt Gregory: what is Ramen Hood for those that don't have Ramen Hood?

Rahul Khopkar: it's vegan ramen shop here in downtown Los Angeles. I'm not vegan but my business partner and I kind of felt like we could make vegan food better than vegan people could, and I would say so far we have.

Rahul Khopkar: But yeah, that is, that is [00:06:00] Ramen Hood in a nutshell.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, I, and having gone to Ramen Hood, I can attest that it's. Probably the best ramen I've ever had, and I didn't miss the meat. Or the egg.

Patrick Wolf: Matt, I would just like to interject here and say, how dare you not have told me about Ramen Hood prior to my trip to Los Angeles in June?

Rahul Khopkar: You were out here in June?

Patrick Wolf: Yes. I'd never been to Union Station. It's beautiful. And,it was right when there was the Pride Parade and they were sending the National Guard But if you, if I had known your restaurant was right there, I would've gone there for lunch that day. I'm sure I will when I go back

Matt Gregory: next time. Well, Rahul, it's awesome to have you on the show. Can you take us back to your earliest food memory? It sounds like it was in Wellesley.

Rahul Khopkar: there's all these like, funny stories my mom has about me being a kid where she was always kind of like making a point of exposing me to a [00:07:00] wide variety of foods. And it, there were times where it was like problematic for a while.

Rahul Khopkar: Like when she and my dad were working for UNICEF, UNICEF would pay for you to fly to your second home. So our second home was in India, and you know, you could book business trip tickets and everything. And I think one of the first times I flew in, like coach or economy like the food came and my, and I was like standing on the seat next to my mom and I was just like, where's the smoked salmon?

Rahul Khopkar: Like, so there's all these stories floating around like that. Like, I think we were in Corsica and I ordered spaghetti and I was just like, why does this pasta sauce taste like ketchup? There's all sorts of, or maybe like somewhere in Italy, maybe. Maybe near Pisa. I, I don't remember, but there's all these stories like that floating around.

Rahul Khopkar: I think like one of my earliest food memories though, and it's like very apropos for what I'm doing now, [00:08:00] is I used to come home from school and, our grandmother was living with us at the time and she and I would sit down and have a bowl of ramen together after school. And so I definitely remember that growing up.

Rahul Khopkar: But food was always like an important thing in our family. Like we would sit down together and eat dinner as a family for as long as I remember. And I know, especially in high school, that was kind of, not the norm for a lot of kids. I had friends whose families were kind of like everybody was on a different eating schedule, especially for dinner.

Rahul Khopkar: And there was no sense of, getting together and doing that. And so, I definitely, you know, have strong memories, surrounding food because of that. And, definitely understand like the convivial nature of eating. And,for me that's, that's like a really big thing. I do really enjoy sitting down with other people and eating.

Rahul Khopkar: Like, if, if we're gonna hang out and do something, my first thought's always like, oh, we should go eat something. Yeah. [00:09:00] So

Matt Gregory: totally, I totally relate to that. And, I think food has an amazing power to just disarm everybody and, put everybody on the same page.

Matt Gregory: Like you're just, you're having the same experience. Pat, did you have family dinners growing up too?

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, we did. it is one of those things that it's sort of like, if there was something that I wanted people to get back to that would be one, eating together is one that I think is, such a micro community building tradition.

Patrick Wolf: I know that it still is a thing in other countries and other cultures now. I think it's just become so easy to eat something that's quick that you can just pull outta the freezer or you can just get something to go.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: Totally agree. I was in, San Sebastian in Spain. probably 2015 or something. And there was a research project going on by IDEO the design firm. And they were studying, Spanish food culture and specifically in the Basque region.

Matt Gregory: [00:10:00] People of all generations get together once a week and they cook, and then they kind of experience the meals together. I think that's such a powerful practice. it sort of forces you away from your phone or away from whatever you might be, looking at otherwise.

Matt Gregory: Rahul what is, so what is your first memory of early memories around starting to cook yourself?

Rahul Khopkar: Not my memory, but when I was very little, I was apparently, like I was always very fascinated with it. And when we were living in India, like everybody has help, which is kind of how the place works.

Rahul Khopkar: And so we had a cook and I was always interested in like what they were doing and I was trying to help them make some chapatis and I fell off this stool. And the cook grabbed my arm and it actually broke my arm. He was trying to like catch me and broke my arm. And I was a baby at the time.

Rahul Khopkar: I was just like, getting to a point where I was [00:11:00] standing. I think I must have been, I don't know, like one or something like that. But I had so much baby fat that like my parents didn't know the arm was broken for a couple days. I was just stuck. That was a whole thing.

Rahul Khopkar: 'cause you know, you're in India, it's like not necessarily the best care. So my arm was set crooked and then had to be rebroken. So I spent like nine months in the cast at one point. But I don't know earliest, earliest memories of cooking. I was always kind of curious about it.

Rahul Khopkar: and I always worked, I've always worked in and around food. I worked for Whole Foods for about a decade. And so, there was always some food knowledge happening, with that. And I think probably at Whole Foods where I saw especially when I was living, working up in Portland, Maine, that store had, an open kitchen where people could come up and order food that was, cooked all in menu.

Rahul Khopkar: And that's kind of where I was like, oh, that could be kind of a cool different job to, to do. when I moved back to Wellesley, that was where I kind of decided I [00:12:00] wanted to try to get a job doing that and yeah, transition into something else.

Matt Gregory: You already sort of alluded to it, but being from like a mixed race family and like your, your mom's Korean roots, your dad's Indian roots, like, how do you think about your sort of cultural, background and heritage in terms of like, in terms of food?

Matt Gregory: Like, does that play a role in the way that you think about food or the way you think about flavor?

Rahul Khopkar: When cooking, I definitely lean towards Korean flavors a lot. I think they're I think there're a lot more. Approachable for people. There's like kind of a better understanding, I guess, about it.

Rahul Khopkar: and then with, with the Indian food, I love Indian food. I'm pretty particular about it.

Rahul Khopkar: I think that there's a lot of Indian food in this world that is, whitewashed Indian Food's one of those weird things where if you really dive into it, you look at what the British [00:13:00] did to the food and then you look at things where vindaloo is actually a Portuguese influenced dish. within India, India's regionality is so insane and intense that the food differs within the country greatly.

Rahul Khopkar: and, I don't pull from Indian food that often. We have a dish at the restaurant now that uses panipuri as like a vehicle, and I think that's a great vehicle. And we've been doing that for, about seven or eight years now. But I don't know. I think personally I don't pull from Indian food that much because it's a little bit hard to incorporate some of the flavors, depending on what I'm doing.

Rahul Khopkar: there are certain techniques. That are really useful, like, frying aromatics and oil before you put the rest of your ingredients in. But yeah, I also feel less comfortable cooking Indian food. I just don't have as much experience doing it. if I'm making something I want it to, be a close facsimile in terms of flavor and I don't necessarily trust myself to get it [00:14:00] there. A large part of it is how you respect like the food that you are making and the culture that it's coming from, and then what you're outputting and, there's some places out here that do fusion Indian food for instance, where I'm just like, fuck you guys.

Rahul Khopkar: Like, you don't, you're not respecting where you came from and the food you're making isn't very good. Like, you've completely gone down a rabbit hole of like being trendy and making food for one type of person, right? Mm-hmm. so I don't know. there's a lot of different ways to look at that.

Patrick Wolf: I'm curious how did you decide to make your restaurant vegan if you, you're not vegan, right?

Rahul Khopkar: I'm not vegan. So my friend and business partner, Ilan, I was working in Copenhagen at the time, and he called me and he was, he had a very meat centric restaurant and was getting a lot of flack on Twitter from vegans about that.

Rahul Khopkar: And he'd [00:15:00] already kind of had this idea to do a vegan concept. And, I was already kind of in this mind frame of doing a lot of vegetable forward stuff because of where I was working. And, he asked me if I was planning to come back to LA and I was and so we started talking about, what, what we could do,

Rahul Khopkar: We originally wanted to do a vegan version of this concept called Noodle World that exists out here. Which Noodle World is exactly what you think it would be. It's noodles from all over the world. It's organized by country.

Rahul Khopkar: Like, it's we kind of wanted to do a vegan version of that, and as we were talking about it, it became a little more tricky, based on the amount of space we had to work with. and so we kind of dialed it down to just ramen.

Rahul Khopkar: And so, I think, not being vegan doing it is a, is an advantage in a lot of ways because, just like with memories, you start to [00:16:00] forget the way things taste over time. And the number of vegan products I eat where people are like, it tastes exactly like the real thing.

Patrick Wolf: Like, nah, dude,

Rahul Khopkar: it's been a very long time since you've had the real thing because this does not taste anything like it.

Patrick Wolf: I have you have, you come across the concept of like, you find a vegan restaurant. You know, this might not be the case in places like LA but like, I travel around a lot. You see a vegetarian or a vegan restaurant and it's like 4.8 on Google or whatever, and you go and it's like, that's because it's the vegan restaurant.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And people are so grateful that it exists at all.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And it's not really about like, is this food really good?

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah, I, that does happen. And I mean, you know, I give the vegan community a lot of credit. They are very supportive

Rahul Khopkar: but yeah, I've definitely, experienced that. I had a bowl of ramen at a new spot in little Tokyo out here and tried the vegan ramen, and that was terrible. But it's

Patrick Wolf: usually an afterthought in my experience. I'm a pescatarian, I eat fish, but sometimes it hits and I [00:17:00] really appreciate it, but it's almost always, an afterthought if they do a vegetarian or vegan ramen,

Matt Gregory: there's real science involved too. 'cause like, I mean, if you go to ramen hood, like there is an egg in your ramen, just, it's just a vegan egg, right? Rahul? So can you talk about that a little bit

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: So the vegan egg is kind of a funny story. we felt like we had to have something to mimic the egg. And so when we first started, it didn't take us that many iterations to get what we wanted out of it, but, when we first opened, we were making the vegan egg out of a locally produced soy milk.

Rahul Khopkar: And, it's actually surprising how hard it is to find unsweetened soy milk that doesn't have some sort of other flavor additive to it. but, we were making it outta soy milk and we were spherifying the yolk. And,

Patrick Wolf: like you do,

Rahul Khopkar: yeah, it was like we, it was this whole thing. we were buying like this yolk mixture from this guy who the yolk mixture already had. I'm actually forget the [00:18:00] two components. It's been so long since we, you'll understand why, but. So we were spherifying this yolk and the whole thing.

Rahul Khopkar: And it was cool because the yolk would pop, but like we'd have to keep the yolks frozen and then you have to put 'em in, in this bath with a, I don't know, like sodium citrate or something like that and wash it around and the whole thing. And people really liked it, but like the yolk lacked this like fatty, the fattiness that a true yoke would have.

Rahul Khopkar: And so, I think I was actually back home a couple years, it was like two years after we opened and there was a Wagamama there and I was kind of surprised that Wagamama had opened up there. And I noticed that these fuckers had ripped us off and stole our vegan egg and were making like the vegan egg.

Rahul Khopkar: And I was like, you know, Ilan and I are talking. I'm like, what the fuck? And I looked at this thing and I was kind of just like, oh, their yolk is a vegan mayonnaise base. And I thought about [00:19:00] it and I'm like that gets you like the fatty nature of what you kind of want out of the yolk, but you don't have this popping yolk.

Rahul Khopkar: And so then we ripped them off backwards. I was gonna say, you stole it back. That's good. Yeah. We switched to a vegan yolk, which simplified our lives in a lot of way. In a lot.

Patrick Wolf: I mean, the egg,

Patrick Wolf: the egg is such a crucial part of the ramen. It's you gotta, you gotta know. Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: And I mean, you put black salt in and the yolk mixture tastes like yolk,

Rahul Khopkar: I feel like there's a lot of things in food where it's about can you trick somebody's brain into thinking a certain way about something as opposed to like it necessarily being identically the same thing.

Matt Gregory: has cooking vegan for this many years influenced your own diet?

Rahul Khopkar: not really. I would say though, I eat less red meat than I ever have before. I don't do that much dairy. I mean, I had a burnt grilled cheese the other night, but it was like, I don't do that much dairy anymore. But no, I still am kind of in this boat of you have to maintain flavor [00:20:00] profiles and it's hard to do that if you start eliminating things.

Rahul Khopkar: Ilan, my business partner has definitely, gone vegan at times.

Matt Gregory: I know that Ilan is Ilan Hall, and he, he was, Top Chef winner in the, I think early days of, of Top Chef.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah. Season two.

Matt Gregory: Which is pretty, pretty rad that you've built this relationship with somebody like him. And I know you talk about your time work working in, in Copenhagen you know, I know that was at Noma, which is one of the top restaurants in the world, I think has three Michelin stars.

Matt Gregory: So you've had some like real brushes with fame in the food space. How do you think about that? I mean, are these just people that you're collaborating with or, is the fame they've achieved on your radar at all?

Rahul Khopkar: Ilan and I joke about his fame all the time. 'Cause it's not really like that's, I mean, he is famous and it's, it is it, the way his fame manifests itself is [00:21:00] very funny and like entertaining and like he has fun with it.

Rahul Khopkar: So it's a really positive thing. And there's all these funny stories about like every time his season of Top Chef gets released in another country, he gets like, hit with all these dms of people being like, "you were a bully." Like all this stuff. But no, you know, it's. Opportunity to do anything, I think with anybody who has any form of profile that's pretty substantial in the culinary world is important. I mean, it, you know, like most things, it's what you make outta your experience, right?

Rahul Khopkar: And what your mindset is like, if you go into things thinking that you know, everything, like it's never a good, I think in every industry, it's never a good way to operate. But especially in creative industries. And, I had a chef instructor in culinary school tell me that cooking was like climbing a mountain where you never reached the top

Rahul Khopkar: there's always something to be learned and I think that, it's the opportunities, the biggest thing, and then what you make of it from [00:22:00] there is your choice. Sometimes it's just being in the same room as somebody and hearing them talk about something

Rahul Khopkar: Is like a big enough thing. Versus actually having an opportunity to like cook alongside them is a different thing, you know?

Patrick Wolf: You, I mean, we've mentioned you being in Copenhagen, Noma a couple times, and you, I think you said you, you were in wine country in California at some point in your career as a lay person.

Patrick Wolf: My mind from those things go to and tell you, tell me how annoying this question is. Have you seen the Bear?

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Yeah. I haven't, I have not watched the fourth season.

Patrick Wolf: Okay.

Matt Gregory: I, I mostly. Oh, well here, ask your question and then I'll give you my, my shake. Well, that,

Patrick Wolf: that question at all, just bringing up the Bear, does that annoy you or are you, can we go further?

Rahul Khopkar: we can go further.

Patrick Wolf: you know, my friend who had worked in some kitchens in various capacities was surprised that I really loved the show. And I was like, [00:23:00] what do you mean? it's a very interesting show about human relationships.

Patrick Wolf: It happens to take place in the kitchen and also kind of gives you a window on how maybe the dynamics work. And I'm curious if you feel like it, it gives any kind of a realistic window onto like how different kinds of, actual cooking environments or relationships are, or if it's sort of just like Hollywood in an annoying distraction to you or where somewhere along that spectrum maybe.

Rahul Khopkar: So, I will say this like everything it is entertainment.

Patrick Wolf: Sure.

Rahul Khopkar: So it's, it's realism is capped by a necessity of, of that. much like how, I don't know if either of you watch the show, The Offer about the making of the Godfather. It, oh yeah, it's great. But like all my friends out here who are producers are like, it's entertainment.

Rahul Khopkar: The reality of that [00:24:00] show is not the real reality of things. As far as the bear goes, that show lost me in seventh episode of season one, where it's like that one giant cut and like Carmen gets locked in the walk-in. Like I've never been in a walk-in that hasn't had some way of releasing the door, whether it's like a physical mechanic or like an ax on the wall, so you can cut your way out of it.

Rahul Khopkar: But and then I have problems with some of the characters and their most notably Ayo Edebiri character, I think is just like, really poorly written. I would've hired her and fired her the same day. And just really poorly written and, and in terms of like, like a character, like people like that in, I mean, maybe today because things have shifted, but like people like that wouldn't survive where I've worked like at all.

Rahul Khopkar: Just they're not like. [00:25:00] They're not exuding the mental fortitude required to to

Patrick Wolf: you don't think she, she had mental fortitude?

Rahul Khopkar: No. I, she's, no I don't like all the whining, like thinking about quitting. It's like, no. Like when you're in the shit, you dig in and you push back, you don't complain. Like it's, that is a lot of what I get out of her character in a lot of situations. A lot of people feel the way you feel about that character. They really like her. I'll tell you who I really like.

Rahul Khopkar: There's two interesting things. One, I forget the guy who plays the pastry chef, but he's based on somebody that I used to work with, at Noma actually. So it was kind of cool to see Malcolm's story told, like a different way. you know whose arc in that show is actually dead on and really well done Cousin Richie's.

Rahul Khopkar: Yes. Because there are tons of people who, go through this transformation from one experience where, you know, before they were [00:26:00] doing fuck all and whatever, and then they have this opportunity and it, it truly transforms 'em. 'cause they've bought into, they've drank the Kool-Aid, they bought into the system, whatever it was.

Rahul Khopkar: And they come out the other side. And the most impressive thing to me is the way they nailed the irrational sense of confidence that can be built from working at like really high end places where it's like, I don't necessarily know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm not scared and I'll go do it and it's gonna be okay, or I'll figure it out as I'm doing it, or like I'll push back and I'll get it done a thing.

Rahul Khopkar: It's like if you look at the contrast between his character and what his character is capable of and that arc versus her character and what she's doing. And granted, I haven't seen season four. They are light years apart and like one of 'em gets it. And the other one is, it's like a character that's there because it, it's truly a foil character and not necessarily like an accurate [00:27:00] representation.

Rahul Khopkar: I feel like.

Patrick Wolf: Okay. Well when I, when I come back to Los Angeles and I do come to the restaurant, we can, drink a beer and we can get really into the weeds about this even more. So

Rahul Khopkar: I would, I would love to, I'll watch season four by then so we can talk about it. 'cause that's the, I only watch a show because people want to talk about it.

Rahul Khopkar: I'm like,

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. So is it annoying to you just its, its existence kind of?

Rahul Khopkar: No, I like, it doesn't bother me that it exists. Yeah. You know, it's, I think that it was an inevitable like outcome of the way food media has gone over all these years that there would be. Something like this eventually.

Rahul Khopkar: But I just don't, it doesn't service me in any way, I guess is the way to put it.

Patrick Wolf: Okay.

Matt Gregory: Well, it's your life. So I guess there's a interesting tension here, right? Where like, so we were just talking about, these chefs who have achieved some level of fame that you're working with, you've achieved some level of, fame and notoriety through your own work.

Matt Gregory: I think it's an interesting juxtaposition between [00:28:00] the, from what I understand though, like the work in a kitchen is like, it's hard work. It's like hard, long hours. Yeah. Grunt work, like you've been doing this for many years. You know, it's tiring. And then there's also like this, small percentage of chefs that have gotten famous.

Matt Gregory: For that sort of grunt work. And so I guessthere's a lot of romance. and maybe it started with like Anthony Bourdain or somebody, in the food industry who made it cool to be a chef. I guess, any thoughts on that?

Rahul Khopkar: It was probably like 20 years ago where it started to get glamorized because of things like Top Chef and media.

Patrick Wolf: Well, Anthony Bourdain's book too, right?

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah. I mean, yeah, he definitely, but, why am I blanking on the name of his

Matt Gregory: Kitchen Confidential.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah, but Kitchen Confidential came out in like the nineties didn't it?

Patrick Wolf: Something like, yeah, late nineties.

Rahul Khopkar: Anthony Bourdain's an incredible storyteller. And he definitely played a [00:29:00] large role in making it feel accessible and did a good job of showing, both sides of the industry

Matt Gregory: I've never worked in a restaurant. I have, I actually started a business that was based in the back of a restaurant. And so we wereworking side by side with the restaurant staff.

Matt Gregory: and there's like a spirit to the restaurant space that I, love. there's a resilience, creativity just like, you know, a figure shit out type mentality. That is, inspiring. And there are a lot of good people that care about giving good, food experiences to customers.

Matt Gregory: And so whether or not it's captured by media, I think that's worth calling out. and I know it's hard, there's a major talk track around like teachers not getting paid enough. I think the same is true of restaurant workers.

Patrick Wolf: Like they don't, they work really, really hard to feed people and they don't get paid enough. You did mention Cousin Richie from the Bear. I feel like he has an epiphany in the show that like his role in all of it is to be the bringer together [00:30:00] of people.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And so like, he like providing experience and that was always kind of the role he played from the beef stand in the beginning or whatever. But like that's, that goes back to what we all said at the top sitting down and having family dinner. Like it's the thing, it's a human thing and it always has been.

Patrick Wolf: And now, that's a role that restaurants and

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: You know, whatever concentric circle of the food industry you want to include in it. But that's a role that it can still play.

Rahul Khopkar: Yeah. that part of his character's mentality is definitely like a very high end restaurant thing.

Rahul Khopkar: It's, I have a story about going to 11 Madison Park that kind of has one of those moments to it. I was with my mom and she wanted, they served a mini eggs benedict course, quail eggs and this whole thing. And as they're clearing the table my mom kind of leaned over to me and very quietly was like, oh, I wish we could have that again.

Rahul Khopkar: And it was, there was a lot of setup that took like three people to drop everything for one person. and they do coordinated drops for all the plating. And, a few minutes passes and we're talking and. [00:31:00] The captain comes back over and is just like, this is one of those moments of, be careful what you wish for and then just drop the course again, because my mom had made this like, very quiet comment to me about it.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, in terms of your own motivation, does the hospitality piece of restaurants motivate you?

Matt Gregory: Or is your focus more really more on the food or , do you see a disconnect between those two pieces at all?

Rahul Khopkar: in a lot of ways that's kind of like the whole front of the house, back of the house thing.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: I'm I'm very much about the food. I like if. Yeah, we're kind of like notoriously rude at Ramen hood.

Rahul Khopkar: Not like in, it's just like a,

Patrick Wolf: like the hot dog fan in Chicago where they yell at you or

Rahul Khopkar: It's not on that level. I think that if Ramen hood was not where it is locatedI would put more effort into the hospitality side of things. But for me, cooking has always been, the return has always been like somebody eating the food and liking it. it's like anybody can go anywhere, no matter how nice it is and decide to have a bad [00:32:00] experience if they want.

Rahul Khopkar: So there's only so much you can control in the end.

Matt Gregory: I've thought about that just like the busy space that you're in, in Grand Central Market and, the challenge of, you can't really control the experience. And I guess that's probably true, that you can't control it, even at a fancy restaurant.

Matt Gregory: If somebody comes in, in a bad mood, they're gonna be a bad mood. And that's a hard thing to change.

Rahul Khopkar: You know, if I've learned anything from being in that market, it's that you can't control everything. I had been cooking back home and then I came out here and I was cooking on the side, just make money.

Rahul Khopkar: And I found that I was like pretty inherently talented at it and there was real gratification. And especially like when I worked for Ilan at his restaurant, the Gorbals you know, we had this chef counter There was real gratification in making something and then putting it down in front of somebody and them trying it and seeing their reaction and enjoying it.

Patrick Wolf: There is a direct pipeline in cooking.

Patrick Wolf: It's just like, I made this thing right over here, and here you go, and here it is, and you're putting it right into your body right now, which yeah.

Matt Gregory: [00:33:00] But that feedback,

Patrick Wolf: yeah, the feedback and

Rahul Khopkar: no, I agree. You know, the return on what you're doing is almost immediate, which is nice. I was gonna comment on what you said about that notion of like, hitting it big as a chef. I think the industry's a little interesting because the physicality of it makes it so that, you have to think of an exit strategy 'cause it's not something you can do forever, right?

Rahul Khopkar: Right. Like, if you have an office job, you'll have your own problem sitting in a chair for like 40 years. But you can sit in a chair for 40 years, it's not that demanding on your body. in this game, it's like you have to have an exit strategy. the only way out really is to go in deeper.

Rahul Khopkar: having one restaurant's never really gonna get you out. you have to have more than one restaurant. it has to be more. more headache, more like you have to keep adding and then eventually maybe you get to a point where you have enough people to run it for you

Matt Gregory: and I mean, doesn't that necessarily pull you away [00:34:00] from the singular task of cooking?

Matt Gregory: If you're having to manage like five, ten restaurants, like you're not

Rahul Khopkar: Absolutely. Even, even with my one place, like my job is not really is not cooking anymore. It's mostly psychology and teaching, right? Because you, like I can make a addition, whatever, and everything I make is designed to be very easy for my guys to do because that's just what it has to be.

Rahul Khopkar: But like teaching them how to do it is one aspect of it. But then having people who work for you, like teaching, critical thinking is very difficult, I've learned. And also just kind of getting people to kind of think about things in a similar way as you, it can be very tricky

Patrick Wolf: in any field.

Rahul Khopkar: No, this is like those, these are universal

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Rahul Khopkar: but, you know, a lot of management over time is really comes down to teaching and psychology. It's not so much about doing what you initially wanted to be doing.

Patrick Wolf: another [00:35:00] dimension of it is, you hear the stats about like, 50% of restaurants fail in their first year or their first two year.

Patrick Wolf: I don't know what the actual number is, but you guys are 10 years deep here. Like you must be doing something right.

Rahul Khopkar: we're 10 years deep, but this is not a great place to own a small business.

Rahul Khopkar: LA does not care about small business.

Patrick Wolf: How, so?

Rahul Khopkar: I was in Japan in 2020 to go to an F1 race, and we were at just some like little bar sitting there talking to the guy who owned it, and he was just like, oh yeah. Like one of the first things the Japanese government did was they subsidized all small businesses.

Rahul Khopkar: Like immediately it was like no questions asked. LA is one of these cities where it's like you have an alphabet soup of agencies that all want money from you for different things that like, are redundant, unnecessary you know, labor here is very expensive. You get taxed on pretty much everything. The way people eat out here, they're more interested in going to places that are like part of a large [00:36:00] restaurant group that are big and flashy than like supporting mom and pop stuff.

Patrick Wolf: but so you guys are, despite that you're still doing it?

Rahul Khopkar: we're still doing it. We only have a couple years left on our lease. our lease is up in 27 you know, we will reevaluate as we get closer to that. But, yeah. I mean, rent's high.

Matt Gregory: It's grind.

Rahul Khopkar: It's a grind. Yeah.

Matt Gregory: I know we're coming up on time here and, Rahul, I just wanna say thank you so much for joining us, and chatting a bit. It's obvious that the restaurant business is a tough one. It's a lot of hard work. but I also know that, the product that you guys have put out there for 10 years is a really good one. That's, given a lot of people, a lot of joy. So, it's a grind, but I know your work is appreciated.

Rahul Khopkar: Thank you. it's been a pleasure to be here. It's always fun talking with you guys.

Matt Gregory: Thank you so much and, Good luck we'll be watching what you do next and, good luck with everything.

Patrick Wolf: i'll holler at you next time

Rahul Khopkar: Lemme know next time you're in LA We can, we can go eat. It'll be [00:37:00] great. That'd be awesome.

Patrick Wolf: Okay, cool. All right.

Rahul Khopkar: See you guys.

Conclusion

Rahul Khopkar: it was cool to chat with Rahul Khopkar about his journey I felt like we had a whole, maybe offshoot podcast opportunity to do like episode by episode reviews of The Bear.

Patrick Wolf: Oh my God. I'm gonna

Patrick Wolf: start that podcast if you don't mind.

Patrick Wolf: it was interesting to me that he really didn't like the one shot episode, which was one of my favorite episodes.

Matt Gregory: I enjoyed that episode also. I would describe the feeling afterwards. I think I was a bit stressed out by the end of it,

Patrick Wolf: for sure.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: Nonstop. I mean,

Patrick Wolf: you know, I, I was just asking him about it to see, I fully expected him to be like, that show sucks. Or like, I don't know. So it's just interesting to hear what he had to say.

Matt Gregory: It was cool to have him on. it just, strikes me, and, this is not a new thought, but like, the restaurant business is really hard. and it's glorified but it's hard.

Patrick Wolf: Right. I think there's a lot of, the visible [00:38:00] part of the iceberg. It's easy to be like, wow, that's cool. And I think that's true for a lot of different industries, certainly including the restaurant and hospitality industry. And it's, I mean, that's what was interesting to me about the show.

Patrick Wolf: We can stop talking about the show, but just, you know, to me it was like, it's very impressive that they've had this restaurant in downtown LA for 10 years.

Patrick Wolf: And, Like, there's so much hard work and just like, yeah. that would be hard to even convey How much work they've done.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Well, I think about the visible part of the iceberg for, for us, and it's like. Making dinner at home.

Patrick Wolf: Right.

Matt Gregory: And even making dinner at home. God, the dishes, the, like, shopping,

Patrick Wolf: we, we forgot to ask him about the, if he does dishes anymore, we forgot to ask

Matt Gregory: him. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, it's a lot, it's so much work.

Matt Gregory: And then just thinking about making the same stuff for, I mean, it's just I don't know. Like I was alluding to, I did some work in the back of a [00:39:00] restaurant at one point in my career and like. I think the people who have worked in hospitality are like just an incredible, it's an incredible group of people that really care deeply about the experience of, of customers have a great deal of patience.

Matt Gregory: and so Rahul was talking about, the sort of. The way he gives it back to customers a little bit, and I'm like, dude, you're making the same food for people every day. Like you can, that's your right.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. I feel like if you can hone that vibe like a little bit, Hey, yo. Yeah. People appreciate that.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. But, you know, we didn't talk about this, but like the reviews for restaurants it's really problematic. Like, I don't know if you've seen Ratatouille, but like it used to be that,

Patrick Wolf: watched it recently.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. It used to be that like, restaurants would worry about the incognito New York Times [00:40:00] restaurant reviewer coming in and like having a bad meal and now it's like.

Matt Gregory: Every single customer who has the power to like post a review of you. It's

Patrick Wolf: basically black mirror, like everybody's just filming everything.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, that's tough. That's a, that's a grind, but

Patrick Wolf: yeah.

Matt Gregory: so

Patrick Wolf: you've been to the his restaurant and to, I, one thing I meant to ask him about, which we really didn't talk about that much, was the vegan egg.

Patrick Wolf: Did you have that?

Matt Gregory: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Wolf: How is it? I mean, it looks

Matt Gregory: exactly like an egg. Wow. It looked, well, it looks like half an egg, yeah. Like it's cut in half sliced egg, sliced. Yeah. And it was, yeah, I'm very equivalent. Experience to like eating a, eating an egg.

Matt Gregory: I just,

Patrick Wolf: just, the whole concept really excites me because I've, having been a vegetarian

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: Or a pescatarian for 10 years. So much vegetarian or vegan food is like an afterthought and there are, I mean, it's been growing in that time.

Matt Gregory: [00:41:00] Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: I think it's been getting much easier to eat like legit food.

Matt Gregory: have you had vegan eggs?

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, but I think I had them like early on and I was like, eh, and even, you know, like the texture of, and the flavoring of everything has gotten better in the last 10 years. I think it has.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's definitely worth trying to get out there to, to try it at some point if you're, if you're out there for music or whatever.

Patrick Wolf: Next time in LA

Matt Gregory: Yeah. And it's right in Grand Central Market which is, you know, it's, it's a busy food market.

Patrick Wolf: yeah.

Matt Gregory: And, yeah, it's a fun, fun experience. And, you know, they've been doing it for a long time and they're really good at it. And it's Ramen delicious.

Matt Gregory: Good time of year for ramen.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. Although, I'll, I'll have soup anytime.

Patrick Wolf: We have a good place near us here now that we go, whenever Mary and I have a lunch opportunity, we're like, now let's just go there.

Matt Gregory: Yeah. [00:42:00] No, actually we had pho we, well, we had pho and ramen last night at my house.

Matt Gregory: We ordered takeout from a local place here that we love.

Patrick Wolf: Nice.

Matt Gregory: So,

Patrick Wolf: I love a, I love a bustling downtown market too. Have you ever been to the one in Philadelphia? I forget what it's called right now. I don't think so. No. Just like indoor, lots of little stalls. Is that what Grand Central Market in LA is like?

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: What about the ferry building in San Francisco? Where would you put that? Yeah, it's like

Matt Gregory: Ferry building in San Francisco. is Chelsea market like that in New York? Chelsea Market?

Patrick Wolf: Yeah.

Matt Gregory: Yep.

Patrick Wolf: I mean, this one in Philadelphia that I'm thinking about is a little more crowded and bustling. It's like, yeah, like Chelsea Markets, like "we are in a market. I, we just went shopping."

Matt Gregory: Posh. Yeah. Yeah. Posh.

Matt Gregory: What are you cooking at home right now?

Patrick Wolf: Actually Eamon, My 9-year-old son just learned to make. Ramen Mary gave him a book, called. How To Be a Person, which we kind of want to give to everyone we know, but it's got, all manner of just like basic life skills. And one of the things was how to make ramen from a packet of [00:43:00] dry noodles

Patrick Wolf: He put in all sorts of mushrooms and vegetables And made it for the family for dinner.

Matt Gregory: And

Patrick Wolf: he was so proud and it was so great.

Patrick Wolf: how to be a person.

Patrick Wolf: And then he made it a second time and it kind of sat for a while, so the noodles got a little soggy.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah. And so that was like kind of sad and disappointing, but now we gotta, we gotta psych him back up again.

Matt Gregory: Yeah.

Patrick Wolf: And that's just, it's never, you know, it won't be the same every time. That's the other thing about the restaurant business is like you're trying to make it basically.

Patrick Wolf: Yeah, it's you, you're trying to bring together the specialness of like, but most people don't go here all the time. It's like a special thing, right? But like, you're trying to do the same thing over and over again.

Matt Gregory: Totally.

Matt Gregory: Well, it was fantastic. Pat, thank you again for joining the episode and, it was great to chat with Rahul and looking forward to the next conversation.

Patrick Wolf: Matt is always a pleasure, and when I go and eat the vegan egg, we can compare the notes.

Matt Gregory: Yeah, that'd be cool. if we're ever in LA together, we could do a live episode with, with Rahul.

Patrick Wolf: That'd be great. [00:44:00]

Matt Gregory: All right, cool. Have a good one

Patrick Wolf: later.

Matt Gregory: See ya.

Matt Gregory (01:07 Hey Pat, how's it going?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:09) Hey Matt, I'm good. How are you?

Matt Gregory (01:11) I am good. It's great to be back. We haven't had an episode come out in maybe a month or so, which was not really planned, but it's really exciting. I'm like feeling very energized to be back here and excited about our episode today.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:26) That's great. I mean time flies A, and B, I've got my microphone this time so like I'm getting a little bit serious.

Matt Gregory (01:32) Yeah. Yeah. No, I can see you're dabbling in seriousness, which is really exciting. Yeah. We dabble in seriousness. Yeah, no, it's, I think with summer, I'm sure a lot of our listeners can, and I know you can relate, like it just, gets busy and end of summer. Yep. Summer camp and.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (01:39) That's a great slogan for us. especially end of August, end of summer, nobody does anything.

Matt Gregory (01:56) ⁓ We took a little family trip, which was really nice. We went to London and ⁓ we just kind of pretended we lived there for a couple of weeks, which was super cool. Played house, went grocery shopping.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:00) amazing. That's great. Play house.

Matt Gregory (02:15) Yeah, it was cool. How was the end of your summer?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:13) That's awesome. Jealous. It was great. It zoomed by as we've been alluding to and kids are back in school. I saw my fallen leaf the other day. It's all happening, you know?

Matt Gregory (02:26) Yeah. It does feel like it's just suddenly the seasons change. And actually this is kind of a nice lead in today. Today we've got Stephanie Hsia who is joining us. Who's a landscape architect ⁓ and leaves. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm super excited to chat with her.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (02:40) I was gonna say leaves, she deals with leaves.

Matt Gregory (02:46) and to introduce you to her, I think you'll be inspired by the work that she does. we've got a couple more episodes that are in the works. So excited to to keep rolling here with Trail Map. And thank you all for listening. And please, again, subscribe if you if you haven't. And feel free to share feedback with us. We'd love to hear any. Feedback, positive, negative, or indifferent. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:11) We're getting further down the trail, but you can just hop on.

Matt Gregory (03:14) Yeah, yeah. And then another cool like little update is that I've been working with a really talented graphic designer on the branding for Trail Map which will launch in maybe a month or so. so that's coming along. And now Pat has a fancy mic. like we're really, we're growing up here. This is cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (03:33) I mean, you folks are watching it in real time. We're crawling, and then one day we'll walk.

Matt Gregory (03:36) Yeah. Yeah, yeah, cool. All right, well, we can stop chatting and we'll get to the good stuff here. Thank you all for listening.

Matt Gregory (03:46) Well, we're here today with Stephanie Hsia and really excited to have you here with us Steph, I was wondering if, as a way to start the episode, if you could just quickly introduce yourself to our audience.

Stephanie Hsia (03:58) Sure, thanks for having me. My name is Stephanie Hsia a landscape architect and currently live in Brookline, Massachusetts. I did grow up in New Jersey and moved around a bit before settling here and yeah, and had kind of a kind of roundabout way that I found landscape architecture.

Matt Gregory (04:18) Cool, we're excited to get into that. I grew up, I don't think you know this stuff, but my mom is also really into landscape architecture and she was an art history major, but studied it a lot. so I feel like as a kid, I kind of got exposed. Like we always went to like really cool gardens. and walked around, you know, cool old houses that had interesting landscapes and stuff. And so I feel like I've gotten a little bit of exposure to it. And I've always thought your career sounded super cool. I'm, really appreciate you taking the time to chat with us. This podcast really focuses on people's paths, like how they, how they got to where they are. and sort of maybe a little bit about where they think they're going. And for people who seem to have found things that are really aligned with their values, like often like there are pieces of it that start really early. so one thing that I noticed as I was reading your bio is there was a description of growing up in New Jersey, spending time among fruit trees in your father's garden. So. I was wondering if you could talk about his garden a little bit and just maybe tell us about it.

Stephanie Hsia (05:21) Yeah, I was really influenced by the garden that my dad created in New Jersey. It was a typical one acre suburban lot, which if you drive around in New Jersey, it's typically a large lawn with some trees in it and not much going on. But my dad planted early on when we moved there, I think I was four years old when we moved there, and he planted.

⁓ three apple trees, a bunch of Japanese pear trees, a pluot tree, which at the time, you know, no one knew about pluots, cherry trees, and also around our depth, he planted every year tomatoes. We had blueberry bushes and we had a vegetable garden in the back, mainly, I would say peppers and chives and all kinds of good veggies.

⁓ And it's, you know, I've never asked him, but I, know, he didn't grow up in a place where he, they had space for gardens. He grew up in Taipei, which is a very urban crowded city. And so he, you know, I think he learned this himself and every year we would, I would help him out in the garden. And we would really kind of benefit from, from all the, the labor that he put in. So we would.

have the Japanese pears. There were so many tomatoes. Every year, my mom would stick a tomato in our lunch bags. Like it was an apple, and I would eat it like an apple, and everyone would think it was really weird, but that's just what I did. And so I loved being outside in that garden space.

And my, it's funny, my neighbor and I was best friends with her growing up and we made our own little garden. My dad helped us create our own little space next to his space. And it lasted for about a year or so. Like, I don't remember what we planted in it, but we very quickly, like it fell to just being chives, like something that was just like self-spread. But we tried to make our own little, little garden space out there.

⁓ but really, I mean, ever since then at any place I've moved, I've always tried to, ⁓ bring some, some of the garden inside. So when I didn't have garden space, would grow plants. and now, you know, where we live in Brookline, we're really fortunate to have a little bit of, garden space and, and have, ⁓ planted, ⁓ also, made a little garden, raised garden beds, planted two Japanese pear trees, two nectarine trees.

So yeah, it's kind of come full circle.

Matt Gregory (07:49)

That's awesome.

So it sounds like there was always a big component of, like, plants, fruits, vegetables. If you think back to your earliest times in the garden, like when you were a kid, maybe between 5 and 10 years old, were you drawn to the fact that you could eat the stuff from the garden? Did you...

play make believe in the garden? What was your time in the garden like?

Stephanie Hsia (08:09)

Yeah, I would say the edible component was huge. It was just really fun to go and forage. one of my clearest memories, my dad would bottle ⁓ the cherries and make wine out of it because they were too sour to eat fresh. So he would put them in jars and add a bunch of sugar and stick them in a basement. I don't think it was like a very scientific process, but

you know, about a year later you take it out and my neighbor and I, you know, we were young kids, he would just give it to us to drink and so we would just love the fact that we were drinking cherry wine at a young age. Probably had like, you know, the amount of alcohol that kombucha has. But, you know, it was so fun to do that. And I would say, you know, we, just like any kids, would like run around in the space and I don't

think it was so much make believe, but created like good hiding spaces. Like my dad planted a hedge around the gardens, around the fruit trees of evergreen trees as a buffer from like the winds to kind of help shelter them. And so we had a lot more planting and a lot more kind of like nooks and crannies and like interesting, you know, foliage than most other properties.

Matt Gregory (09:20)

Yeah, cool. That's great. It sounds like a magical place.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:23)

Totally.

Stephanie Hsia (09:24)

⁓ maybe as magical as a one acre suburban lot surrounded by other suburban lots could be. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (09:28)

You work with what you got.

Do you think his interest in planting came from anything related to his professional life or was just that he really wanted to like spread his wings because he had more room and go with it?

Stephanie Hsia (09:41)

he's retired now, but he, was a chemical engineer. Um, he did study, however, geology in undergrad. So I think he always had an interest in like earth maybe. Um, and, um, I mean, it's interesting that if his other, he's, he has a lot of other brothers and sisters and I don't think any of them really garden. maybe it just comes from like an innate.

desire to cultivate.

Matt Gregory (10:03)

that's great. we've, started to grow some plants here at our house and it's just, even if our, like our total production of a given crop is like 10 tomatoes in a summer, it's just like very satisfying to get something from your backyard.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:18)

Thanks.

That's about literally how many tomatoes we got, by the way. got a lot of them.

Matt Gregory (10:23)

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (10:23)

This was a good,

this year was a good crop of tomatoes. Last year wasn't so good. But there is a lot of also joy of I've got two young kids and having them be excited about seeing the crop and picking it themselves and eating it themselves is really rewarding. So it's like kind of passing on that, you know, to the next generation, this love of cultivation. ⁓ They get really excited when they see something like cucumbers, which are

Matt Gregory (10:38)

Yeah.

Yeah.

super cool.

Stephanie Hsia (10:48)

it seemed to just kind of sprout out of nowhere. And it's it's kind of magical. It's like, it's just growing from air and soil and water. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (10:55)

They have those huge leaves too, it really like

spread out.

Matt Gregory (10:59)

Yeah, we might need your help with our cucumber Steph because the ones that we grew late in the season look more like lemons or mangoes than cucumbers. They're like a very weird, there's something weird going on. Maybe we could talk about that offline.

Stephanie Hsia (11:08)

⁓ okay. Yeah, okay.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:13)

But like, you know, having a garden in your backyard is kind of just a great way to be connected to, you know, the earth and nature, like in your everyday life. like, it seems to connect to what you now do in your job is to, you know, create environments for people, you know, not just in their, in their own, on their own property, but like in city and shared spaces to be sort of more connected to, you know, living, breathing earth.

Matt Gregory (11:14)

⁓

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (11:23)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (11:40)

all around them. Urban spaces can get pretty, I live close to New York City, there's big areas of not very green spaces and I've just been looking at some of the pictures of the stuff that you've been working on recently in Cambridge and in Florida.

It's easy to draw a direct line from the stuff we were talking about in your childhood to this, but I'm just curious about the space between those two points and how you got there.

Stephanie Hsia (12:10)

Yeah, that's a great question. Definitely growing up in that kind of environment and seeing the landscape, cultivated and grow and seeing the fruits of your labor and developing that love.

certainly that is a huge component of kind of what we hope to do with our landscape designs, which is, know, creating the kind of space where people can appreciate being within nature and experience kind of like the beauty of being in a space that might be inspiring. it is the hope a lot of people go into this field.

with kind of big aspirations of, and come from a place of wanting to, you know, improve our urban environments, tackle some of the kind of environmental and social issues through the design of the public realm. But, you know, in reality, we work on a very kind of small scale sometimes, like a site, you know, a garden or a park.

Sometimes we get the chance to work at a larger scale, the city scale. But Regardless of the scale, we always hope that we're able to express something in the landscape that leads to the appreciation and the use of the space in a way that is beneficial socially and ecologically.

Matt Gregory (13:19)

Yeah, that's one of the things that I realized as I thought about like more about your the type of work you do is like how multifaceted it is

Maybe before we get there, I know, you studied both sciences and art. And I'm just wondering if you can kind of, as Pat was starting to get to help us draw a line between your education and landing in.

in landscape architecture.

Stephanie Hsia (13:43)

Yeah, it was a little bit of a journey to get here and to find the field of landscape architecture. ⁓ I don't think it's very well known. And I wasn't really aware of what landscape architecture was, you know, growing up. And so when I went to college, I always had this kind of dual interest in the sciences. I loved biology, loved

studying plants and animals ⁓ and also growing up had this kind of overall like desire to help the environment. I just didn't know what was the kind of best avenue to do that. And in college I studied biology and art and so those are the kind of you know dual interests art and design and biology and I graduated not having a clear path.

whenever I told anyone I was a dual degree, they'd ask me how, how do they relate? And I would say, you know, it's, I think fundamentally it's this kind of appreciation for beauty, in my opinion, is like, what kind of maybe ties the two together. But in terms of a career, I wasn't clear. And so I actually spent a year

teaching English in Taiwan. And then I went to grad school at UC Santa Barbara in the environmental sciences program there for a master's thinking, oh, might, you know, maybe I'll work for environmental nonprofit and then I can just do art on the side, you know, as a hobby. And I graduate. I like photography and painting particularly.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:07)

What kind of art?

Stephanie Hsia (15:11)

In college, it wasn't a huge focus. was kind of, took a class a semester and was able to graduate with a dual degree. So it was always kind of like more, less of a serious pursuit than the sciences for me. And so, and then in grad school, you know, I did enjoy the program, but it always felt like something was missing, you know, and

Patrick Dyer Wolf (15:25)

It always is. No, just

Stephanie Hsia (15:36)

I ended up working in Oakland, California and saw a poster advertising free public lectures in landscape architecture. And I was like, maybe I'll just go to that, just check it out. And I went to the first one and I was like, wow, this is exactly what I want to do. But I had already gone to graduate school, so was like, ⁓ how do I do this?

Matt Gregory (15:54)

So cool.

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (15:59)

I

had to go back. And you have to, like you, it's a, it's a technical program. You have to have a degree in order to practice. there is an alternative path in in that you can do like an apprenticeship, which is like how people used to do that in the past, but that's a very challenging way to become a sort of like a registered landscape architect. I think you have to work under someone for 10 years and you have to find someone who's willing to do that for you. And it's not typical, like most firms.

hire you with a degree. It's just not a typical path of travel. So, yeah.

Matt Gregory (16:33)

Yeah, it's, it's, so

interesting to hear, the, way that you sort of, ⁓ studied these, these things, you know, biology and art that, you know, might seem quite different on the surface, but you were like satisfying different parts of your brain with, with the, with a different, ⁓ educational paths. I look at like, I went to a liberal arts college, Pat did too. both went to Wesleyan. and you know, there was no pressure.

on us, you know, exerted by the university to be like, you must study something that will lead to, you know, earning and to career path. But that's like very different from I've done some mentorship at Northeastern University with the entrepreneurship program there. And like, as part of the undergrad experience at Northeastern, you have a year of working of like, you go right out to like, what do you want to do? Like, we'll get you a job in some company and you can do that for a year.

And I think, know, Northeastern is very, it's the co-op program. Northeastern is very proud of that program. But it's like such a different undergrad experience than the liberal arts experience. And I think like, I just think there's a lot of pressure being put on kids today to like decide what they want to do. And I think that there's so much benefit in exploring.

⁓ And it sounds like there was a real exploratory nature to the path that you took through school.

Stephanie Hsia (17:53)

Yeah, I was really fortunate that I could go back to school. It was a hard decision to make both ⁓ kind of financially and just career wise to have to kind of essentially start over. you know, I had already started working as an environmental consultant and it's been a couple of years doing that work. And so the idea of going back to school and starting with internships again, et cetera, was, was a little bit, you know, it had to really kind of

come to terms with that, but it felt like this was the right path for me and it was worth investing in and doing it. You know, it still had the rest of my life left. So, but I would have to say that I am not regretful at all about my path prior to that. I would say my life experiences and my working experience all really greatly informed and benefited.

my career as a landscape architect. I already had this prior working experience, but beyond that, this kind of more technical expertise in the sciences that became very beneficial. And, you know, I also did enjoy my time in my twenties. Like some people do come to landscape architecture earlier and you start working and it is a very intensive field to for study and for work.

And so having the kind of time where I could do a little bit more exploration and study different things, I think I'm very grateful for that and that I was able to, you know, do this kind of schooling and exploration.

Matt Gregory (19:19)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (19:20)

Do you feel like your working life now, I mean, from the limited amount I've read and from what we've been talking about, it seems like it's a job where you can try to bring together and balance, I guess, you know, an element of artistic creativity or just, you know, more sensory...

you beauty and like that side of things with all of the, as you say, intensive and scientific knowledge and experience you have and to try to like meet those two. Do you feel like, is that accurate? Like, are you, do you feel like that is part of your goal or your pursuit or am I kind of off?

Stephanie Hsia (19:57)

I think it happens concurrently more so than not. and it is true that you could, you know, focus on one more, one or the other. ⁓ I don't think they're really in conflict with one another. they're kind of dual, you know, there's, there's the process of the design and then there's the execution of the design, like the built work.

And so I think both come into play essentially, very, as essential elements and as, as goals too. Cause we want technically well executed projects that are, you know, aesthetically pleasing and that are beautiful and that are, you know, beautiful spaces people want to be in, but are, you know, technically sound.

the details support the life, the trees, the flowers, et cetera. So we look a lot into providing the underground supports in terms of the structures and the soils that are put in, et cetera. So, and then in terms of the approach to design, a lot, we start from a place where we are really focused on the concept and understanding the site.

in terms of its history, in terms of its place, in its kind of context, its hydrological and ecological context. And we're finding the story that we want to tell through the design, which is kind of like a, in a way, like an artistic pursuit, I guess. But we're solving technical challenges at the same time. So we're solving circulation, like how

cars, people are moving through the space. We're looking at, know, storm water, you know, there's flooding issue, know, climate change, et cetera. So we're solving for technical problems at the same time that we're trying to also create these spaces that would hopefully inspire people.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:41)

I was curious about, I mean, so you've been working on the Urban Forest project in Cambridge, is that right? I was curious about, you know,

Stephanie Hsia (21:53)

Yes, ⁓ that was a,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (21:55)

just how the things you were just talking about manifested in that, telling the story of, I mean, it's a very well-known city, a lot of notable things going on, it's very beautiful. I'm just wondering if you could speak to telling that story and the environmental, all the many facets of what you were working on there.

Stephanie Hsia (22:17)

Yeah, it's a really great project. A little bit unusual for a landscape architect to be ⁓ the lead in that project. It's a master plan. It's looking at how does a city grow and maintain their urban forest over time. So we worked on that project in 2018 and ⁓ are actually now actively working on that again as a five-year update.

So we're looking at the success, you know, how has the city progressed in terms of the goals that we laid out in the master plan and what are the next priorities for the next five years for the city. In terms of, it is a much more technical project, but we are looking at it through many different lenses and many different disciplines of like, how do we tackle the urban forest through policy?

⁓ How do we look at it through practices? So how does the city ⁓ manage and maintain the trees? Through design when, you know, cities are reconstructing the streets, how do they make space for trees? And also outreach and engagement. How does the city bring in the residents, all the constituents, renters, et cetera, to plant and care for the urban forest? So we looked at it through

many different lenses, some of them more technical than others, a lot of the key component of it is communication. And so that does require, you know, the ability to kind of synthesize and create drawings and graphics that are legible, that are clear and that are beautiful. So that's, know, how it comes kind of together in terms of like the technical and I would say like maybe the more artistic.

you know, hand to that. Yes, visuals are super important.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (23:55)

Gotta have good visuals.

Stephanie Hsia (23:59)

And it's a lot of data. And so how you take this complex, you know, data set, how you dice it and create, you know, graphics out of it that tell the story.

Matt Gregory (24:00)

Yeah.

I'm when you look at building a team, you're currently working for a landscape architecture firm in Cambridge. And when you look at building a team for a project like the Urban Forest Master Plan, are there different disciplines within landscape architecture? Or are you doing all of these different pieces? Because it strikes me as being a really broad skill set, like the left and right brain and the

Stephanie Hsia (24:32)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (24:34)

creative and the technical, like what does a team look like?

Stephanie Hsia (24:36)

Yeah, definitely not on our own. We have a team of consultants who are experts in their field who advise us and we work together with them. So we definitely, you we have a policy expert. We have a resiliency expert on the field, an arborist. The previous plan had an ecologist as well and a soil scientist.

And we also have a graphics communication consultant. So we do build teams. A lot of what we do, ⁓ landscape architecture is a very multidisciplinary and also very generalist field. So what we do a lot of the times is we know a little bit of everything and we coordinate, collaborate, and we bring things together and we synthesize. We do a lot of the work ourselves, but we rely on experts who

are, you know, they provide the more technical expertise that we're not able to dig into or don't have the training for. But I would say within our realm that, you know, planting is probably the one that we would really claim as ours. ⁓ Grading, planting, a lot of the other kind of topics that we work on, we will consult with experts.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:43)

It's good that some people somewhere rely on experts still today.

Matt Gregory (25:47)

Yeah, not just AI.

Stephanie Hsia (25:47)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (25:49)

I have a question. This could not be, this might not be a thing at all, but tell me if you've heard of this. I've heard in a few places that whenever this was done in mid 20th century, like Joe, city planner, was like, we don't want the mess of like female, like fruit trees all over our cities. So they planted all male trees and that has been like a leading cause of.

Matt Gregory (25:50)

Go for it.

Stephanie Hsia (26:11)

Mm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (26:13)

allergies, allergens, because it's just all dude trees. Is this in any way accurate? And this ties back to our earlier discussion of fruit trees, which are so wonderful.

Stephanie Hsia (26:16)

Yeah.

⁓

Yeah, that is interesting. I haven't heard of it as a leading cause of allergies, although I can believe that. So some, you know, some trees do produce a lot of pollen. They're wind pollinated. So those are the ones that will cause more allergens. I, there are some trees that do produce a lot of smelly fruit, like ginkgoes, for example. If you sometimes cities by accident, we, know, they, they might plant a female ginkgo and then

it'll just be a big mess. But I would say, you know, it's kind of like the there's a saying the right plant in the right place or right tree in the right place, like we're in the city streets sure like, you may not want to be planting as many female trees that are producing a lot of messy fruit. But maybe there's the opportunity to do that in parks. And then with the wind pollinated plants, the male plants, you know, the hope is that

There's some planning where you're thinking about where, you know, you want to diversify your forest. You don't want to plant the same thing everywhere that leads your plant, that opens your, your urban forest and your trees up to risk. Where like pests and diseases can come in and kind of wipe out, you know, a good portion of the forest. There's a lot of examples of invasives coming, invasive pests and coming to do that. So generally the, the kind of.

best practice would be to try to diversify and like find the right places where those plants could go.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (27:45)

So take things case by case and not use a heinously broad brush.

Stephanie Hsia (27:49)

Yeah, that would, you know, I would say maybe as an example, the Asian longhorn beetle in Worcester about a decade ago, wiped out, I don't remember what portion, but it was a catastrophic loss of maple trees. They just had over planted maples in that city and took out, you know, a good portion of the canopy. So you definitely don't want to over plant.

Matt Gregory (28:12)

If we can go back to just quickly to like this multidisciplinary field that you're in and I can relate I think to the the energy that you get from kind of I don't know if it's like if the analogy is like being a quarterback or like, know, just kind of pulling all the pieces together. I think it's like a very satisfying thing. I've done that in jobs in my career too, which I can relate to. I'm wondering like

Where do you get your energy when you're thinking about landscape architecture? Like which pieces of it are most energizing? where is your heart? Or is it all of it?

Stephanie Hsia (28:46)

Yeah, there's so much to love, which is why this field is real, like I love being in it. I'm finding that because we work on its project base and projects come about and we're always working on different things, and the projects also vary quite differently in scale and project type.

that we're always learning. And I really love that aspect where I'm just constantly learning new things. And a lot of that does come from collaborations, I do love learning from other consultants. And it's, I feel like it's going to be a never ending kind of learning career for me. I love many different aspects of it. It's very satisfying to produce a very beautiful drawing.

It's also very satisfying to see your landscape design come to life and be real. It's just, it's just an amazing thing. it's like, see it come to life. It's, and see people use it and enjoy it. I would say I love doing the research as well. love diving into, I love diving deep and really finding something that's really unique and special about the site that you're elevating.

and showcasing and your design is very satisfying to find that one thing that is really grounding your design and kind of inspiring or informing what is coming out of it. I would say too that I do love diving into research, my background in sciences. I love kind of looking through literature research and finding things that

that substantiate, that like provide evidence, but also inform kind of like how we do things. That's very satisfying to bring in like scientific basis for how and why we do something.

Matt Gregory (30:30)

I guess I look on the, on the residential front and like, at the, you know, landscape, businesses that are out there. And I think there's like a big range of them, right. And there's some really good ones and less good ones. but it, strikes me that, ⁓ that industry is like, definitely a service industry. and,

the work that you do on each individual piece of land and thinking about the context of it and thinking about the diversity that's possible. so the kind of the service model of like, we're just gonna put down mulch everywhere and do the same thing every year. Like it kind of loses that nuance and...

I get really excited about, the thoughtfulness of the work that you're doing and thinking about each unique place. ⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:13)

Well, so

we're both from suburban New Jersey, different quadrants, but we're both, you know, similar zone. And Matt, what you were describing is like all around me. There's, you know, the landscape trucks. It's hard to drive around this neighborhood and not like see a landscape truck. I'm not trying to like toot our horn, but we've taken, a small step we've taken is in the front, our front yard, we've planted like,

Matt Gregory (31:29)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (31:35)

some native plants of New Jersey, which like people, think people think are just weeds. They're like, oh, you should, you should weed whack those. Um, but like, you know, they don't, you don't have to water them. They just, they live here. They're, um, and like, it's just a, like learning what those are. Like they're not a, they're not a hedge that you would see here. They're sort of just like, you know, they do, they do great here cause this is the plants that are from here.

I had a conversation recently with my friend, actually who went to school with us, Matt, my friend Rachel, who is growing, she's growing like a moss garden in her front yard. And it like, she has a young kid, a three year old kid, and they were playing together in her new moss garden. And it just like unlocked a memory for her of like, my gosh, this is like, this is what I used to do. Like when I was her age, like when I was five years old.

I used to love to sit in a moss garden and pretend that fairies were coming in and just be in kind of a shady area. I could just sit there for hours pretending or talking to my friend or whatever. And I think, so she's kind of rediscovering it now, her parent-age self.

I experienced this too when our native plants were coming up this year, like in the spring. was like a pretty wet spring in this area and like they were just thriving. I was just like, man, like this is a satisfaction and joy that like I can't even remember the last time I had it. and I, I think you're right, Matt, like a lot, you know, a lot of what we do, a lot of how we sculpt the earth around us is just like not connected to

how it wants to be or how we want to connect to it. I'm sorry, I know I'm not supposed to stack questions, this is just like a really rambling paragraph, but I think it has a general point. ⁓ I want to tie it together with a quote that I saw on the Reid Hildebrand Instagram page, that says, "if war has an opposite, gardens might sometimes be it." Like I think, you know,

Stephanie Hsia (33:23)

you

Thank

Patrick Dyer Wolf (33:34)

finding a way to connect with our landscape is is balance and like is peace. And I wonder if you, do you ever get, other than just going and maybe, you know, seeing how people are interacting with your spaces, do you ever get feedback from people or do you ever get to discuss with people who are there, like how it has affected them or how?

Stephanie Hsia (34:01)

Not too much. You know, I've overheard or people who have overheard things and will relay them to me and those spaces did a project at MIT. So that's a local one. Down in Tampa, the client did relay some feedback, which was really satisfying. And, you know, we're revisiting the Urban Forest Master Plan right now.

And so getting, definitely getting some feedback on that. It's something that we don't really have too much of a chance to do sometimes. And that we, once we build a project, sometimes the clients will keep us on just to kind of check in every once in while, especially residential clients, but typically urban projects, you know, once we install, we don't really have, we don't have a contract that, that lives on afterwards. So there's not a lot of post construction,

kind of evaluation or post-occupancy evaluation. It's something that we would love to do to understand how people are using the spaces, how successful is it, or is it designed in a way that might be off, like not appealing to certain populations? Those kinds of things would be really great to understand beyond on the technical side of like.

is the plant surviving or not, but how people actually, you know, do they find the bench welcoming or is, you know, are the pavers too fancy and feel like it's not public and it's actually might feel too private. So things like that. I think a lot of our conception of like, what is a kind of

like acceptable home landscape comes very much from like a European history, this European history of like how people, you know, how we kind of dominated the land and we kind of forced, you know, trees and plants into certain shapes and into formal designs. And that was kind of brought over here and

⁓ has been perpetuated as a kind of like, this is what is acceptable in terms of like a beautiful cultivated landscape is like, we almost have to show a little bit of dominance to it and shape it and make it tidy. But I think, you know, and then that you're saying about, you know, people being like, what is this? Is it a weed? It's like, it is a chance for that to evolve with our value system of like accepting, you know, that

⁓ there's a chance for diversity. There are different types of plants and that we do want to support wildlife. We do want to support pollinators and that we can plant things that are messy, a little bit messy. And, you know, we do maybe want to plant more natives because those do hold more habitat value, wildlife value than non-natives. So I think it's a

It is something that we face a lot is like the perception of these spaces in terms of maintenance and needing to, it's a kind of like overall cultural like shift that needs to happen to be able to accept this as like an acceptable form of a home landscaping or even the landscape.

Matt Gregory (37:06)

So for somebody that's listening and this is resonating with them and they've got a landscape service company that comes in and as I've heard, of mows and blows and everything is tidy and what would you recommend to somebody who wants to understand more about how to evolve their landscape into something that's a little bit more nuanced and a little bit more connected to the natural?

environment, but maybe doesn't have the budget to hire your firm to come do a project in their backyard.

Stephanie Hsia (37:35)

Yeah, there are a lot of great resources out there online of planting, planting recommendations of natives that work in, you know, your region. And you do want to kind of just as a basis, you want to understand the conditions of your site, sun/shade, moisture, etc. So I think planting is a really kind of easy one. Plants can be expensive, but there's also like, you know, you can start small and kind of

build it over time, plant a little bit this year. There's some plants that do self seed or will spread. So those could be like good value plants. do that at home where I'm like, I see this one's growing. So I'm just going to take a cutting off of it and plant it over there. because I, don't spend too much on plants. So I think planting is an easy one. And then in terms of maintenance,

One thing that is really beneficial to insects is to kind of leave more of that plant material over time. An easy thing is to take the leaves and mulch it and spread it on your planting beds as a kind of mulch. You could also choose not to maybe clean up all the leaves and do that in the spring. So that's creating habitat over the winter. I have a couple logs.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (38:46)

That's a tough one for people. People

are resistant to that.

Stephanie Hsia (38:48)

I know, yeah.

Yeah, we could pile it somewhere, know, somewhere in the back where it's maybe not as visible. Could leave logs. I have a couple logs that are kind of like dual seats and also are just kind of rotting at the bottom over time. But the kids love turning them over and seeing like centipedes and worms on them.

Yeah, I think there are these little shifts that, you know, it's really just tackling what you can in the moment, start small and build it over time.

Matt Gregory (39:14)

Yeah. Cool.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (39:15)

My wife

was in college, did a semester, an urban education semester in New York City where she was working in a kindergarten class and they had a rotting log in a terrarium and they were asking all the kids what they thought were gonna happen and they asked this one kid, said, what do you think's gonna happen with this log? Do you think, are critters gonna come out of it? And he said,

Small lions.

We always reference that when we're talking about rot... small lions. When we're talking about rotting logs. Anyway... sorry.

Matt Gregory (39:39)

Bye.

Okay.

funny.

No, no, totally fine. So in the scale of different projects that you've worked on, we talked about the Cambridge Urban Forest Master Plan and this Tampa project for this greenway in Tampa or more residential stuff, is there a specific scale that you like working on or is sort of a mix of different scales satisfying?

Stephanie Hsia (40:10)

It's of different scales that's satisfying. Yeah, I think it's really satisfying to work at a larger scale where there's more of an impact, like the Urban Forest Master Plan, for example. The Tampa project was also part of a larger district. It's 53 acres in the future, about just a portion of that was built.

Matt Gregory (40:21)

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (40:29)

And that really created a kind of whole new district. You know, so being part of that kind of vision is really, really kind of, you know, very interesting and satisfying. But also just thinking like, like we think about details a lot. You know, currently I'm doing some research into how we plant trees and the soil systems that are supporting those trees. And so those things,

know, understanding kind of like what the tree needs that that's in this very tough urban condition. Scales up to the city scale and to the, you know,

the details for that at the very, very small scale influences the larger scale too.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (41:06)

feel like you might have alluded to this briefly towards the top. A thing that I think about related to this is, there's kind of a gap in, I don't remember what any of the numbers are, richer areas have more trees, poorer areas have fewer trees. And we're talking about urban areas. And in my neighborhood,

Stephanie Hsia (41:25)

Okay.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (41:30)

quote unquote, Newark, New Jersey is a great example. It has a riverfront. It does have a, there's a beautiful park, Branchbrook Park, but there's a lot of area that could be the subject of many projects or whatever, but it's always questions of funding and.

know, desire to do things or not do things. And I know that, you know, the current mayor and the government there has been very wary of just unleashing gentrification. Like they don't want it to just be another example of what happens all around the country where like people get, people just get, you let one thing happen and then people who have been living there for decades just get priced out of the neighborhood.

Stephanie Hsia (42:13)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:15)

I guess I wonder how you think about that kind of thing if you do, if you have occasion to in your projects or if that's something that your firm ever deals with, if there's like grants of some kind involved or yeah, how you think about that kind of stuff.

Stephanie Hsia (42:27)

Mm hmm.

Yeah, that's where the consultant comes in. All right. We have worked with a economics consultant to specifically the question that you're asking about gentrification. And how do you support that local community to stay in place as as you know, the neighborhood is changing and becoming more green or more, you know, amenities, green spaces, which do tend to attract more investment and then

Patrick Dyer Wolf (42:31)

Yeah.

Stephanie Hsia (42:50)

you know, typically people get priced out of the homes that they're living in. So there are, it requires planning in advance and for the city and the developer to recognize this and to plan for it and to put in the structures. There are, you know, different kinds of structures that could be put in place to support people who are living there ⁓ to continue living there. I couldn't speak like.

too much more detail about it, but it is something that we are very aware of as we are creating these spaces in the city. In Cambridge, what you mentioned about the disparity in canopy cover between lower income areas, higher income areas, it is very much tied to the historic development of these spaces. If you look at, for example,

I don't know if you guys know about the redlining, which was like a program back in the 30s of essentially discrimination through home mortgages. And so there's a clear correlation between that and like current canopy cover. If you also look at the land use type that are in those spaces, those tend to be places where there's a lot more industrial uses, commercial uses. And the homes are much more

multifamily ⁓ with little setbacks or very limited back yard space, which all relates to the fact that these places have less space for planting. So it's not only that there's, you know, less income in those areas to plant, but there's actually less space. And so one of the things we recommended in the urban forest master plan was that

or like one of the big takeaways was really that different strategies are needed in these different areas. And in those areas that are really hard to plant, a lot of they really rely on the city to be able to plant more in the public realm. with the sidewalks and the parks, it is creating finding those opportunities to where there may be places like parking lots or vacant lots to to find, you know, room.

convert basically impervious spaces to more permeable spaces for planting. There are also things that cities can do through negotiations with developers to, you know, as in return for development rights to plant, create parks and plant green spaces, create green spaces and those harder to, you know, harder to plant neighborhoods.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (44:48)

Mm-hmm.

So they get a tit and someone else gets a tat. Tit for tat.

Stephanie Hsia (45:05)

Yeah, it's,

yeah, they just have to know, you know, it's just really providing the city with like here, you know, here are the spaces that we think really need the canopy based on what we're seeing. so that's, that's a lot of what we're doing is like, what do we think is going to happen based on the current, you know, planting rates and how do we, how do we help the city direct their investments and their energies to reach their goals of, you know,

getting these neighborhoods that are currently much below average and canopy cover up to more of the city average.

Yeah, and it has real consequences. It's not just about trees. You know, it's like in context of changing climate, a warming climate, these have real impacts on health.

Matt Gregory (45:36)

⁓

Patrick Dyer Wolf (45:44)

Yeah, no doubt.

Matt Gregory (45:45)

So this is a bit of a shift in gears, but you talked about learning basically being a big part of a value of yours, something that's really intrinsic in your role. There's a lot of just continued learning, and it seems like you get a lot of energy from that. I'm wondering, what about teaching? Are you?

Do you feel like a desire to pass along the things you're learning to like the next generation of landscape architects and like, does that look like?

Stephanie Hsia (46:15)

Yeah, more and more as I feel more and more comfortable and more kind of have more experience in this field. do do some lecture, like guest lectures at landscape architecture programs. I've done some presentations to like nonprofit groups, for example, on specifically really on the urban forest and also on the soils research.

I haven't looked for teaching opportunities, but it's definitely something I would maybe consider in the future, but I'm more focused right now, I think on practice. Yeah, but there's a lot of mentorship that happens too. And so that's already satisfying is to work, we work in teams with different levels of experience. so mentorship is a huge part of what we do too.

Matt Gregory (46:45)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (46:46)

What are you working?

What are you working on right now?

Stephanie Hsia (47:00)

Um, well, the five year update for Cambridge urban forest master plan. Um, and, uh, I just wrapped up, uh, uh, large residential project up in New Hampshire. Um, so working a little bit on wrapping that up and, uh, I'm starting a master plan for a botanic garden in Wisconsin. Um, yeah, those three projects.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (47:21)

wow.

Matt Gregory (47:23)

Very cool. Sounds like a lot to keep you busy. I'm wondering, in having a busy day job, being a parent, all the different responsibilities you have in your life, can you talk a little bit about the role of your backyard garden and how you think about that, what energy you have for that, what role it plays?

Stephanie Hsia (47:41)

Mm hmm. Yeah, it's, it's a respite really. It's, so lucky. I'm so lucky that, you know, when I'm in the kitchen, which I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I feel like I'm surrounded by green space and that's mentally very calming for me having, just being, feeling like I can see green and I'm immersed in it. when I work from home, I'll spend like five minutes outside and weed real quick.

And I like that a lot, actually. I waiting is a chore for some people, but I really like doing it. And I haven't had, it's like, I need a quick break. I'm going to go outside, five minute waiting session. Or just like, I'll just check on the plants. I have to say as a busy parent, it's definitely not in the shape that I would want it to be, but it is, it is a, you know, it's nice to be like, okay, I got five minutes. Let me do it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:07)

It's an exercise in patience.

my mother-in-law gave me a t-shirt recently that says gardening. And there's a woman, know, like, she looks like a 1950s woman gardening. It says "gardening because murder is wrong". And it's, you know, some people I think took it as like a vegetarian shirt, which I don't think it's intended to be. But it's like, it's it's mental health. Like it's, it's a...

Stephanie Hsia (48:36)

Hahaha

test.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (48:44)

Yeah, it's what you're describing.

Stephanie Hsia (48:46)

It really is.

Matt Gregory (48:46)

I also think

as somebody who's been lucky enough to like go spend the morning in Steph's backyard, like it's awesome for you. And it's also like a real gift to your friends and like your community. it's a, like, feel like I hang out there and it's just relaxing and it's like a nice way to disconnect. And you kind of forget that you're in a pretty urban environment.

And yeah, it feels very satisfying. you know, we live in, I live in a multi-unit building and it's challenging somewhat because we share all the space with three other wonderful neighbors. But like it's, you know, figuring out how to, you know, align and like, you know, what we want that space to feel like is it's, actually a lot of work to figure out. And yeah, it's just really cool to be in.

in your space, feels very welcoming, very grounding, calming, also just thoughtful. But also you can tell that it doesn't have the like, I've been to some wonderful houses that have massive manicured green lawns and everything is tidy and everything. And your garden has like, it doesn't

It feels natural. feels like it connects to the space that it's in.

Stephanie Hsia (49:58)

Thank you. That's a huge compliment. It feels natural due to the weeds that are around. I'm just kidding. ⁓

Matt Gregory (50:02)

I mean

you

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:09)

gotta remember not to

weed my plants that I planted, you know?

Matt Gregory (50:12)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or have your neighbors.

Stephanie Hsia (50:13)

Yeah.

Matt Gregory (50:15)

So I know we're almost up on time here. Thank you again, Steph, for spending some time with us this morning.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:21)

Can ask one more question? I just saw somewhere that you, this is a while back, you had a project that explored the phenomenological qualities of water.

Matt Gregory (50:21)

Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:32)

Do you remember that one?

Stephanie Hsia (50:32)

⁓

it might've been my student project. Does that sound familiar? Okay. Yeah. Yes. Feminological qualities of water. Feminological. Yeah. I would say that's not a term I use every day. I don't know. I was, it's a grad school term, I guess. yeah, it was, ⁓ I think, you know, thinking about water, as in it's

Patrick Dyer Wolf (50:36)

I think so, yeah, 2013. Can you talk about what that is? What are the phenomenological qualities of water?

Yeah. I mean, I use it every day.

Stephanie Hsia (50:57)

forms missed the flow of it. ⁓ The project looked at, it was kind of a crazy student project, which it's good for student projects to be a little bit more on the crazy side for exploration, be bold. And it played with the ground surface.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:11)

Be bold.

Stephanie Hsia (51:18)

coming up in different ways where the water would kind of cascade either like across the back of it or be pumped up and be like, like little water jets or mist. And so it was a playful landscape or a plaza, which just had many different experiences of water as like a playful environment. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:40)

No, no.

Stephanie Hsia (51:40)

It was

kind of a, you know, I look at it now. like, that is like, that's a death trap. Like whatever I, I, I drew up total death trap. ⁓

Matt Gregory (51:45)

you

Patrick Dyer Wolf (51:49)

Well,

I imagine there was no boiling water.

Stephanie Hsia (51:52)

No, yeah, you know, to be really feminological, I should have added that in. Across the spectrum.

Matt Gregory (52:00)

I actually sensed real regret in that sigh, Steph. You didn't figure out how to incorporate.

Stephanie Hsia (52:04)

Boil the water.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (52:05)

Should have boiled, should

have boiled it. Put a hot tub in maybe.

Matt Gregory (52:09)

Are there specific projects or types of projects?

that you hope to work on in the future that you're particularly jazzed about.

Stephanie Hsia (52:17)

Yeah, I'm really interested in tackling kind of how we think about biodiversity more in our landscapes. And that also ties to scale where, you know, animals and they work, there are no boundaries for animals. And so everything kind of works together in a city to support different organisms.

⁓ and so I'm interested like kind of at a site scale when we're planning, cetera, like, how do we think about what that parcel or that space can do for different fauna. Cause we think about plants a lot and we think about, and I think a lot of it is like, what is the habitat that we're creating, but how do we create the frameworks like to tackle this question?

And so I've been doing a little bit of research into how we measure biodiversity. It's very, you know, there's different ways and so it's kind of, it's complex and it's also dependent on, you know, the fauna that you're looking at supporting. And so much of it is, you know, the habitat size, et cetera, that's all dependent on what you're looking to.

what your goals are for which animals you're hoping to support. So yeah, that's one thing I'm really interested in thinking more about, hoping we have the opportunity to do that, either as like a research project or applied. But I think people are definitely, the field is definitely heading in that direction. ⁓ We've also been tackling climate.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (53:35)

That's interesting.

Stephanie Hsia (53:39)

really focus on carbon emissions in our fields recently. We don't have an existing standard, unlike architecture and construction, they do have carbon accounting standards. We don't have one for landscape. There are some tools out there that are very useful, but the longevity of those is not for certain. And so our firm is actually investing quite a bit in understanding

what is it that our field needs to do to get to goals of carbon neutral, you by 2040 basically is what the American Society of Landscape Architects have put out there as a goal. But our field is very carbon intensive and the only way we can really offset is through planting. We are lucky that we have offsets, but ⁓ it's all about reducing our embodied carbon emissions in our projects, finding the materials, finding local materials so we're not shipping everything.

finding materials that are low carbon, et cetera. So we're starting to dig into what that is.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:32)

Do you dabble in LEED certifications? Is that still a standard that people?

Stephanie Hsia (54:36)

It still is a

standard. We do some projects that are LEED, but it doesn't really apply so much to landscape. There are other standards that are more applicable to landscape that we've worked on.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (54:46)

Got it.

Matt Gregory (54:46)

So as it relates to your own trajectory and then thinking about the field, do you have any recommendations for young people that are thinking about getting into landscape architecture, about ways to explore that interest and pursue a path that might look something like yours?

Stephanie Hsia (55:04)

⁓ I would find something that, that really excites you as a student and grow it and use opportunities within your project work, ⁓ to, expand your expertise in those areas. So, ⁓ I would say like in my kind of trajectory, I was able to find ways to kind of dig more into research and to kind of, ⁓

build that ability and then, you know, the people around you know that you're really interested in that process or in that topic and people will start going to you. it's, you know, what's great about this field is it's generalist, but it's always good to have fine things that you're really particularly passionate about and to grow those, find opportunities to grow those things.

Matt Gregory (55:46)

Are there, so I took a class, senior year of college, a couple classes on architecture and there was a great lecturer who I loved listening to. And I still like, of all my college notes, it's probably the class I took the most notes in. Are there good like resources for lectures for people that might like want to just like listen to?

like thought leadership in this space. Like, can you find that online?

Stephanie Hsia (56:11)

Definitely Landscape Architecture Foundation is a nonprofit that does a lot of, know, puts together conferences and puts a lot of material out there. So I'd definitely go to their website. They also have fellowship programs, so they support people who, you know, promising research and gives them the time to do that. The American Society of Landscape Architects

is the, like, it is the national ⁓ organization that certifies landscape architects and there's a lot of resources too on their website, lectures, videos, yeah, all kinds. Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (56:48)

You're gonna put

that in the show notes, Matt?

Matt Gregory (56:49)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Steph, thank you so much for spending your morning with us or part of your morning with us. Really appreciate you taking the time and I guess anything more you want to share with us before we sign off?

Stephanie Hsia (57:02)

⁓ No, I'm happy to share landscape architecture. think it's a really fun, exciting field ⁓ and a very optimistic one. And yeah, I hope your listeners find it inspiring or interesting at least. Thanks. Good to talk to you and good to meet you Pat.

Matt Gregory (57:16)

Awesome. All right.

Great to chat.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:20)

that was great

Matt Gregory (57:20)

That was a great conversation. feel like, you know, I don't spend that much time in green spaces, but when I do it really. Yeah. I spent a lot of time in, in not green spaces, brown spaces, paved spaces. ⁓ and it's such, it's such a nice feeling. What's when you think about garden spaces that you've spent time in, like what, what do you think of that?

Patrick Dyer Wolf (57:28)

You get gray spaces, brown spaces.

Paved,

I've never been to Steph's garden, but the way you were describing it even was just lowering my blood pressure. It's almost like the type of haircut I feel like I've been striving for my whole life is just not too manicured, kind of tumbling over in the right way. It's like, you know.

Matt Gregory (58:03)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:04)

Where it's like it like seems effortless, but really it takes a lot of like thought and expertise to appear just like so And she was she was saying that she goes she goes out all the time just looks at the plants like she's got five minutes Just look at the plants pull out a couple weeds It's just like living in harmony and it's not it's not that you're not shaping the landscape It's just that you're being very like in tune with it as opposed to trying to just dominate it like a lot of I think

Matt Gregory (58:17)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. mean, I think,

it's you, you certainly have to spend money, but it's, it's easier to just hire somebody to come in and like, rip it all out and plant new grass. it's a lot more time. Yeah. It's a lot more time intensive.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:38)

Right.

Yeah, put some chemicals down.

Matt Gregory (58:49)

to be thoughtful in the way that, it's at some level, like I think, and I feel this with our backyard, like it's like kind of scary. You like don't really want to mess it up. ⁓ you know, so like it takes a level of confidence to like, to do it. And I've seen Heijin, my wife, like really building that confidence in terms of like our little patio garden. And it's really...

Patrick Dyer Wolf (58:59)

Right.

Matt Gregory (59:12)

It's very satisfying. It's very comforting to have that. And I wonder, like, actually was working with a company a couple ⁓ of jobs ago that was focused on olfaction And one of the theories behind the work that we were doing was that our urban environment, especially like our built environment is

is almost like scent. mean, obviously there's like, I'm thinking about like walking in New York City in the summer. Like there's, there's horrible scent associated with that. ⁓ mostly, yeah, mostly human created, like the, like natural scent of flowers, of trees, of, you know, being taking a walk in the woods, like it's, it's got like this restoring quality to it. and, and I, and I think about like,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (59:38)

Hoof. Tough stuff. Yeah. Hot garbage.

Yeah.

for sure.

Matt Gregory (59:59)

all of these sort of inexplicable diseases that we have, know, anxiety and depression and, know, like these different issues that we have. like, I know that when I walk in those environments or that I'm in those environments, you know, I feel better. I feel like more, yeah. Yeah. If they can, mean, yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:15)

Everybody should take a walk in the woods 10 minutes every morning. I also, I wasn't, yeah if they can.

Well we gotta make it easier for everybody, you know? ⁓ I was in LA in June. We were working on recording some songs. And you know, LA is a huge city. It's the second biggest city in the country. But I was in East LA.

Matt Gregory (1:00:24)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:00:39)

⁓ There's just so many, there's a lot of fruit trees. There's a lot of just like beautiful flora kind of just like spilling out all over the place. Great smells. A lot of like stairways and you know hills, mountains. You can kind of like find yourself in a canyon and like it can get very dry obviously and there's been you know fires. There's fires that can be

Matt Gregory (1:00:43)

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:01:05)

Usually not as bad as they were this year, but, but despite all that, like there's, it seems just like a thriving still ecosystem and the, you know, there's birds in these canyons. I don't think a lot of, many people who haven't spent time there would think about, think of LA in that way, but I really experienced that this time. you know, getting to take walks just around neighborhood streets and up through.

know, hilly streets and whatever. ⁓ And I think that can be, I mean, you know, New York City's very crowded, very cramped together, but I think that can be possible to cultivate almost anywhere if we really, if we want to.

Matt Gregory (1:01:30)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I was in last, last, last fall, I had the opportunity to go to China and I was in Shenzhen, China. And Shenzhen is where most consumer electronics in this country come from. It's like got a huge, it's not, maybe not like, like central Shenzhen has become, you know, more, more like

white collar type jobs, more office jobs, more tech. But surrounding Shenzhen, there are just tons of factories. But Shenzhen is known, I believe, as the garden city in China. the city has really built up over the last two decades, but there's been real thoughtfulness around maintaining green spaces.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:16)

It's like New Jersey, the Garden State.

Matt Gregory (1:02:27)

⁓ And I had this perception of what I was going to in China and I was completely wrong. Like it was like an incredibly walkable green environment. And I was just kind of blown away by that.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:02:27)

Mm-hmm.

I think that that points to another thing that I wanted to get into a little more in this conversation, but it could be its own rabbit hole, which is the kind of interesting intersection of like how that happens. And we were talking about, you know, private spaces, people's yards versus a private firm, like Steph's versus a government. And it's like, you know, if a government or a firm is doing something, it's not, you can't please all the people all the time, but like,

Matt Gregory (1:02:54)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:05)

Sometimes that's where it has to come from if you want to do it on a city scale. kind of has to be. And you know, you could be as democratic or not democratic as guess as you want about whatever project you're doing. it's just sort of an interesting intersection to me of like people wanting to have control over their own space versus like a shared space. How do we want it to be? But I think.

you know, as we've been talking about, think the more green space we can have, the better for everyone.

Matt Gregory (1:03:30)

Yeah, and I think it's, you know, talking to somebody like Steph, who, you know, has like a really diverse and, you know, ⁓ quite extensive educational background, and then all of this experience on the job, like, it takes really smart people to like, manage these things, because there's so many different considerations, and it's so multidisciplinary. And I think like,

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:03:53)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Gregory (1:03:54)

connecting the dots a little bit here, like the type of exploration that we were talking about, you know, that you get in kind of a liberal arts education, where like you're, you can kind of explore and, know, like that's building a skillset that's like a generalist skillset that, you know, somebody like, you know, like somebody like Steph.

you know, can explore that way and build all these, you know, different skills in art and biology, and then bring all that like learned experience and practice to her work. And, and it's really cool to meet people like that. And I think for maybe younger listeners, you know, you may feel pressure to be like, I'm going to be a

baker, or I'm going to be a school teacher, I'm going to be a lawyer, doctor, or whatever. Those are all amazing paths, and you can have a great life at them. But I think there are also paths where you just get to be a really good thinker, critical thinker, and learner. And then there are paths like landscape architecture that are well-suited to those types of brains.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:00)

Yeah, I do want to shout out and support Wesleyan a little bit. don't know if you were really giving them the business, but remember all those majors that were interdisciplinary? Mary's was Science and Society where you combined a hard science and a soft science, College of Letters. think there's certainly a liberal arts vein in those type of places, but you can definitely...

Matt Gregory (1:05:16)

Yeah.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:25)

do what we're talking about with Steph, whether different disciplines to try to create a balance,

Matt Gregory (1:05:32)

wonderful to chat, Pat. ⁓ Thanks for being on and look forward to the next episode.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:35)

OS.

Always a delight, Matt. Thank you to have me here.

Matt Gregory (1:05:43)

Yeah, of course. All right, bye.

Patrick Dyer Wolf (1:05:45)

Bye.