Alan (Al) Doan is the Co-founder of Missouri Star Quilt Company, which offers a selection of precut and quilt fabrics. After building and shutting down a consumer finance app, he partnered with his sister and mother to transform a small quilting operation into a thriving e-commerce and brick-and-mortar business. Al is also the Chairman of the Board at Creativity, Inc., a creative commerce holding company that includes quilt, yarn, and art companies, and is an investor and mentor in small-town revitalization and creative ventures.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:58] How Al Doan built and grew Missouri Star Quilt Company in a small rural town
• [7:40] Al talks about building themed quilt shops to create unique in-person experiences and community engagement
• [12:25] The economic ripple effects of revitalizing small towns
• [17:32] How buying and transforming small-town real estate serves as a content engine and PR generator
• [24:15] Local authenticity and in-person experiences as the future of retail
• [28:46] Comparing physical experiences with virtual and AI-driven retail
• [35:17] The content, commerce, and community framework that drives Missouri Star’s growth
• [44:55] Missouri Star’s content strategy, from tutorials to entertainment, inspiration, and education
• [52:39] Why Al stepped down as CEO and what he learned about leadership, emotional control, and self-awareness
• [1:09:27] Al’s life beyond business: family, farming, rugby, and adventure travel

In this episode…

Many brands are rethinking how they grow, shifting focus from online ads to building genuine, real-world connections. As consumer behavior evolves, companies must create experiences that deepen loyalty and community rather than chasing short-term clicks. How can businesses design strategies that balance digital reach with tangible impact?

Known for turning creative ideas into thriving ecosystems, town-builder Al Doan maintains that content, community, and experiences can transform a company’s reach and impact. He recommends focusing on storytelling that makes customers feel seen and creating immersive environments where they connect with your brand beyond transactions. By blending emotion, authenticity, and experimentation, growth can arise from meaning rather than just metrics.

In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris sits down with Al Doan, Co-founder of Missouri Star Quilt Company, to discuss how building a brand-driven town transformed an industry. Al talks about using storytelling and community as growth engines, scaling leadership through emotional intelligence, and why hands-on experiences outperform digital noise.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• William Harris on LinkedIn
• Elumynt
• Al Doan: LinkedIn | X
• Missouri Star Quilt Company
• Creativity, Inc.
• Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships by Andrew M. Davis
• Mark Friedman on LinkedIn
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Quotable Moments

• “My hammer, for sure, has become, ‘bro, you should build a town.’ It’s surprisingly cheap.”
• “You don’t have to do this. People find other leaders all the time, all the time.”
• “Ninety-five percent of being a leader is just controlling how you respond to news.”
• “When you give people the opportunity and the tools to achieve, they will achieve.”
• “It’s funny, man, because if I have a quality I admire, it’s eternal optimism.

Action Steps

1. Build a community around your brand: Creating spaces where customers can connect in person strengthens loyalty and deepens emotional engagement. Shared experiences transform buyers into advocates who feel like a part of your story.
2. Use storytelling to humanize your content: Sharing real stories about challenges and growth makes your brand relatable and memorable. Authentic storytelling connects audiences to your mission more effectively than polished marketing copy.
3. Invest in leadership self-awareness: Recognizing emotional triggers and improving response control helps build trust and stability within teams. Leaders who manage their reactions well create healthier, more productive work environments.
4. Collaborate with adjacent brands: Partnering with companies that share your audience expands reach and credibility. Strategic collaborations can introduce your business to new communities without relying solely on paid advertising.
5. Balance digital strategy with real-world experiences: Blending online content with physical engagement, like events or workshops, makes your brand tangible. This hybrid approach sustains attention and builds long-term relationships beyond digital channels.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro  0:03  

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show.

William Harris  0:13  

Hey everyone. I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 million and beyond. As you upgrade your business and your personal life, most entrepreneurs dream of building a business. Al Doan built a town. He's the co founder of Missouri Star Quilt Company. What started as a small family shop in rural Hamilton, Missouri, turned into a nine-figure e-commerce Empire along the way, Alan, his family, didn't just sell fabric. They turned their tiny town into the Disneyland of quilting. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but I'm gonna call it the Disneyland. Maybe Forbes. Forbes called it. Okay, then I guess we can 14 quilt shops, restaurants, a hotel and a pilgrimage site that quilters travel from all over the world to experience. It's part growth story, part love letter to community, and part Abstrakt hack. That makes you wonder, could other DTC brands do the same? What would it look like if Athletic Greens built a wellness village, or HexClad created a chef's playground, or good wipes? Well, I don't know. We'll let al weigh in on that one. Beyond the quilting empire, though Alan is a founder investor, pickup basketball legend, and the guy behind the @drbillnye handle you've probably seen online, he's here today to share not just how he scaled an e-commerce brand from zero to 100 million, but plus, but also what he's learned about leadership, community and thinking way bigger than just paid ads and funnels. So grab your headphones. Let's dig into some good stuff. Al, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast.

Al Doan  1:42  

William Harris, what an intro, man. You like the Jason Kelce of business podcast, yeah, we're here.

William Harris  1:53  

All right. Well, this is good. Let's make sure the content matches, and I'm sure it will. I do want to give a shout out, though, to Mark Friedman, one of the smartest e-commerce strategists in the business, a good friend. Mark is the one who initially put us in touch. He's like, Hey, you got to talk to this guy. Al, thank you Mark for Yeah, he's pretty good.

Al Doan  2:10  

I like that guy. Yeah,

William Harris  2:12  

me too. Last interruption, then we'll dig into the good stuff. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is the award winning advertising agency optimizing

Al Doan  2:21  

my business. Brought to you by me.

William Harris  2:27  

Elumynt pays for this. I'm not paying for it out of my own All right, we're skipping it.

Al Doan  2:35  

Guys, listen, if you need an agency, one Williams very busy, and I don't know that he'd even take you on as a client, you're probably not good enough. But if not good enough, but if you were to try, why do you give him a call? He's a great guy. He'll take care of you.

William Harris  2:47  

You're doing the ad reads from now on, okay? Because I have to cut right into this one, because this is the wildest growth hack that I've ever heard. You bought a town, yeah? What?

Al Doan  2:58  

No. So, so early on, early on in our business, we, we were in a tiny town, like 1500 people, an hour north of Kansas City, and so we opened up a quilt shop. And we're, you know, in America, there's about what, 3000 quilt shops, or 3001 and why does anybody care that we exist and we're in a town that doesn't have a lot of traffic? I mean, if you could imagine a 1000 person town, there's like a gas station in a Subway sandwich shop. That's it. Not a lot going on here, and not a lot of reason to stop. So we opened up, thinking, we just service our local area and and then we we built my my big idea in the beginning was like, alright, we built a website. We put together a a quilters daily deal, like a like a WOOT comm Steve and cheap something like that was our, was our shtick. So we had a little online persona that we were building. And in the beginning, I was very passionate about, like, my emails. I didn't want to spam anybody. I wanted good quality emails. So I was, once a week, I'd send you this great email packed with all the good content, we started making YouTube videos, and that was great. But then most of what we talked about was just what was going on in the local quilt shop. And everybody sort of loved this local vibe of, we're just humans doing our thing, you know, a little quilt shop out here. And so as as we, you know, we bought an old antique showroom, or is an old auto showroom that then was an antique shop that then we bought and turned into our first quilt shop. And you just sort of document the story of, like, here we are. We're doing this, oh my gosh. We have this going on. We're buying some more fabric, and we're doing a little this, and we're doing a thing here. And then we but we were like a block off Main Street, and then somebody was selling their main street building, and we bought it and sort of told that process, and it ended up being most of the content that we were making was like, here we are in the we're back in the store today, digging out this asbestos tile with our teeth and just, you know, putting it in my pants to take home with me and and then you're. You know, the insulation is coming down here. Imagine what this wall is going to be. We're going to do this. And so there's a lot that we could take our audience on a journey with us. We finished that main store and then looked around and, like, we had our weekly content of tutorials and teaching you what to do with stuff. But like, such a juggernaut this, like, what are we doing day to day? And it saved us from having to, like, put our kids on there, like, you know, like, maybe family is a very public failure. Is like, No, we're the business is doing things that's interesting. And so we're going to keep talking about what the business is doing, but it's us that's doing the stuff in the business. So then we, we bought another another building, because the problem I had with our little quilt shop was I didn't want people to drive, you know, a couple hours and come to see us in Hamilton, Missouri, open the door and walk in, and most quilt shops in a small town, you're going to walk in and just some lady sitting doing a crossword puzzle. It's like, let me know if I can help you. And you kind of, you know, you're just moving along. And I, like, I wanted some energy and real enthusiasm as you walked in, so you'd feel excited to be there, and like we were excited to see you, and so we did. We didn't have a warehouse. We did all of our fulfillment out of the stores. And so you'd buy a yard of fabric, and it was our shop team that would go and pull that fabric and cut a yard of it and wrap it up, put it in a bag and get ready to ship. Well. So then we got we filled our store with fabric, and we needed more space. And so we bought another downtown building, and I built this little bit of software that sort of split the orders, so the fabric that had these numbers would go here, and that was this genre would go over to this other one. And so you'd come to town, man, and we had a lot more online than we did in store, which is still true to this day by dramatic margin, sure. And so you, but you'd come to town and, like, people were busy. They were doing stuff. They're, Hey, how are you? Let me know if I can help you. But then everybody's buzzing around doing a thing, and you're like, What is this place? And and so then we had, we had two stores going, and I had this ran of the hour. I was like, man who gets to say that they have the most quilt shops of any town in the world. Somebody's got to have it. What's, what is that? And like, that little banner was enough that I was like, Man, if I put that on a billboard, I bet people would stop and come check it out. I want to tell, I want to say we're the most quilt shops of any town in the world. And so, you know, the best I could find it was like, four, you know, quilt shops some town over in Germany or something. And so we just like, All right, we're gonna, we're gonna try and get like, five or six shops doing exactly this. And we did this sort of, like fairway games at a, at a, you know, like an amusement park. And so you have one person that can service a couple. I got that idea from Wall drugs up in South Dakota, if you've

William Harris  7:37  

ever i That's exactly I'm picturing. And you've got all the, yeah, it's

Al Doan  7:40  

great. A ton of billboards, and you stop there and they have, like, store on store on store on store. But it's just like, they're all kind of connected, and you can go check out anywhere and move around in there. And so we built these themed experiences for like, like, in our world, in the quilting world, they're all these very focused niches that you would never find a store that's like, just a batik store right where it's like, Island type fabrics that would be a small section of a bigger quilt shop, because you want to have enough for everybody that comes in. Well, we got to build this dedicated batik shop and a dedicated kids shop, and a dedicated Civil War era fabric shop, and a dedicated floral you know, and like, we have all these shops. So if that's your jam, if you love Thanksgiving, Bro, wait till you see this shop that's built just for you. And you're going to walk in there and you're like, oh, they like, oh, they get me, I'm home. Is the greatest thing well. And so, so in the process of doing this, we sort of realized that we made a this quilt Town USA, sort of moment. And so we have, now we have 16 stores that are all themed differently. It literally is like, it's like an amusement park for for 40 to 70 year old women is most of our demographic and and so we have, we have 16 stores, we've got a retreat center where you can sleep and have events and, like, they call it retreats. So it's you and 40 of your closest girlfriends. You get together and you just party, and it's like, a couple of days. No, I mean, we do 70 of these a year, three day events, one after another, after another, and they, they just come and they so and like, it's funny man, because I have these three pillars in any business that I work on where it's like, you got to have an angle for each of these, and it's content, commerce and community. And so like, like for us, our angle, our angle on commerce was, like, the daily deal, and we had a wide selection. We had a couple good answers for like, what's our angle with this? We had a couple good angles for content where it's like, all right. We got the town stuff, we got our tutorials, we got these emails. We got like, we know how to do good content, and the community piece, like, how do we make people feel a part of this? And so part of that is, like, Facebook groups. We started a forum that's one of the biggest quilting forums, and we did some stuff. But really, our community is when you come to town, this is your comic con right at home, your kids are like, Mom, you're a hoarder, you've got a basement full never gonna make it like you're weird. And you come here and you're an artist and you're a collector. And you're a connoisseur of great fabric, and you've got taste and style and all that, like you're normal, where Comic Con is the same thing at home, you're a weirdo and you need to get a job. You go to Comic Con, and all of a sudden your people surround you and say, You are cool, you General of the, you know, video game Halo. I can't believe you have this, yeah, all done up. You're amazing. And you go out of that environment, and you're back to being weird. And so you love to be there, because these people get you. And so we try and create these moments and happenstance places where, if you come to town alone, you leave with friends and and it's, it's been this great piece of what we've built. And it's funny, because when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. My hammer, for sure, has become, bro, you should build a town. It's surprisingly cheap. You know, you don't, we couldn't do this in Manhattan, but you go find a town that needs a little bit of an identity and a and a rebirth and and now you're like, great, we're just gonna fill all these empty commerce spots. And the town, the town loves it, because they get all the tax revenue, and there's reason for people to come by and visit. And, like, the grocery store sells more everybody's business is better because we're doing our thing. But, but like, the challenge is we just have to, like, decide to go do it. And just like, Disneyland, you know, Walt Disney, he can't just build Splash Mountain and be like, you guys, gotta have a vision. You're gonna when I get the rest of this in here, it's gonna be awesome. Wait till you come back. I'm gonna pave these, these trails, and it's gonna look nice. Now you got to build the whole thing. And you sort of have to suspend disbelief and like, not judge yourself until you get enough there that you say, here's a reason to come to my town, and so we definitely did that. We our version of that was like 12 shops. We had, like 12 shops get done, probably closer to six or seven people started to really get it and get excited. And then, you know, your restaurants have we've got little quilting themed items that we'll get these guys put in there. And our bakery has a quilt shaped cookie, you know, like, everybody sort of gets on board with it. And now we've got an identity. We've got a like, there's a there's a reason for people to know Hamilton, Missouri now, and it's awesome.

William Harris  12:11  

You said the town loves it and into a point, like, once they understand it, they love it. But how do you convince the town that this is the right idea, that you're like, hey, we're going to be the quilting town everything else that you've ever been known for. We're putting it away this

Al Doan  12:25  

on this the town loves it. Mostly Okay, the well, because, you know, changes the thief of identity, right? And like I can tell our our story of the town is the birthplace of JC Penney. And if you've got nothing else going on here, you talk about we've got. JC Penney, he didn't start a store here. He didn't do it. He doesn't care about but they've got two statues of him in town now, and they've got a museum dedicated to him. And I'm like, the problem is nobody's ever Googled who's the founder of that failed business. JC Penney, I want to go. I don't want to go to his first store. I want to go to where he was born and visit that house that sits in the town square and compromises the whole city park. That's what I want to do. I've never Googled who started Montgomery Ward and tried to, like, go visit his boyhood home. But for the town, this was their thing. It's the JC Penney High School, it's the JC Penney Museum, it's the JC Penney Days Festival. Like they just love this guy who could have cared less about them, I think totally. I mean, he might have given 50 grand over his life to this place, but they, they don't care about us at all. They've never paved the street here and but because he was all they had for so long, that was the thing. And agriculture, it's big farming community. So now we come in and we say, hey, hey, we're quilting. And there's a lot of old timers that are, like, yeah, bunch of bunch of wieners and, and like, so if I was waiting for permission, they would never give it to me, right? Like, literally, literally, with a small town, it's like, gonna come, I'm gonna get your permits, we're gonna do all the thing, but like, I'm just gonna build whatever I want to build, and and then, like, love it or hate it, I get to exercise my vision here, because I bought these buildings, and the buildings are always very cheap, you know. But like, because of the work we've done in these buildings, we'll fix the brick and put all this stuff together. We spend a couple 100 grand on each of them that will buy a building for $20,000 put $200,000 into it. But then this building stands for another 100 years. And if you're doing, if you're doing the cost like from a from a like, is this worth it standpoint, it's like, all right, but all of my spend, I get to, you know, I get to amortize over 30 years like, my monthly spend on having a town that's this whole identity and all this content engine around it is dramatically less than my Facebook spend each month and like and like this one this town is taking me on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, NBC, night news, you know, CBS, Sunday morning. NP. Are Forbes, Inc, every everywhere I want to go, the story of what we're doing with the town is the most interesting thing about us. And so that's taken us all over the place, and honestly, been the fodder that I use to run my ads in the most effective way. And so, like, I'm a huge proponent of like, Guys, you're sleeping on just buying a town. You should you go, when I say buy town, I say buy town, I don't mean like you're purchasing the district and doing anything. It's like I bought a I bought the this next town over from us. They have a commercial row buildings cost, I think, 70 grand. It's all fallen in, and it's awful. But nobody has no these towns. Nobody wants to build anything and put it in there. No vision. So I wouldn't bought this next one, I think I'll turn it into yarn town, USA, right? I own yarn Comm, and we'll go build we'll go build well, and it's already a great business webs up in Massachusetts, and we'll, like bring their store experience, and I'll split it into multiple experiences. We'll have a loom store and we'll have a weaving store. Those will be very close to each other. Then we'll have a crochet and embroidery and a yarn store, and, like a fine art yarn store, where you have the alpaca and, like you split it up into these experiences that span multiple shops, and you get, it's the three ring circus idea. You can't go there in just a day and see everything you have, all these things you want to check out and like they we've now put the flag in and said, Oh, you love knitting. Cool. We're the capital of knitting in the US, maybe the world, because we have an entire town dedicated to it. Nobody's loved knitting as much as we love knitting and and by just, you know, it's sort of like the early days the internet. If you wanted to be a thought leader, you just have to start talking, because nobody was talking about it. And so sure you start leading with thought you get it. Well, towns are the same way where it's like, all right, I need, I need, like, four or five shops related to this. And there's very few businesses that I that I can't find an angle to finally get there. You know, guy that sells aquariums online, I'm like, Dude, your town would be freaking sick, right? Give me. Give me the, give me the fish shops up and down and this kind of fish and that. And here's your sea water, and here's your your coral store, and like, but like it lets you expand this whole thing, which just supports your online selection more. But now that you exist as a real place that I can visit, you're not a faceless, nameless warehouse on the internet trying to spam we meet with crap. You're this destination that has such an identity and a physical manifestation of your brand that, like, conveys meaning to me, and I now want to be a part of your world. Yeah, you talked

William Harris  17:32  

about how this also gives you a lot of really good content, and that's kind of like an angle and a stick that you want to go it's like, so if you were going to get this in front of, let's just say, another business that's doing 50 million a year, and you're going to convince their their CFO, that you're going to buy a town with some of the funds, right, which might not even be that much for them, right? Except some of these towns, they're not even that expensive. But you're saying, Hey, okay, buying the buildings is one thing creating all like, getting the buildings to where they need to be, fixing them up. And, like, there's a lot there. And so it's like, okay, I'm you're gonna convince the CFO that this is the right idea to invest funds into. What are you looking at for the the payback for this? Is it? You're saying, Hey, this is gonna create a lot of content. You're getting all of this free publicity. So what's the cost of PR?

Al Doan  18:18  

Yeah, I mean, I mean, so in our world, like we build one of these, and we expect the businesses to be break even on paying their own mortgage and their own staff to run, right but, but we have, we have people coming already. We've been telling the story for a minute, in the beginning, in the beginning. I mean, that was very nearly where we were all along. Is like the town has always at least broken even, and, and then we, we so, like, if I'm, if I, let's say I'm running, and I don't know snowboard company, and I sell snowboards, right? Well, I start by, like, I buy the I buy the second building, and I say, Great, now we're going to build, like, this is just for big and tall dudes, all the most giant boards, or whatever it's going to be. And and we would go by that building, maybe it's 50 grand or 100 grand for the building, and you're going to put another 100 grand in to, like, fix it up and keep everything straightened and going, and you're just telling this story along the way. And so it's some content. It's doing its thing. That store opens, and now it's got an operating budget and its rent is the mortgage, which should be low, right? Go find a small town where you're you need your mortgage low. Because this is more about the story than it is about location. Location, Location. People, you know, Cabela's in Sydney, Nebraska. People just went to Cabela's. They went to nowhere Nebraska. That's what you're building. So we build this second the second spot, people come and visit, and then, and then we build the next spot, which is maybe a, you know, snowboard demo facility, where, like, you get a go off into the pits, and you can come hang out for a week and just try board in like it. It's great. You do a little thing, right? You and you connect all this well. So what I'm thinking about on my end is like, great. I need, I need some money from the CFO. But it's really just permission to go and, like, expand the complexity of our in town operation. It's and as you expand this complexity a little bit, you're increasing the capacity for you to showcase more SKUs, so your assortment grows incrementally as you go and and then you now have a you've zeroed in on an audience that, you know, now we are the, I don't know how many big and tall snowboard stores there are out there, but now we are one, and we have a location, and we have some, you know, there's a very real sentiment attached to this. And so I would look at it. I would look at the ROI on this in two ways. One, the content which you go and feed out, and it's great. You now have a reason to exist in these spaces, which, which, you know, is cool and means something. You have some PR stuff that comes back to you, which is, which is cool, too. And, and then you have the collaborations where, now, like this, this piece of your business is collaborating with so and so. And we're going to launch the line here, this place that does this thing in, in my world, that's most of the value, I think, sort of zeros in, in one of those buckets of of having this, this whole town experience, the PR opens a bunch of windows, you know, like, it's such a cool story to tell that anybody that I sit down with, if I was just a giant Quilt Company in a warehouse and they say, Oh, that's so cool. You sell so much fabric. Tell me about that. We sell a lot of fabric. But he said, where I go is I talk about this town, and I talk about the community. That's part of it. I talk about the the events that we run, which, again, just generate more content. We just had our big birthday bash. 1000s and 1000s of quilters come to town. It's the biggest event in quilting. It's this whole big to do, and and people come and flood our town, and it's great we have like, do we're doing, like, dance offs and, you know, cake walks. And we have a theater that's running with presenters all day long, and vendors come. It's this whole big Lollapalooza for quilters. It's great content. And other people are talking about this event and this content, which, which, again, you know, when you run Huck fest snowboard version out of Vermont. When the whole town turns into that, you go to fruit of Colorado, do the whole town turns out for this mountain biking world they they've created. And it like, like, because that happens, the industry talks about us, people know, you know, like, it's this whole thing that, because I've got the town, I got to put events on top of it, and that, just like it increases the effectiveness of what we're doing. And so like on, on the P and L level, it's, it's not a genius idea. In fact, it just makes your business a little bit more complex. You're not losing money, not making money, but now you're, you know, you need your person to be a little more, a little more stable to run a couple of these sort of things. They're moving staff around different places, sort of like multiple departments on the on the, you know us as marketers level, we look at it and say, Man, that's friggin This is amazing, you know, like, I can do so much with this gem of an entity that that I get to start talking about who we're going to collaborate with, because they want to be a part of this town story. I get to talk about what events we do on top of this, and telling those stories. Again, I'm just repurposing my same properties to do this, and then the story of us as a business. You know, we love our town, we love our people, our employees, our friends and family that like, live and work here and love what they do, and there's all these other pieces that sort of endear us to our customers. It's funny because, like, like, I know folks have done focus groups trying to figure out how to compete with us. Measure. They'd be like, they'd be like, you know, you guys keep showing up. It's like, America's local quilt shop. We're like, no. These guys are these giants. Now, like, No dude, we're just a cute little quilt shop in northwest Missouri. That's all we are to most people, because that's they can see us, they can look at us, and they can come visit and give us a hug, and it makes us very tangible. And it's, it's a it's a big asset.

William Harris  24:15  

I love that you called out the local aspect. That's one of the things that I, I was working with a like an RC car company years ago, a decade ago, and one of the things that we were looking at, it's like, okay, from a positioning standpoint online, especially for them, they were a third party retailer, right? So they're not selling their own stuff. And it's like, you only have a few things that you really can do. You're not the one that has the most in stock, because the company that has the most in stock happens to be the distributor, so you're just never gonna beat them on that. You're not the one. Let's say that has. You could try to compete and say we're the lowest price, but it's like, that can also be like, a race to the bottom. It's like, it's hard to run a business on lowest price, right? Or you could be the one that has the best customer service. And to the point where I would say, like, how could you be in the phrase I used to say is, do. A local hobby shop online. Basically it was like, I wanted people to feel like they were walking into your store. It's like, if they don't know even what this piece is called, they're like, hey, but my car is making this sound, and I don't even know what piece I need to buy from you, right? And it's like, so you have these video consultations, and you're just like, Yeah, great. We're gonna help you. We're gonna, oh, yeah, take this apart. Okay, unscrew that. Yeah, okay. This is the piece you need here. I've got it here.

Al Doan  25:22  

I immediately love that business because, yeah, you're trying to be maybe the most accessible, the most interesting, like, I would love if I'm an RC shop, right? And you're like, like, you're doing Car Talk, but for an RC and somebody, here's my thing, here's a video, here's how it's broken. You say, Great, let me break this down for you this week in in car talk, you know, RC Car Talk, 100% we're over this up. We're doing this thing. And, like, it's funny, because I've watched those videos, and when I get to the end, I'll buy it from them, even if it's a couple bucks more thinking, this is my this is my loyalty for them making this, here's my tip. I'm not gonna buy a cup of coffee. I'm gonna buy your stuff. Thank you for being there and, and, yeah, like, like, it's funny, because if I'm them, the other content I start getting excited about making is like, like, what's the craziest stuff we make these cars do here? We've got, we took some rocket engines and put them in this, you know, we're gonna lie, says, here's our trek, and if you come visit us, you can race our track. And it's this track that we have in the backyard, and it's awesome. And like, actually goes into the building and not through the thing, like, we just got hit on this track, and, oh, and then also, now I know that's crazy, but we opened up RC boats next door, and then we did RC planes the next door. And now, like, we're the RC aficionados. There's people that sell this crap because they they're just buying what we tell them to buy. But like, We are the mecca for RC stuff, and every store is attached to a test track. You know, like, you just get this whole persona around. Like, we get it more, and we love it so much, and you see it because nobody else has built a shrine to our cars. Like we have, we have a town dedicated to this. And, like, that's a mic drop, right? Like, like, you it is, you win. You win. This is So,

William Harris  27:07  

this is like, this is the future of retail to a point and where I go with this is when we talk about retail and what's needed. We need experiences, right? Like, we need a place where people can still come in-person, but it's maybe less of like browsing aisles and aisles and aisles of stuff. It's more about like, How can I just kind of immerse myself in this experience? This is anecdotal, but talking to my middle school daughters and their friends, they don't actually like to buy a lot of things online, if it's something that is just, you know, whatever basic whatever thing that the other they want to buy that online on Amazon and use their parents prime account and whatever. But for most of the most of the things, they actually want to go and be in malls again. They want to experience things they like that environment, and it's just got to level up a little bit. And to your point, why not a town? There are other futures that are being here. I want to kind of get your take on the other versions. One is VR, AR, stuff like that, right? So, like, I've got the vision Pro, and, you know, you can create this right now. So far, nobody's done a very good job of it. Allo yoga has done like, an okay job where it's like, you kind of are looking at, like yoga clothes in like a forest or on a beach, and it's like, it's still not the same thing, but it's like, really creating this experience that people can go and be a part of. And then I had Akash Nigam, who is the founder of genies with AI companions. And just the idea he was talking about, you know, Home Depot, you can actually play games with your Home Depot AI avatar. And you know, you're engaging with them. You're creating this personality and this relationship with them. And so, like, there's other futures of retail that are coming out. But I feel like the town is maybe the most practical future of

Al Doan  28:46  

all. It's funny because all of those, all of those are sort of pretending, sure to have the experiences that we're creating, right, like, so if I was going to build an AI app for mine, I build my town in in AR or in VR, right? And and you get to walk down Hamilton, you go into the shops, and there's a people, there's the stuff like this, what you're shopping but to have that really matter, I sort of had to create the town, you know, like you're mirroring reality into those spaces. That's the idea. And if your reality kind of sucks, well then you're just lying to people and so and so make a great reality. And the rest of this stuff will come naturally, sort of how I think about it. And it's funny, because Amazon's interesting, man. You know, I look at Amazon sort of like Walmart, right? If I get into mountain biking and I go to Walmart and I buy a nice huffy and I take it out on the trail and it breaks in half, but I fell in love with mountain biking is great. But then I go and buy a real mountain bike. I show up and specialize. I show up in in, you know, giant or one of these, one of these shops, and I go buy a real mountain bike from somebody that, like, goes deep on this, because I've now entered into this hobby, and in Amazon, Walmart, all these guys, they're gonna do a great job of like, of like, Oh, I've never tried quilted. Let me look for a thing, and there's going to be a little like Toy dollhouse version of quilting. And you can try a thing out. And then when you fall in love with it, you want to go someplace where they really get it, someplace that, like, someplace that perhaps has built a town dedicated like, like, that's, that's sort of how I look at winning in that space. And again, you know which town, which town has the most like authority in this space? It's going to be the people that built an entire town around it. It is, it is interesting. In the age of, of, sort of, AI, right? Where, where, like, the shopping experience gets reduced to, hey, which one of these is the best? Find me the cheapest of this, and you're not interacting with with the content or with the user as much. But again, I kind of think, I kind of think a lot of this stuff, you know, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm spear fishing, and I know exactly what I'm going for, I'm just got to stab it like I think that makes a lot of sense. If I, if I want to, if I want to sort of look at what's out there, try and be inspired, get ideas. I think I still got to go to your website and your your content, and I'm going to read what you're doing or watch the videos you're putting out. And so I think it's, I think it's a thing that will exist, right? And your low hanging fruit of people that are just looking for a pair of scissors, hope we show up great in chat. GBT, you know, I got, I like, I hope we win that one. But I think

William Harris  31:26  

you're doing it. So here's the reason, right, when you think about what an LLM is actually doing, you know, without going too crazy, it's basically like this matrix of this works with this, and this fits with this. And so you want to be the thing. When people say quilting, you want, you know your brand to come up as many times as possible. So that way the LLM basically says, Hey, whenever I'm saying this, this word seems to also be associated with this in high enough capacity that that's what I'm going to give them a reference to, right? So when people are looking for this, well, all of the PR that you're getting all of the people that are talking about you, let's just even say on all of the forums that AI is pulling from, because it's not a human being, and it needs to get that information from actual human beings. By having a town you're still significantly far and above than just having another data feed like everybody else, yeah,

Al Doan  32:18  

when, like, I keep thinking if, I didn't have this town to sort of be my identity, all I've got is look at this new products we got in that's a lot with what people do. It's nuts to me. Man. It's like, why would I ever read your newsletter that just says we got more crap in the store?

William Harris  32:37  

Did you see the iPhones now in orange?

Al Doan  32:38  

Yeah, but, I mean, it's actually dude, it's funny too, because the other version of towns that I love you saying that just made me think of it as like, it's like, I kind of wish, you know, Nintendo had a town, or Microsoft that would be like, if Facebook had a town for for as as goofy as Facebook is, what a rad thing to go and hang out in, right? Like, I just want to go walk their main street and check out their store. And, like, a ton of people would go there, and they buy the merch, and they do the thing, and they'd like, you know, experience the future of their, you know, codec avatar, like, like, it's just a playground for what they're building. And, and it would be a great exercise. Like, great, what's the physical version of our brand? We want to take this digital only thing and imagine it as an experience, or Nintendo, or, like, I don't know, man, I play, I play some video games and stuff. And it's like, Dude, I want that store. I want to go in and and play with the figure eats and, like, look at the stuff, and think, oh, that's neat. And here's all the other nerdy 40 year olds that also play this dumb game. And now we are normal for a minute, because we're just buddies that that nerd out on this thing. And then we go home and, like, they can have the whole town. Every game gets to be its own spot. And then there's big arena where you play on a big screen, and you can, like, sign, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff you can do, and events that happen and launches and all that stuff that lives around this town. It's like, Dude, your cost in doing that is nothing. Why? What do it you guys give us. Let the fans be even bigger fans and bigger ambassadors. But, but, like, there's that version of a town too that I think totally works and kills it. You you've got a big brand. You don't have any excuse to be in physical retail at all, but you're building these, these shrines to, maybe it's to your customers, or to your to your, whatever your product is, and letting people just be enthusiastic fans of what you do like there's something to be said for it.

William Harris  34:39  

I'm a fan of it. I'll tell you. When I was in college, one of the papers that we had to write was like, what's your, what's your, you know, 30 year plan, or whatever it was. I don't remember what it was. And as a college student, I remember writing that I was like, I'm gonna own a town. And I described the town that I was going to own, and to your point where it's like, this town that I wanted to create that was unlike any town that existed. And so I'm. Big believer in what you're doing. I like it. Moving on from the town, though, what are some of the other things that you have found to be very helpful in you building and growing this business? You mentioned your three pillars. My handwriting sloppy. It was content. Something in community, yeah? Thank you. Yeah, yeah. No.

Al Doan  35:17  

Like, if you're, if you're that RC, if you're that RC, car place, right? It's like, All right, we can't just sell stuff, what? What's our angle? And it's, we're either the biggest selection, we're the cheapest price, we are the, you know, we're we're kit fake focused, you know, like you come up with whatever your angle is for commerce, whatever your angle is for content, your angle for community. That's been super helpful for us. I'm trying to think so, like, if you know the pieces, the pieces that have been the most interesting for us as we've tried to grow this thing, it's funny, you'll kind of chase around new customer arbitrage, where you can find it, right? A new thing comes out, and you're like, great, they don't even know they're selling customers is cheap, and we figured out how to go get him. We're doing a thing in the end. In the end, like, I read this book called brandscaping by Andrew. I forget his last name, great guy, though he's cool. He's actually like, I, I've, I've met him a couple of times. Actually was going to go have a meeting with him. He's out of out of Nashville, and I flew to Memphis and said, All right, it says you're three hours away. And he's like, he flew to the wrong town in Tennessee. Suck, really. I didn't know it has that include nearby airports. It always gets me and so cool guy. But he wrote this book brandscaping. The idea of brandscaping is essentially who, who has your current customer base already? You know, in my world, it's like, it's like, All right, who's, who's, uh, you know, there's a cooking channel that caters to my demo Exactly. And it's like, great. Who are they? Where are my people hanging out already? There's, I mean, maybe it's like, what's that? AARP insurance, or Reader's Digest. I always thought Reader’s Digest. It's like, Dude, I love reading that book in my grandma's house. Like, she always like that, that audience that still loves Reader’s Digest, for sure, loves quilting, you know? And so it's like, great. How do I connect with them? Or what's the collaboration look like that? We do a thing together and and their audience is excited to meet me, and our audience is excited to meet them, and we all high five together. And so there's a bunch of like that's been the biggest unlocks, I think, in my world, is, is that starts happening again? Well, we just had one that we did. There's this, this guy on Bravo, who does southern charm. His name is Craig Conover, and, you know, he's just, he's just a hot guy on Bravo, that all the ladies, just a sweetheart of a man and and he designed a fabric line. We did a bunch of projects. So, like, he was just making pillows, that was his shtick. And he had a store in in Charleston. They did the whole thing. And we approached him and said, Hey, man, like, I bet there's some some crossover here. We should do a thing together. He put out a fabric line. We made a bunch of stuff out of that fabric, and did, did a whole thing. And now he's been on our tutorials. We've been on theirs, and like his, audience is excited to meet us. You know, it's an extension of of, hey, I'm I'm a maker, and I create stuff. And look, I'm learning how to make this new thing. You guys should come with me and try it out. And and our audience is excited to see him, because he shirtless in a lot of his pictures, and they half naked. Greg Conover, he's a really charming guy. He's really nice guy. But, like, it's in our world too. He we did a little pop up shop related to him, right? So all of his stuff and his showcase is line great, and all the stuff he was making. And then he came to town for our big event, our big birthday bash, and people got to come and meet Craig, which was a whole big deal in his shop that we put together for him, our marketing team was, was leveraging that into all this great social content. And their team and our team are working together to create a bunch of stuff that we're posting weeks and weeks after the event, and then all that product into our online space is, is just driving sales and doing a great job. And so it's, it's sort of, it's funny. I you know that diagram of Disney that they put out where it's like, it's like, every movie comes out, the retail thing, and it needs a ride. We need this, and it's all the czar of inner operations, and everybody's talking to each other. I'd always look at that, man. I'm like, we suck. Why don't we do that better? Oh my gosh, we're doing this, and we're such idiots because we don't see it over here. Well, now we're, we're at a point where it's like, no, as it comes in, it's getting leveraged in all the right places, and all the teams are talking to each other, and as we do that, the entire business gets better. And so that's, that's where I'm like, as I look forward from here, what takes us to double our size right now? It's, it's that, it's, it's, we are friends with more. People or buddies with more people. We help more people get rich by exposing them to this audience and helping them create products and do all kinds of cool stuff and and like, I just get so pumped about the future of that and that brandscaping idea where, like, we couldn't afford to pay for these customers. If I had to buy them off Facebook, I just we'd never get there. But if we can give some of ours, and they give some of theirs. And like, everybody's stoked on the other side, like, Man, what a it's a way better way to spend a career than just trying to mine dollars for customers on social.

William Harris  40:31  

I can't wait to see this Disney ification of you guys here when you come out with figurines, and it's Nancy with the, you know, removable thimble. And I mean, this is gonna be next level.

Al Doan  40:42  

My mom, no joke, has an actual figurine you can buy in the sword. It's a creepy really, when your mom has an action figure, dude, you're just like, what is happening? Who's buying this? Why are we doing this?

William Harris  40:54  

But I do agree with you on the idea of, how do you how do you get where your customers are already at? The idea that I like to think about is it's like, how do you get the people who your customers think is cool to say that you're also cool? And going back to human relationships, I really like thinking about things in that frame of mind. If we were hanging out in a group and all of a sudden you were like, Oh, you play guitar. You got to meet my friend John, because John also plays guitar, and he's really great. And you're like, all of a sudden, if I just met John out on the street, I would be like, I don't know who you are. I don't care to get to know you. But now I'm like, I gotta get to know John. Al just told me I need to get to know you. And so if you can get those people like you said, AARP, if you could do some kind of a deal with them or something even a little bit closer related pillows, it's like, okay, that's close enough. How do we find a way to get each other's customers to see us as cool? Yeah, more or less. I mean,

Al Doan  41:48  

it's a great point, and honestly, not to not to beat a dead horse, but like another reason to have a town, man, oh, you play guitar, dude, my buddy, my buddy, John, has an entire town dedicated to freaking guitars. It's the wildest thing you can make one, and it's got a nuclear a shop, and it's got a guitars of the world. There's a museum there for it. Then you have the, oh, it's crazy. And yet, you get together, dude, just random, like, have you ever been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Ohio?

William Harris  42:18  

Yes, yes. I grew up in Ohio, so, yeah, bro,

Al Doan  42:20  

you go, you go upstairs in there and like, you get to play with AC/DC, or whatever you're doing the drums, or whatever it is, and you're like, This is the coolest thing I've ever done. And it's like, every freaking guitar shop I walk into should have this experience somehow. Or like, I'm there maybe, maybe all my buddies, like, we now have instruments and we can do it. I want to buy that guitar. I'm gonna take it home. I'm gonna keep practicing like this. We're gonna, you know what I mean, it's like, dude, build that. You guys. It's what, like, Guitar Center. When they were like, five stores, I think they were sort of like, that was a much bigger deal, where now they're, they're just giants and soulless, but, but sweet people, I'm sure, but, but, you know, you know what I mean? Like, when they were small and exciting, it was, like, it

William Harris  43:03  

was follow that up with that sweet people. So I think that town exists. I think that town is called Nashville, no, but to your point, yes, it could be a lot more niche than that, like a total dedicated town, just for that. What? It's

Al Doan  43:17  

funny, man, if I walked into Nashville, right? Like, yeah, I would not expect that I would have an amazing experience walking into some sure music shop because I don't know anything about it, and I feel like an imposter being there. And they're not built for beginners, but you know what I mean, like, But, but. And each of the shops probably ash shop. But if there's an entire like, this is actually a good point, they all banded together and put all the guitar shops on one city block. Yeah, shop after shop after shop. It same reason, like McDonald's and Burger King go across the street from each other, because everybody just wants to go to where you're doing that. Like, did the guitar district in Nashville be a freaking maybe that does exist, but it's like, Dude, it probably doesn't, and they should, dude, 25 stores to walk into and all these like, they spread out into the street, and they've got their displays. Everybody's just jamming, and we're having a great time. And like, you're gonna look in each one till you find your thing. Like, that's a reason to fly to Nashville if you're buying a new guitar, because that experience doesn't exist anywhere else. So go there, to the Mecca and buy your guitar. That's what you should do. And it's like, dude, wouldn't it be a shame if somebody else built that before Nashville? Right? Like, Nashville, right? That whole thing, it's Duluth, Minnesota, is the Guitar Center of the World. But, like, somebody's gonna take that, that flat,

William Harris  44:33  

he needs to. And they said, We did it. We got it all right. So the content piece, though, so that's one of the biggest things you're getting out of this. I think you said you said you got started on YouTube in 2008 I mean, this thing is just, you know, it's embryonic at this point. How did you like when you think about content now that works versus 2008 like, what is the stuff that you're what's the stuff that's working?

Al Doan  44:55  

Content is funny, man, because it's like, My ambition is to saturate. Operate the content space with my own content. When you search for quilting on the internet, it's all friggin Missouri Star, and you're just so, oh my gosh. And, and you think about the content world, right? So like, like, as I as I've defined it, these are my own buckets, but it's like, you have educational, you have inspirational, and you have entertainment. And so if I'm a quilter, there's a there's inspirational stuff, there's the the three minute up worthy type video that gets shared on Facebook that makes me cry, of a fireman giving a quilt to somebody, and it's a story that you know, like, I love it. And there's the 10 minute version of that, and there's the 92nd Facebook version of that, and there's, and then there's, there's also, like, we're, hey, we're doing this thing for charity, and we're, it's all these like, like, different forms of content that I could consume that are going to inspire me. If I'm entertaining, I've, like, I've got two comedians making a quilt and hamburger. Oh my god, if you know quilting and watching these dummies, I can't believe how silly those guys are. And then I've got, you know, I've got, like, Oh no, the quilt explosion, and this quilt ripped. What do we do? And like, you know, little TV shows. That's what you're gonna watch while you're walking on the treadmill. Because, again, you're a quilter, and you just want to watch quilting stuff on the treadmill. You're putting on 20 minute episode of this thing, and off you go. And then in education, you have, like, did you have? You've got the tasty style overhead videos. You've got the, you know, the Tick Tock quick 92nd we're making a quilt today. You've got the, you know, the three minute quick, you know, sped up education piece. You've got the 10 minute tutorial video. You've got the hour long, the three hour master class. Like all these are different formats of this. My entire business is built on the 10 minute tutorial content. That's it. And it's like, so when I look at this, I'm like, Man, I want to be doing all this stuff. There's so many other other angles to go. And a lot of people would look at right now and say, the only man I got, I got to be great on tick tock. It's like, Dude, there's an audience there, but there's still an audience searching for how to fix my RC car on YouTube, and doesn't even care about what's on Tiktok and and if, and if it's if you're an RC enthusiast, and they've got a humorous one that you just like to watch their videos because they're entertaining, or maybe they're just this guy is the friggin the nerd of this stuff, And, you know, encyclopedic knowledge, and he's just doing, like, find whatever your niche is. There's an audience waiting for that and willing to follow it, and then like, worry about expanding out of that once you get going. But like, I wouldn't even try, and I wouldn't even bother pigeonholing yourself in that. Like, like, at this stage for us, we look at all this stuff as like, plus ups where we were on Tiktok. We'd love to have more of our videos on Tiktok. It's always great when they go and we'll we're making videos for it and doing a thing. Our meat and potatoes is still this tutorial stuff, and nothing's nothing surpassed that yet for us. And so we like, like, All right, we've got this thing, and it's got an audience. If we want more audiences in these other spaces we should expand into them. How do we go figure that out? And and so, like, the ones that I'm ambitious about right now, I think are, you know, clearly, clearly, some of the short form stuff you talk to some of these guys that are just killing it with, but, like, they're so infuriating. I hate that they're they're doing good. All these videos that, like, don't have a conclusion, you know, like, like, I made quilting tutorials and like, cut off the last three minutes where you see it all come together and just infuriate you. Where you go to my profile, look for the next one. You're like, these guys suck. It would be the best channel out there, because that's what they reward. They reward that retention. Then the click in like shows that you love it. You got to be scammy and spammy. It's just not in our character to, like, do the cliffhangers and be jerks about like, you can't find it here. You got to watch four more videos. Figured out.

William Harris  48:48  

Irritates me too. Are you familiar with the Big Bang Theory? Sheldon Cooper, yeah, yeah. I think there was the one episode where it's like, he wanted to complete everything, and so Amy just like, started doing things to leave cliffhangers for him. So it's like, they're playing tic tac toe, and it's like, right before the last move, he races the board. It's like, no, what are you doing?

Al Doan  49:11  

Yeah, no, it's, it's a that stuff works, man. And it's like, that's, that's hard for me. Somebody else is gonna win that one. I'm gonna give it somebody else, because I don't want that to be me. But, but there, I mean, honestly, it's, it's just storytelling, storytelling, where people are and how they are. I think there's still plenty of room for like, for like, traditional media, you know, cable TV, storytelling, yeah, and there's, there's still plenty of room for like, you know, Facebook. No one, no one owns the Facebook quilting videos right now they, they don't. And, you know, even in my own space, somebody come in and be the talking head, the voice of the industry that everybody just watches every time, because nobody like that. Crown shifts. Somebody will own it for a little bit and move somebody else and and, you know, whether you're maybe that's like whatever business these listeners have. Dear listener, whatever business you have speaking to you,

William Harris  50:04  

we're picking the fourth one, whatever

Al Doan  50:08  

start doing. It's funny man, because, like, I've tried to make content for my own personal brand, right? And I've got like, 20 videos. It's like, Hey guys, it's me. Oh no, that's stupid, you know, like, it's so hard to start making content. But like, the guys that do it, they're just, they're like, Yeah, I was, I wasn't afraid to be a little cringy, and I made the thing and let people start following along and and honestly, man, when you're doing something, it's way easier to tell that story than just, like, let me just sit and talk to the camera. And so living a cool life, being a cool business, doing interesting things and supporting interesting causes and trying to do cool stuff, it's, it's a content dream. Just go share that stuff, tell the story, and then you'll find your your sort of angle where you like to do it.

William Harris  50:55  

Yeah, and that's such a good call out, too. Of just you have to be willing to be cringy a little bit at first. I definitely look back at my first podcast, and I'm like, I hope nobody watches those ones, and I'm gonna feel that way two more years from now too, right? And it's like every time you just the whole point is you should be getting better and better. Yeah, yeah. What about I gotta go into a little bit of personal stuff here. Dr, Bill Nye, this is your handle. This is how did you become? Dr, Bill Nye,

Al Doan  51:24  

well, listen, man, we all, we all pick a handle as 14 year olds, right? Unfortunate reality is, I got rich too early before I had to be professional, like most people, have this cooling process where, like, they want to get a job, so they have to have, like, Al Doan at Gmail. And I never, I never suffered through that. So now, as a grown man, I'm I just, I'm still in my 14 year old email saying,

William Harris  51:49  

but how did that start? Like, are you just a big fan of Dr. Phil?

Al Doan  51:53  

He taught me Listen, I was homeschooled growing up, and so he was a big deal in our house. He taught me how to make a hovercraft at a mom's vacuum. That's a good deal. And then I remember, I got into land parties, and I was playing like Unreal Tournament. And I love, I feel like, dr, Bill Nye. He never got enough enough attention. When I was a kid, he didn't get enough clout. Now he's maybe got too much. But as a kid, I was like, I just like the idea of people being fragged by Bill Nye. And so that became my, my handle. And you wouldn't believe it. Not a lot of people taking that handle. You know, if you're trying to be killer or something like that, thing's gone in a second. But no. Dr Bill Nye, very available. My AC just came on. I've ruined the whole show. Now I'm sure,

William Harris  52:39  

no, it's not ruined. They'll probably be able to clean up most of that. I'll mark the clip though, just in case. Okay, so as you've scaled up, you stepped down as CEO, and I'm sure had nothing to do with the email address. What science pushed you to say, Hey, I think it's time for me to bring on somebody else to do this. It's funny, man, I wrote a

Al Doan  53:00  

blog post about this when it happened, because just signs, signs that the founders been in there too long, right? For for me, for me, I was 26 when I started this thing and in rock and roll, and I had this a friend of mine, actually, he and I had consulted together. I called him when we got going. I was like, Rick, come help me out, dude. You're, you're a smart guy. And he, and he came in, he was this old gray hair guy that, like, just had seen everything, and I just need him to be like my confidant and help me through stuff. But he had some some responsibilities and stuff, and so we, we'd show up in like a weekly meeting, and you know, I'd find myself like barking at him. Like, gosh dang it, Rick, I told you to do this last week. What are you doing, man, I pay you real money. Are you freaking kidding me? Oh, dude, I can't believe it. And then I'd be like, Dude, why am I yelling at this guy? I'm not a yeller. I don't need to do that. And I'd show up and be like, Hey baby, you know, that's not me. This is papa bear down. You know, I'm a good guy, and, and, and we did this cycle a couple times. I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm like, an abusive boyfriend, like, I keep, I keep, you know, yank them around on this stuff. And so I went deep down this rabbit hole of sort of the coaching and therapy stuff. Found a great team over at reboot with Jeremy colonna and Dan putt and those guys that were very sweet to me and helpful. And a lot of what I sort of came to understand was going on is like, when, when you're insecure in a situation, you react very aggressively or defensively and and in my world, you know, I was 26 like, Dude, I was, I was 100 people, and I still made everybody send me a daily email of what they got done daily. I was like, I'm spending money on all you fools like Joe, tell me what you got. And I, and I remained the most, I would say, the best at every job. In the company, nobody could do any of their jobs better than I could, because I was like in their business, which, which was, was a sucky reality, and also very sucky for them. I now, I now can see how awful that would be. You know what? I mean? You're not on a team. You're you, you're working for a man and and so like, but I'd get 100 of these emails a day, and I prided myself on no middle management. We're doing this thing, and here we go. And I was just micromanaging everybody, and we were growing too fast. I had no experience in it, or we were growing very fast, and I had no experience in it, not too fast and and because, because we're doing this, I kept I was way out of my element on a lot of these situations. And instead of raising my hand and saying, Hey, my hand and saying, Hey guys, I have no idea. I don't know. I've never negotiated a deal like this. I've never hired a Chief Operations Officer. I've never, you know, like instead of being able to have those conversations, because I thought that would make me look weak, and the people around me didn't have the answers either, and so I needed to look strong. And the way I thought how to do that was by being kind of a douche. Well, so, so then, then, you know, we do the this therapy thing, and one of the journaling prompts was like, imagine you're in a helicopter looking down at your life. Describe what you're in. I was like, it's four walls. I'm stuck inside. It's my family business in my family town that I live in, in an industry that I've told everybody to believe I can never leave this. I'm stuck here. I can never do anything. And one of the most liberating things that that anybody said to me is like, Dude, you don't have to do this. Like you can. People find other leaders all the time, all the time. And if this isn't making you happy. You got one life man like, step step away from this. We will figure it out. We'll figure it out. So we did, we, you know, I came back, it was like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't think this is good for me and and I'm not doing a great job. And so we found, we found another CEO who was my buddy Mike, who has the Myers Briggs of Jesus. You know, he's just this very people oriented person, but you can imagine, after me, that was the perfect personality type to come into this, this organization, to sort of heal it up. And now we've got, we've got this great CEO named Jeff, who's an operator that like this guy, he can go into a marketing team and say, Hey, show me your plan for next year. Hi. I think, I think, I think we can do better where I didn't have any context for that. I was just looking everybody in the eye and being like, are you screwing me? Are you not getting enough out of you? Oh, I just got to guess, I think you're screwing me. Yep, you know what. I mean. It's like, man, such a crappy way to run a business. I needed to have some idea of what good looked like or what bad looked like, before I came and applied it to my team, and I was just guessing I'd hear other founders tell a story, and I'd come back and say, You guys are all the worst. You're not doing it right. And so now with Jeff, he gets, you know, he has some barometer of like, oh, this is a reasonable expectation for marketing. Here's a reasonable expectation for our advertising budget. Here's how this stuff should go do. When I built our own warehouse, and I was just watching videos of like Amazon on YouTube and being like, oh, that's what a warehouse should look like. Okay, all right, I'll build it this way, and I'm going to build my own software, and I'm going to migrate ourselves onto our own ERP, you know, without any partners, any help, we're just going to do it. And so my advice to other people is, like, if you have a boss that is yelling a lot, if you're yelling a lot, it's not, it's not because they're terrible, because they they're way out of their depth, they're out of their element. They're making everybody around them suffer because they're trying to point to everybody else and say, look at all these dummies so that you won't look at them. That's certainly what I was doing. And, man, you like looking back on it now, I'm like, Oh, what a great moment to get out of there. And it was funny because I stepped back from that day to day. I'm still, like, I still own it. I still, you know, I'm still in it almost every day, doing a bunch of work on here, advising and and guiding, and I still run the product in the team and stuff, because I'm good at that, but, but, like, I'm still very passionate about but what I've been able to do is I, every year I have a hard skills effort. I do in a soft skills effort. I do so hard skills like, go take a class on how to do negotiations, go take a class on on how to read a PNL. You know, it's one of those things that you just think everybody will pick up along the way, and it's like, no, I'm gonna go. I did one of those Harvard, the OPM program, which is great for, yeah, it's like, here's, here's a bunch of coursework that an MBA would take, and we're just gonna go through it all. I'm like, I'm, I think I'm a way better marketer than your marketers you have, but man, I'm like, I never tried to practice negotiating. I never thought to look at like, you know, Toyota operations and try and understand how to build my organization better. So all this stuff was very helpful in a hard skills formula for me. And then the soft skills, like, go on a retreat with with your CEO buddies, go join one. Those circles where you talk about problems, that kind of thing, and that's been so healthy for me to sort of be scaling myself up because, like, now I'm, I'm sort of presiding over this big organization. And if you're not skilling up and finding peers that are doing, you know, in a similar spot, and being able to work with them and do a thing, you're gonna have a hard go at it, man, you're not. It's not it's not intuitive, just how to do this stuff, and you're gonna figure out how to be a great boss and live a good life at home and be a great husband and a great father and all the other pieces that you need to do if you don't surround yourself with some people that they can help you along that way and later, not even my CEO. Now, he's one of those guys. He's, like, he's, he's been a great mentor to me. I had an experience recently where, like, one of his guys was, you know, he did something stupid or missed a thing, and it was, it was connected to my product stuff, and I got him in a meeting, and I was just like, you Oh, I guess we're all dummies. Now, I can't believe you get one of those. And I called him after I called my CEO is like, Ah, sorry, man, I've kind of barked at your guy, and might have missed that one. He said, it's funny, man, like 90 95% of being a leader is just controlling how you respond to news. They're gonna come and tell you a thing, and if you can control it in a way that you're proud of, and you respond like, okay, all right, man, I'd like us to do better. This is okay, you know, like, if you can be in control of that, then, then you're gonna be a great leader. And if you can't, you're just a spaz that everybody secretly hates. And somehow you've stumbled into power and, you know, stuff and and that's been like the most practical advice I think I've ever gotten on leadership, and it's one I think about often. As my kids bring me problems, my wife brings me problems, my, you know, my company brings me problems. I I just want to be the guy that responds in a predictable, you know, accountable, but not spazzy way. That's what I'm trying to be. And it's funny, man, you got, we've all got buddies that are somehow just unfappable. They have this quality to them when, like nothing gets to them, this eternal optimism and like no news is bad news, and it can be hard, and we're gonna figure it out. It's like, Man, I want, if I have a quality I admire, it's that I want to be that guy. I want people to talk about me that way, that just just like I've been through enough cycles, I don't need to stress about these things. We're fine and and unfortunately, I'm not quite there where I would like to be, but I've been through enough cycles that I should be able to hold myself to that standard and say, Dude, didn't kill me last 20 times. It's not going to kill me this time. Like, let me, let me respond to the hug and in like an arm around the shoulder, rather than any other way. And it makes a huge

William Harris  1:02:54  

difference. That's seriously great advice, something that I've borrowed from the hospital. I used to work in the hospital, and as you can imagine, seriously bad things can happen there. You can give somebody the wrong medication and they die, right? You can take the wrong limb like there's some very, very bad things, but you won't be able to improve the processes that allow those things to take place if people are afraid to report on any of those situations, right? And so I've borrowed that in our own agency, where there is more or less a no fault policy, where it's just like you have to share, if you catch something that you did, that somebody else, you have to share what the thing was that happened, that was wrong, knowing that I'm going to look at this and say, Great, we have an opportunity to fix our process, then, in some way, we have an opportunity to fix it so that way that can't happen again. There are two things. There are two caveats that. One is, if it was like, you know, gross negligence, you you got drunk and decided to go into somebody's ad account and mess around with it, it's like, that's not excusable. And the second one would be like, you know, intentional malfeasance. You did something on purpose. You were mad at the client, and you were like, I'm gonna screw up their business. Like, those are the two

Al Doan  1:04:07  

starting that account on Snapchat or something. You can't do that. Yeah, exactly. It's funny, man, when I think about that, there's, I was a camp counselor one year, and, like, this is my embarrassing story that I think about all the time. I was camp counselor once year, one year, and we were in a gym, and there's a bunch of kids in there, and somebody opened the emergency exit door and started going and and my response was, who the freak? Who did it? Who did it? Point him out, who did it. And slowly, Jimmy did it. And like, gosh dang it. Like all I did was make that kid feel stupid, right? And like, kind of spazzed out and like, wanted it. Wanted to name I wanted to blame somebody, because that's your instinct when something goes wrong. I want somebody to be the dummy so that I'm not the dummy and and I don't want to be taken advantage of it. I don't. Want to be the pastor, like, just, it's one of you guys, and it's, it's funny, man, if I go back, that's one. It just, like, sits in my memory is like, I wish I could have been like, Dude, it's just a beeping alarm. We'll figure it out. It's no big deal. Like, I could have changed that dude's whole moment been looking in front of his friends instead of look like an idiot and, have you know, and I'm just like, that's one, that's one that I compare my actions today to, and I still do that to some people sometimes where, like, yeah, who, what? What was it? Oh, it was you. You're accountable for this mistake, and I'm gonna point you out in front of everybody. And it's, it's such a muscle to build, but it's worth building of like, Hey, I'm gonna give you a call. Let's talk about this. I feel like this thing's happening, man, it's, it's it. I sort of give this because there's people that are working for crappy bosses, and in startups, you forget, man, like, if they're treating you like this, if, if you'll, you'll chalk it up to, like, it's a high energy, you know, high growth startup, and this is how it is. It's like, Nah, man, people can be great and still good humans and find those bosses work for those guys that are great and and good humans don't work for crappy people that yell at you and spaz out and are unpredictable and treat you like garbage. And there's presidents of companies that have owners of companies to treat them like

William Harris  1:06:22  

it's not all right. I'll go farther than that, too. And I'll say, if you care about your boss, because hopefully you do care about your boss, if you care about your boss, and they are that person, call them out in the right way, right? But give them a shot. Don't just walk away like I. I would say that maybe in society too much now we're too quick to just be like, that person's toxic. I'm getting them out of my life. And it's like, Wait a minute. We need to call each other out in a kind way, but just say, like, Hey, have you ever thought about maybe taking some training on this, or whatever is responsive to that? Then fine.

Al Doan  1:06:51  

My guy, Rick, man, he's, yeah, you know, we together went out to try and find a solution, because, like, we could identify the behavior, you know, and, and I couldn't in the in the moment, but like, you know, when I was there apologizing, he's, like, it's sort of a cycle we're doing. We're doing this. Like, you're, you're here a lot in this space. And like, this isn't fun for you. You're not sleeping good. I promise you that. Like, like, you're, you're not proud of this. And so, like, I got some ideas of stuff you could do. And, like, you know, there's like, naked bathtub retreats in Big Sur that are an option, you know, like, there's a bunch of places that that do this stuff, and it's just a matter of, like, in the in the end, you just go, it's like, some guided journaling, read some poetry, and then, and then talk about what's hard in business. And they and they'll give you some, like, therapy as a toolbox, they give you a couple of tools that you can reach into and use, you know. And like, ones that, ones that, you know, I put in mind that now when I hit situation something, ah, it's a loyal soldier. I got this thing in the back of my mind saying this how I need to respond to this. And I don't need that anymore. Like, we can move past but, but, like, yeah, thankfully, my employee didn't, you know my guy, Rick didn't just bail on me, right? He said, Hey, man, I like, I love you and and like, I care about you, and you're gonna keep going on this. It's gonna be a crappy life. No one's gonna want to work in the spot. Your business is going to suffer because you're not going to get great talent. They don't want to be around this and like, let's, let's work on that. And dude, it was magic. It changed my whole life, having having an employee that, like, cared about me enough to do that

William Harris  1:08:29  

exactly. We're getting into my favorite segment anyway, so let's just jump into it. The who is Al Doan’s brought to you by Elumynt. You're not going to let me live that one down this

Al Doan  1:08:42  

segment. Let me

William Harris  1:08:48  

live that one down. So I don't have any other sponsors on purpose yet, because I'm like, kind of to your point. Maybe I care too much about it, right? It's like, I don't know if I don't know if I like them enough, though, to actually have them be a part of my company. They'll

Al Doan  1:09:04  

give you money your sponsor. That's

William Harris  1:09:08  

the thing. You take money from somebody they kind of own you a little bit. You're like, I don't know if I actually want to be associated that closely, okay, but who is Al Doan, Europe, pick up basketball extraordinaire, self proclaimed, yeah, tell me. Tell me a little bit more about your pickup basketball here. No,

Al Doan  1:09:27  

there's no great story there. I just, I'm six foot seven. I'm a giant man. No way. I didn't know that. So, as a giant, I play a lot of basketball. It's funny, there's been a there's been a moment last couple of years where, like, there's a bunch of tech guys, we get together and just play ball and, and it's great, man. I honestly, I don't have a good run around here, like, I'm out on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and so I get to play basketball, like, twice a year, and it's, it's just a treat, man. You get around with a bunch of guys and, and, yeah, play a game. It's fun. And so I'm, I'm a big fan. I'm a big. Fan of that. It's funny, if I was given sort of a high level of of what I do day to day, there's a couple of things that I think are interesting. My Well, I got married eight years ago to a lovely woman named Drea, real sweetheart, six foot two yoga instructor, six foot man. I was like, where's this drill? Apparently, my buddy knew her for like, 10 years, never even thought to connect us. His giant, giant woman friend never thought to connect we have four kids, and and they are. They're a treat man. Like being a dad, I can't say enough good about it. I wanted to be a dad. I agree, or like, since time I was 15. It's a it's a dream come true for me and and I have the very toxic trait of, I think I'm maybe the best dad that ever lived. I think I do such a good job. And I'll mention it to my wife, you know, she'll be like, I'm not sure I spend enough time with him, and just all he know I love him. I hope he knows I love him. And I'm like, what I think I'm the greatest dad that's never crossed my mind that I wasn't the best. So like, love, love being a dad of these kids getting into this farming world. I've got a couple 100 acres and some motorcycles to ride on, or to go ride on these fields with my boys. And we just bought, we bought a couple of cows that have been great. We bought three cows in the winter and from a sale barn, and they all died within a week. And like, you want to feel like a crappy steward, buy three cows if you're digging graves for like, 1000 pound animal, it is a monster. I was like, What am I doing? We're back in though. We've got a couple. They're alive six months now. We're doing a good job, nice and then, and then, like, I go on one big, grand adventure year with some buddies. And so we've done, like, Kilimanjaro and the Everest base, yeah,

William Harris  1:11:51  

you started that. That's

Al Doan  1:11:52  

right, dude. It's, it's, it's funny, man. Because, like, when, when you're an entrepreneur, I don't know if, I don't know if you've suffered from this, but, like, as I got in my business, and you hit a high growth stage. All the good habits that I put in place to help me get where I wanted to go, I threw them right out the window. You quit working out. You quit eating, well, you quit journaling, studying. Quit like, you wake up and work, and then you work till you go to sleep and you sleep, and then you're done. And so it's just like, in crap, shit, I got married. And like, like, it was funny because I got married, and it actually threw me into a bit of a depression, because marriage was this big milestone that I was working towards for so long. And then, you know, like, when, when you're single and you want to, you want to insert a little enthusiasm or joy into your life, you click a lever to change right? And you can either change where you live, you change who you're dating, you change your job, you change your religion, you change your you know, like, like, you pick one of these things and you turn it on its head, and now life is interesting again. You're having a good time. Like, I'm married and was like, I'm not moving. I've got a mortgage now. I'm tied in with the same great woman, salt of the air, sweetheart, but I'm not. I don't get to go anywhere else. I've got a job that, like, like, this sort of me now and and I could either go and do more jobs and create more jobs for myself, but like, the quality of life I want precludes that. And I was like, I'm I'm happy in my religion. I like the the moral framework that I'm that I'm building around. And so what do I do? And it really threw me for a loop. Man, I like, I got, I got deep down in the, not like, grown up depression. I wasn't like, couldn't get out of bed, but I was certainly like, I don't know what the freak to do, and I don't have any motivation or ambition. And it's funny, because the the the cure for that for me, like, I, one of my buddies that I did this school stuff with, he was doing a climbing trip to Kilimanjaro, and it was like, he's like, Hey, we're going in two months. We want to go. I was like, Dude, I can't do a push up. Like, I can't. He's like, get in the gym four days a week and you can go, and I said, All right, man, I had a goal now set there, and love it. And had a got a trainer, and got working on it, and, like, got me, got me back doing a thing, and I accomplished the thing. It was this really great moment for me. And so I've hung that now that I have a big, hairy goal I'm going to work on each year. Right now, I'm running a marathon in two and a half weeks. Wow, which, as a six, seven giant, is not a small feat. This is not my my special place, and it's super hard and awful, and I hate it and can't wait to be done with it. But, like, I'm gonna do it and but I've been training for it all summer, and it's like, I just need this thing to hang in front of me, to work towards, and I'll go knock it out. And so, like, that's, that's the other big piece of my personality is, like, I kind of get to be an adventure now and go do these cool bucket listing things I do. Last year I started playing rugby in a real d3 rugby team. I never played rugby in my life. And. It's like, it's the best, just a beer league with these guys that are, that are cool buddies, and we travel around and play like, it's just so much fun. But at 43 is not when you want to be picking this stuff up. But like, unfortunately, man, I was, I was busy in my 20s and 30s building the company. So I'm just here now trying to have a good time and do fun, interesting things, create some good stories that I can tell my kids at night and, yeah, that's, I mean, if I was going to give an overhead view of me, I think that'd be a basketball. Basketball would be a very small piece of it, but, but delightful piece all the same.

William Harris  1:15:34  

I love that you're playing in like you said, d3 rugby. I hadn't played baseball since high school, but last year, I joined a softball league, men's league, and it was the same thing, right? Was like, Man, do I went to the batting cages. I'm like, I gotta remember if I even can swing and hit this ball. Like, even though it's slow pitch, it's like, I don't even know if I can do that, right? Do I have the coordination too? But is there something about getting together with a group of guys and spitting out sunflower seeds again, and you're like, This is a good time.

Al Doan  1:16:03  

No, you need to do it. You know? What's funny too, is somebody's with the guys. There's a Shopify reviews app called okendo, yeah, yeah, cool, cool, Aussie guys. But I was at some sort, some, like, advisory board thing they did, and I talked him into sponsoring my d3 rugby team, and they put, they put a couple grand in, and now the jerseys we play in are like a kendo Shopify app jerseys and and the thing that I love about it is I was like, I was like, Dude, you guys should be freaking sponsoring every little league baseball team and whatever. And, like, it's such a it costs you 200 bucks to put this stuff together, and, like, everybody's just chatting about it, because it's such a novelty of this, like, random app sponsoring, sponsoring the their little league team or our rugby team or your softball team. I think it's such a move, dude, if you're, if you're a big enterprise software thing, get nerdy on on doing that because, like, it's lots of great conversations. All you need is, like, ass sign up from out of that, and it's a net win. But like, the fact that we're playing, we're traveling, we're playing all this stuff, and everybody's saying, What is a kendo? I love it. I thought it was such a smart move that they went along with my random idea and and and kind of think everybody should, should exploit that for, like, if you have a customer, just be like, dude, if, if I can sponsor anything your kids are doing, I want to sponsor this.

William Harris  1:17:30  

I got to think about that now. That would be a really good idea. Who do I want to sponsor? Um, this has been a lot of fun talking to you. I have learned a lot about you, but I've also learned a lot about building towns and all kinds of good growth stuff. You went a lot deeper than I expected you go to so I appreciate

Al Doan  1:17:48  

that. Oh, we get to the depths. If

William Harris  1:17:51  

people wanted to follow you, learn more about what you're sharing online, what's the best way for them? Yeah, I

Al Doan  1:17:57  

mean, I'm on Twitter. Dr, Bill Nye, most, most. What we're doing these days is, I'm investing with a group rolling fund. We just do, like, deep, nerdy tech. So if you're into nuclear, if you're under exposed to the future, come hang out. I'll show you all the cool stuff we're doing over at rolling fund. And it's like, it's, yeah, man, the future is awesome. I like, I love, I love that we live in the age. I don't know if you remember watching like, the TED Talks, where talks, where the guy's like, and this is a drone, and it goes up and it drops the ball. This is what we're gonna do. Like, I have vivid memories of watching this just be like, Oh my gosh. When, when a drone can go, this is crazy, right? And now we live in an age where it's like, Dude, it's happening. This is going, we're doing it. It's great. What are you the most

William Harris  1:18:45  

excited about? Then? What is the Teck thing that you're like, this is, this is the next level thing before where I

Al Doan  1:18:53  

would 100% take a single use robot that, like, just stood in my mud room and put my shoes on the shelf. You know what? I mean, like, like, just get good at that. Or I want him to clean my countertops three times a day and just move the dishes like I would, I would, I'm in for 10 grand on the robot that just did the one thing and crushed the counters were always clean. Because, are you gonna buy an optimist then? Because 100% I mean, the bummer will be when China hacks it and he murders me in my sleep, but you're gonna go somehow. My wife, Chinese, manipulate, manipulator that stabs you to death with a robot. My wife

William Harris  1:19:29  

has no interest in that. Being in our home, I'm like, Well, I gotta just bring to the office.

Al Doan  1:19:33  

Then it's, it's so funny because, like, at the point that that all those little jobs, like, like, you know that I've heard the talks on like the washing machine being invented and or the dishwasher being in it's like these people, you're so resistant to it because the way you've done it forever, but all of a sudden it's like, oh, well, washing used to take two full days of a woman's time. You know? You know, whoever was running the house is time two full days. And all of a sudden. That's now two hours, and you're like, oh, maybe I'll read, right? Maybe I'll embroider, maybe I'll go back to doing the crafts and hobbies that I love. So like I do, I'm, I'm loving robotics. I love robotics as it, as it speaks to, like, you know, warehouses and fulfillment stuff. I think that's such a no brainer. When all that's just automated and done a lot of energy stuff, we're nerding out on, dude, we've, there's, there's the dude. There's so many cool companies that are just, like, trying the craziest stuff. There's, there's the company we're in that like that, like they're doing, they're doing airship. I think the company is called airship, but it's like they're taking, they're taking, like, blimps and moving shipping containers from China. So they skip the port. You go in the in the jet stream, and it moves you, you're here in three to three or four days sort of thing. You know, it's like dramatic decrease in cost.

William Harris  1:20:50  

Drops you right into Hamilton, Missouri, drops it right there. I'm just like, Dude, I

Al Doan  1:20:53  

want that future. Absolutely we should have this. This is amazing. So no, come, come hang out, guys, if you want, if you if you want to ask me about you're stuck in your in your company and you're not sure what to do. I've got, I've got a lived experience around this. Happy to to give some light coaching and refer you to real grown ups that know how to coach and and then also, let's just nerd out on the future and be eternal optimists. I love it.

William Harris  1:21:17  

I love it. Well, thank you again for sharing your wisdom with us today. Happy to man. Thank you everyone for listening. Hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 1:21:26  

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

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