Transcript

Reid: Okay, Joe, so another guest coming on the show Jeb Banner, who has just a fascinating array of experiences. So, we’ll be very curious to see where we can even get in terms of the depth of his experience right there. There’s a lot to dig into there, but having at least the cursory understanding of what some of those experiences are, where are you hoping to go in this conversation?

[00:00:48] Joe: His background reminds me not. In terms of what it is, but in sort of the, some of the categories, remind me a little bit of Lindsay Picardo. There’s like music and business overlap, which is also obviously her world. So there’s part of me wants to understand,I’m, infinitely fascinated by people who really jam with music.

it’s not a thing that has ever really spoken to me. I don’t enjoy playing instruments. I’m not really a concert person. but at the same time, if I’m in an environment and it lacks music, It’s this gap in me. And so people who like do things professionally or have touched in it in some capacity are always interesting to me. And I love to hear what their backgrounds are in that. launched, built and handed off a music festival in Broader Pole that’s different. That’s interesting. then he is a founder like three or four times over of different companies. Portable Next time take At the same time.

So I think he’s just built in that model of. Let me pack it in, let me put it in. But he also seems very intentional in it, and so I’m interested in his perspective on a few things. Like, Hey, how’d you avoid burnout? Inside of that, how did you make the decision to start another thing while doing another thing? How did you balance, like, if I take this on, will my focus go so far away from what I’m already working on that I can’t do it? Or just how does he address that kind of question? So I think there’s a lot of things I want to understand from him. Both his just interests and how he overlaps them. my hypothesis is that his work and his life really go on top of one another. They’re not really separate.

[00:02:18] Reid: The congruence that we talked about with Mark Totally, yep. same thing. 

[00:02:22] Joe: I think there’s a lot of prior conversations coming up in Jeb, and I want to get his perspective on how he manages that, what he’s looking to do

[00:02:30] Reid: I think there’s an opportunity as well for us to maybe go back to earlier on in the show where we were really following this thread of intuition and what told him to another thing and another thing and another

[00:02:51] Joe: I’m curious, like I was saying to Reid before we, when we were prepping for the show, very interesting to me cause it has this big mix of music and technology and events with which, which don’t feel as scalable with like very scalable things. And just like the sort of mix of your background this is a broad question, but where’d your interest in music start at? Was that like always present in your life? Did it pick up early on, or how’d you get into that space to begin with? 

[00:03:21] Jeb Banner: I remember discovering and Elvis and my parents’ record collection when I was like seven years old. And playing those songs and just being mesmerized. I, of course listened to music on the radio and like that, and I had songs I liked. But something about hearing those records and made me pay attention in a way that was different. Like, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. record, just kind of blew my mind.

Lucy the sky with diamonds, you know, songs like that. and the way Elvis sang and the energy behind his voice. Just, I just tuned in really tight. I was so excited about it, that I wanted to figure out how to make that noise. my goal after that was to, acquire an electric guitar

[00:04:00] Joe: at like seven. Yeah. 

[00:04:02] Jeb Banner: it took me like four or five years cuz I didn’t know how to go even about like, figuring that Sure. But, and one, and then when I got one I’m like, man, it doesn’t sound anything like these records. It’s like, sounds nothing like it. Of course I didn’t know how to play it. and so it was a long road from, that to learning how to make it sound that way. And then I’m still on that of, recording and producing

[00:04:22] Joe: and so, so do you play now real actively?

[00:04:24] Jeb Banner: Yeah. Yeah. I’m, this weekend I’ll be going, to a lake house with some friends. Uh,we call ourselves the Pink Eagles and we put out music under that name.

But we get together every six to nine months and we, write and record over a weekend and then we finish things out. I just got a text from a buddy who’s just sent me tracks for one of the songs we’re working on when I was walking up the stairs here. and, We finish things out, remotely through the studio.

He’s down in Nashville. We’ll bring in a drummer, but we’ll do the writing together. And then, we’ll build out the beds of the songs and then we’ll fill them in. Then as we finish them, we’re putting them out one, one song a month right now. So basically single a month. And that’s a super fun project.

Just like really dear old friends. One, I went to high school with another one. I went to college with another who’s like, went to high school with my wife, and although the people we work with are dear friends of ours too, here’s one of the things I’ve learned. Projects are a great way to maintain friendships and I think a lot of people struggle to maintain friendships cause they don’t have any, Through line to like connect everything, it used to be while we played sports together or you know, we went to school together. Well, projects are a really good way to create that through line and to have a point of contact and say, Hey, how you doing on this?

Let’s get together. what do you think about this mix? Whatever it is, that’s the music angle. But you can do it with writing, you can do it with, interests. I’m a forwarder, mushrooms, I’ll text people pictures of things I’m finding, they text me. It’s like a way to stay connected. so I’ve learned that a lot of my best friendships have some kind of project level thing going on. It could be music, it could be a business, 

[00:05:59] Joe: some of your experiences were building the music festival in in broader pool, right?

[00:06:04] Jeb Banner: yeah. I mean we did, the broader pool music festival coming out of the Musical Fam Tree Festival. Musical Family Tree was something that just started on a bit of a lark. it’s about to turn 20 years old next year, which is crazy. But, that was just an archive of Indiana music initially, but became a,a nonprofit serving the Indiana music community.

And so I was like, well, hey, we’ve got all these great musicians engaged, and this is back in 2005. And so we did a festival that year, then the following year, and then it turned into a broad Broadwell Music Festival, which ran for several years, which then morphed into what was called Warm Fest, which, was about 10 years ago that that last happened.

And that was a very big event with lots and lots of,musicians. I learned a lot from that experience. so yeah, the music thing’s just, it’s been a part of my life since I was young. it’s cool to like come full circle and be in a business like open date where I’m actually working in the music business, and going to venues and talking to clubs that. Are, you know, booking bands I like and working with The Vogue, who really birthed the business and everything they do there. So it’s fun to be back in that space, but through a way.

[00:07:09] Joe: I’m curious. I owned a gym for a period of time. Fitness is very much my hobby. And I found that having the hobby and the profession. That link together started to eat away at the enjoyment of the hobby.

And I’m curious about how you balance that, like something you’re passionate about that becomes your job, which sounds great, but can have this sort of backside that’s difficult. I’m curious if you experience that at all, or if you do, how you navigate it. that’s a I think you can burn yourself out. I have a buddy that, 

who, master recordings. I I don’t know what you call ’em, but you know, like a record has to get mastered before it gets released. And I asked him one time, I said, did you listen to music? He’s like, no, I just, know, I listened to it all day long for my job. It’s like, it’s kind of lost it’s luster for him.

Yeah. fortunately, my job does not require me listening to music all day know, we’re building software, we’re doing other things. So when I do listen to music, it’s very much enjoyable. When I’m working on a recording, sometimes I get to a point where I can’t hear it anymore. Meaning like, can’t really differentiate. It’s becoming too many times in a row.

Yeah. It’s getting mushy to me. Yeah. And so I’ve learned I just have to walk away, or I’ve learned that I have to take everything out and get back to the bass drums and vocal and rebuild from there because it’s like, okay, where’s the heart of the song?

But, it feels like almost endless joy, you know, music, I listen to it at home. Big record collector. I love listening to vinyl. I play music all the time. so yeah. it seems to be a bottomless Well, there are other things in my life, like with foraging, like in each season there’s different mushrooms Sure. That come up. We are in Morl right Yes. We’ve got another week or two. And, and generally by the time morales 

done, I’m just about tired of morels. It’s hard to be tired Ofs. I, I’ve about to say, I’ve heard of them so many times and obviously we can get ’em in our state. And I’ve never eaten one. You’ve never eaten one. 

[00:08:56] Jeb Banner: a. Oh, they’re very expensive but like, Yeah. They’re about 60 bucks a pound. Yeah. 

[00:09:02] Joe: depends on where you buy ’em. But they’re 

[00:09:03] Jeb Banner: expensive. But they are very good. 

[00:09:05] Joe: what’s special about them? they are, they’re often called like, kind of like,the tmn of the, the forest. Okay. or like the mushroom world. They have this, really meaty, delicious, savory texture and flavor to them that’s unlike any mushroom. There’s no other mushroom that compares to, and I, there’s a lot of mushrooms. Yeah. one of the best dishes I ever had in my whole life was a, like, cauliflower roasted in Cremini, or, in portini mushroom sauce. It was like wild. Is that some fancy restaurant in Raleigh? but I’m, I’m curious, just like, 

[00:09:34] Jeb Banner: what do you make with them? What’s your go-to with thel? My, you wanna highlight thel. You’re not gonna, actually, the best thing to do with morale is just eat thel. you cut it up and you put it in butter with a little salt and pepper. Okay. And get it to where it’s just a little toasty. little bit. Don’t burn it, but yeah.

Little That’s it. Five, seven minutes and then let it cool and eat it. Some people like to bread it. I don’t like to bread it. I I don’t generally bread things, but, I think the less you do the better. Because the flavor itself is a delicious woodsy flavor and it’s just got its own flavor.

[00:10:03] Joe: and every time I try to mix it into something, I end up regretting it later. Interesting. You have a lot of what I would call like artistic tendencies, music, that feel very like nature. is that also something that comes through in the, the software that you work on?

Because I see that as also a very creative endeavor that gets looked at as like an engineering thing, which feels on the other end of creativity, but it’s, it feels actually very related to me. I’m curious about how you. You think through when you’re building software? are about it like you think about musically on the basis and building it up?

[00:10:33] Jeb Banner: in my head space,they operate in similar ways. often compare it to building a tree house, like when I was a little kid. I build a tree house with a buddy of mine. and there’s my favorite children’s book is, Andrew Henry’s Meadow. And if you haven’t read it, I recommend it.

It’s about this really inventive young kid who just builds forts and contraptions all over his parents’ house until they finally kick him out and say he can’t do this inside anymore. And he goes to Meadow and builds ’em for all his friends. And so all his friends have these cool little castles and all these like mechanical things going on, everything.

And that was a highly influential book for me. and I realized that my whole life, I’ve been building tree fort after tree fort after tree fort. recording studios a tree fort, a business is a tree fort. a song is a tree fort. There are all these little things. And to me, so when I think about engineering versus, artistic design, to me there’s no distinction.

I recognize that there’s a functional level of engineering that’s more manufacturing, but when I think about my experience of it, it’s much more building. Much more like clay and wood and nails, or, pointing at a screen and saying, make it do this, or listening to a song and say, this part doesn’t work.

Can it do this instead? or we need to add this, whatever it is. mostly it’s listening in one way or another. Listening with your ears, listening with your eyes, whatever it might be. Paying attention, sensing how you feel, trusting your feelings and your thoughts, and then reacting to something and then following the reaction and seeing what happens. That’s most of my artistic design building experience with business and everything else. It’s just trying to stay tuned to seeing how I react to it in 

[00:12:14] Joe: One of the you mentioned I’ve been building Tree Fort to Tree Fort, and things that I’ve been talking about with people a lot lately is the way that your identity get wrapped up in what you’ve, what you’re working on or what you’re building. And your LinkedIn, it’s like things. And I’m curious when you transition season ends and you’re focused on something new, how do you transition there? Well, where you don’t feel like your identity is in this old thing, you’re also not like shooting onto the next one? and feeling like you’re playing ping pong with like who you 

[00:12:49] Jeb Banner: are. Well, there’s a morning period, like I just went through it yesterday. I’m in the middle of it right now. I sold our building in Broad Ripple, which we’ve had for 10 years. It’s where small box grew up as where portables started.

And it just got to the point where it didn’t make sense for me to own it anymore. And honestly the price was right and I looked at it and said, this is no longer bringing me the joy it used to bring me. And it’s time to let go, but I do love that building. It’s an art Deco 1940s building and it’s just a sweet, beautiful building.

it was sad. I was really sad yesterday and I still feel it. when I left Bal it was sad When I left small box, it was sad, all these transitions are challenging and I think that a lot of people, are pain avoidant. I’m pain avoidant. Everyone’s pain avoidant. Yeah. and so I think one of the most important things to do is as you go through life, is to, get to know your pain and get to be friends with it a little bit more and, be able to say, Hey, I’m gonna experience pain going through this change, but it’s the right change for me to make because I’m trusting that on the other side of this, there’s something that’s better for me and I’m gonna be in a place that is, more energizing to me.

If I’m being. De-energized by something consistently, then that means I, I’m not in the right position, I’m not in the right place, I’m not doing the right thing. And if I continue to persist in that, cause I’m scared of the pain that change might cause me. there’s a great example, that someone gave of like having a splinter in your finger and, of getting the splinter out, which hurts, just doing everything possible not to hurt that splinter, you know, in the finger and just like building up the whole glove around your hand.

We do that in life all the time and next thing you know, we’ve got all these things that we’ve built to like, avoid pain and then we’re not really dealing with what’s going on, and then we’re in even greater pain. You know, so it’s like, I’m not great at this, but I’m getting better as I get older of like doing the hard thing sooner than later so that I can be free and, have the energy I need to 

[00:14:52] Joe: Yeah. I’m curious too about consider the pain in the moment, a signal of it’s time to transition versus necessary pain in the journey. when is it like perseverance, no pain, no gain versus this is the 

[00:15:08] Jeb Banner: wrong thing for me. Yeah. Like 

[00:15:10] Joe: like where do you need perseverance? Yeah. And where do you call it a day? Yeah. It’s like, you know, obviously like our, our grit and perseverance and hard work and pushing through the hard times. And if you’re somebody who’s like, yeah, I got hard, and so I moved. Everybody’s like, who are 

[00:15:23] Jeb Banner: you? Yeah, you’re flaky. You’re flaky. Yeah.

[00:15:26] Joe: So how, how do you think about balance? 

[00:15:27] Jeb Banner: I struggled with that a lot with leaving portable, it was a successful company. we had raised a lot of money, we were growing. but I also came to a point where I realized I was not the right CEO because I didn’t feel like I had what was in me that the business needed. There’s a lot to that. That’s a longer conversation. But,

It got to the point where I’m like, yes, I could push myself through this. I could force myself to do this. but it would be very draining to me. And I’ve done that. I’ve pushed myself many times in my life I drained my batteries to, to where I didn’t have a lot to give.

And I think about it as sprinting versus a marathon. if you’re sprinting, you recognize you’re going to burn down your resources, but you also know it’s gonna come to an end. If you’re in a marathon and you’re burning too fast, then you know that you’re not gonna make it to the end that’s what I was experiencing there.

the way that I’m going day to day is not sustainable. I told the board another 12 to 18 months, I said, I can do it. but something needs to change for me or in the business. fortunately we had the person in the business that was ready to step up and. be that leader.

and so we could do over the period of almost 12 months, of transition that ended up being the right move for me and the business and that person, Jeff, the ceo. that was ideal. then you get a kind of in a corner where you’re like, you don’t have that kind of exit available to you, and then you have to make an even harder decision.

that’s something that I think,I feel for people that get in those situations. And I felt like that when I left my first business of just like, I felt like I was in a corner and it was a very traumatic, separation, from my partner in that first business. And,  I’ve learned from that experience how to sort of get ahead of it a little bit more. 

[00:17:14] Joe: That’s interesting too. I find is if I know the finish my motivation actually wanes a little bit. and so I imagine I’m imagining myself in that situation where you’re got 12 months ahead of me. line. It’s no longer my my but I’m 

[00:17:31] Jeb Banner: committed and need to stay in it. Was that anything that you struggle with? Yeah, I think, there’s a difference between up and being all in because you love it showing up and being all in because you have to. And, I never stopped loving the people I was working with. Right. Like, that never changed.

It was the experience I was having, being in the business had changed. and I things I’m really good at, which are really starting and building new things. Yeah. Had been done. and when I reflected on it, I realized, I felt claustrophobic and I didn’t have vision for what was next. I couldn’t see any further. Like I, everything that I saw had come, had already happened. and it was like when you lose vision for what’s next, Then you’re probably not the right leader for what’s next. with that business and where I’d gotten with small box before that, where I lost vision.

and there’s a lot more to the small box story because I actually went down a lot of rabbit holes. One turned into portable, which was good, but I lost vision there too. And then when I lose vision, I lose drive. of mine, he said something to me one time that really resonated. He was talking about music, production and doing everything.

He says, I have infinite energy for that. Like I never get tired of it. I constantly look forward to going into the studio, recording, working with people, and that’s the space I want to be in with whatever I do. A space of infinite energy. I mean, there’s a limit to that of course, you know, physically. Yeah, but like my mind is always engaged by it.

when my mind stops being engaged by it, when I no longer pleasurable stroll through the garden of that business, if you will. Yeah. When I’m, at home or on a bike ride when it feels like a burden, not a joy to be in that, that business, then I’m not really showing up in the way I need to for that business.

I’m no longer the right leader, the right person. And that’s where you have to be really honest and there’s things you can do to fix that, but also there’s a point where you just have gotta say, I’m being somewhat selfish by stepping back Sure. It’s, this isn’t really serving the business.

[00:19:33] Joe: There’s a real healthy dose of humility that takes or maybe just like recognition of that ego exists and its ability to walk away from the decision that. Is but like you, you’ve been able to say like, I’m not, future. That’s actually like, for somebody whose is having a vision for the future, I imagine very difficult thing to say.

[00:19:53] Jeb Banner: Yeah. It’s, it’s hard to, feel like you’ve come to the end of your vision, But I think part of my background as an artist has gotten me used to it. It’s like you run to the end of your vision for a song or for a group or whatever it is, and you’re like, okay, I can’t see any further for this. I have done everything I can do. It’s a song I worked on last year with another band. And then we got to the point where I said, look, I have done everything I think I can do for this song. I suggest somebody else takes it from here. Like, get somebody else to mix it. I don’t have anything else to do.

I have done as much as I can do everything is here. And not in a resentful way, just in a, like, if you don’t feel like it’s done, I respect that I am done. Yeah. Right. And and I think that knowing that is important because otherwise you’re gonna burn yourself down. Out of some desire to be seen by others and I struggle with this a lot is respected and, you know, persistent, whatever gets things done.

And when I left portable, I had to work with my coach on that a lot because I was very concerned that people would look at me and say, ah, he bailed. he couldn’t stick with it. And I had to get to the point where it’s like, there probably some people are gonna say that. It’s like, and that’s okay.

I gotta be okay with that. Yeah. And it’s still the right thing for me to do, and it still means I believe in the business and still I still love the people in the business. None of those things have to not be true. You know, it’s like, right. So it’s like, it took me a lot of work to get to the point where I could accept that I could do what I thought was right for me and what I honestly thought was right for the business and deal with the consequences on reputational perception level, which, nodded. 

[00:21:29] Joe: You just mentioned a coach. did you start working with worked with 

[00:21:33] Jeb Banner: one coach, CJ McClanahan, probably, gosh, eight, nine years ago Small Box. And that was good for where I was at at the time. And then we worked together for three or four years, and then I went for a while with Outta Coach, and then I found another coach, Dave Cashen, Ks, h e n more recently with Portable. the portable board was very supportive of that and actually helped me connect with the coach with Dave. And he is trained in Conscious Leadership, which is a fantastic framework. The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leaders is great read for anybody that’s serious about leadership and so I worked with him over the course of about a year, kind of like coming out of our Series A where we got a lot of funding through them.

When I began to see that it was time for me to exit the business, that, was just really powerful. Like, it was a spiritual experience. There’s no way to describe And he’s a very spiritual man, even though he doesn’t show up that way for everybody. But because I was open to that and and sharing my journey, he shared his, and together we built a really deep bond and continue to connect, here and there outside of the coaching engagement, which has been meaningful for me, and I think for him too.

But, that coaching relationship was transformational. it pushed me to get to a deeper level of awareness and acceptance of my feelings and my desires andmy fears. Gosh, I mean, so much of being a leader is confronting your fears and being honest about what’s going on inside you

[00:23:02] Joe: I’m curious about what the trigger point was for. I think I need to get 

[00:23:06] Jeb Banner: it was really when we started to add a lot of people. Okay. And my life became, Much less a, sort of bootstrapped,a little bit more of a scale up. The focus became much more on the operational side of the business, which is not as much my strength. I understand that stuff for the most part, and I appreciate what it is. It’s not where I wake up in the morning and get excited. Right. I don’t get excited about systems and processes. I respect them. I know we need them. but I find them to be heavy, not light. Like, when I think about them, I get tired.

So when you think about day spent dealing with, OKRs and, all these different structures in a business and reports and reporting out and, all this stuff, I was just like, I just wanna talk to people about how they’re doing. it’s like I just wanna talk about how they’re feeling and I didn’t do that enough and I got stuck in a lot of conversations trying to like untangle a knot, Which is, I’m a problem solver, I’m an entrepreneur, I can do that kind of stuff, but it’s draining to me. after a while it gets really tiring. the thing is, you set your own traps as a ceo, you do stuff and you don’t even realize it unconsciously.

That create messes for yourself later on. And setting traps. And the more that you can get ahead of that, and the more that you can put fires out more quickly and deal with the pain more quickly, the fewer messes you gotta clean up. And that’s really where I got to at a certain point.

and there was some hard decisions to make early on after working with the coach that he helped me work through, personnel decisions that were challenging. And a lot of it was just my reluctance was based in my fear. I was, again, pain avoidant and I felt like if I did something that, People might not like me. things like that. there’s a very human side to, to that stuff where, you know, there’s a lot of feelings. and just to kind of skip ahead to all that, the thing that I realized coming out of the experience was how important feelings are how little companies spend talking about 

[00:25:03] Joe: gonna ask you next, is like, we are not taught to, to spend a lot of time thinking about feelings inside of business. No. think about where business came from in terms of, it really came from the industrial revolution in many cases. And then about, you think about the assembly line and everything else.

You got, you’re minimizing inefficiency all the time. What’s more inefficient than a feeling? You know? It’s like, oh, you don’t feel good about this and you’re gonna stop the whole assembly line to talk about your feelings. We don’t have time for that. You can talk about your feelings at home.

 that’s. Very masculine sort of approach. Right. And that masculine dynamic of like just, plowing through, crushing things as we go has been the dominant driving force of business for really ever since, the dawn of modern business. And now we’re starting to see, a better understanding of what, especially in the creative, spaces.

And I think that more and more of work is creative work. you could bagging a grocery is creative if you do it in the right way. But, as you look at those creative spaces, you have to think about the whole human being. You cannot just think about them as a robot pounding out widgets.

It’s not how it works. don’t feel like they’re engaged as a human being in the work, then they’re probably not gonna very engaged. And most likely it’s cuz they don’t feel something. Yeah. it’s very interesting. I feel have here at Element Three is that, you really can’t separate the human from the work. And it’s probably easy for us to have that do people-centric work.

Like our people are the product, they’re both who make it work and who deliver it, and there’s no separating from the people that we have. And so it’s easier for us to see that overlap. Was it challenging for you in a software space where you have a product, built by people, but it’s a machine. did, do you feel like that took you longer to like, get to, did you feel like that pretty early on?

[00:27:01] Jeb Banner: one of the things that frustrated me about the agency world, because before, I ran an is, oh man, I feel like so often, I don’t wanna say held hostage, but you know, like that’s the extreme version of it by the talent. But it’s just like, well, I want to go do this, but my people don’t want to do it. I’m not gonna do it cuz if they don’t wanna do do it, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? Right. Right. And then you have a, or ISN engaged Right, right, right, right. They’re just like, well, we’re not into this.  then you try to like, you know, they sometimes feel manipulated or forced when you’re like, opinion, pitch heavily to like, Hey, we should do this. Right.and it was frustrating to me because I was like, well, I really want to go do this, but if I don’t have people that want to do it with me, then it’s not gonna work with the product.

I felt a certain freedom, especially early on of like, the product isn’t gonna tell me it doesn’t want to do something. The product will do whatever we say it needs to do. And it was like, yay, let’s go build out the thing it needs to do. And so I think that I got a little bit overzealous about that perhaps and didn’t focus enough potentially, on the people side of times because I was so focused on what the product was.

Yeah. not to say I was showing up as some sort of tyrant. But I was just focused on what the product could do and on one level that kind of like dehumanized things a little bit, and just, I’m kind of realizing this while you ask these questions, so thank you. but I think that as I went through, went with the business and saw kind of where we’re going,I always felt called back to the people side of it because that’s where my heart was.

Yeah. enjoy the fact that the product didn’t tell me that I didn’t wanna do something. Yeah. Just to be honest. Yeah. change it. Yeah. It’s like, no, you’re gonna do this. And it’s like the product does that, it doesn’t have an opinion. It doesn’t have feelings, you know, it’s like, it’s not challenging, won’t, quit, it won’t gimme two weeks notice. it, won’t get hired by somebody else. Well, yeah. Yeah. It’s so, so great. to be honest, there’s a lot of fun things about how product is not human. Right. But in the end, it’s being built by humans. It’s being used by humans. So it has to, Be built by people that care about the problem,

cuz otherwise it’s not gonna solve it in the right way. Right. And it has to treat people that use it in a way where they feel like they’re being cared for. So feelings still matter a whole lot in the product business, feeling the product itself is not feeling itself.

[00:29:16] Joe: I think you started to gonna ask, but I’ll ask to see what else maybe pops into your mind. now with open date, you’ve been through iterations of leading very people-centric and then very product-centric business and realizing like, oh, there’s more people in here than I initially maybe experienced. So now as at open date, and that’s the focus at the moment, what learnings have you taken from your other applying in that product world

Yeah. feel are making a difference? So this is a enterprise product. So whereas portable, especially during the early days, was not an enterprise product. It was a. More of a self-service. Some people will call it product led,software solution that required, not a ton of support hand holding. Is that how you differentiate two in your head 

[00:31:11] Jeb Banner: as like how much support does it need, It’s a little bit on price point. Okay. like, looking at five figure versus six figure, with, but yes, I mean with the enterprise offering, you know, you might fly out and be with that person to enable their onboarding. Right. With a, more of a transactional self-service offering, more of the SMB market.

You may never even talk to the person. Sure. They may sign up online, go through trial convert, you may have an email or two, then they may be a happy customer for years.

[00:31:40] Joe: Right. literally do the true PLG Formula. That’s right. so, it’s a good new muscle for me to build.We began doing more of that at portable towards the end of my time there because we were naturally going up market as the product became more robust and we started to sell accounts. but,with open date, it’s all pretty much enterprise. know, these are people that, that are running,know, music venues. There’s a lot of complexity to running a music venue way more than you might imagined. 

[00:32:09] Jeb Banner: terms of so much complexity. And how, what’s really complex for them? Oh, the way offers are managed, the way,finances are managed, there’s all these idiosyncratic things around the way different artists.

[00:32:21] Joe: I’ve got a artist in, or maybe I’ve rented out, Vogue has hosted powder keg events. Does that have a different. Like pricing model way that they would process it on the back end than taking a band in.

[00:32:35] Jeb Banner: Yes. Cuz they’re not giving, they’re not guaranteeing the powder keg, any of Right. And, it’s, that’s generally more of a rental. Whereas let’s say they’re bringing in a band like the Fleet Foxes, they’re going to, give them a guarantee. They’re going to do marketing, they need to have a budget, they need to see how they’re doing against that budget. What are the actuals right against the budget? What’s the overall forecast look like for that event, for that month, for that weekend, genre. It’s

[00:33:01] Joe: like a mini campaign like each time you book a new band it’s a lot. Yeah. lot. Right.

[00:33:06] Jeb Banner: And then you have. all kinds of dynamics with each artist, and you have all kinds of communication that happens. So it’s a really interesting problem to solve. it’s a very large treehouse, I’ll put it that way. There’s a lot of rooms. And, it’s a fun problem to solve because it’s a interesting space for me. It’s live music. It’s, I worked at a venue in college, like I came up with this world and I love this world, but, there’s no doubt there’s a, a great deal of complexity to it, which is part of why we’re building an enterprise solution versus more of a point solution around one specific problem. This is an operating system we’re building 

[00:33:40] Joe: So are you bumping into HubSpot and Salesforce? And

[00:33:44] Jeb Banner: we’re not trying to be that kind of company. Okay. think about this more around, a specific tool to, manage a venue and the shows that are coming into Not necessarily like, you use potentially, like a MailChimp or something like that with this tool. Yeah. still 

[00:33:59] Joe: communication device outside of it. 

[00:34:01] Jeb Banner: you could import export data and 

[00:34:02] Joe: even that, adds another, another layer of complexity right.  Open eight has ticketing in it. So the ticketing data then flows through and outputs the ability to then segment into lists based upon, okay, I wanna see everybody that’s gone to,you know, Americana show. I’d like to email them an offer for an upcoming show.

[00:34:19] Jeb Banner: we have an app that we power, the product, like to push notifications to everybody in this, geographic area. that’s what I’m talking about terms of the marketing We’re not looking to be hotspot Salesforce 

[00:34:31] Joe: Well, it is really interesting both a, what it sounds like at least is both a platform for managing the business side of it, the bands, the bookings, and then also communication with your other end of the platform. The band wants wants to come cuz they’re gonna get fans and the fans wanna come if you have good bands. And so it’s. It’s interesting when you’re building that, do you see it as a platform technology or how do you classify it in your head?

[00:34:53] Jeb Banner: we think of it as an operating system a music venue operating system. and as we build it, we’re getting deeper and deeper into the financial side of the business with venues. by the important thing is the ticketing piece, because by ticketing then we have all of the revenue, basically Right.

Showing up as well. when you use a third party ticketing, then you have to import it and it’s a lot more awkward.so ticketing’s really the business that we’re, we want to win and we win it by having everything around it That no one else has. So, like no one else, Eventbrite doesn’t have this operating system. don’t have all these other tool settlements. and everything like that. Is that 

[00:35:31] Joe: you normally run into from a standpoint?

[00:35:34] Jeb Banner: there’s a ton of competition there. everything from Ticketmaster and Access down to, little, custom builds that people have done, with Eventbrite, ticket web companies like that, kind of in the middle. there’s a million ticketing solutions out there. We’re differentiating around what’s around the ticketing. The ticketing itself. There’s a certain, table stakes with, with it permission to play, if you will. So, once you get to that threshold, which we have for most, live music clubs, then it’s about the rest of the product and how it makes, empowers the data that a ticketing, data empowers, all these other insights in the product.

[00:36:12] Joe: I’m how you decide what to get into next. opportunities, decide where 

[00:36:22] Jeb Banner: Yeah, that’s a good question. it’s a combination of, attraction and, open doors. and I think just a little bit of the universe sort of, pointing at things.

saying, okay, you know, like with open date, I was not planning on getting back into the CEO role for a while. I was planning on doing some coaching consulting work. That was my plan. And I was beginning to work on that. And it was October and November and I sat down and talked to the guys there, and, they said, Hey, would you be interested in this? And I was like, well, geez, it’s music, it’s technology. I like you guys. I know you guys. I knew some of the team. it’s stage, you know, like, like, I said with with portable, I, struggled when we got like building I like building. Yeah. I like building. I said, let me look at this. And so, yeah,  It was about a, I’d say a month or so of reviewing, discussing, exploring, and then then committing. and,I expect to be doing this for a few years, 

five years. I don’t know. But, you know, I think this is something where, I’ll probably find it interesting for quite a while. and I think that will probably be the right fit for quite a while. There’s a lot can do, a lot of road to go and it’s very much a relationship business. Yeah. Like going out and building relationships with people is a big part of this business. I enjoy that. I enjoy meeting people, traveling, know, I’ve got moments. All my kids are outta the house. I can do that a lot more now. So, behind a computer screen 10 hours a day like it 

[00:37:45] Joe: during 

[00:37:45] Jeb Banner: the pandemic. Right. Which was honestly 

[00:37:48] Joe: of what burned me out. Yeah. 

[00:37:49] Jeb Banner: Yeah. I just, I’m not built for that. I’m built for human interaction. Human interaction. Yeah. Yeah. And, it’s very draining sitting in a chair 10 hours a day looking at a screen. It is, as I’m sure you remember. Yeah. and I, one of the things I, I came out of, I said, I’m not gonna do that again. I’m gonna work in a business where I can be out in the world more. and just being with people as much as possible, I’m 

[00:38:10] Joe: have a fully remote team. Or even a partially remote team the thing I see in my head is like, you’ve done a nice job of like your own interest and then against the needs of the role itself. and I have this thing in my head where I see you as like a bubble, and it’s like the Jeb interest bubble, and it comes and it hits an opportunity bubble. And if there’s like enough overlap, you’re like, yeah, I can get into that. And then maybe over time that bubble starts to shake apart a little bit.

And when you feel that disconnect happens, it’s like, all right, I’m gonna mourn that over, but into the next season. And I find that is really challenging for people to do well. the like, willingness to make the change. Because of the pain of change is so extreme. Have you always been good at location just natural for you? I don’t know.

[00:39:06] Jeb Banner: if I’m good at it to be honest. I think I’m, I think I’m practicing.

[00:39:09] Joe: Yeah. I think I’m like a Well, I think the fact that you give shows a sense of like, maturity I think a lot of people either lack or just don’t talk about.

[00:39:22] Jeb Banner: I think a lot of people are scared of change, understandably. It’s scary. I’ve just come to trust that on the other side of it, I’ve just come to this trust fall sort of relationship with the universe, where that every time I, I seem to, to fall backwards blindly into what’s next. It seems up in a better place.

And, I almost kind of wonder what is holding me back from even the bigger jump. I still have so much fear and so much pain that I want to avoid if I was able to work past What kind of jump could I make then, and I think for me it’s, it’s just being present and what’s Seeing where I’m attracted and drawn towards, listening closely to my feelings, people like my wife and close friends for their counsel. being as honest as I can with the people I’m working with about where I’m Talking about how I feel, talking about what I’m concerned about, had a good talk today with, the partners at Open day.

I said, this is what I’m what I’m feeling. I feel good about this and I don’t feel good about this. Yeah. And they said, good. But you know, we, we see that, we feel the same way. I said, are you okay if,I take this direction and we go a little bit down this road, I’m not gonna be too specific to this inside business and maybe we take a little longer on this road than we thought, but I think it’s the right way to go.

And they’re like, yeah, that’s good. We can do that. Whereas in the past when I was younger, I think I would’ve felt pressured to have the answer for everything and to say, this is what we’re doing now. I often show up and say, these are the questions I’m trying to answer, and these are the questions I think the business needs to answer.

And I don’t have the answers to all these questions. Here’s some ideas I have, and that’s more of my approach Now. To invite people in to the answering part and to the asking part and more to be a facilitator of that. And then leading around saying, okay, we’ve had the conversation. Here’s, what I’m hearing and here’s what I think we should do. And then making sure we have alignment. But alignment is not consensus. people might say, you know, I kind of felt like this was more the right direction. I’ve learned and I made mistakes like this. A small box. You’re never gonna get everybody on board. In a bigger company particularly.

But you have to keep moving things forward and they have to feel listened, been listened to, but input is not direction. Like when you’re getting input from somebody, they need to understand that’s not direction they’re giving you, they’re giving you input, direction’s, what you’re giving them. And I think lot of leaders don’t communicate certainly been guilty of that. Yeah. my full-time job was element three, and I was fortunate about walking and 

[00:41:58] Joe: immediately report to Tiffany. you were she’s fantastic. Yeah. And she’s such a good communicator about, actually, I distinctively remember multiple team meetings and she’s always had the challenge of leading like the youngest team in the organization. Like when she still wore, VP of sales and marketing hat here, everybody on the team was. Like sub five years experience. And then she’s the ceo, And now looking back, I’m like, the amount of frustration she must have had us, but she would communicate like, I’m done asking for input. I’ve taken all of it in and this is the decision. And it made it very clear. It’s like, okay, great. Like now the conversation about what should is over And now it’s how. Yeah. And that looks like a very clear, we can talk 

[00:42:38] Jeb Banner: we can talk about how, you, you have more chances for input on the how. Yeah. I struggled with that a lot at Small Box. I built a culture of consensus there and that was because I want everybody to be involved and included. And, and too often I, dragged my feet on things because I didn’t feel like I had everybody’s buy-in looking back on it. That silly, it’s not serving anybody’s, it made everybody unhappy. it was not good for the business. you have to keep moving forward. I still struggle with that. 

[00:43:06] Joe: I don’t like other people feeling bad. Yeah. Yeah I mean, you don’t, I want, I’m very high need for approval. I want people to like Yeah. It’s that thing. I don’t want people feeling bad. 

[00:43:15] Jeb Banner: I don’t wanna do something that I build a story in my head that I made someone feel bad. I know that that it’s a story, but story that I find myself believing. Yeah,

[00:43:25] Joe: I hear you on that. So, Jeff, as we wrap up, I’m curious cuz you seem to have a good, sense of the feelings that you go through, which actually. Like I’m, I struggle immensely with like identifying like I’m off, but I can’t figure out what I’m off by. Do you have any habits or techniques or practices that you do that are really helpful for getting more introspection? mm-hmmAnd be able to identify with it?

[00:43:49] Jeb Banner: Yeah. meditation. morning and Night. not every day, but I’d say 70, 80%. The time I do morning and night. I rarely go a day without one or the other. What’s your style? Is it like box breathing? Is it just nothing specific and just time quiet what’s your style? Um, I have a number of different kind of modalities, I guess you say. I go in and out of, I do a lot of like chanting, like om chanting, a lot of vibrational stuff. I’ll do different kind of breathing techniques. I’ll do what might be considered insight and meditation where I intentionally go deep into a thought or feeling or I’ll explore a feeling.

I will sometimes meditate for 10 minutes, sometimes for an hour, depending upon the situation. I found that the more My life sort of like came upon me with portable when things went kind of intense with the pandemic and our series A and everything, the more I needed it, because I needed all that processing time for all the emotions, all the thoughts, everything to get back to a bit of a blank slate.

So by the end of it, my mind was still again. but I, when I came into it, it was not. and I think that bringing that stillness into your day allows you to maintain an equilibrium where you’re not having a whole lot of noise always in your head. not to say there isn’t, but you know, less noise than when I was younger.That’s a really important habit. I started that about six years ago. I don’t do guided meditations. A lot of people find them really helpful. My wife does quite a few of them. I find that I am such an auditory person. I start listening really to the, to the voice and everything. I just love meditating alone and just a seated meditation and a lot of 

[00:45:27] Joe: and a lot of, a lot of 

[00:45:28] Jeb Banner: chanting. so I’m, I’m kind of a noisy meditator. Yeah. Um, but the vibrational piece of it,I think of it as tuning myself. Sure. Like, I’m an instrument. I need tuning every day. I come in to the morning. I also do dream journaling, as I mentioned, I’m doingthis. I’m fascinated by that. That’s yeah, you can, it’s another conversational, it’s fun. Yeah. So I started doing that December and then I, I started putting it into chat, G P T and asking for analysis. And then one night I was actually meditating and I was like, I saw the whole product. I saw it in my head. I was like, it needs to do all this. That’s awesome. Shot over 

[00:45:59] Joe: to Max 

[00:46:00] Jeb Banner: and he was like, oh my God, you won’t believe this. I was just talking about the same thing like five minutes ago, and I was like, well, the universe is knocking on our door buddy. So, 

[00:46:08] Joe: got together with another buddy and then, built 

[00:46:10] Jeb Banner: it and like, Two 

[00:46:11] Joe: That’s really cool. Is ian right 

[00:46:13] Jeb Banner: right now or It’s, I mean, It’s out there. 

[00:46:14] Joe: Decoder decoder dot Yes. I’m going, oh, I’ve had two very fascinating dreams the last 

[00:46:21] Jeb Banner: two days that have the same theme behind them. It’s great. It’s fun. I was gonna put them in there. It’s great. I’ll give you the link, but it’s just decoder with the E I’ve taken out between the D and the R me and then, you can have or young Ian and I love the young Ian interpretation.Oh, interesting. So that’s really helpful cause I can kind of see what’s going on with my unconscious world. Yeah. Of like, okay, I’ve got some, I’ve got some anxiety here, you know, like I’m running around trying to find my shoes in the stream, like whatever’s going on, often I’m trying to find things in my dream. Yeah.and then, I do retreats. so I do a week in the woods every summer. I do an awful lot of, that’s totally just by myself. Yeah. I do a lot of stuff just alone in the woods. I love being in nature. A lot of walking. and then I’ll do weekend retreats usually around music and friends, often out, out in the woods.

[00:47:08] Joe: the thing I hear there is like when you have a life that has a lot of demands on you in terms of you have to use your brain and navigate complex situations, whether it’s building business, managing people, whatever, all the time, the idea that we can do that without recovery, It’s sort of silly.  it’s much like fitness, right? If we just work out all the time, you eventually break. Yeah. I’ve started to feel that way. Like I’ve only, I’ve only gotten, consistent with any amount of meditation time and journaling time over the last, I would say six months. And there’s been like moments where I like, if I miss it two days in a row and I’m like, why am I off?

[00:47:45] Jeb Banner: And I’m like, oh, I haven’t processed anything in a watch now everything’s I think of it as being sort of like psychically, spiritually constipated. when I don’t meditate, I’m not a journaler, I’m a dream journaler. my wife’s a journaler. She’s great. and I’ve tried it at times. I didn’t find it that meaningful for me. Yeah. That doesn’t mean it’s not for someone else. I wrote a memoir recently of my life up to my first child. I found that very meaningful of like processing at that distance Yeah. Of like, 20 years to 40 years or whatever it go.but the processing thing, no matter how you do it, whatever it looks like, that is super important. 

[00:48:21] Joe: Mm-hmm. Because if you don’t do that, then it just builds up and Yeah. it’s like LA 

[00:48:26] Jeb Banner: Lacking digestion.Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, It’s constipation and then you’re going into the situation, you’re not present.And if you’re not present, then all kinds of stuff is not getting caught. You’re missing all kinds of stuff. And then, the person you’re with doesn’t feel like you’re really with them. Yeah. And so they walk away thinking, don’t really feel great about this situation. They feel that connection Right? Yeah. You’re, man, you’re walking around doing a lot of meh. Yeah. And think about it, just like walk into a store in a Starbucks, look the person in the eye and say, how are you doing? Like, it’s very different than like a love of coffee.

It’s like, it, even those little things, you can practice that in your daily life.a person on the street that’s asking for money, ask their name, talk to them, ask them how they’re doing. Give them some money. Yeah. I find that those little things fill my cup in a way that before I used to be so resistant to, cause I thought, that’s not me. I don’t do those things. I was very guarded. But the more I did meditation, the more I did that kind of practice, the more I stopped being guarded like that and started seeing everyone as a child of God in my mind. 

[00:49:29] Joe: love them they are needing love. You mentioned spirituality a couple times, brought it up there at the end. how much, how meaningful has that been in your, path? Well, I was raised in a very Christian, home evangelical Christian, and it was a terrible experience on the church side. Not entirely, but a lot of it was really negative. not my family. My family there was challenges there, but, the church experience 

I had was very judgmental, very fear-based. and it really turned me off. and now I see it as a huge disconnect from the teachings of Christ. It’s really a shame what modern Christianity has become in many instances, not all. Yeah, not all. I agree with you. there’s many good examples out there too, but, It really just turned me off. And so like by the time I hit college, I could not get farther away from a church. And even till now when I go into church, I have a bit of allergic reaction. Even talking about now my hair raises a little bit because I feel that like disdain for that and I don’t feel disdain for a lot of things. But I felt so trapped in that situation.

and, and so unhappy in that. but when I got older, I started to go through a revolution of like sort of my own life and approach to, things of the spirit. and there was some experiences I had that just opened my eyes. Mm-hmm. and then I started to revisit a lot of those things from my childhood with a fresh perspective. Revisits the teachings of Christ, looking at them not as Christianity, but as the teachings of Christ. about Buddha, reading about all these different teachers. 

[00:50:54] Jeb Banner: but anyway, I started to open, my eyes started to open and then I had a pretty big awakening. It was actually a buddy of mine,musician, gave me a bunch of Alan Watts,uh, talks. And he’s this great English guy who’s a sort of a apologist for the Eastern religions, but was an Anglican priest. And, he just explained it in perfect English. And I went on my first week in the woods back in 2015, and I brought Alan Watts with me because of my buddy Carl. And, I listened to him the whole week. He was my only companion. And by it was like something had switched in me and I saw the world differently. And I saw that, that I was a player in the world I had mistaken myself, a little bit, in terms of who I was. I had mistaken myself for my ego, my persona, except I’m really a, if you will, a spirit playing in this world. and that woke me up, is all I can  say. I think when Jesus was talking about being born again, and I think he was talking about waking up, yeah. Not in like the quote unquote woke, sense of things today, but more in the sense of like recognizing, that,I am essentially Jeb and it’s a great role to play, but that’s not 

[00:52:02] Joe: this is really relevant for me. I grew up in a, in the Catholic church, I’m way too good at checking the box to find meaning in a, in the environments that I’ve experienced in the Catholic church, which are largely, did you show up to mass today or on Sunday? And did you take communion? Yeah. Good. Yeah, you’re in great, you’re in great shape. You don’t have to have a real relationship. It was the way that internalized it. And,it wasn’t a thing that spoke to me. And, grew up Christian, I celebrate Christian holidays, and lately I’ve been 

feeling the gap of not having a spiritual practice. so I’m, as it is natural and this conversation has come up, I’m very curious now, selfishly curious about like, how do you practice spirituality? Because a lot of what you’re saying has been, it’s similar to my journey. I would say the thinker who I’ve am most moved by spiritually  is Richard Roar. if you’re Richard Roar. Yeah. Oh Yeah. Have you read, The Universal Christ? I have not. read 

[00:52:55] Jeb Banner: other things by him.Haven’t seen quite a few of his lectures. he’s like a lovely thinker. Yeah. Oh yeah. 

[00:53:00] Joe: he’s very much in tune with things I’ve been reading And I was catching that from you. And so I’m curious, how have you built, like, what’s your practice look like? Cause I don’t, like, for a while I was like, oh, if you feel that way, it’ll internalize. But I’m 

[00:53:15] Jeb Banner: withering muscle. I think practice is every moment, every day. I think that there’s certain things that, that are, particularly beneficial or nutritious, if you will, to, being present with life, which to me is the, the ultimate practice. Okay. life. Yeah. loving yourself, loving others. being in a state of acceptance and love at all times is the goal of practice. Meditation helps you build that muscle of presence and acceptance, forgiveness, it’s a big part of it too. First of yourself and then of others. All part of acceptance and love.

Every moment of every day is a chance to practice. Sitting in your car at a stoplight is a chance to getting honked at by somebody who thinks they cut you off as practice. passing somebody on the street and smiling at them and giving some love to them is practice. leading a team meeting and making sure there’s space for everyone to talk about their and, and following up with somebody hard time is practice.

Every moment is practice. So I think, like to me, like the idea that you go to church, to, sort of like check the box has taken people down the wrong road because that’s not actually the teachings of Christ, right? Well, no, not least not in the way that came to understand him later. Yeah. Yeah. it’s about loving people and that’s an active thing. And, I think people often miss the part where he said, love others as you love yourself, and there’s not a lot of people doing the, the loving themselves part. Yeah. And so they go out into the world and the love that they’re expressing is not really love. It’s 

[00:54:51] Joe: sort of 

[00:54:51] Jeb Banner: performative, attempt to appear. It should look like

to appear loving. Yeah. But true love is not necessarily agenda, It doesn’t have an agenda to it. Yeah. And so, love is present with what is, it’s accepting of what is, and it is forgiving of what hurts. that’s a practice that takes all my time, all the time, and I fail at it constantly. as a leader, it’s hard because, you’re competing with all these different energies, and you’ve got to make decisions and you’ve got to move quickly. And sometimes you’re going to do things that, aren’t right, or are hurtful or are not respectful. part of the practice of being a leader is being present with who you are and, the way you’re being experienced by others 

while still not. Feeling that you have to own their feelings as much as respect their feelings. Ownership versus respect is very different Yeah. And I can’t control your feelings. I can’t own them. I can respect them and I can listen to them and I can feel them with you, 

[00:55:53] Joe: but I can’t hold them in there. I have to be a filter. They have to pastor through Sure. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. I’m gonna leave the conversation there cause I think it’s a great. Thoughtful spot to end 

[00:56:03] Jeb Banner: to just 

[00:56:04] Joe: sit 

[00:56:09] Reid: . Okay, Joe. So, a really enjoyable conversation with Jeb Banner. a guy who into, when we came into the conversation, we knew, had a very interesting background, and just did a lot of different things, but after having them on, it was. Real interesting to see all the other aspects, even outside of the work, stuff that you can see on the surface.

Right. just a super interesting guy. A lot of super interesting hobbies, all these types of things. But with all the different places that we went in that conversation, what did you take away as some of the most important things for us to think about moving forward?

[00:56:45] Joe: The commentary around mourning the season was really interesting to me. I think Jeb has a lot of internal awareness about how you process various moments in your life. he talked about at the end, I asked him some questions around like, spirituality. And he was talking about how much he uses meditation to like reset and the way he uses that as a, like a process, like almost like a computer processing moment.

Like, shut down your stuff, stop taking inputs, sit with it, let it process through you. and I imagine that tool has been instructive for him in terms of, some of his other, like noticing things about himself, just his own self-awareness. But I thought the part where I asked him about, Like transitioning between roles and businesses and how that happens.

Like how does that work? And he just talked about like the morning period, and that was really interesting that you can put yourself intentionally into that feeling, but it’s still be a positive. I think we ch, we chase, largely we’re told that like sad is a bad emotion. Like we label emotions good and bad when emotions just are.

And it was obvious, like, the idea of like, oh, do the hard thing. It’s a good thing for you. Little bit cliche, but the idea that like you have a good thing already, but just because it is a good thing. Let’s take portable as an example. Portable’s a really successful business is a good thing. He is no longer the right fit for the role that it needs to play.

And it’s also not feeding him as it should. Well, everybody outside is like, why would you walk away from that? You did it. It’s like, This is true, but it’s not fulfilling me anymore, and I am also not good for it. So in these two situations, the right thing to do is to move into a season of transition from that mourn that season has ended, and to be happy that it existed and then move into the next thing that will help fulfill me, that I will give back to.

and I think being able to pull your identity out of the things that you do, out of the roles that you hold. is very challenging. and something that was a a really interesting perspective,

[00:58:49] Reid: and as I’m thinking about it now, that actually feels like somewhat of a common thread from almost every conversation that we’ve had over the course of this show, is that. Most of the people that we have discussions with have experienced a lot of transition.

They’ve been in different organizations, they’ve led different companies. They’ve founded different things, right? Lots of variety, lots of transition, and all these people have had a very healthy relationship with their past experiences, and there has been challenge that they’ve navigated. It’s not like it’s all been jump from success to success to success, but even as these individuals look back on some of the transitions that they were forced to make from different circumstances or the ones that they had to make, but were challenging, everybody seems to have had a very thoughtful and positive, healthy relationship with those past experiences in a way that Jeb showed. Very Clearly and explicitly how he goes about that process.

[00:59:38] Joe: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point. I’m going through the conversations now in my head with different people and it’s interesting also to think through the ones that feel more forced transition versus chosen transition. But at the same time, I don’t feel, like a sense of victim in the forced ones. And that’s important. Like, I had lunch with a woman the other day and she said like, it’s important to be able to, process various experiences and. And not like assign them blame or like give fault to them for things. And I feel like the one that actually comes to my mind is like Kevin Bailey with Swing Shot.

Like he will talk about how like, that went through a really rough period in comparison to what the expectation was and how close it was to a big exit. But he does not put some sort of like, Oh, slingshot and like shun it from the side. It’s like, it’s part of the story. even though it was challenging, it is paying back dividends in the future.

And I think a lot of the people we’ve had on do a really nice job of like processing, what did I get from that experience? Regardless of its overall like positive or negative view in the moment. Like, what was about that? What about that moment prepared me for the next moment? I had not put that together until you said it.

[01:00:49] Reid: And another thing, I don’t know if this plays into it for jab in terms of how he’s able to have this positive mindset about these different experiences, but in talking to him about just some of his hobbies and things that he pursues outside of the walls of the office, we had talked about like looking hunting for mushrooms. Right. and

[01:01:05] Joe: music’s a huge one.

[01:01:06] Reid: Music’s a huge one. The relationship he has with the outdoors and the time that he spends in the woods and these types of things is like, I can only imagine that plays into the way he’s able to have the mindset that he does about the professional things. And as we think about that, like congruence of work and life that came up in Caswell’s episode, like I, I just wonder if that’s something that allows him to have that mindset is how much he lives into these other areas of his life as well.

[01:01:29] Joe: yeah. I was very inspired by the, he talked about the relationship he has with his friends, who he plays music with. like very cool. Uh, it’s a bit rare that people maintain that kind of relationship with friends. That is not. Like couple friends, you know what I mean? Like, oh yeah. You know, our kid plays soccer for this team and so we’re friends with the other parents on the team, but like, I don’t hang out with just the other dad without my wife around. it’s you sort of have like group friends and guys are particularly bad at this, I think is my anecdotal

[01:02:02] Reid: and I think it was cool. And like I have three really, really close friends from college that I try to be intentional to stay close to. and we’ve, we have fallen into some systems that allow us to do that nicely. But it will take intentionality and as people have kids and life gets more like complicated in general, that will get harder.

[01:02:23] Joe: it was nice to hear Jeb talk about like how important that has been for him. And also I think there’s validity to your point around like, Having more to fill your life to find filming in than just the role that you’re playing actually probably allows you to play the role better and to navigate these transitions much better.

[01:02:41] Reid: Yeah, A lot of intentionality in that episode.

[01:02:43] Joe: Yeah, for sure. Awesome.