Omnichannel Strategies for Business Flexibility With Darren Marshall

Darren Marshall is the CEO of Steven Smith Teamaker, a luxury tea and beverage company. As an Inc. 5000 growth leader, he has 30 years of experience delivering transformative growth in the consumer sector. Having spent 10 years in the consumer private equity space, Darren has led some of the world’s most iconic CPG brands. Before joining Steven Smith Teamaker, he served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Innovation at The Coca-Cola Company and the Senior Marketing Manager for Taco Bell at PepsiCo.

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

Darren Marshall’s career trajectory and how he joined Steven Smith Teamaker as its CEO
What did Darren enjoy most about working with Steinway & Sons?
Steven Smith Teamaker’s origins and mission
Maintaining a precise omnichannel balance
How to position a company for agility
The importance of marginal CAC — and how to measure it
Constructing your team to align with company culture
Darren talks about his core motivators and stress-reducing rituals

In this episode…

In the rapidly developing e-commerce age, once essential retail categories have become obsolete as brands launch products in high-performing categories optimized for the digital shelf. However, brands renowned for deteriorating categories have struggled to maintain customers and profitability. How can you pivot to adapt to omnichannel approaches?

With 70% of products delivered to the food service industry at the pandemic’s onset, growth-oriented CEO Darren Marshall pivoted to launch products in multiple DTC channels. Restructuring your business model requires agility, discipline, and innovation to maintain inventory, quality standards, and profitability. When expanding to new mediums, you must invest strategically in digital media to target and acquire a diverse customer base. Through collaboration, an intentional culture with motivated professionals, and low customer acquisition costs, you can scale your business in modern verticals.

On this Up Arrow Podcast episode, William Harris invites Darren Marshall, the CEO of Steven Smith Teamaker, to discuss how he adapted the company’s retail model for the e-commerce landscape. Darren addresses the importance of marginal CAC, his rituals for stress reduction, and how to balance omnichannel investments.

Resources mentioned in this episode

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 0:15

Hey everybody, William Harris here. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt in the host of this podcast where I feature experts in the DTC industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. I'm really excited about the guests that I have today Darren Marshall Darren is the CEO of Steven Smith Teamaker and integrated omni channel tea company based in Portland, Oregon. Smith's mission to enrich lives through exceptional T experiences is enabled by its head, heart and hustle culture, which earned its place on the Inc 5000. Darrin has deep international leadership experience building consumer brands ranging from Pantene to Coca Cola to my favorite here, Steinway and Sons. I want to bring up a little bit later on there. And I'm excited to have you on the show today.

Darren Marshall 0:59

William, it's such a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

William Harris 1:02

And I believe if I remember correctly, Yarden Shaked is over the founder over at Veros is the one who introduced us. So thank you, Yarden. for introducing us, I want to bring something up about maybe various little bit later on as well. Before

Darren Marshall 1:15

Yarden and shot and sorry, no, go for it. No, no Yarden and Varos are awesome, such a great platform. And it's been super helpful in in driving our E commerce business. I'm sure we'll talk about it a little bit later.

William Harris 1:30

100% I guess I want to at least dig in a little bit there. Before we get into the meat and potatoes, in the bulk of what we want to talk about today was just the idea of bringing growth to an old stale category through innovation, grit and agility as where you were did and I love that I think there's some some stuff that we can get into there. From an omni channel perspective. Before we do at least want to call out the sponsor here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800 million. We had one that recently IPO and we were ranked as the 12th fastest growing agency in the world by Adweek, you can learn more on our website@elumynt.com elumynt.com That said, never the boring stuff on to the fun stuff. Then, tell me about your backstory of how you ended up coming to be the CEO of Smith Tea Company in in what brought you to where you are today.

Darren Marshall 2:33

Who would have known you know things happen and things evolve. And being agile and flexible through life has been very interesting. I grew up in, in Winnipeg, just a little bit north of you in Canada, in the cold prairies. I was really into music when I was was a kid. And that sort of allowed me to adventure a little bit. I went to college and on a piano scholarship and enjoyed that I realized that, you know, there's a lot of really gifted musicians in the world and demand you know, not so much. So diversify a little bit. I was always interested in in Math and Economics and Business and stuff, stuff like that. So eventually ended up in business school and, and better Procter and Gamble. I was really interested in brands and consumers and how people made choices about what they, what they what brands, they would represent, or would represent them. p&g to the US, then to PepsiCo, and then to to coke. When the recruiter called me about Coke, they said, you know, you have some interesting international experience, was that something you would be interested in pursuing? And I said, Yeah, for sure. Thinking London, Paris, you know, maybe Brussels. And they said, Yeah, how about Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. So, in 1998, ended up in in Kuala Lumpur with my family. We were there for just a couple of weeks went and then the economy completely crashed, which was a very interesting period in life. It didn't kill us though. So from from Malaysia to Singapore, Singapore, to Thailand, Thailand to Hong Kong over the course of just more than a decade, which was super Interesting, lots of lots of interesting things to talk about, then back to the US still was working for Koch and sort of grew up in, in the sort of the global marketing commercial world got interested in involved in the private equity part of that business buying and selling small beverage companies, which then led to leaving coke and joining Steinway and Sons when it was acquired by Paulson and company and help to transform and grow that business, getting it ready for acquisition and potentially an IPO. And when that didn't happen, left and went to Smith tea maker, and I've been here for about five and a half years, been a really interesting time. Lots of things have happened. But an interesting career career journey, when I wouldn't have changed one thing about it. When

William Harris 6:08

I love it, I think that's one of the things that you called out is being willing in business, you have to be willing to pivot. But even in your career, you have to be willing to pivot and looking at okay, well, what is life presenting to you right now at this opportunity? And is it something that you can say yes to and that if you can, sometimes, there's some really great opportunities that are around the corner that you could never even imagine planning for, you just have to kind of take it go with it.

Darren Marshall 6:30

100% and it goes to I think your interest in change your influence your your interest in evolving risk taking all of those those things, there's a lot of a lot of people in fact, I would argue most human beings, you know, they they die 10 miles from where they were born, and their roots are deep. In the the expat world. There's a lot of debate between do you give your kids roots? Or do you give them wings, and we chose wings. And it's something that we've used ourselves and my daughter uses on a regular basis.

William Harris 7:17

That's really cool. I like that roots versus wings. And I like I said, I called out the Steinway and Sons one as being one that I'm particularly I was like, Oh, when I saw that, I was like, this is cool. I love this because I'm a musician as well. And you were talking about, you know, your early career path of there's, there's a lot of musicians out there and not as much opportunity. My goal originally was I wanted to be a rock star. And my mum wisely said, that's not a career path. I did have a band in high school at the time, we were doing really well and, but my mom was like, you know, that's, you gotta get it degree. It's something, something other than, you know, being a rock star. And that led me towards, you know, a whole series of things where, you know, I've got my own situation where it's like, I ended up taking nursing then because I could work three days a week, have four days a week, so I can still do the band thing. And then transition eventually to marketing as well. And so, you know, this idea of starting down one path of being open to what life you know, puts in front of you, I think, is one of the best ways to be able to just chase a lot of different dreams and chase some really fun, interesting experiences as well. But so the Steinway and Sons though, so, you know, I, what do you what was your favorite part about being at Steinway and Sons, again, as a musician? Was it kind of like a little kid in a candy shop? I feel like anytime I see a piano, I have to sit down and play with it, was we actually able to get work done?

Darren Marshall 8:43

Yeah, you know, it's, it's a style is a really interesting place to be. And I'm really glad that that I was there. A lot of people outside of the music industry, we're like, why are you doing that like that has nothing to do with with your background. And I'd argue not quite quite the case. But for people who understand music or culture or luxury, it was a really, really cool place to be. There were a couple of things that I really enjoyed about it. Like you are right in the center of art at its highest form. So the number of, of artists current and past who are like in your building on a regular basis is really, really cool. When you think about the history of the old Steinway building, which is isn't there anymore, but you know, Rachmaninoff was in the basement, practicing on his first trip to America. Coin to Carnegie Hall, so all of these legends have used your space in one way or another, and then the current legends. You know, from from usual Hwang to to Billy Joel to John that teased to whoever it may be like all of these people are like, in your, in your space all the time. So if you're if you're interested in in that sort of environment, then it's it's pretty cool. It's sort of like working at Nike, I guess, in some ways. Sure. And then there's the craft, I mean, the factory is just fantastic. So taking these amazing pieces of, of wood, super highly selective from certain regions that are on certain mountains that have wind from certain areas, so that they build a certain they grow with a certain amount of resonance, or in strength and everything else. Taking those trees, drying them for two years and turning them into 100,000 pieces, which are then crafted by hand into a piece of of art, which is intended to last several lifetimes. It's pretty cool. It's really, really interesting to see how the that transformation happens. And the craftsmanship, which goes into $100,000 piece of, of musical history.

William Harris 11:37

Yeah, that's yeah, that's something I didn't realize about even the selection of the wood, looking at the wind that made it up. But I can, I can somewhat understand that now a little bit, my, my wife likes to garden. And in Minnesota, obviously, we have to start our seeds indoors, because it's too cold for us to plant right away. And so we have a fan that we blow on the plants as they're growing in the basement, because you need that in order for to build up the right strength. Otherwise, when you eventually take it and transplant outside, it's just gonna, you know, keel over and die. And so that's interesting to like you said that it's like, that's a part of the fact that you guys even looked at for the woods that you're sourcing, to make sure that it's strong enough, which is an interesting allegory into just business and life in general, that if you just put Okay, going back to the wings versus roots, if you just put your kids into an environment where they're not challenged, they're not going to develop the resilience that they need to be able to be successful in the world. And so that's a really interesting corollary. Yeah,

Darren Marshall 12:38

yeah, definitely. Definitely. Challenging struggle, I think is, is when I look back on my career, just crazy that it's 30 years now. But it's the challenges, it's the mistakes, it's the screw ups, and then fixing the screw ups. Those are the things that have left a lasting impact. Those are the things that I think make me not only better at what I do, but also make me a little bit more interesting. Having having messed up enough times, to be able to know what not to do, while having enough curiosity to discover things that maybe you haven't done yet.

William Harris 13:27

Yeah, that's interesting. So I want to dig into marginal CAC. But before I do, I also want to hear a little bit about Smith team acre. And for those who are maybe not familiar with it before, give me like a little bit of a spiel about it. It's specifically on the idea of it's like, what drew you to that particular brand of tea makers?

Darren Marshall 13:52

Yeah, so the tea category is the second largest beverage category in the world after water.

William Harris 14:01

Wow. Didn't really have that. There's

Darren Marshall 14:04

a lot of very large cultures in our world where tea is, is the primary beverage. So having worked in the beverage industry, internationally, I had a pretty good different understanding of what tea could be than, than others who maybe didn't have that, that that that exposure. So the tea category in America, it's pretty big. It's a, you know, a couple billion dollars. But it's, it's old, it's flat. It's it's traditional, it's a little stale. There's not a lot of innovation that is going on. So the Smith story actually started many years ago. So Steve Didn't Smith, our founder came back from military service in the 70s. He grew up here in Portland. And he was working at a natural food store. And he had fond memories of his grandmother and them sharing red rose tea, that sort of thing together. So he's working in this natural food store, and they had accidentally got a over shipment of peppermint. And so he and a couple of buddies said, hey, we'll take that. And they loaded up their VW love bus, I presume, and started driving up and down the coast selling peppermint. And that turned into stash tea, it which was founded in 1973, I guess, they grew that business, worked on it for a couple of decades, sold it to to a Japanese company, and thought they retired. And then Steve said to himself after a couple of months, you know, bored and he said, you know, the world doesn't just need a better T. The world needs a brand that could inspire. So what if Merlin the magician met Marco Polo? What would they do together? And that was literally the brief for Tazo, which was founded in 1993. So that business also grew. It was very innovative and very different, very interesting Starbucks, who's up the stream, got interested and bought the business, Steve and the team stayed on for several years, and grew that to a very significant business proposition. He then retired in 2008. The family retired to the south of France, and they got bored yet again. So Steve, Steve is walking through through Saturday markets in Ave or something romantic like that, you know, the smell of the lavender is in the air and the perfumes and the the great soaps, and you know, the great sausages and great wines and all of these very handcrafted things. And so he said, you know, the world doesn't just need a better tea, the world doesn't just need a brand. But this notion of of our teas and all handmade, very special, the stuff that I would want to drink, nobody's doing that. And I should. So Steven Smith, tea maker was founded in 2009. business grew, Steven fortunately passed away. In 2015, a private equity firm got involved, I got involved, certainly thereafter. And there we are today. Today, our business has done pretty well we've we've just more than tripled the size of the business in the last five years. It's it's a, it's a very different consumer goods products company. In that half of our business is direct to consumer half of is wholesale. We've we've been able to to do quite well through the last couple of years, all of which have been pretty turbulent, turbulent. And it really comes down to being agile on channels. really finding opportunities when when when what some doors closed, how do you open others, it's about being agile on on products, and really being able to innovate and find new reasons for people to engage in your product in your category. And having a an infrastructure that that allows for agility. So that goes down to part of it is culture and how do you shape a culture? And part of it is is how do you make sure that you're not depending upon too many others. So having an integrated operation, it has been a huge competitive advantage for us it has enabled that flexibility to be able to move as the market moves. So that's a story.

William Harris 19:37

No, and that's good in one of the things that you said here that I really held on to is the omni channel balance there that you were talking about of you know, having wholesale having DTC that is unique. I feel like there's usually one where it's, you know, it's 9010 or something, there's usually one that you're overly indexed in Um, how did you come about that being the right balance for you guys? And how do you? How do you maintain that balance? How do you know if that's the right balance or where you're, you're moving things into?

Darren Marshall 20:12

Yeah, you know, a part of it is planned and part of it is responsive. So, as we were going into 2020, the first quarter of 2020, this was actually the first eight weeks of 2020, procreate. 70% of our business at that stage was in food service, hotels, restaurants, cafes, that sort of thing. And then we had hobbies in in other areas. And then promptly, you know, most of that 70% of our business disappeared in mid March of 2020. So we had to, if we wanted to stay in existence, if we wanted to support the at that point, 50 or 60, tea makers that were part of our business, then we had to do something different, and do it fast and do it well. And we had we had an E commerce business. But it's not something that we spent a lot of time and certainly didn't invest a lot of money or effort in. And we had to. So in in the middle of March, we had been working to evolve our user experience. And we were getting ready to sort of relaunch something. So we were able to have a platform that that made sense. And basically we took our PPP money, whatever that stands for, can't remember and invested all of it in acquisition media. It's sort of going to Vegas and betting everything, the farm on Shark nine. And that's what we did. And thankfully, we had there's other components to all of this. But there's we had the right product, the right time, people were at home, they were looking for something that was healthy and refreshing the weather weather happened to be super nice. At that point, we had an amazing iced tea proposition that no one else had. And things just took off. And thankfully, we were able to, to to actually grow our business double digits in 2020. And then when our food service business came back, it was that much stronger, because our awareness had grown nationally at a really healthy clip. So that adversity actually turned into the biggest blessing and growth driver of our business ever. And we were able to to not only completely recover that food service business, add on a very significant ecommerce business. And now both of them are growing, you know, 30 40% continued that now it's a couple of years after that, that time. So it's, we're very, we're very fortunate. And it's gone to agility to being to making a bunch of mistakes, learning from those and getting better every day.

William Harris 23:26

When it sounds like, you know, you being the right guy for the job in a situation like this, because you even explained about how you went from country to country to country and you saw, you know, the the.com bust economy, you saw, you know, the other recession that we had in 2008. And so, you know, you kind of have been through a few of these things to know how to be adaptable in your career and in your personal life. And so now it's a matter of, okay, we've got this opportunity, here's what's right in front of us, we're sitting, you know, sitting here, and here's what's happening, how do we be, let's just say nimble with with being able to make or at least even say, willing to make those changes. But being willing to make the changes and actually being able to, like you said be agile enough to make those changes are two very different things. And I think there's a lot of other companies that maybe saw the writing in the wall but weren't able to make those changes, and you call it out this agility? How did you set the company up in a way to where you could actually execute on those thoughts and ideas?

Darren Marshall 24:30

Yeah, good question. I think there it goes to two things. One is, is culture. So we've, we've been able to, to refine and define our culture in a way that that makes sense. We looked at at the people on our team who just really fit well, who do And who we'd love to be able to replicate people like X, Y, and Z. And what was the common element through that. And it really came down to three things head, heart, and hustle. Being able to not be a rocket scientist, but to think logically to think commonly to apply discipline, to be speed logical in what you're doing using data where you can, heart caring, caring about what we do, caring about our consumers and customers who buy our product, caring about each other, and being able to work together and collaborate. That's not not unique. And, or it is unique. And then third is hustle, just getting shit done. And you know, being able to move things forward no matter what it's, it's interesting, just the importance for a smaller business like ours, the ability to execute, and to depend on people who can get things done, it's really, really important. So the whole notion of being able to weed out the people who were not really it consistent with that the that culture, getting them off the bus, as it were, from a Good to Great standpoint. And filling that bus with people who were, you know, ready to fight the people you want to have in the trenches that people are going to roll up their sleeves that you can depend upon. So that was one. The second is like, really leaning into integrated production, and having flexible production. So particularly in the private equity worlds, there's certainly was an awful lot of focus, the private equity playbook was you know, outsource everything. So you keep your, your capital investment super low, and put it on somebody else's books, which could work financially, but then you know, you've got flexibility, you don't have any flexibility on inventory, you don't have any flexibility on on quality, innovation is long and burdensome, because you've got to depend upon someone else. And you just need a lot of upfront cash to be able to move it forward. So a lot of our competitors who were working within that model had all kinds of inventory that they couldn't, they couldn't sell, because their customers had basically shut down during during the pandemic. Whereas we were able to, you know, we had raw tea, how do we how do we package it in a way that can be sold through the channels that are still active, and not everyone had that ability to do it? We did, and we took advantage of it. And part part of it, I guess, also was was like, there was a fear of failure, I wasn't going to show and, like, if we didn't do something, then you are automatically failing. And we weren't gonna let that I wasn't gonna let that happen. So we did whatever it took. I like that you

William Harris 28:29

said, you know, one of the things I like to ask people oftentimes is like, What do you fear? But and I liked that you brought up this idea of this fear of failure, because I would say that that resonates with just about every single person I've ever had on the podcast, more or less, the fear is on, I don't want this to fail. And I even had somebody on it, I'm trying to remember who it was Jess Chan talks about how it's like, she doesn't want they're like this fear of unmet expect tential unmet potential or whatever, where it's like, you know, on a, you know, Tombstone or something, if it says like, Hey, here's Jess Chan you had someone's potential that she didn't use or whatever, right? It's this idea of this feeling of failure, but I liked that you brought this back to not just like, fear of failure being like, how do you define failure, and you define it as just like doing nothing. And I think that's the key, right? Where if you could look at it and saying, like, doing something means that you're not failing, you might you might do something that doesn't work, but you've done something that you've learned now. And so that's not a failure. That's a that's a growing that's a point along the growth path. And I think that's key.

Darren Marshall 28:29

Yeah, and you know, you may need to you take three steps forward, you might need to take two back because you realize that that you know, that's a dead end, but you're still net up one and even if your net down, you still realize that okay, well, there are landmines you know, over that ridge, and I've got to go in a different direction. So yeah, Doing nothing is guaranteed failure, doing something and experimenting and learning quick failing, quick, changing super quick is is just necessary.

William Harris 30:14

Yeah. Something else that you brought up when we talked for the last time was marginal CAC. And I feel like that's a term that not enough people use when they're talking about being able to be, you know, really nimble and wise about how they're growing things. But when you talk about marginal CAC, what are you looking at there? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. So

Darren Marshall 30:39

we've gone from spending nothing on E commerce to is to investing millions of dollars in, in digital media. And it's not a straight line. There's, there's a, you know, an investor might look at this, particularly ones who don't have deep experience and say, Well, this is arithmetic, right? Like, if you want to 10x your business, then let's tax the investment. And it just doesn't doesn't work that way, particularly in a changing environment, like iOS 14, you know, all of a sudden about. So it's, it's interesting you one of the things that there's everybody manages their digital meeting, media in in one way or another. One of the ways that we've looked at this is we've got routines in place where our CFO and myself and our E commerce team get together every week to be able to understand it, the fruits of our labor, you know, we invested this much last week, and here's what it has yielded. And it's interesting when you when you look at those weekly investments over many years, and you plot them, it's really fascinating to look at the differences. And it's not a straight line, it's a it's a line of diminishing returns. And what we've learned from that is there are when you invest more than x, then you're not going to get as much back and when you. So there's those sweet spots along that pathway as you're investing. And you've got to be able to know when you can put on the gas, but when you really need to take on take on the brakes. And there are other certain factors that that start driving within that, in some cases, it's new product innovations or new advertising campaigns that you might use, or certain seasonality elements, it'll change that, but knowing that there's a diminishing marginal return to your investment, and knowing where that sweet spot is, and how it changes on a regular basis is just, it's so important, I think, to have a super detailed finger on the pulse of your business, and particularly in a business where how you invest your E commerce media can make or break the business, the total pundits. So anyway, that's that's, that's how we think about marginal CAC and why it's important.

William Harris 33:41

Well, and I think to your point, one of the things that's really interesting about this is there are sweet spots, and you're either in if you're not looking at it from a marginal CAC perspective. You're you're either under spending or overspending, and you're not sure which one it is. But you're, you're, it's, for lack of a better idea. It's like, you know, gasoline engine, you've either got too much fuel or too much air and you're not getting the right combustion that you need for this to be the highest performing machine that it can be. And that's going to, you know, ruin the engine, or it's going to do damage at some point in time along the way, if you don't get that under control. And I feel like I've seen a lot of businesses where we come in and they're they're just wildly on one side or another. But they're still looking at CAC very flatly right, they're just looking at it as just this single number instead of understanding the nuances there. So I think that the the wisdom, there's just realizing that there have to be nuances and you need to at least know what those are. Yeah, yeah, it's

Darren Marshall 34:42

interesting. Our marketing had sent me a really interesting article about a DTC company that just recently declared bankruptcy and one that I had known and perhaps you as well. And it just hit me that they were complaining about about, you know, all of these factors, Facebook changed and the market changed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Our CAC is actually lower now than it was four years ago. And it's gone up and down, it's about half of what it was last year. And that's because, like last year, we thought it was a straight line. And we've helped we've behaved throw a bunch of money early in the year. And it didn't work, it really didn't work, and it put us back, but being able to look at it super granularly. And finding those those sweet spots of knowing when to be strategic about when to hit the gas, really, really makes a difference. And being able to not spend on investment. And thinking about it even from a from a business standpoint, thinking about it from a contribution basis, as opposed to a pure revenue growth basis really makes a huge difference. And being able to drive for profit as opposed to, to $2 growth.

William Harris 36:19

Well, one of the things that you said, and I'm not a racecar driver. So this might be a horrible analogy, but I think I'll get the rough, the rough idea here is knowing when to hit the gas versus the brakes. In so let's say that you're about to go around a corner a turn, it's not the time when you hit the gas, right, it's like wait, you might need to tap the brakes a little bit. But you do want to accelerate out of the turn from what I understand. You don't want to wait until you're all the way on the straightaway before you hit the gas. And I feel like that's what businesses miss. And one of the ways that we help to try to navigate that is by looking at broader economic things that are going on, as well as your specific like, macro demand coefficients. And so a simple way of looking at this would be, let's just even say right now, tea at home, right? Like it when when people were during 2020, the number of searches for people saying like tea at home, likely skyrocketed during that period of time. And that's when you say, Okay, we hit the gas on this right now, this is one more here, we need to be able to you the more you do this, the more you can anticipate when these fluctuations are going to take place, but let's just say normal fluctuations and what's going on from a seasonal perspective, knowing how do you preemptively get into that and get out of that way at the right times?

Darren Marshall 37:32

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And it sort of goes to knowing your car as well as we play out the analogy, right? You can feel when Okay, well, I need to put on the brake. But unless you really know your car well, and you can feel the vibrations. Like it's one thing to look at the metrics on the dash. But you know, you're seeing birds moving in, around the corners, there's something going around. Yeah. Like knowing that just having the right refined intuition together with the it's an equal left brain, right brain way of looking at things and being able to pounce quickly.

William Harris 38:13

Totally agree. Um, one of the other things you brought up that I appreciate it too was you're talking about having the right people on the team in that being pivotal in this and being able to be an agile company. And it reminded me of something that Jason Lemkin said he's a big influence in the SAS space as well. But he said something along the lines that I'm paraphrasing here, that the only thing worse than a team that's too lean is a team that's not lean enough. And so, how, how did you, you hinted at this a little bit, but getting the right people on board, you can't always change everybody to adopt what the heart, the head, heart and hustle you can't always make everybody the either are or aren't, to a certain degree going to espouse those values in their own personal lives and work lives. So those who aren't How do you handle that?

Darren Marshall 39:17

Yeah, really good question. And we're, we'll continue to work through that for forever.

Darren Marshall 39:28

It's,

Darren Marshall 39:29

it's interesting in our environment, our revenue per employee has, you know, gone up three to four times in the last five years or so. And which is part of the problem is is is we had too many people. We were not lean enough back in the day and had a certain sort of work culture which was very recreational and leisurely and we evolved that to being very growth oriented mode, in most cases, it there's a just a natural selection, you know, people opt out. And, you know, just not the culture that they want to be able to work with. And that's 100%. Okay. If I were to do things differently, then I would have taken a hit right at the beginning and eliminated the replaced the people who were not great culture fits right away, take the hit early and, and rebuild ever like a solid reset. What we did at that point was more evolutionary. And it would have been easier to do it all at once, as you would have been difficult, but in general, it would have been would have been easier. And then the ongoing piece, like there's just hard decisions that you need to make. And it's, you know, people who don't fit the culture and don't fit, what you really need is not just the your technical abilities, I would I would more than then I would rather have someone without the technical abilities, but with the ability to learn, and someone that I'd really want to be in the in the foxhole with to be able to sort of work through things, as opposed to having an expert who just doesn't care. And in those cases, then it's not a it's not a question of if, but when and how, and you just need to evolve them out. Someone said to me, you know, someone who's not engaged is already quit, they just haven't quit yet. They haven't formalized they're quitting. And so they're, you're not going to get value out of out of that individual. And nothing is so difficult that you can't, you can't learn learn that that skill, I'm replaceable, you're replaceable. everybody on our team, and your team probably as well is replaceable. So it's it's not it's not rooted in and ego. And if that ego is not the right fit, you need to get rid of that person.

William Harris 42:28

That's very well said, I've heard it said, you know, we implemented EOS traction over the past, maybe about two years ago now. And I've heard it said, Hire Slow and Fire Fast. Yep, you're, you pull it up. There you go to great book and yeah, higher, higher, higher, what is Hire Slow Fire Fast if I said it wrong, but it said idea where you know that that one wrong fit can absolutely start things. And we did have to have to fire somebody I know, maybe about two years ago. And I remember that being one of those things where it was hard. But it was ultimately the overall morale of everybody else went up as a result of that. And and this person is great, wonderful person just wasn't the right fit. And it's amazing to see how that can be a benefit to the team to make sure that you're refining it.

Darren Marshall 43:21

Yeah, I heard something this week, it was really interesting. It's like when you seek people around a high performer, everybody's performance goes up. 15%. And when you see people around a low performer, everybody's performance goes down. 30%. So it gives us there's all kinds of facts that we need to perhaps work through on that one. But the the notion that that rising tide floats all boats as it were from a performance perspective, totally is it makes sense. And it's very important to get get the right people for sure.

William Harris 44:02

Yeah. Speaking of people, I want to transition a little bit then into who is Darren Marshall, I like to get into personal side of you as well. We talked a little bit about what do you fear? Is there a different answer that you would give besides you know, the fear of failure? Is that your your biggest fear?

Darren Marshall 44:26

Yeah, you know, it's it's interesting. A few years ago, I got into cycling, road cycling. And one of the things that I like to do is to sort of set crazy big goals that are a little audacious and then work really hard to to to reach them. And so, last year So I decided, actually two years ago, I decided that last year I was going to do this cycling race called the Haute Route, through the Dolomites. In Italy, five days, you know, 100 kilometers a day, but 10,000 feet of climbing a day, over five days, so it's aggressive, I have worked my tail off for a year to get into, into shape, to be able to, not only well, to finish and to, to not embarrass myself, and it was, it's great, it's having goals like that I think are real, for me, are really important. And I look at the, for me, the real core motivation through that was, I am not going to be the guy who doesn't finish, I am not going to be the guy, you know, puking my guts out on the side of the road, I am not going to be the guy who, you know, leaves halfway through because, you know, he didn't do the work to be able to, to get it done. It's so that's, that's a, it's also, you know, taught me that being physically fit, certainly helps me deal with stress in a much better way. And it, it helps to get rid of the frustrations and anger and helps me to think through things, you know, all of those things. So it's, it's, it's, it's helpful.

William Harris 46:51

Well, that's great, because that's literally the next question I was gonna ask, which is, how do you deal with the stress of the job? You know, there's been so many ups and downs in the market lately. And it sounds like you've had a lot of significant ups, but it's still likely a lot of stress. Do you have routines? Or, you know, what is your way of handling the stress of what you do?

Darren Marshall 47:12

Yeah, so exercises one, sleep is another I am I'm a, an eight hour a night guy, I need eight hours of sleep, right. And when I wake up refreshed than that's important. I, I believe in hard work. But I also play hard. And what I mean by that is vacations are important time away time with my family time with my friends. So those are important things for me. So it's interesting, I've gotten feedback from our team that by taking appropriate vacation time, it sets a standard and allows people to breathe a little bit to balance their families and their family needs. But when we're here, we're here to to get it done. And that focus and cultural focus is really important. It's, it's, it's effective. And it's the right balance, I guess, is the answer your question.

William Harris 48:23

Yeah. When it's good that you, you know, for lack of a better word that you eat your own dog food, right? Where it's that idea that it's like, okay, if this is what I say is important for you guys, as a team, then I'll model this as well. And I think I commend you for that. I don't do as well as that, as I should probably don't take as many vacations and things and something I'm trying to work on as well. And my wife encourages me to work on more as well, too. So that's good. Um, what about any fun stories of anybody? You know, you you worked a Steinway and Sons in even just Coca Cola and all over the world. So you've likely run into some really cool people influential, famous, inspirational, any good stories of anybody like that you met that you're like, Oh, this is a fun story. I like to tell.

Darren Marshall 49:12

Yeah, you know, it's, it's, it's interesting, you get more senior in bigger companies and you you do meet some interesting folks. And certainly in the in the arts world, there's a lot of people that I've had the pleasure of meeting. Some of them are impressive, and some of them aren't. But there's, there's two actually people that particularly from my professional life that that I stayed remember, in a big way. So I remember way back when I was an absolute Junior Woodchuck at Procter and Gamble. I was in Toronto on a Monday morning getting a super early flight to to Cincinnati and To get to who they were using the tiny little planes to be able to make that that flight, and you had to get on a bus to go to, to the plane. And, you know, PNG people, particularly at that time, you know, looked a certain way. It was what you wore, you know, what you look like, you know, all of that stuff was very, very defined. So I remember being on this bus and I went to back to the back, and it was like, Oh, my goodness. And I get sit down beside this guy. And, and he said, how your proctor, aren't you? And I said, Yes. And you said, I'm John pepper, the CEO of, of, of Procter and Gamble. And so we talked on this little boss on the plane and stuff. And it was, it was really cool. You know, here I am. 20 Something Junior, with Chuck, you know, with the king. And he was just the most the most humble guy and like, Super Down to Earth was interested in who I was, you know, what my career journey had been? And then at the end, you're like, Yeah, I'm going back to the office, you want to drive? And you just, yeah, it was is like that's what a leader of a fortune 50 company should be. I think I've met also a lot who are not that overtime. But that sense of humility and authenticity, I think was really interesting. And then I remember when I worked in Thailand, our division at Coke, was planning a start to sort of the new strategic planning session, and we wanted to inspire people we had done well, and, and so I remembered, you know, my boss, who was the president of the division had said, Okay, well, what should the theme the and we're thinking sort of like the moonshot, and how do we, you know, go bigger go home type of type of thing. So we, we decided on this moon sort of theme, and we ended up getting Neil Armstrong to come to this this kickoff. Nice. And he's unfortunately passed at this point. But But talking with him, about his experience, being the first man on the moon was just again, really, he was he's done this amazing thing, but he was super humble about it. He was like, how were you chosen to be, you know, the guy that put his first foot on the moon, he's the guy closest to the door. And, and, you know, thinking about the technology and asking like, it was just it was such a humble way of being able to not only create that audacious leap into, into mankind, I guess. But But the way he did, it was just, you know, you work hard and you do the discipline. You, you do what it takes, you have curiosity and bravery, to be able to make it happen. And I guess those are sort of the values that I resonate with. Being being curious and adventuresome, and being tenacious, but caring about people and how they come together. Those are those are important things. And so those people have been important to me.

William Harris 53:46

Almost the epitome of head heart and hustle right there. Right, like, yeah, to be smart to be an astronaut. I have the heart. But there's also a hustle, too. It's not it's not for the faint of heart, either. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Darren, this has been absolutely wonderful talking to you today. I appreciate you sharing your wisdom with us. If people want to connect with you follow you work with you. What's the best way for them to do that?

Darren Marshall 54:19

I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me there. Darren@smithtea.com is my or Darren@smithtea.com is my email address. You can find me on LinkedIn with those coordinates. And I hope that people enjoy our products. Come check us out and hopefully we can make your day just a little bit better.

William Harris 54:45

I love it. That's awesome. Thank you again for coming out here today turn. Thanks a lot. Thank you, everybody. Have a great day.

Outro 54:53

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