The Benefits of Multi-Channel Marketing for B2C Businesses With Brian Nolan

Brian Nolan is the Co-founder and CEO of BookOutdoors, a fast-growing platform for planning and booking personalized outdoor getaways. His passion for building beautifully designed products has made him a veteran of the e-commerce industry. As a serial tech entrepreneur, Brian co-founded Suspect Clothing, the HJN Group, Top-Bargains, and Sellbrite — which was acquired by GoDaddy in 2019.

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

Brian Nolan shares how his trajectory in the e-commerce industry led him to found BookOutdoors
The differences in marketing strategies for B2B and B2C brands
What are the benefits of multi-channel marketing?
How to lead with empathy and align team members with the company’s vision
The obstacles founders overlook when pursuing an acquisition by another corporation
Brian’s coping techniques for stress relief
Brian reflects on his experience as an EMT, fireman, and magician — and how he acquired a ranch
How Brian's relationship with football coach Pete Carroll influenced his business philosophy

In this episode…

As the e-commerce industry becomes more prominent in the corporate space, marketing strategies have evolved significantly. B2C businesses emphasize the importance of targeting consumer emotions through convincing storytelling — accomplished through multi-channel marketing techniques. How can your business benefit from multi-channel marketing?

eCommerce entrepreneur Brian Nolan believes multi-channel marketing is beneficial for most online retailers. Since customers differ in their preferred retailers, marketing on various channels can broaden your target audience and provide an opportunity to spend less of your marketing budget. Spending less to have a more effective marketing strategy across multiple platforms is helpful for any business looking to gain more traction in the marketplace. Brian’s knowledge of the industry and experience founding e-commerce brands offers encouragement to fellow entrepreneurs.

On this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Brian Nolan, the Co-founder and CEO of BookOutdoors, to discuss the lessons he’s learned from his entrepreneurial endeavors. Brian talks about the differences in marketing strategies for B2B and B2C brands, the benefits of multi-channel marketing, and the challenges many founders overlook during business acquisitions. He also expresses how leading with empathy equips team members to work toward a common goal.

Resources mentioned in this episode

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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, it's William Harris here. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt. In the host of this podcast, I feature experts in the D2C industry sharing strategies on how to scale your business and achieve your goals. I'm really excited about the guests that I have here. Brian Nolan. Brian is a successful serial tech entrepreneur. He's a veteran of the e-commerce industry and his first company Sellbrite was acquired by GoDaddy in 2019. Now Brian is Co-founder and CEO of BookOutdoors, the fastest growing destination for finding and booking outdoor travel accommodations, such as campgrounds, RV parks, glamping, resorts, and more. The reason why this is a special guests to me is because Brian and I go way back, I started working at Sellbrite back when you guys we're still at Idealab. They're out in California, and founded by Bill Gross, right for those of you who know, IDEA Lab. And so I've known you and I've worked with you personally and consider you somebody that's a friend and a mentor. So I'm really excited to have you here, Brian.

Brian Nolan 1:10

Awesome. I feel the same about you, man. And I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

William Harris 1:13

Yeah, thanks. Before we jump in, we've got a lot of things that I want to talk through here, which is just even you know, multichannel, but then going into what you're doing at BookOutdoors, and how that translates from B2B to B2C. Before we do I want to call out the sponsorship. 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. And we were ranked as the fast 1212 fastest growing agency in the world by Adweek. You can learn more on our website at Elumynt. Which is e-l-u-m-y-n-t.com. That's it for the boring stuff under the good stuff. Brian, tell me the backstory of how did you end up at BookOutdoors? So we talked about the acquisition that Sellbrite but Okay, moving forward from there, what what happened? What was it like at GoDaddy? And what led you into BookOutdoors.com?

Brian Nolan 2:01

Sure. So I ended up spending two years at GoDaddy as a product lead for their emerging e-commerce and payments division. And that was fun and all but it's not it's not a startup, right. So I wanted to get back into the startup world where that's my sweet spot, I thrive I love the zero to one journey. And so after two years, I left GoDaddy and just so happened to connect with I had actually planned to take some time off and kind of think about what I wanted to do next. How could I use my decades of e-commerce experience to do something new, but not the same old thing? I wanted a new challenge. I didn't want to just repeat and do the same thing I've been doing for the last 10 years. So as luck would have it is the stars aligned. Roy Rubin who is the founder of Magento, the world's biggest e-commerce platform, I happen to get to know him a little bit. Just being in the e-commerce space. We had mutual friends. And he reached out and said, Hey, what are you doing next? I want to talk to you about this idea. And so he had connected with Amir highpass, who's who's now our co-founder in this business. Amir is a owner of RV parks and campgrounds, RV resorts, really in the southeast of the US. He's He's a leader in the outdoor hospitality space, really well known in the industry and a big advocate for outdoor hospitality. And he had been tinkering with the idea of a travel marketplace. You know, think Expedia or booking.com BUTCHER specifically for outdoor hospitality. He, as a campground owner wanted that distribution channel to be able to sell his inventory to get more visibility for his campgrounds. So Roy had connected with Amir, he loved the idea of being an RVer himself, who's Roy's now an investor with a with a he's got a VC firm called R-Squared. And so you connected with me they both realized they needed a tech co-founder, CEO tight to run this thing. And so we started chatting and I realized, you know what, first of all, I love the outdoors. I grew up in Southern California now live in Colorado. I love getting outdoors. But I felt like this was that perfect sweet spot of it's a you know, we'd be building a B2C marketplace. And so I can take all my learnings working with the biggest marketplaces in the world for a decade like Amazon and eBay and Etsy and those guys and everything I knew about e-commerce and apply it to this business. But it's but it's still something new and different for me. So it's a different verticals travel. It's a B2C so we can build this consumer facing brand that I thought would be really fun to do, which is really fun to do. And so it was kind of exactly what I was looking for. So I said, Okay, give me a month off. Let me take some decompression time here. And then we'll dive into it. And so that's what happened. That's how we started.

William Harris 5:04

I love that. And I think one of the things that I love about that is, is just the idea of, you know, as, as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, you're, you're the type of person who has to sometimes move in order to feel good about just life and yourself and whatever. And so, you know, jumping right into something makes a lot of sense, especially something that you enjoy, like the outdoors, right?

Brian Nolan 5:25

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, honestly, really, that month, I was like, chomping at the bit. And I was doing my research and learning, it was a new industry for travel, you know, working in the travel space in the outdoor hospitality space is new. So I like that, as an entrepreneur, I like entrepreneurs that come into a space, that bring experience that can be applied, but are a little bit naive to the space, because then you're not constrained mentally in a box, right? You can think outside the box, and do things differently maybe than people are used to. And that's how disruption happens. So Exactly, yeah, yeah,

William Harris 5:59

taking something from one area, bringing it to another area that nobody else was thinking of, because sometimes they have tunnel vision and what they will, this is just what we do, and you can break them out of that mold.

Brian Nolan 6:08

Right. And at the same time, I wanted to be sensitive and aware that I don't want to kick the door and be like, This is how we're all going to do it now in this industry, right? So having a mirror as a co-founder who is very knowledgeable about this industry, who does have the relationships seemingly, everybody helps a lot helps validate what we're doing. We and again, I came in listening and learning and seeing where we can apply things from the e-commerce even the traditional hospitality space to this base without completely making too many waves. And, you know, and and some people off.

William Harris 6:48

Yeah, for sure. What I want to dig into that, like, what are some of the differences that you've noticed, in running, let's just say B2C, as opposed to B2B and like the different like market strategies that you've had to employ? Or just what are the differences you've noticed or similarities as well?

Brian Nolan 7:05

Very different from a marketing perspective, right? Sellbrite was a B2B SaaS business. So we're targeting and we're marketing to other businesses, small to mid sized e-commerce businesses. You talk to them differently. You know, the trade shows a different all those things. This is now in a space where you there is some competition for eyeballs? Maybe not. There's a little bit of direct competition, but there's other kinds of adjacent competition, too. So you're competing for eyeballs for somebody's attention on what how they're going to plan their next trip? What are they going to do, you're even competing with hotels, and, you know, and all the big guys, so it's very different. Definitely, you know, brand and social media and experience and lifestyle are way more important in a consumer facing one than then on a B2B. While it's still, you know, a little important, but you're trying to tap into the emotions of the consumer and get them to not only think about outdoor hospitality for their next trip, but booking with us, and why we're better, and why we can create a better experience from the beginning from the planning and booking stages of your trip, which is also the exciting piece, right? Yeah, so it's just a different angle and different employees and you know, different talent that you need to hire, to attract that kind of user in different KPIs that you're measuring.

William Harris 8:37

Yeah, you know, what are some of the different KPIs are there are there certain things that you've been surprised by you're like, Wow, that was such an important KPI for us in the SaaS world. And we're not using that at all here. And maybe ones that you're like, well, that's a KPI we didn't track at all in SaaS, but this is wildly important for us here.

Brian Nolan 8:56

Well, I think the big thing is the business model is different. So in SaaS, it's recurring revenue, right? And which is a beautiful thing. Revenue just stacks up month over month and you're really focused and concentrated on churn what your churn rates are. And that's, you know, monthly recurring revenue MRR or ARR annual recurring revenue if in turn those are kind of the big numbers that you're focused on where in this space Yes, you want repeat customers as well obviously but you're looking at row as return on adspend and you know conversion rates and things like that much more closely.

William Harris 9:34

Yeah. I want to shift into Sellbrite stuff a little bit because we had talked about this before multi channel being you know, when you're talking to a lot of brands are looking at how do I go omni channel How do I go multi channel but how do I make sure that I do that in a way that makes sense to my brand and it might not always make sense for every brand or the way that you do it doesn't make sense for every brand and you have a lot of experience in this both before starting Sellbrite and through Sellbrite, what are some of your thoughts there on the different ways that people are approaching multichannel?

Brian Nolan 10:05

So it's very interesting. This is one area that definitely carries over from my experience at Sellbrite, right to BookOutdoors. Because a lot of it is education of the observe of the customer of the user, right? Why do you want to adopt a multi channel strategy, and it's very similar for e-commerce and travel. And it's really about the idea of getting in front of a why as wide of an audience as possible. Think about yourself and where you shop online. Not everybody shops at the same places online, especially if you're buying different kinds of products. And so it's not just you know, just you can have your own website, to take bookings or to take sit, you know, orders directly, and we recommend that. But not everybody's going to do a Google search and go find your website and shop there. People have habits that shopping on Amazon, I do a lot of my shopping on Amazon, and I go to eBay first, you know, hard to find things or whatever. So the audiences are different. And you need to get in front of as many people as possible. Now, what you list is different, right? That you can have different strategies there. So back at Sellbrite, what we learned is sometimes brands will just list everything everywhere, which is great, they have more of a commodity product, they just want to get as many sales and eyeballs as possible. And most marketplaces, including BookOutdoors, we charge the seller, a commission for the sale. And the what we always talked about was think of that as a essentially risk free marketing expense, you don't pay that unless you actually get a sale, very different than running Google ads do that you have to pay for the clicks, even if you don't get a sale. So you're you're it's access to a huge audience, hundreds of millions or billions of users in certain cases, right? For, for a small commission to the sale. So some people, some brands make sense to list everything. In particular, like fashion brands, oftentimes, it makes sense to use the marketplaces as liquidation channels. So they have this season's all the current products on their own website, they do drops there. And then they have leftover excess inventory from last season or whatever. And they can put that on eBay or Amazon or whatever. Same thing in the travel space, we talked about, you know, sometimes these campgrounds are super popular on the weekends and and holidays, they don't need help there. But they do need help on the weekdays or off seasons. So same kind of strategy. And then finally, in certain cases, it doesn't sometimes, multichannel strategy doesn't make sense. And where it doesn't make sense we've seen the most is if you have some kind of unique experience that you've created on your own website that can only be done there. So think like if you're, you know, selling eyeglasses, and you have a certain experience on your site that's using the camera so you can see the glasses on your face and try things on. You built biology. Yeah, yeah. And you've built this technology to, to, you know, create that kind of experience? Well, you can't just go listed on eBay and have that same experience necessarily, right. So in those cases, maybe it doesn't make sense or, you know, again, it's maybe for access inventory. But I think broadly, having a multi channel strategy does make sense for most e-commerce retailers. And that was always our position at Sellbrite. And what led us to start Sellbrite because we were doing that at an online retailer before Sellbrite?

William Harris 13:42

Yeah, we like you said, it's a lot of this comes down to just following your customer, where's your customer at and if your customer is already over on Amazon, for instance, last time, I remember checking those stats, Amazon takes about 76% of the product searches now. So 76% of all products, just start on Amazon, that's a massive amount. If you're not there, you know, you're saying hey, I just want people to come to my website, you're missing out on an insane amount of people that might be looking for something very similar to you. You're just not even showing up. You're just not even in the game at all with them. And so the same you

Brian Nolan 14:15

don't want your website listed on gray, like you don't want to show,

William Harris 14:19

right? Yeah, I know, I don't want to have a it's like even when we say like, I don't even want a website. If they want me to come to my store. It's okay, you know, well, maybe there's a way that you can be where your customers are. And I liked how you called out the idea of excess inventory because that is something that happens a lot, especially like you said in fashion where it's, it's this season and next season, this isn't going to be okay anymore, it's not going to be good. And so they can't sell at full price they need to move that inventory. And that's a big cash flow issue for a lot of businesses and being able to offload that inventory, even if it's at a discount is great. And I think what I've seen a lot of businesses do in those situations then would be to sometimes listed under like a different name. I got like an outlet name, right? And so it'd be, you know, fashion outlet or something. So that way they, they can still maintain full prices on their website for all of the current stuff, but then just moving this offseason stuff there without diluting their brand equity to

Brian Nolan 15:12

Yeah, that that brand equity and integrity is super important for especially the higher end you get with the brand. Yeah, yeah, we say I mean, that's, if you remember the flash sale sites like Gilt Groupe and hot look like that was part of the appeal there was that they were behind a login and paywall and so you not everybody could just see that their brand was there, you had to be a member you had to log in. Right. So same kind of thing here.

William Harris 15:42

One of the other things that I wanted to talk to you about too was leading with empathy. This is something that I witnessed firsthand with you, you were very good about being able to lead the Sellbrite team. For those who don't know, I was remote I was in Minnesota, you guys were in California. And I still felt like I was part of the team. As much as anybody else would have, how, what are some tips or tricks that you have for people who are leading any team, whether it's remote or not, but just leading with empathy, and being able to get your team aligned on these visions and where you're going?

Brian Nolan 16:16

Man, I mean, first of all, thank you for saying that we it's not easy to have most employees in a single physical location and have some remote and still make them feel included. So I'm glad you felt that way. You know, empathy, I think is like the most important characteristic of a leader, you need to listen, you need to put yourself in other people's shoes, whether that's your customer, your partners, your employees, everybody's different, everybody has things going on. I'm not perfect, either. Obviously, I had, you know, times where I faltered there, but I tried to do that. And we made that part of our like, training material, even with our customer support team at Sellbrite. To talk to normally when customers are calling you, it's because something's wrong, and they're upset. And so we put empathy training in our customer support training program, so that they can understand they can put themselves in the customer shoes. And you know what, after six, eight hours of just being sometimes yelled at as a customer service rep from customers, it's hard to do that. You have to be like, very aware. But it's so important. And on the employee side, you know, again, it's just sitting and listening and trying to understand the point of view of the of the employee and where they're coming from. building that trust early on, you try to hire people that you feel like you can build trust quickly. You know, so, you know, in terms of like tips or tricks, I don't know if there are any real I mean, studying what empathy is. And understanding that piece of it, I think is helpful. I mean, we used, I still use mindfulness meditation as a way to be present as a exercise for my brain to be present on conversations and not be distracted. And maybe that's a big part of empathy, too, is to be able to sit and listen and truly hear what the person is saying, and digest that. And so if you're distracted, and you have things going off, that's hard to do. And you don't you kind of you feel distracted to the other person, right? Sure. So mindfulness meditation, and you know, just There's cool apps now that have been around for a while, like headspace and calm and 10% happier that can help you learn how to do that. But I think that's, you know, a big important thing as a leader is to be empathetic.

William Harris 18:54

Yeah, recognizing, like you said that they're a human being. They're not just a cog in the wheel. There's a really good painting that I liked by Richard and I might forget the last name, I think it's Sergeant Richard Sargent, called anger transference. And it shows this, like four different quadrants were in the top quadrant, the boss is yelling at this guy. And then the next one, it shows this guy yelling at his wife, because he's got holes in his socks. And then the next one shows his wife yelling at their son, because maybe he made a mess or something I don't remember. And then the next one shows the son yelling at the cat, right? And it's just that idea that it's very easy for anger to transfer from person to person and I can imagine being on a phone call and customer support. You're getting yelled at all day, it's very hard to refine your your calmness in your balance when that's when has just been spewed all over you. But having a leadership team that is pouring back into some of that empathy and compassion, even having Yoga I remember we had a yoga session at Sellbrite as well and you know, those things can help to just rebuild that back up and reminding remind Seeing them that you know, those customers are also human beings who may just be transferring some of the anger that they're, they're having the frustration they're having maybe their bosses yelled at them. And so they're yelling at you now. And it's not make it right. But it's like, how do we, we have to end that cycle at some point in time? How do we flip that back around, and there was Ted Rubin on the show a couple of weeks ago. And one of the things he talked about was, the time that you have 100% of your customers attention, for the most part, is during customer service, that is the time when they absolutely want to hear what you have to say. They're listening to every word. And they're, they're watching every word very closely, that you say, and how you handle those situations can be absolutely magical, or absolutely detrimental to the business

Brian Nolan 20:41

100%. And a couple points I wanted to make there, too. We've had several instances at Sellbrite, where we were on like the review sites and so forth, where we turned a one star review into a five star review, just because we talked to the customer and listened to them, and had a human conversation and understood where they were coming from and apologized and explained where we were coming from and had that human connection. And they appreciated that. And flip the review from a one to a five, like multiple times over the course of our you know, business there. So the other thing I would point I wanted to make too, is we're all human, we all mess up, I've had it especially as an entrepreneur, when the stress is high, I've come in to the to the office and been a jerk with the team, and not practice empathy and not showing empathy to the team. And in those situations, go, you know, go home sleep on it, maybe they'll come back the next day or later that day, and swallow your pride and acknowledge that you messed up and that they don't, you know, they deserve to be treated better or whatever. And like kind of talk through it with them. And that goes a long way. And it builds that trust back up. And you know, we had to do that. Not hold fortunately, not a lot of times, but I had to do that a couple times.

William Harris 22:02

It may have even built the trust up more than if you hadn't lost not saying that you should lose your cool as a boss. But but you know, I remember hearing even in marriage counseling, they'll say something along the lines is you know, if you've been married for 10 years, and you genuinely say to each other Oh, we've never had a fight, it's like, you have to question whether we actually love each other then or not. Because if you love each other, like there are going to be emotions. And those emotions are going to disagree from time to time. And you're going to have disagreements and arguments and fights. And it's a natural part of that. Otherwise, maybe you're just too apathetic to even have have that emotional disagreement in the first place. And so by having sometimes those moments where where things don't go the way that you wanted them to, you have those even as a team, but then you can acknowledge that and you can apologize, and you can get better. I think that that goes even further. Because we all wonder, well, but sure, it's easy to be kind when things are working out well. But what happens when something isn't going the right way? And if you do have that ability to come back to somebody and say, Hey, I messed up. I think that guilt goes even further for gaining somebody's trust and appreciation.

Brian Nolan 23:05

Right? 100% agree.

William Harris 23:09

Something else I wanted to talk to you about then too, was the acquisition. So a lot of people who are listening, either have been acquired or are looking to get acquired. And it's an exciting thing. It's a scary thing. And so people who are thinking about going through this or just going through this, I'd love to talk to them. Have you talked to them a little bit about your experience of what was it like? So you get through this? You know, how do you feel? You know, where do you go from here?

Brian Nolan 23:39

Yeah, so we were fortunate to be you know, one of the few businesses that do get acquired, it's hard and most businesses don't get acquired. And we were also lucky to get acquired by a great company and GoDaddy. And they've been around for a long time. Obviously, they've built a great culture. They've been working really hard to revamp their reputation from the early days over the last sure decade or more. And so I would say the first thing is, as you're, you know, in the process, I guess of acquisition or you're courting suitors for acquisition, culture has got to be one of the biggest things like that was so important for us. We had actually had the benefit of working with GoDaddy as a partner first. So we got to know the people and really liked them and like, they're all people that I would have hired myself at Sellbrite, right. And that goes so far and makes such a huge difference. And ultimately, why we ended up going with them. Now, you know, like I said, In the beginning, GoDaddy was a great place and the culture was great and we were doing some fun stuff there. But it is you're going from I went from a 20 Something person startup to a multi 1000 person Corporation and things are different, right. So as a founder as an entrepreneur, small startup kind of entrepreneur, that transition is sometimes hard. GoDaddy did have a really good, actually transition team, they called the transition team to, to, to integrate us as fast as possible. And so that helped a lot as well. But there's a couple of things here. So one is just getting into a bigger company, and where you're no longer the boss, and you're you're just, you know, we became director, senior director level, I think. And so we had people under us, we have people over us. And you get to learn different things, which is great, and you learn from different people, but it is very different spend a lot of times planning for meetings, and, you know, with the CEO, and so forth. But I think the big thing is, entrepreneurs often tie their identity to their business, right, you hear talked about as their baby, or as right times, they're just known like, one to one, you think of the business, you think of that person. And they're tied very closely together. And so I think one of the biggest challenges for any entrepreneur, any founder, that whose company gets acquired is that disconnection of your identity, or giving your baby handing your baby over to somebody who can now do whatever they want with it. And sometimes they keep that brand going, and they, you know, you keep driving the mission forward of what you wanted to do. And sometimes they have other plans, and they want to just bring in the technical assets, or the talent or whatever, and the brand is not as important, they kind of let that go by the wayside. And that's really hard to deal with as a founder, when you've poured your life and blood, sweat and tears into something for however many years to have to turn it over. And you get this jubilation of Awesome, we got acquired and might be life changing on from a financial perspective, but then, to see what, you know, the the acquirer does with your business and your brand, and your employees and your customers. Sure, is hard, sometimes, like they don't, they, you know, from my experience, they don't get treated the same as you treated them. And there's often you know, our employees were fortunate, there was other opportunities for them to move within the company and do things they are interested in. So that's, that's important piece of it. But you know, sometimes the customers don't get the just talked about like that empathy in that, you know, a customer gets to talk to the founder, and like, turn the story, you know, one or two, five stars, all of a sudden that goes away. And, you know, I don't have that kind of control anymore. And, and it's tough and funny thing is that, you know, so we got acquired in 2019, four years ago, I still occasionally get, like LinkedIn messages, or even text messages from customers that had my cell phone number back in the day, ask them for help on something. And I'm like, I'm not even there anymore. I can't, you know, there's nothing I can do. So I've seen some stats, I talked to somebody who was at Google for a while helping his whole job was to help the entrepreneurs of the companies that Google acquired, assimilate into Google and find their purpose and still perform at that same level that they were performing as a as a founder. And I think he saw something like 43 companies acquired during his time, and 42 of the founders were unhappy, at some level, from unhappy down to like, clinically depressed, only one was truly happy. And that one was never tied his identity to the business in the first place. So for him, it was a pure transaction. And it was easy for him, or her, I don't know if he or her. So it's hard. And it's a true. You know, I want to make sure I come across because this is not like a pity story. Like, oh, woe is me, I got my company acquired. And now I'm sad. It's a great thing to have your company acquired for the most part. But there is this piece that doesn't get talked about very much that is that, you know, it's hard to kind of deal with for most founders. And, you know, oftentimes they'll leave the company that acquired them before. The time that they come in, I come into two years. After we got acquired, we saw some other companies be acquired by GoDaddy and some of those founders left less than a year, just because it wasn't their thing. And people deal with it differently. And so yeah, it's just something to kind of be aware of.

William Harris 29:45

How do you deal with the stress of being an entrepreneur and acquisition? I mean, there's, like you said, you talked a little bit about meditation and headspace but, you know, do you have routines or things that have helped you cope with even all way through running the business and the ups and downs and the stress of that,

Brian Nolan 30:03

I just shove it down.

William Harris 30:07

That's true at all.

Brian Nolan 30:10

You know, I don't have a, I don't have a routine that I do every day, I kind of pick different tools for my tool chest depending on how I'm feeling or what I'm dealing with. fortunate to have a supportive spouse that I can vent to if I need to, and she'll listen and be empathetic to me huge. And I try not to burden her too much. But it is a roller coaster to be an entrepreneur rollercoaster of emotions, right? You can have really great days and really bad days, the next day, next day. Obviously, I get outdoors, I think being outdoors is is a huge part of mental wellness, we say this all the time at BookOutdoors that we feel like getting outdoors is the remedy or the balance to our Connected modern lives. Just unplug just go for a walk, take a trip, if you can use BookOutdoors to book it, but you know, getting outdoors and taking a breath of fresh air going for a five minute walk, listening to the birds seeing seeing just looking at nature, there's studies that have shown that, you know, it's, it increases cognitive function and creativity and obviously reduces stress. So finding those things that work for you. You know, so for some people, it's like playing video games and just being immersed in a different world for sure, an hour or whatever. And like, just kind of forgetting about it. So, you know, when it is hard, I tried to clear my mind in one way or another meditation or whatever. And you know, just find things that can give me a little bit of space from the thing that's stressing me and so I can get back to it. I want

William Harris 31:55

to come back to the BookOutdoors thing here, there's a thing I know, oftentimes in the D2C space on Twitter, where we talk about touch grass, it's like this thing. It's like touch grass on the weekend. And, and to your point, there's studies, I think science is just now really starting to catch up to a lot of how much this matters to our human emotion and even our physical health of Let's even say, you know, grounding and having your feet on the grass and having your feet touch that and let's just even talking about like, ions, and everything like this is beyond me. Like I'm not the scientists that will even begin to claim to understand this. But even just seeing the color blue outside in the sky, seeing the colors of green feeling the breeze move through you all of the different Let's even say like the pollens and the things that are out there, the sounds of bees, you don't even necessarily know it. But like all of these things, they're having an impact on us. And let's even say for 1000s of years, humans have existed around these types of environments, and they are coming to us they we've almost adapted to that and to remove ourselves too much from it. I think that there is a detriment to it. So I would say that I'm a huge fan in agreeing with you of get outdoors and just be a part of nature.

Brian Nolan 33:09

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's even a part of meditation is feeling your feet on the earth and like the gravity pulling you down. And yeah, yeah.

William Harris 33:21

I want to talk a little bit about just like the personal side of who is Brian Nolan as well. I know there's some fun things that I know a lot more about you maybe that I do all of our other guests, but you used to be an EMT. Before way, way, way before, right. Like what was what was that like being an EMT? Like what are the fun things, bad things? Any good stories there that you could tell? I know, there's some that you probably can't tell, but some that you could tell? Yeah.

Brian Nolan 33:48

Yeah. So as a EMT P which is a paramedic EMT, so Okay, advanced level advanced level. So what happened, you know, I was in a mold. I was in the early web one o.com era. And when the.com crash happened, I got laid off like many others. And then right after that 911 happened, and I had grown up loving. Again, I'm going to date myself, shows like emergency and chips and like, first responder kind of shows back in the day. And, and then in high school I was in I grew up in Los Angeles. So I was in the LA City Fire Department Junior explorer program in high school, or junior high high school, I guess. And so always kind of been fascinated with that. And so once, I don't know, I was like, you know, early 20s Um, the, the tech industry was kind of in shambles at the moment. 911 happen. I didn't have a wife or kids or anything then. So I was like, You know what, I'm going to do this. I'm going to go take an EMT course first. So like a basic one, which is only like three months and become an EMT. And so maybe join the fire department and like, go that route. Maybe that's my career calling So I did that and joined a private ambulance company as an EMT. First, the basic life support. And mostly what you do there is like transfers of patients from one hospital to another, not the most glamorous thing in the world, but you got to pay your dues do that, I think nine months is the minimum requirement to then enroll in paramedic school where you learn all the advanced life support, all the drugs, all the innovation, dysregulation, all that kind of stuff. So I as soon as I could applied to the best paramedic school in LA and went through pair Mexico, which is like 45 units, I think in a year, which is a ton, you do a full anatomy physiology course and plus all the paramedic stuff and and became a paramedic and then trained with LA City Fire Department was testing to join fire departments around Southern California mostly. And working for another private ambulance company that had the contract to do all the 911 stuff for LA County Fire and Santa Monica fire and so forth. So was running 911 calls and man that is talking about dealing with stress, right, they talk about being in the fire department is many hours of boredom interrupted by chaotic stress. Sure, well, I haven't work at stations that were super busy. So we were like, go go go for 24 hours straight. But it really taught me to fall back on your training and what you know, and don't let the environment and the stressful situation fluster you, because you cannot operate as a paramedic. If you do that, right, you have to get back to what you know, and how to do it. So it was it was fun. And I still miss doing that sometimes, like, it's different every single day, obviously, there's different things that come up. And I've volunteered for fire departments, even police departments since then, to just kind of get back into it a little bit and give back as well. But that was you know, really fun. But what I did learn was that I still really love technology and the internet and things are starting to come back. And I didn't particularly particularly love the culture of the fire department. And what it was like to do 24 or 48 or 72 hour shifts and not be home. And that was tough. That was really tough. So I did it for a total from the very beginning of EMT to then being a paramedic for about five years. But transitioned out and started a different company after that. But it was still like us. I still miss it. It was fun. I saw some horrible, horrible things, some funny things, made some great friends, you know, you try you have to trust and rely on your partners. But yeah, it was it was fun.

William Harris 37:52

Yeah, you and I've talked about this before, because I was I was a registered nurse for anybody listening that didn't know that. And so saw a lot of similar things in our fields there. And one of the things that I take away one of my biggest memories from that time of my life was and I don't know if you can relate to this, I've I've held the hand of people as they take their last breath on numerous occasions and you feel life leave their body. And for me, it was let's talk about grounding. It's it's one of those moments where it reminds me that there are more important things in life. And sometimes if I get out of my clean headspace and you know, get overwhelmed or stressed out or frustrated reminding myself that it's like, you know, is this the most important thing that's going on in the world right now? Or is this something that is much more trivial? And I need to remind myself this, like I'm breathing, that in and of itself is a miracle. And so as I'm breathing, just come back to Earth in appreciate where you are right now? And yeah, yeah,

Brian Nolan 38:54

I've done that. And I've also given people life back, which I'm sure you did to where that's also incredible to give them a second chance and to bring their to see them dead on the ground. And then alive again, is incredible. Yeah. But yeah, I try to remember that now, too. Now I have a daughter, seven year old daughter. And, you know, when I'm stressed out about work and trying to get something done that I feel like needs to get done right now today, and it's late, my daughter wants to spend time with me. I stop and I try to stop and think about like, Does this really need to get done right now? Can this if I wait till tomorrow morning? What's the impact? And what's clearly more important than spending time with her? So I tried to do that and tried to like, take stop and break and be present with her realizing that email or whatever it is, in certain cases. Yes, it does need to get out today. Right. There's deadlines, but in many cases, it doesn't matter if it gets done today at 678 pm or tomorrow at seven 8am and just get it done and you're probably thinking clear or clearly anyway in the morning, so, yeah, I tried to remember that as well.

William Harris 40:05

Something else about you that I really appreciate is you are a magician. And and I know you won't you won't admit as that you're good but you have to be so you were a part of if I remember correctly like it's like a secret society it's I don't know if the secret site but like magic castle there and not like the Disney one there in LA and like you have to like pass a test and like do magic tricks well enough that they let you in. And then you took me with you on time they have this piano for you if you guys have never been in this piano that plays by itself, it's piano seems normal. It's a really I don't know, it's a really fun event place to be at but tell me about like magic and like what you got you into magic and you know how that's been a part of your life.

Brian Nolan 40:46

Again, growing up in the 80s 90s man with David Copperfield was like, everything right? Those those annual those annual TV specials he did where he made Statue of Liberty disappear, whatever, I loved that stuff. And I got into it as a kid. Whenever he would come through and tour in LA, I would like beg my mom to take me into the show. And so I got to see him a couple times in person. And so I'd been I don't know, I just been kind of fat infatuated with magic as a kid and got out of it as it became a little bit uncool. I think through like late high school years and in college, and just you're distracted and you have other things you're interested in. But I have a friend Alan, who I met randomly added, we were both members of a totally different architecture group. And he said, this is back in LA when I lived there. And he said, Hey, have you ever been in the Magic Castle? So for those of you don't know, the Magic Castle, if you live in LA, you know, but Magic Castle is a private club for magicians in LA, it's the clubhouse of the Academy of magical arts. So you think about like the Academy of Motion Pictures or whatever is the Academy of magical arts. It's a private clubhouse for magicians and their guests, you have to audition to become a member. So Alan was a member. And I had been once before as a guest and loved it. And he said, Yeah, you should, you know, you should come with me sometime as my guests and so I went again as a read around 30 years old or so. And maybe a little older, 32, something like that. And, and I loved it, I kind of fell back in love with that mystique of close up magic. And that's my thing that I love now is like cards and coins and close up magic. And so I started going with him more as a friend and a guest. And then I made it a bucket list item to become a member, I'd always wanted to be a member as a kid. And I'm like, You know what, I'm gonna get back into this, I still getting to know the fundamentals, I just need to practice. And so I took like, probably a couple of years, year and a half, something like that, to really like get back into it, go with him frequently work on my routine that was going to do for an audition. And by the way, I'm not a professional magician. I've never been paid to do a show. It's just a hobby. I like doing for friends bar magic, mostly. Yeah. And so now my daughter's into it too, which is cool. But so I just like practice, practice practice. Went to the Magic Castle as much as I could as his guest and did stuff for people you know, and just kind of like got out there and then audition one day. I made it set a goal to I wanted to be a member by the time I was 35. So the I think it was the day after I turned 35 They do the auditions on Mondays first Monday of the month. So just kind of happened to line up that way. But I did the audition pass on my first try. And I've been a member since so it's been over a decade now that I've been a member of the Magic Castle super fun to go hard to get into if you're you kind of have to know a member to get a guest pass to get in or to go with a member. So I like to bring people like you and they're come from out of town and are nerdy like me. Know you would love it too. But it's just fun. That's another escape, right? Yes, the Magic Castle is 100 plus year old Victorian mansion that these brothers the Larson brothers, who Milt Larson just passed away actually, like less than a month ago. The other this the second brother, but they built it in the 60s. Their dad was a magician. They were both from the TV industry and turn this Victorian mansion into this incredible place of dinner and bars and theaters and it's just awesome. It's fun.

William Harris 44:31

Did you ever see or hang out with any you know Famous magicians that we would know they're at the Magic Castle you're just like, you know shoot the breeze with them?

Brian Nolan 44:41

Well, honestly some of the best magicians I've ever seen are not as like TV famous, I would say is you know David Copperfield or whatever buddy. See. David Blaine got you know hanging out with him. Other celebrities to not even magicians but other celebrities would go there. Since it is a members only thing they can kind of let loose. But Derek Delgado is an incredible magician who's lives in New York. Now he's got to he's had a long running show there. That was like highly acclaimed, he's incredible. Just not as like, you know, TV famous as as Blaine or David Copperfield or whatever,

William Harris 45:20

when there wasn't that Justin Willman or whatever, right? Didn't he go through there? And yeah, show Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, he's another

Brian Nolan 45:27

one that's there. In fact, he was just out here in my little town in Colorado recently doing the show. And I got to connect with him again, and bring my daughter up on stage and meet him and everything. So that was fun, too. He's a nice guy as well and great magician.

William Harris 45:42

I feel like this is gonna turn into like the many lives of Brian but wasn't there a movie Life of Brian Right? It's a Monty Python show. Because now you're now you're a farmer. Brian. You've got goats and stuff like that. Right? Like you've moved to Colorado with goats.

Brian Nolan 45:57

Yeah, so weird. I can't even I pinch myself sometimes. Because I grew up like I said in LA. I always thought and you can ask any of my friends like they're, I'm the last person they thought would leave LA. I grew up as a SoCal boy, la Valley boy, actually, in San Fernando Valley. But as you get older, your priorities change, right. And when I got married and had our daughter, we wanted to move we were living in Pasadena at the time in LA, we wanted to move somewhere else that was a little bit slower pace that we had some space that LA is a tough place to raise a kid sometimes. And especially lately, it's gotten a little tough in LA and in San Francisco and California in general. So we had planned on moving and then of course, when the pandemic hit, we packed up like a lot of people did, and decided to move and we loved Denver area, Colorado, we fell in love with it here. We had a couple friends that moved out here. So we got to come visit. We love the weather in the sunshine in nature. And it's kind of like how the suburbs of La used to be when I was a kid or reminds me a lot of that. And we didn't plan on buying a ranch, but we did want some land. So we were looking at you know, places ahead maybe like two acres. I grew up the in suburbs my entire life. So the most land we had was like a quarter acre. Sure. So we're like, yes, let's get some breathing room, let's get some space, especially turning COVID are like, oh, man, I don't want to be around anybody. And so we were looking at places that had smaller lots smaller than we have now but you know, still like two acres to five acres something like that. And then couldn't really find anything and and then happen upon this place that this beautiful property that has incredible views of the mountains and it's surrounded by nature and happen to be a new house. This family will also moved because of COVID. So they've just built this house but decided to move close to family in Florida. So they sold it and had a barn I'm in the barn office. Now there's an office built out already in the barn. So there's like all these things that worked for us. Yeah, so we got we haven't went on horses yet. But we got goats and chickens and Barn Cats and our dogs that came with us. And our neighbors have long horn cattle, Texas Longhorns and Highland Shepherd cattle. Right here. We get roosters behind us. Donkeys we can hear and so it's fun. It's just being kind of living the dream here in our branch environment. But we're still super close to the downtown of the of the town we live in. Five minutes, 10 minutes from there. So all the amenities are we need and then 20 miles from Denver. So we're, we're, you know, 30 minutes, maybe from Denver. So if we want to go into the city to catch a game or to go up a nice meal or whatever it is right there, too. That's awesome. Yeah, it's kind of just worked out. We got lucky.

William Harris 48:49

This is one of the only times I probably ever get an opportunity to do this then on my podcast. So I'm going to show off some of my animal sounds. Unless you have any good ones here. So I've got the horse here. I don't know, well, maybe maybe I don't know if I have a goat. But I've got a good horse and a good pig and a good elephant. So even though you probably don't have any elephants. So here's my horse. daughter loves that one, right? You got to add up to it. And then the pig is I don't even know. And then the elephant that's a good pretty good elephant, right? Okay. Good. All right.

Brian Nolan 49:27

You got the lobster shirt. You're an animal guy.

William Harris 49:30

There you go. One of the other things that I wanted to talk to you about was just, you were telling me about a moment that you met Pete Carroll. We were asked I was talking to you just about like what was it like you know, meeting like one of your celebrities or whatever you brought up Pete Carroll. So tell me about this, this encounter that you had with him? Oh, man.

Brian Nolan 49:51

Alright, so excuse me, for those of you don't know who Pete Carroll is. He's now a professional football coach. He coaches the Seattle Seahawks. And so I grew up in LA, I went to USC. I am a huge diehard USC football fan. And so you know, I've been loved USC football. Now, if you remember back in the mid 2000s, we had a pretty good team, we had Matt liner and Pete and Reggie Bush, and others playing and we won national championships. And Pete Carroll was the coach of USC at the time. So and we went from being a really crappy team to national championships in like, one season. So you know, the question that a lot of people had is how did how did that happen? Like, what's Pete Carroll's secret sauce. And by the way, Pete Carroll came from the NFL to USC, and he wasn't successful at the in the NFL, he had been fired, I think by the jets or patriots right before he came USC. And he took some time off to kind of figure out what his philosophy was in life and how he operates. And then and then USC ended up being like a Petri dish experiment for him that was ended up working. Yeah. So anyway, I'll try to shorten the story a little bit. But I had read an article in the USC Business School Magazine, about Pete Carroll, where they interviewed him and tried to get to what his secret of success was. And he talked a lot about manifesting positive outcomes, and always believing something positive was going to happen, happen and playing without fear and training, like it's an championship. And he actually has his master's, I believe in sports psychology. So this is like, right up his alley, right? Sure. And this is also right around the time of if you remember The Secret. Oh, yeah, that came out. Look, that was like about manifesting, putting things out into the universe and kind of manifesting that. So it's kind of like thinking about that and read that. And, you know, kind of in doing like vision boards and having things manifest. So this was kind of all aligned, right? When I read this article, I'm like, Oh, okay. So it's kind of the same kind of thing there. And so I wrote, I wanted to meet him. And I wanted to see this in action. And not only because I have this love for USC, but like I want to say, so I wrote, not an email, not typed, I wrote a letter, mailed it to him, saying, I'm just explaining everything I just explained. And saying, I would love to, like shadow him for a day just to see how he works with his team and the coaches and everything. And I didn't hear anything for a while, and then finally got a letter back saying, we'd love to have you come out to a practice, and let's meet, and we can chat about it, and blah, blah, blah, right. So I got to go out to a practice, I scheduled time, met with him went up to his office afterwards, he gave me some books to read kind of along those same lines, and the inner game of tennis and some other books. Really interesting. Just had a really awesome, interesting meeting. And so that led to me, actually, in him inviting me back to shadow him for the full day. And for those of you know, Pete Carroll is now still at 70 plus years old, has probably more energy than most 30 year olds. And he did back then to in his 50s. And like I was, it was hard to keep up with him. And this dude was jogging everywhere and running everywhere. And like 6am to 10pm every day. You know, so he starts by meeting with the coaches and watching tape from the day before and, and it was just fun, I got to like live this dream of being on the inside behind the curtain of USC football and like, get to meet these players, I've been watching on the field and these coaches and sit and call recruits and have them be all excited about being invited for a scholarship to USC and, and go into practice and eat lunch with everybody. And like it was just so fun. And I'd still learn so much from him and still use this a lot of what I learned to this day. And then he invited me back again, because I was in the spring. So he's like you got to come back in the fall right before the season is like even more exciting. And so I did it again. And that led to me helping volunteering with his charity that he had in LA. And it also led to me becoming a Seahawks fan when he left USC and went to the Seahawks. So I know it was just such a cool thing for me like, just to see and learn and be in an environment that I was already in love with and in to learn from somebody who was doing it and applying that and you know, going back to the beginning like the empathy thing that was a big part of his thing too and working with the coaches and but just keeping that positive because you lose games, you know, things happen when your startup and keeping that positive, optimistic mindset that something good is about to happen. And keep pushing forward and keep Yeah, just you know, slow and steady.

William Harris 54:49

Stay positive, stay grounded, right, like get outside a little bit. And yeah, I like that. Be empathetic and work hard. I mean 6am to 10pm That's is not easy, right? It's like put in the hours put in the time work hard, like it's not going to just fall into your lap. But stay positive throughout it. That's, it's always nice when you can meet your, your, your idols, and they they live up to your expectations. You're like that was a good experience versus being and they're generous

Brian Nolan 55:17

with their time, right? He was mean he had, he was running a championship football team. He didn't have to even write me back. But he was generous with his time, and says a lot about him. I think

William Harris 55:31

that's cool. Brian, it's been absolutely amazing talking to you today, I want to make sure that I'm respectful of your time and everybody's time listening here. If people wanted to work with you, if they wanted to follow you stay in touch with you. What's the best way for them to follow and get in touch?

Brian Nolan 55:50

Yeah, so I'm, I'm on social media. LinkedIn is probably the easiest way my handle or whatever we call it is Brian C. Nolan, B-R-I-A-N-C as in Christopher, Nolan N-O-L-A-N. So that's on Instagram, LinkedIn, whatever. And on there, they're all the same Twitter. So you can DM me on Twitter, you can DM me on LinkedIn. Those are probably the easiest ways to get in touch. And I'm always posting stuff there too, of what's going on. And what's next. So that's yeah, and thanks for having me. This has been fun. Yeah, reminiscing. Absolutely memories,

William Harris 56:28

all kinds of good stuff. You know, I hope everybody took away something of value here. There's a lot of value. But there's also a lot of just being able to recognize, I think that, you know, this transcends a lot of different genres this certain sense. Everything from from startup world and B2B into startup world and B2C into working at GoDaddy and then you've even got, you know, goats and magic and EMT, and, you know, college football, like all of these things, they all hinge on a lot of the same core concepts, which is staying positive, work hard, you know, be empathetic, I think those are things that everybody should be able to focus on. So, thanks, everybody for jumping in and listening. Have a great day. Thanks, William.

Outro 57:08

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