Life as a Creative Contrarian

Tim Ludwig: Ben, thank you for joining me. I’m really excited about the conversation today, and I think you have a lot of really interesting stories to share, and I’m ready to dig in and get after them if you’re ready to go. 

Ben Landers: I’m ready to go, Tim. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, so I thought I’d start this episode a little bit differently than I normally do where I usually sort of go back to the beginning of people’s lives and hear a little bit about their childhood, but you had sort of sketched out a number of through lines and patterns that you’d recognized in yourself and the things that were commonalities to a lot of experiences. And I thought that might be a pretty interesting backdrop to sort of set the stage for things. And there’s five of them that I wrote down here from your list. And I thought we’d just quickly tick through them one by one if that’s all right. 

Ben Landers: Yeah. Sounds great. 

Tim Ludwig: So, the first one, which I absolutely love, probably because I try to be this type of person myself, is kindness. And so, I wondered for you where that came from and just why you’d say that’s important to you and why it’s been important in your life. 

Ben Landers: I would, in terms of where it came from, I mean, I think I noticed with my own kids that I would say that everyone’s born with sort of a disposition. And I think some of it, like I take no credit for my kids being the way that they are. I give all the credit to my wife. But I do think a lot of it is just you’re sort of born with that temperament. So I think there’s a little bit of that, maybe a little bit of the genetic side. But my mother, I think of my mom and my dad, and of course, everyone has a critique of their parents and things that their parents did that left them with emotional baggage or scars. But my mom was a teacher before, when my parents were newly married, she was a teacher in elementary school. And then throughout my childhood, she was a kindergarten teacher for a Catholic school. And so my mom is like your prototypical world’s best teacher. In fact, my future business partner, I didn’t really know this until right before I was interviewing with him, I worked for him before he became my partner, my mom had taught two of his kids. And he was so- he thought my mom was so great that I literally almost thought like, oh, this is a layup. He thinks like I can do no wrong because of her. So, I think a big part of it comes from my mom. And then my dad, we joke around, has a lot of sort of peculiarities, but he is one of the nicest guys. Someone would cut him off in traffic when we were kids, and he never lost his temper. The guys when you’re in the city that come up and start washing your windows when you’re kind of saying no, no, no, like I’m good, my dad would always let those guys do their thing and tip them. So, he’s just always very kind. In fact, the one place where I always thought my parents, I thought from a business standpoint, where they almost took it too far was like my parents were not the type that would ever, if you ordered a sandwich and you said no onions and it came with onions, they were picking them off and eating it. They would never send it back or make a fuss about it. And so, I think as I got into the business world, being assertive was sort of hard for me. I went to buy a car, and I’ll sort of end here. I went to buy a car, and my dad went with me. It was the first car that I really like was negotiating to buy on my own. And my dad was so uncomfortable with me pushing back on the sales guy in terms of the price that my dad left the dealership, just stood up in the middle of it and left. And the guy goes, there goes your ride. So you have to buy something. I’m like, I’ll take a cab home before I pay that for this car. My dad got home, and he said, I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life. So, I think my parents are kind to a fault. And a lot of that is in my core. I have to fight against it when I think it’s in my benefit from a business standpoint. 

Tim Ludwig: There are worse things to have to fight against in life. 

Ben Landers: Absolutely, I totally recognize that. 

Tim Ludwig: And it sounds like the apple did not fall far from the tree in terms of where it comes from in you. The next one on your list was binary passions, and this one, if you need a reminder, I’ll explain what you meant by it, at least my understanding of it, but it might take a little explanation for, I think, the listener to understand what you mean by that. 

Ben Landers: Well, I think, again, going back to like temperament. As a kid, I guess I could probably be described as like ADHD. I was all over the place. But when I would get into something, I was I was all in. Our employees made a video once for, it was like Boss’s Appreciation Day or something that they should never have been like celebrating. But they made this video to surprise me. And the through line of that was like when the employees were being interviewed, how would you describe Ben? How would you describe Ben? How would you describe Ben? Every single one of them was like passionate, super passionate. So, when I get into something, whether it was like business or I was into cycling growing up, whenever I get into a topic, I really am sort of, it’s all in, 100%, very hard to sort of turn it off. And I’m sure we’ll get to this later, but that’s been one of the challenges with sort of where I’ve ended up. It’s like when people say like, hey, do you think you’ll start something new, another career, I think there is a part of me recognizing that it’s hard for me to sort of take it gradually, that I kind of feel like I better be really careful with what I set out to do because it could become like a snowball that’s just run away. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, my son is a bit like that, where when he’s interested in something, the intensity and focus is extreme. And if he isn’t, there’s nothing that you could do or I could do to persuade him or cajole him or force him to manifest some motivation to get into it. It sounds like that’s sort of been your experience in a lot of life as well. 

Ben Landers: Yeah, I mean, of course, with age, you start to, I think one of the things where I’ve gotten much better from when I was a kid was sort of coming up with little tricks to get myself into something that I’m not typically into. Whereas when I was a kid, it was hopeless. 

Tim Ludwig: What are some of those tricks? 

Ben Landers: Well, this probably isn’t a great one, but when I was starting the business, I hated sort of the administrivia, like building the spreadsheet to keep an eye on the business. Or there were so many routine tasks. But my business partner, one of the things that he imparted on me was sort of the whole like you can expect what you inspect. So, like if you’re not looking at the accounts receivable, and this is when we were really small, if you’re not looking at the account receivable, you can expect it to be screwed up and you’re going to have some bad account and we’re going to lose a bunch of money because you weren’t watching the thing. So inevitably, I had a small team at that point and would assign some of these things out, but I had to run the traps and check to make sure they were doing it. And turning it into a little bit of a game, where I am, I’m a morning person. So, when we had the business, I was getting up at 4:15, 4:30 in the morning, no alarm. I was the first one in line at the Starbucks which opened at like 5 and then I would be at my desk. And then I would come in and I would sort of do this like running the traps of the business before anyone got there with a huge venti black eye or red eye or whatever I was drinking at the time, something that’s terrible for you, I’m sure. So sort of making a game out of it and that’s one thing. And another thing was my wife was big on going to mass when the kids were small, going to church. And even though I grew up the son of a Catholic schoolteacher, I hated going to church. I never got anything out of it. Every minute was like an hour. But it was really important to my wife, and so it was like, all right, it’s an hour out of my week, I can come up with this. So I remember bringing like a little field notes thing. First of all, we sat then in the front row. I was like, my mom sat us in the back because we were bad kids. I’m like, I think it works the opposite. We stick them in the front row, and when our son starts to goof off, like the priest is right there. And that was like a big difference. But it also worked for me because the guy is like looking at you in the eye while he’s giving some homily. And then I would try to find things that related back to the business and just sort of general leadership lessons, which there were some times where that didn’t work. And it was like my eyelids, I had to put nails to keep them up. Sometimes I would play games with my son in the pew and just basically it’s like him and I hanging out, making that hour go by. But when I was a kid, I’m sure my mom put us at the back because we were probably just all over the place. I had two younger brothers, and so probably like punching each other in the pew. 

Tim Ludwig: You guys were getting squirrely and she needed to keep you sort of hidden from the rest of the congregation and maybe ready for a fast exit. 

Ben Landers: Correct. I remember having to take my son, he was having a tantrum once, we’re in like the second or third row, as far up as we could get. And he’s having a nuclear meltdown while the priest is giving this homily. And I’m picking him up and he’s doing the thing where he’s like flailing and kicking. And the priest says something like, everyone say a prayer for that dad; that guy’s having a rough time. I literally was walking out with my back, going like, I cannot believe this is happening.

Tim Ludwig: That just reminded me of a time when my daughter was little and she’s been really obstinate and stubborn since the moment she was born. We were in a mall one time and shopping in a store and she started to have a meltdown. And so, I grabbed her and took her outside, and she just wasn’t stopping. And so, I knew that this was hopeless so I just put her down. And then she’s lying on the ground outside this mall with people walking by screaming. And every time I would go to touch her, she would rise up and say don’t hurt me, stop touching me. 

Ben Landers: Yeah, and you’re in California, that’s like you’ve got to be careful, someone could have come to arrest you. 

Tim Ludwig: That’s right. I was waiting for CPS to be called. Next on the list here is using data to drive results. When did you first discover that you enjoyed using the data, and then what are some of the ways that you’ve found that you’ve been able to use it both personally and professionally? 

Ben Landers: Yeah, I first discovered it cycling, bicycle racing. When I was a kid, I got into bike racing, and so I had sort of a knack for all endurance sports – running, swimming, cycling. I was sort of naturally good at all three, but I really took to the cycling. I don’t know how I got this because, again, I grew up kind of upper middle class, had to mow lawns for my first mountain bike, which was not a super fancy bike. But I got one of the early Polar heart rate monitors, where it was like this gigantic watch and you kind of just put it around this big piece of foam on your handlebar of your mountain bike. And I remember even back then, all my friends, who were a lot of kids, but we also trained and rode with adults, kind of saying like, what is that? That’s so goofy looking. But sort of this- back then everyone would say sort of 220 minus your age was this standard formula for like what your max heart rate was, and then you did all your training zones based on a percentage of that. Well, I get this heart rate monitor and immediately notice that I can’t get my heart rate over 194 beats, and I’m like 14 years old. And so, I, of course, think, oh, something must be wrong with me, but I’m really good, so it doesn’t matter. And I remember my physician saying, who’s like a runner, who was saying, oh, that formula is complete BS. It gives you a rough idea. And so, some people that were trying to train in their zones, and again, some people like stop at the top of the hill and like try to take their heart rate for six seconds and then extrapolate out how many beats a minute it was. I had the data and then sort of knowing like, hey, I don’t need to be trying to get my heart rate up this high, 70% of my max or whatever is like way down here. And then later, but not that much later, I got a power meter. Cycling is a really interesting sport in that, like with swimming and things like that, it can be harder to quantify, or maybe swimming and running are pretty easy as well. But with cycling, these power meters, it’s measuring the exact output at the crank. And so, I was an early adopter of a power meter and used that to basically do all these things that, at the time, for amateur cyclists, I’m sure the professionals were already doing this, but I would go out with my friends for a ride, and I’m in the DC area, which is like rolling hills. And so what everyone does when they train around here is they like hammer up every hill. They go fast up every hill, and then they basically just coast down the descent to the next hill. So the power output is just up down, up down, up down. And we’re talking like extremely up and then zero, extremely up and then zero. And so, when I got the power meter, it coincided with when I had gotten a job where, all of a sudden, the job is taking all this time that I used to spend training. And it’s like, how am I going to be as good as I was when I now can’t train as much? And the answer in part to that was training smarter using the data. So, if I wanted to do an aerobic ride, I would ride maybe at like 200 to 230 watts, but that meant going almost walking speed up the climb and then hammering down the descent to try to keep the wattage steady. And as a result, you’d spend like five hours in this aerobic zone as opposed to a minute at like your anaerobic, above where you’re not even using oxygen and then zero output, and basically training a myriad of your body’s systems as opposed to really focusing on one with the data. Another just personal example of using data was when I was in college, maybe like a lot of people, I stopped cycling in college. I went to Ohio University, which is a big party school. I don’t want my kids necessarily to hear this, but I think they know. I had a fake ID when I was 19. And so I could go in all the bars and all that kind of stuff. And so, I went from like 160 pounds when I went to college to like 225, 230 in four-ish years. And so… 

Tim Ludwig: That’s a big difference. That’ll slow you down on the bike. 

Ben Landers: Yeah, I wasn’t riding at the time, so I wouldn’t even have appreciated that. But my fifth year of college, I decided I was going to lose weight and I was going to run the Athens Half Marathon. I decided I was going to lose weight maybe in September, August when I went back to school. Athens Half Marathon was in May the next year. I had a computer. Most people would go to the computer lab. This was 1998, 1999, somewhere around there. But I had bought my roommate’s computer. He was like in financial trouble and he sold me a desktop computer and I found this app called Diet Power. And it was essentially, everyone now has like MyFitnessPal and Lose It, these apps that are on their phone, but I used this program called Diet Power and I entered every single thing that I ate. I measured everything. I weighed everything. Most of my friends had graduated, so I was in my fifth year, it made this a lot easier. But I essentially went on like a super low calorie diet. And one of the discoveries, of course, is everyone eyeballs stuff. So they say, I had chicken breast and some rice or I had peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. That’s not that many calories. And it’s like if you weigh the peanut butter that you’re putting on the sandwich, for most college guys, it’s like four servings, not one. And so once you see that, that awareness that the data provides you, it’s like, oh my gosh. I remember going to the bars where I would have a little business card, like an index card, and I would put one through six, sometimes one through eight, and every time I’d have a beer, I would tear a number off. Because of course, after four or five, it’s like, I don’t know how many I had. So I had three beers last night. Well, three and six is quite a big difference when you’re trying to lose weight. And the business side of things, our entire business was built on this idea that most small, medium sized businesses do not accurately track their advertising and marketing, the results. They don’t know what’s working. They follow other business owners. They ask buddies in business groups. The sales rep is cute, so they spend more money. It’s like the most idiotic things ever. And our whole business was sort of based on this idea that if you actually tracked as best you could all your advertising and marketing, what you would see would just blow you away and cause you to cut certain things that you’ve been doing forever and maybe try some new things just because if you know you’re going to see whether it works or it doesn’t, it’s easier to spend a couple thousand dollars than where you feel like you’re just throwing it into a black hole. 

Tim Ludwig: So with all this data, I wonder for you, Ben, what role does intuition or gut feel play in your decision making?

Ben Landers: Well, I feel like there’s a- my whole life is like this big sort of paradox, and maybe everyone is this way, which is with the cycling, it was sort of an exception. I mean, I was very much into the data and wouldn’t say I followed it sort of dogmatically, but I really- there wasn’t a whole lot of like, if I felt tired, but I could produce the power, I did the workout. In business, I was much more torn. My business partner was sort of really the one, and when I met him, he owned another company, he owned a bottled water delivery company in the DC area. I met him while I was cycling, I think. And he was an engineer and a finance guy, and he was sort of all about the data and tracking. I was at the- when I met him, before I started to work for him, I was selling advertising that really was almost impossible to quantify. I was selling sponsorships to amateur participatory athletic events like Chicago Marathon, Baltimore Marathon, selling the title sponsorship of those things. So how are you really going to quantify what LaSalle Bank gets from sponsoring the Chicago Marathon? I mean, I don’t even know if LaSalle Bank is still in business, which maybe that shows you how well that advertising works. I don’t know. So, there was always this sort of like where you get torn, where like you can’t quantify that something is working. I guess one good example, like when we started the company and we started doing swag, we started buying shirts and stuff, maybe our second or third order, we ended up getting Patagonia jackets and vests and all that stuff. And I remember, I don’t remember whether it was my business partner or someone kind of saying like, why would you, each of those jackets is like $180. Like, why wouldn’t you just get Columbia? They have your logo on them, that type of thing. And I was sort of saying that, I don’t know how you are, but when I go to trade shows and I get like the fake Yeti and two months later, you have this Yeti and it comes delaminated so it’s like a joke, or you’ve got the pen that you put in your work travel bag that then explodes before a meeting and your whole bag is ruined and it’s all over everything. It’s like that you can’t quantify certain things like that, but it was just you had this feeling that if we put our brand, kind of piggyback it on, this was before Patagucci, kids call it. This was like Patagonia was like quality stuff, lasts forever. So your price per wear is like ridiculously low. And the stuff is so nice that people proudly wear it. The stuff that we had was really nice stuff. I’d have friends that would say like, if you get me that jacket, I’ll wear it. I don’t even know what Blue Corona is. So, there are some of those challenges. I think I continue to, Bob and I, my business partner, we used to joke around that like when we couldn’t quantify something, like if we wanted to do something, like when I worked for him, we did sponsor a bike race. And I told him- he said, I want to know how many new accounts we get from sponsoring the race. And I set up a number of mechanisms to try to capture that, enter this code on the website when you sign up and we can track it, when you call in, mention the Silver Spring Grand Prix, all that stuff. But we used to joke around that anything that you couldn’t quantify or any advertising that you did that failed the analytical test, you could at least kind of rest or sleep at night that you got branding. Throwing seeds out on the field and some of it is germinating in places that we can’t see, can’t quantify, can’t measure.

Tim Ludwig: So, use data where you could, but you’re also willing to not be so dogmatic about it that it would prevent you from doing things that intuitively felt right or like they were worth the gamble or the effort. 

Ben Landers: Yeah, but it definitely would cause- I mean, even as you asked the question, I got this little feeling in the pit of my stomach, which is sort of this- today I’m trying to learn more and sort of be more into investing, and my narrative is like I spent all this time building a business and accumulating money, and it was just basically sitting in a Vanguard account, just no allocation of anything. I read a lot of the- I listen to all the, whatever the private equity firm is that recorded all the Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings, I’ve listened to all those and big Munger, Buffett fan. But there are certain times where I go into like a Schwab account, and I had a bunch of buddies at one point that were working at Palantir. And just based on who they are, how smart they are, how hard they were working, I didn’t even look at any of the parameters and I put, whatever, like 30 grand, I’m buying 30 grand of stock just based on these guys that I know that work there and what they’re saying. And I think that was when the stock was like 18 bucks. And I’m sure some people at that time said, oh, this is like ridiculously overvalued, and they’re not- So, I do things that defy the- sort of the irrational side of things. 

Tim Ludwig: That’s a very Peter Lynch approach to investing by the way, it sounds like to me. 

Ben Landers: Yeah. I mean, HubSpot was the same. I bought HubSpot, we were a HubSpot VAR when Blue Corona was very in its infancy and all the VARs got to buy stock pre-IPO at like $25 a share. And so I bought a bunch of stock. And Bob, my business partner, said, good luck with that. I think it got to 75, and I was saying to Bob, look how well this has done. I’m going to buy more. And then he, as a Harvard MBA, finance guy, he said, I just want you to understand, like A, they’ve never made any money. The company’s never made any money. There’s no plan to ever make money based on the stuff that I’ve read about them. And that stock at 75 is like Blue Corona trading or being sold for X, whatever X was. It was some ridiculous number. So, I would never buy that. Like, I would never buy that company. It’s way overvalued. And look, it’s come down a little bit, but now it’s close to $500 a share. 

Tim Ludwig: The next item on your list here was creative problem solving. And I just wanted to hear what sort of a quick example of this was. It’s sort of an interesting combination of things too with the data and then if you can be sort of analytical and rigorous about that but then also creative, it seems like that’s pretty powerful. 

Ben Landers: Again, I think my strong suit, and I think I noticed this at a pretty early age, but when you have a company, you have some challenge, customers are canceling or complaining or something’s happening, and you get the team in a room, in a conference room, and it’s like all right, let’s brainstorm possible ways to solve this, there are always people that just could come up with like a thousand ideas like rapid-fire and then there are people that won’t say a word no matter what, doesn’t matter who’s in the room. It’s just they can’t get it out there. I am the former, like I can come up with a thousand different ideas. And I was trying to think of an example of creative problem-solving. I’m not sure off the top of my head I could name one that I think is terribly creative. But certainly over the years, there have been lots of different challenges. I feel like I’ve always had a very out-of-the-box or the opposite of everyone’s throwing out ideas and I say something that’s out of left field. I don’t know if it’s- I would say probably 35% of the time, 40% of the time, the idea that was like completely out of left field, that at first everyone’s like, are you kidding me? Like, get serious, this is a serious problem, meeting. Probably 35 to 40% of the time, that became something that we did that ended up being a big deal. I think one of the ones that, again, I don’t know that this is the greatest example, and my bar for creativity has probably changed over the years, but when I was working for the bottled water company, half our customers were residential and half were commercial. So, you’d have someone who had DrinkMore Water, that was the name of the company, at their house, and then they would work at like the FDA or some government agency. And inevitably their floor would say like, ah, the DC tap water is terrible. Like do you guys want to all pool our money together? We’ll start a water club and we’ll get bottled water delivered to our floor. And that was a very common thing. And we got tons of business from referrals. I mean, we tracked all of our advertising and marketing, and word of mouth was huge. And I remember we were trying to figure out like how could you get people in an office to volunteer that they have DrinkMore Water at their home, like where their co-workers might hear it or see it. And I remember once, Bob and I, the owner of the company and I, one of the drivers had broken his leg and sort of at the last minute, I show up, I’m the vice president of sales and market. I have nothing to do with like delivering the product. But I show up for work, and Bob says, hey, grab a cup of coffee, we’re going to go run a route. We’re going to run Mike Mills’ route. He broke his leg and can’t drive. And I was like, are you kidding me? Like this is the problem when you go work for one of these small companies. You end up doing the dumbest stuff. So Bob and I are driving around. I’m with the owner of the company, so it was kind of cool. But we’re driving around, and I didn’t appreciate, as someone who worked on the inside, I didn’t appreciate that these guys that are delivering the water like inside the FDA, they’re walking through like a maze of cubicles with hundreds of people. And so, I kept saying to Bob like, how come- why can’t we get the drivers to like pass out cards, like mention my name, get $100 off. And Bob said, the guys will not do that. The guys, the water delivery driver, even if I pay him $100 in a new account, their motivation is getting all their stuff delivered by like noon so they can go home to like their girlfriend or to lift weights, which is ironic because these guys are lifting like 50 pound bottles all day long. Then they get off at noon and they go bodybuild or whatever. But so, what we came up with was we had this kind of like the Amex Black Card. So, Bob had like a Black Card. And I remember any time he used it, people would always make a comment about it, like waiters, waitresses, that kind of thing. And so, I remember thinking, what if we did something where, when an employee of like the FDA sees the bottled water driver, they give him a card and the guy gives them like a secret code and then they redeem it for a prize. And that way it’s not the driver; the driver doesn’t have to do anything but react. Like the drivers are all nice. If someone interrupts them, they’re going to play along with it. So anyway, we got these cards made, these DrinkMore cards, and it was like a credit card type thing, blue. I don’t remember what it was called. It had a name. It was kind of like the Centurion Club, but I didn’t completely rip off Amex. Things like that were just things that we came up with. He had had the business for a long time, so it was sort of like it’s never going to work. It’s sort of like, all right, you’ve been here a year, you think you’re full of new ideas, but that’s never going to work. And that one was a big one as an example. 

Tim Ludwig: That’s really neat. I love being in a room with people that think completely differently from me. And I think there’s people with just different levels of standard deviations apart from the norm. And this is sort of a segue into the last one, I think, but it’s always really energizing to have somebody say something, and it’s just like, whoa, I never would have thought of it through that lens, and it wouldn’t even occur to me, but it’s so smart. It’s just like, you just blew open the walls and exposed a whole new dimension or something. 

Ben Landers: The best is if you can marry, I think, one of the things that, I feel like I’m pretty, have a high degree of self-awareness, is I know where my circle of competence is, what I’m good at. I’m good at coming up with creative ideas, and I’m good at coming up with a volume of them. What I’m not good at is winnowing it down to the best one. And so, I used to have a guy who worked for me named Tyler Yost, and I say this as a shout out. Tyler is just a fantastic guy. We hired him as an account manager when we were probably at 25 or 30 employees. He worked for Bank of America. He was a Six Sigma Black Belt or Green Belt or something, very analytical guy. He worked for Red Ventures before. He worked for Bank of America and then Red Ventures. And having Tyler, early on, I would call Tyler when he was the account manager, and I was basically saying, hey, I’m giving you an additional job, which is like you’re almost like my- just sort of, when I go into these meetings, I need someone like you to kind of help me come up with weights for these different things, because to me, everything is a great idea. These are all things we can execute. But I know we can’t. And so, I need someone who’s really analytical and disciplined to essentially say, no. And he would draw- he’s like a consultant, he would draw all these little triangles and say, all right, quality, speed, cost, and it would always frustrate me, but I needed someone like that to help me execute. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, that makes sense. And so, the last one here is oppositional and contrarian thinking. And you view it as a strength. I mean, it sounds so negative, so I think people may not understand how being oppositional or contrarian is actually something that you sort of see as a superpower. So, what’s the benefit in your mind to having that sort of a brain or outlook on things? 

Ben Landers: And maybe I’m describing it the wrong way, but like I just, on a personal example, I remember in cycling, road cycling, I think anyone who’s ever taken up road cycling can’t believe how hard it is to go from category 5, which is beginner, you’re brand new, you just got a racing license, to category 1. Category 1 are the guys going to the Olympic trials and stuff like that, professionals. I would say the vast majority of people get to cat 4 or cat 3, and then they get stuck there. It’s extremely hard to move on. To move on, you have to win a number of races and get points. And there’s always like a junior or a college kid who’s coming through the ranks who will be a professional. So like you would have won, but these three junior kids just took off and got all the top points. And so, I remember watching all these amateur, we all had jobs and stuff, everyone trained. And everyone would say, well, I don’t want to peak in March. I want to peak when these big races are in like May, June, July. And they would use that as a justification for like why they were riding easy in December, January, and February. And I’m sitting here thinking like we’re in the DC area where the weather is horrible in the grand scheme of DC in January and February. So the last thing you want to be doing is like long, slow rides in January. So I remember thinking, why wouldn’t you, basically, if you’re a cat 3 and you’re trying to get out, why wouldn’t you come out like in your absolute peak condition March 1st, win all the early season races, upgrade, you could even take a little mini recovery in like April, May, whatever, May, and then come back for the later summer races. And if you’re trying to peak when everyone else is also trying to peak, it’s going to be impossible unless you have real talent. And if you had real talent, you wouldn’t be in the Cat 3s for that long. And so that’s exactly what I did. I was like doing the hardest possible rides in January and February while all my friends were like, oh, you’re going to burn out, you’re going to burn out. It’s like, no, I’m not. We have jobs. We can’t burn out physically because we can’t train enough. So, things like that. Or like another was, now this intermittent fasting is a big deal. I mean, everyone knows about it. But when I was tracking my calories, you hear this thing where like if you starve yourself, I should probably say this quietly, but if you starve yourself, your metabolism will drop, like everyone’s heard that. But it’s like by how much and for how long? I mean, sure, if you starve yourself for months, maybe your metabolism goes down a little bit, but you’re telling me that I couldn’t take a day and just have like 500 calories and then go normal the rest of the week, maybe do that twice, two days a week. And, of course, so I did that, and everyone, people were calling it the weekend Ben diet in college where I would basically eat like a monk Monday through Friday, and then on the weekends, it was a free-for-all. So just whatever everyone says, just my gut instinct is what would happen if I did the exact opposite of what everyone says. Like eat a balanced diet, what if you didn’t eat a balanced diet? What if you just ate one thing? Like what stops- we feed the dog that we love so much the same crap every day. What would happen if I just ate the same sort of balanced meal or meals every single day and never varied it up. Just stuff like that. And on the work side of things, it’s the same sort of thing. When we started Blue Corona, everyone said, oh, it’s a digital agency. It’s a digital agency. We never thought of it quite that way, but it’s a digital agency. And so the natural thing is like, oh, well, you want bigger clients, like you want marquee clients, go get BMW or Four Seasons or all these things. And I remember thinking one of the best parts about the bottled water business was that we had 15,000 clients. We had all these little residential accounts, which they’re getting like- they’re paying like 50 bucks a month, and then we would have a huge corporate account and then we’d have all these little corporate accounts. So with rare exception, if you lost a customer, I mean of course, you wanted to keep everyone but you could lose- someone’s moving – I got to cancel, I’m moving. It’s like okay, good luck in your new city. You didn’t lose any sleep over it. And so I was like why would we want to build a business where we have like BMW paying 50,000 a month, paying us, having this like lumpiness, and you have to go pitch them and do a whole song and dance. Why wouldn’t we want hundreds of small business clients where they might be paying $1,500 a month? Wouldn’t that be the better business to own? You could get junior people to do the work on those small accounts. Inevitably, you’re going to get some big marquee accounts, so you’ll have some experienced people. But if the experienced people get a big head and go off and quit, you probably have some talented junior people that you could move up pretty quickly. Just sort of these things. I remember going to, and I’ll sort of end it there, I remember going to a marketing conference, and I was literally sitting in a circle of people, and it was like in New York City or Chicago or somewhere. And everyone was going around introducing themselves – oh, we’re a UX, UI digital agency and we focus on luxury hotels, or we have Victoria’s Secret as our client, or limited or whatever. And I remember it got around to me and the one guy in the group who knew me, I don’t know why he did this, he pre-introduced me. He said, hey, everyone, this is Ben. I think I’d walked up late. He’s like, this is Ben. His company builds websites for plumbers. And I was like, you’re such a dick. Why would you say that? I mean, we have other clients than plumbers. We do have a lot of plumbers. But I remember thinking, on the one hand, I was like just a touch embarrassed, there’s all these hoity-toity advertising people, but then I remember also thinking, we have a better business than all of you, in my opinion. And looking at some of those people that were in that group, they still have a 15-person company, ebbs and flows, never going to be able to sell it because they’re the creative genius. 

Tim Ludwig: Those are wonderful examples. They’re also examples in my mind of creative problem solving. So, I think there’s a strong linkage there. Let’s switch gears now and maybe go back to more the traditional format that I use here. And there’s three topics I want to touch on. The first is you talk about there was a pretty dramatic transformation for you as a student, starting probably around early middle school all the way up through college. And just I’d like to unpack that a little bit more. What was the trajectory for that transformation? Where was the starting point and then what was the evolution and sort of the ending point? 

Ben Landers: I mean, it’s funny when you said the trajectory. I think when I was a kid, I don’t remember exactly when I started struggling with school, probably around puberty. I developed early, so I was one of the tallest kids in my elementary school. I also feel like the teachers sort of gave me almost initially unwanted attention because I was taller and more developed than other kids. But somewhere around there, I started just struggling with school, hated school. I think it was a combination of, again, at the time, undiagnosed ADHD and I also had some childhood health issues that were a real sort of struggle in terms of like being absent a lot and having my mind on other places. And so, I mean, I hated school. I went to public school my whole life and in a nice area. So there were nice schools. But I joke around with my kids, the world was different back then. Again, I grew up in a really nice area. I think it was really nice. But there was a fistfight every single day. I wasn’t involved with any of that, but it was close enough that it was like there was a fear with school. And so, I just absolutely hated it. And the trajectory, I graduated high school and everything, but I remember when I graduated, a four-year college, it was sort of like out of the question. And my dad had grown up really poor and was the only person in his family to ever have gone to college. And so, I’m sure he was super sort of like, oh boy, we’re not making progress here, this isn’t what I anticipated. I remember he would get Christmas cards from his friends. He worked as an engineer for the Department of Energy and he would get these Christmas cards. And it was like our son, John, got into Princeton or our son Eric is going into the Navy. And I was like, gosh, I wonder what my dad’s card says. Like my son Ben is a real fun guy and he’s having some issues right now. So, yeah, I just didn’t do well and I really did not see sort of a path forward there. And when I graduated, I took like a gap year where I was working. I was working at a bike shop, sort of a manager. And then I took classes at a community college. And at some point, things started to change where I started to kind of get my shit together. And I think there was some recognition like, okay, I’m more attentive in the morning, so I’m going to take classes when I can kind of mid-morning, then I’m going to go to work. I started to realize it took me longer to read whatever the material was that we had to, so allocating enough time there. I remember learning for me like note-taking. I don’t even think I took notes in high school. But in the college classes, I remember if I took notes, like verbatim, like wrote down as much as I could and then would review the notes, like if I made index cards before, all the freshman class, you’re memorizing stuff, I could memorize things really well as long as I wrote it all out and did it on the index cards. So, all that ended up, I ended up kind of turning the corner, and then I went to Ohio University, transferred to Ohio University. And then I had almost a dip where when you transfer to these schools, you register last. So, even though I had some credits, I registered after everyone else. So, I remember I had history at like 7:30 in the morning on the other side of campus and OU is the type of town where you walk. You walk to class; no one’s driving. And I had the fake ID. And in Athens, Ohio, probably to this day, everything costs nothing. So, a pitcher of beer is like $4. It’s ridiculous. So, early classes, fake ID, new, trying to make friends. I remember being on academic probation the first year that I went. My dad, again, was paying out-of-state tuition, was probably like, what the F is wrong with you? But then, again, I went through this period where once I could register with everyone else and I got out of the dorms, I moved into an apartment, that was a game changer. I mean, studying in the dorms I found really challenging. There’s just always a distraction. But again, once I could do my own schedule, there was that, and I started, of course, getting into the upper level classes where everything started switching. I don’t know, for everyone listening, somewhere in the 90s, group projects became this big thing. Companies must have gone to colleges and said, we need people graduating to be really comfortable working in a team, a team environment, a group environment. So everything became group projects. And as soon as everything became group projects, it was like all of a sudden, I did have a handful of superpowers that in history 100, if you’re a great presenter, it’s worth zero. But in like management 300 where you get assigned to do a case study on Xerox with four other people and two of them are deathly afraid of speaking, it was like, all of a sudden, it was like, hey, I’m a great presenter, and I’m happy to do the presentation, and I’ll build the PowerPoint, just get me the actual like written material. And then again, as soon as people would see you in action, then the next group project where there was the ability to self-select, I think then you start getting in better groups because people are like, hey, we’ll have that dude present, and this lady is great with the number crunching. And then that, of course, I think is much more like the real world. It’s like my first jobs as a salesperson, it’s like what are you really good at? It’s like well, great, I can get a job where that’s like almost all I do is what I’m really good at. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah. So you sort of opted into your strengths and then the other theme that it sounds like is being in an environment where you had a lot more independence, where it wasn’t just this sort of rote approach to education, where you had some ability to self-create the experience that you were driving for and have the ability to pick and choose how you went about it. 

Ben Landers: I did terribly with being told what to do. I remember even sort of telling my business partner, when we were in the early first couple of years, I mean first year, losing money. And I remember saying I was going away for Thanksgiving, and I was going to leave on Wednesday, of course, Thursday, Thanksgiving, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I was going to be gone the whole time. And he’s 18 years my senior, and he was my boss before we started the company. So there was always this sort of alpha, the big dog and then me. And I remember him saying, I had like four employees or something. I was packing up on Wednesday, and he’s like, where are you going? I said, I’m going to go to my parents’ farmhouse for Thanksgiving. He’s like, when we’re losing money and with everything the way that it is, that’s a great idea. It’s like that kind of thing. I remember going home and telling my wife, I don’t think I can go to the farm, like Bob is pissed and like thinks I need to be basically on all weekend. And years later, he would say like, I didn’t say that, or I was joking around with you, I was busting your chops. But I mean, I took it as, he was like a mentor. I took it took it seriously. But I remember kind of saying to him in some follow up, like I can work around the clock, but the minute you tell me I have to be there, it’s like I’ll just quit. I’ll do my own thing. So having that agency, I think, was a big thing. And one other sort of tie into sort of your strengths, I think there are a lot of people that sort of are of this belief like you work on your weaknesses. Like with cycling, that was the big thing. Like you’re a sprinter, a climber, breakaway person, you have some strength. And I was always good on the breakaways side of things, kind of sustained power. And so the idea was like, if you’re not good at sprinting, you should work on your weakness. And I had a coach early on who was like, if you’re like going to the Tour de France, you have to be- your weaknesses have to be shored up to some degree. That’s never going to be you. You’re like 28 years old or whatever. You’re doing this for fun. So, you’re best- you’re like almost- if we mapped out your power across different durations, this is where you have the opportunity to shine. These are the places, no matter how hard you work at it, you’re not going to be good. And so I never trained, I never did sprint training, never. I was always working on my strengths. And I think on the school side of things and the business side of things, it was a little bit similar. It was like I’m not going to try to build complicated databases and spreadsheets. Like I built websites in the early days, I learned CSS and HTML, but it was very obvious we need to hire someone to do this because I can go out and sell whereas we can hire someone who can code up these basic websites. 

Tim Ludwig: Right, find your comparative advantages and exploit them. 

Ben Landers: Exactly. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah. You’ve mentioned a number of times now your business partner and mentor Bob who I know you think incredibly highly of, and I think that’s the next place I’d like to go in the conversation. You talked about some early sales jobs in Chicago, then you and your wife decided to move back to the DC area, closer to where you grew up and your family was. Then you went to work for Bob, and then you became business partners. So how did it come to be that you two got together like that? 

Ben Landers: The story gets kind of blurred around in my head. As I think back to it, when I started my career, I worked for HotJobs.com. It was the high flying dot com. I thought I was going to make tons of money. I had stock options, and I was so excited about all the stock options that ended up being worth, they were underwater when HotJobs was acquired. Then I went to WorldCom and I thought, I’m going to have this career in big technology. Then I took this and WorldCom, the whole WorldCom fiasco happened. All of a sudden, I found myself saying, I don’t think I can handle another one of these. HotJobs was acquired and went all over the place. Then WorldCom, that whole thing happened. I went on this boondoggle into the small business world. That’s got me from Chicago back to DC. And then through that job, I met a guy who was one of Bob’s first employees, a guy named Phil Coop. And Phil is also like- I only knew Phil for a brief period of time because he moved to Maine, which is why, he called me up and said, hey, you should come and interview for my job. I’m from Maine. I’ve been working here, but I’m moving back to Maine with my wife. It’s where her family’s from as well. And I remember thinking, this is not the direction I had anticipated for my career. I was working for this advertising company. Now I’m going to go work for a bottled water delivery company, like a local bottled water delivery company, where one of their advantages, when I would say to Bob, what makes your water better? He would say, one of the things he said was, one of the advantages was we’re local. I was like, that is the- I’m coming from HotJobs and WorldCom, like technology and patents, and it’s like, we’re local. People want to work with a local company. I’m like, oh God. But Phil convinced me to come in and meet Bob in an interview setting. And Bob is, to this day, I think Bob is easily one of the top three smartest guys I know. And he’s also very, in one sense, he’s unassuming. Like in the interview, he had a baseball hat on and a DrinkMore Water t-shirt tucked into khaki shorts with no belt. I remember all this because one year I convinced the whole inside office team to dress up as Bob for Halloween, where we wore these boat shoes – he always wore boat shoes – and then these khaki shorts with a DrinkMore Water shirt tucked in and a long sleeve shirt underneath and then a Duke hat. He went to Duke for his undergrad. So, Phil is what got me connected to Bob. And then, like I said, early in the interview process when we were just doing this sort of, hey, where did you grow up? Are you from the area? And I told him where I went to high school and stuff. And he said, is your mom Helen Landers? I think she taught my kids at St. Elizabeth’s. And of course, I knew where she worked and stuff. And so, he thought the world of my mom in terms of how she treated his kids. And so anyway, that’s sort of what led to us connecting. And then in many ways, Bob was like- we’re very similar in some ways and completely different in others. Like Bob was, he went to Georgetown Prep, went to all these private schools growing up. His dad was an attorney. And so, he was like a pedigree guy. All these, Georgetown Prep, Duke, engineering degree at Duke, Schlumberger as a young engineer, and then to Harvard Business School, where I was like public high school, barely graduated, community college, I’m not even sure I told him that, and then Ohio University, tier three public college, and it took me like five and a half years to get out. And Bob was, whereas I was probably the last kid in high school done with the math test, Bob was the first one done, just always the guy who he could do- he would laugh if he heard this, but like to me, he could do these like ridiculously complicated math problems in his head, like in no time. Just one of those people that’s conversant with numbers, fractions, decimals, huge numbers, dividing, percentages, analogies based off of the numbers. Whereas I’m like- And he used to sort of whip that stuff out to me. And I remember once, Bob was also into cycling, I remember kind of saying to him like, his is after we had known each other for a while, I’m like, Bob, clearly, you have a gift. But what annoys me is that you pretend that I’m bad at math compared to you, because like I don’t- because I’m not trying. I said, just think of it like this, I can put out more power with one leg on a bike than you can with both legs. And yes, I’ve like trained and stuff. But the reality is I was born with that gift. So what if I rode alongside you with one leg and said, come on, Bob, just try, just try harder. It’s like, give me a break. But we’re different in one sense, but we’re very similar. He’s a high passion guy. There’s sort of one Bob. There isn’t like a business Bob and then a personal Bob. And I’m kind of that way. I’m the way that I am in all aspects of my life. He’s that way. He’s a really funny guy, always working humor into everything. I would say kind and generous. He talked to, whether it was a warehouse person working for him, the stewardess on an airline, the flight attendant, he treated everyone like they were VIP. And he was super argumentative. Like he’s sort of a- it took me a while to figure out that the path was like, all right, in this relationship, Bob’s the big dog. He’s the boss. I’m the former underling. He’s right, I’m wrong. He’s smart, I’m dumb. So all I really have to do is whatever I want to have happen, it has to come from him. It has to be his idea. So if I said like, this is probably like a really dumb idea and I would throw it out there, he would then argue why, well that’s not a dumb idea, why would you say that? You always do that. And then he’d argue for it. And once I had that, that little number- We bought a phone system, like you’ll love this, Tim, we bought a phone system and we got to a size where we’re outgrowing our phone system, so we bought this fancy phone system. And the guys who sold us the phone system said, it’s going to cost $2,000 to wire up your office to put the Ethernet ports in, these are voice over IP phones. And I brought back the proposal, and I would run bigger investments past Bob. And I said, hey, this is the proposal. Do we lease or do we buy? And then it’s going to cost two Gs just to wire up the office. He’s like, that’s ridiculous, I’m going to wire up the office. And so we had ordered the phones, and they were going to come in in like three or four weeks. And weeks are going by. And Bob is running another company; he’s running the water company. So it’s like my admin is like, when is Bob going to- the phones are going to be here like next week. And we need the ports. We haven’t even started. And I would go up and kind of nag Bob and nag Bob. And he’d say, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, I’m busy, I’m doing other stuff. I’m like, I get it, but I need you to do this. And finally, I went up to his office and I said, I talked to the phone guy today and the phone guy was giving me crap. He said, I told you that water guy, when I told him that you were going to do it instead of pay them, he said, who’s going to do it? I said, the guy that owns the water company. And he said, I told you that water guy can never do that. Like, what? That’s like the dumbest thing ever. The guy, the bottled water guy is going to wire your office? And Bob hears that and like the Ethernet was in like the next day. And then when the phone guys are there installing it, the technician’s there and Bob like walks up to him and he puts his arm around him, and he’s like, Mike, you thought that this was over my pay grade, you tell me this isn’t the best, cleanest installation you’ve ever seen. And he didn’t know what Bob was talking about. He was like- and I just remember thinking like, oh, well. 

Tim Ludwig: That’s great. We could probably have a whole show just about your relationship with Bob. But I know you learned so much from him and took away so many lessons. What are like a couple of the top ones that sort of have had the most impact on you? 

Ben Landers: Yeah, probably number one is Bob was a big- he ran his business, the bottled water business, sort of Open Book management. I mean, he went to business school when Open Book was becoming a big thing, The Great Game of Business, all that kind of stuff. For those who are listening, if you haven’t read The Great Game of Business, it’s a fantastic business book. And the idea is like business is a game, it’s a team sport, and by sharing data and numbers and how the company’s doing, how the business is doing, the key metrics with employees, they’re empowered and people start to really see how they impact the business. So, he was always a sort of think like the owner of a business. So, he would always, when I worked for him, and I was sort of trying to come up with a- make a decision or had an idea, he would just say like, Ben, if you owned the business 100%, what would you do? Or he went on vacation once, and I hadn’t been there all that long. And I said, there’s a lot of stuff we haven’t covered. I’m like your vice president. And he said, just pretend it’s your company. Whatever you think is right. Like, you and I probably are not going to agree on everything, but if someone walks in the front office and the receptionist isn’t there and the person is just standing there, it’s your company, what are you going to do? I’m like, I would walk up and say to him, hey, do you have an appointment or who are you here to see? Can I get you a cup of coffee? He’s like, just do that. So that think and act like an owner mentality and that became sort of one of the big key differentiators in the culture of Blue Corona was we treat Blue Corona like it’s- like each person treat it like you own the company. And we also think like the owners of our clients’ businesses. So, the typical agency, the client gives them a budget of $2,500 for Google pay-per-click. And then the person managing the pay-per-click account sees that we’re getting leads or sales for like a third of what the business owner is willing to pay and they’re hitting the budget. And so, in a normal company, it’s like, well, they hit- I was told their budget’s this, they hit the budget. So, I just went on to the next account. At Blue Corner, the deal would be like to tell the account manager, like I can get leads at way less than they’re willing to pay and we’re hitting the budget halfway through the month. Talk to the client, let’s up the budget. And that was like a common thing. So that was a big thing from Bob. Bob was a measure everything and make data-driven decisions. So everything that can be quantified, quantify it, track it. And he really, I think, kind of applies that with everything, golf and his health and all that kind of stuff. It’s like really looking at the data, not taking people’s word for things. And even his business, the bottled water business, you sort of commonly hear like tap water is fine. And he would sort of say, 99.9% of all tap water is used for like non-drinking. So, when you think of the cost benefit of the government deciding how much do you want to pay to filter it, when most of it’s like watering your lawn and flushing your toilet. So that might be okay for you, but like what I put in my body, I’m going to remove as much as humanly possible in terms of impurities, lead, things you can’t get rid of. So make data driven decisions was a big one. Bob is also, I remember being shocked when I first met him, he was clearly extremely smart. He had gone to all these fancy schools. I remember when we were starting, we had started a couple of different businesses, but each time, his sending me out on the mission was to basically go online and look at what everyone else was doing and put it in a spreadsheet. When DrinkMore Water had its first e-commerce, it was a brochure website and I built an e-commerce aspect of it. He was like, go and see what Deer Park, Poland Spring, Crystal Springs, let’s see what every single person’s doing and kind of look at it and steal from like… And I remember thinking like, you can’t steal other people’s stuff. And he was like, this isn’t school. We’re not like plagiarizing someone’s homework. Like, of course, we can steal it. We can steal anything we want. And by the time we’re done, we’ve added a little bit of this and we’ve added a little bit of that, we added our own idea here. It always becomes your own thing. So kind of that steal it like an artist. He didn’t recommend that book, but it is a great book. I remember thinking like, I thought if you went to Harvard and you’re super smart, I thought you just come up with your own idea. I’d say he almost never did things like where it was like I just had this out of the blue. It was like, I saw this company in Arizona doing this really cool thing. What if we did it here in Maryland? And then the one other thing I was thinking about, I guess two other things that I got from him that I think have really helped me a lot was, I don’t know what he would call it. I sort of used to think that like at infinity, the answer is easy. There’s probably like an actual thing here. But if you have a business, and you’re like, we want to grow the business and we have a $20,000 marketing budget, what should we do? Bob would change it around and say, what if you had a million dollars to grow the business, what would you do? And almost always, when you’re dealing with like these 20,000 small numbers, it’s like, oh, we’ll do a little bit of this and we’ll do a little bit of this and we’ll do a little bit of this. It’s sort of this incremental versus he would kind of use this extreme, like take it to the extreme. What would happen if we hired like a hundred people like that and had them in a room doing X? How would that work? If Blue Corona was a hundred times the size that it is today, how would that look or how would that work? And a final one that sort of really helped me was, I remember he overheard me when the business was probably, we probably had 20 or 30 people, and we were going through that classic we were growing fast where like everything, to me it felt like the wheels were falling off the wagon, like every day there’s some fire. He overheard me, I was out in front of our building talking to a high school friend of mine. And my high school friend was working for like Eli Lilly or someone as like a sales rep. And I remember I was telling him like, oh, it’s a complete shit show over here, like one of my key people just quit and this client wants to see me tomorrow. They’re probably going to fire us. I can’t seem to get anything right. We’re outgrowing our accounting system. It was just one complaint after the other. And I was like, Bob- we shared an office. I was in the downstairs, he was in the upstairs, but my mailbox and our controller was upstairs. And so, I would kind of have to walk by his office to get to our controller and my mailbox. So later that afternoon, I was walking to get our mail or something. And he said, hey, I overheard you, who were you talking to on the phone earlier? And I said, oh, it’s my high school buddy. And he’s like, do me a favor. Next time- do you talk to him every day? I’m like, every other day. He’s like, next time you talk to him, tell him, everything’s going fantastically. We’re growing like crazy. I can’t hire people fast enough. We have, like clients are killing it, like we’re doing great work, all these things that were true, but just tell him that. Because when you go through and just reinforce, like every business has all the problems that you were bitching to your buddy about. The difference is, when you focus on those problems, that’s all- it’s like your life becomes what you basically point your attention to. So, if you point it to like we’re growing fast, and we’re doing great, and we’re hiring, and all these great things, it just like creates sort of a vicious cycle where things get better and better. But if all you ever do is focus on the problems, that’s all that’s going to happen. And it’s just going to trip you up and suck the energy out of you. Your body will think your business sucks. And so, I remember, I don’t think it was that one conversation that changed it, but I do remember having sort of this epiphany that you can control your focus. And at any given time, like in your personal life, in your work, there are going to be problems and issues and challenges. And there are also all sorts of great things going on. And again, your life really does become just sort of what you choose to focus on. And that was a game changer for me. And of course, I try to teach the employees that. We’d have an employee inevitably coming out of college, had never worked for a company before, where the pace is getting to them, or a client would get mad at an account manager and they’d get all bummed out. And so, helping them reframe things, just always reframing whatever the situation was for like what’s the most productive interpretation of what just happened and just developing that as a habit. Ironically, since I sold the business, I was just thinking about it as a lead up to talking to you that, for whatever reason, I almost stopped doing that temporarily when we sold. And I remember thinking like, gosh, all that stuff that I used to sort of do religiously because of the business, God, I need to keep doing all that stuff as it relates to my personal life. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, great learning. Selling the business is the last part of our conversation I want to touch on. So it wasn’t that long ago you had a very successful growth story with Blue Corona, found a buyer, and then made the transition out of the business, certainly the day-to-day operations pretty quickly. And just, it’s a pretty fascinating next chapter, I think, to be in that space where you’ve been so driven and worked so hard and it actually worked and it came together. And you had the opportunity to take some chips off the table and rethink how you want to spend the next couple decades of your life. And so, to start, how’s that going? 

Ben Landers: I kind of feel like I’m like bipolar. One side of it is it’s an absolutely amazing. I almost feel guilty saying, like talking about how amazing it is, because I just feel like, A, anyone who’s still working, it’s like painful to hear. We were on vacation last week, and my extended family and my brother-in-law said, Ben, what’s your next week look like? And I said, exactly like this, but just not at the beach. Instead, I’ll have a golf course in the backyard. So it’s really great. I mean, kind of like what we’ve talked about earlier where I was sort of like this binary off-on. I mean, when I had the company, we started the company in 2007, 2008, I worked seven days a week literally all the time, getting in the office at five or six in the morning, leaving. I always tried to be one of the last people to leave just out of principles, it was kind of stupid, but I did, until like 2015. And then we got big enough where I started saying it’s not the greatest look to be running myself ragged. And so then I started working a little bit more, taking vacations and stuff like that. But I was all in with the company. And one other thing from Bob is, when I met Bob in the interview, he said, where do you want to be in five years? What does success look like? What’s your number? We talked about that in the interview. I remember him saying, this is him, if I had $10 million, I would sell the business and mountain bike, golf, hang out for the rest of my life. I remember thinking sort of the same way. We had this idea with starting Blue Corona to build it up, make it a great business, and eventually have someone who would want to buy it. And that was the idea, that like, hey, when I said to my wife, what’s your earliest memory? Like, how old were you? She’s like, I don’t know, I kind of remember like my eighth or ninth birthday. But I don’t really have clear memories until I’m like maybe 11 or 12 where it’s like really consistent. I said, yeah, me too. So, I basically have, like our son was born 2007. I basically have until 2017. He’s not going to remember a thing. He won’t know whether I was here, whether I wasn’t here, all that stuff. And let’s be honest, you add all the good stuff to the kids, and I basically come home and take away, I put bad habits, goofing off with them. So, I say all that in that now, having exited, part of the motivation was to be ever present. So, like taking the kids to school, going to all, I mean, I always went to their games and stuff, but really being there for them and just I see them a ton, which is amazing. 

Tim Ludwig: Those are the obvious upsides, I think, control of your schedule, the ability to be at leisure when you want, to pick and choose where you want to exert yourself, the time with the family obviously. What have been some of the challenges that you’ve come up with the new lifestyle and position? 

Ben Landers: Well, yeah, it’s interesting because I guess I’m at that point where I sort of recognize, I’ll sort of bumble this out, there’s a more articulate way to say it, but I get into the- I mean, first of all, when you’re the CEO of a company of any size, there’s some importance that comes with that. I mean, you’re introduced that way even when you don’t want to be. People invite you to games, they send you stuff like, hey, a new restaurant’s opening, here’s four free meals, bring your team. This part of your identity becomes I’m a CEO, I’m in this company, and I’m somewhat of importance. When you sell the business, I think there’s some idea that like, oh, I’m going from CEO to where now I’m like a fairly high net worth individual. I’m like, that’s important. But that, you sort of want to, in many ways, you want to keep it like anonymous. It’s not like you’re walking around advertising that, at least I don’t. I drive the same car I’ve always had and upgraded the house, but it’s nothing crazy. And so you lose that platform. I mean, that was the other thing I thought, like my kids came to take your kid to work day. And I brought my son on New Year’s Day to the office where I was doing like planning and he was, of course, like drawing pictures on the whiteboard or whatever. But my kids wouldn’t have been old enough like when I gave a all company presentation for the new year kickoff or something like that, like this is our plan for the year, here’s our strategy, and sort of seeing me in action. Whereas like my son now at 16 and my daughter at 14, I think they would have really gotten a kick out of that. And so I don’t have that. So I didn’t appreciate that. Like, I’ve gotten- I don’t have a platform like that anymore. So that’s one aspect of it. The other aspect of it is just, again, I don’t- as sort of a competitive person, I mean, I always wanted to grow the business. And sometimes I wanted to grow the business just because. It’s like, I want to get Blue Corona to 100 million in revenue. And it’s like, why? It’s like, I don’t know, because that’s bigger than this competitor who we hate them. Like, we want to be better and bigger than them. And of course, I recognize that sort of playing these status games of like bigger company, more revenue, better car, fancier house, none of it makes you happier. And in fact, it probably has the opposite effect. But I would say, that, of course, continues to be- when you’re surrounded by people who are still working, it’s like when you have the friend who gets the job at the company that then IPOs and now they’ve got $50 million, and you’re suddenly looking at your pile going like, gosh, I don’t- I want that, like I want more. But then, again, I’m old enough or smart enough, wise enough to realize that that’s just endless, just getting off of that. But I do struggle with that. When people who are still in their sort of peak earning are having these things happen to them and you think to yourself like, gosh, should I really be- it’s like, what is it, the John Lennon, watching the wheels go round and round. It’s sort of this like the game is going on and I’m not in it. And every now and then, there’s this, hmm. But I’ve got to say that the enlightened part of me or the zen part of me says that’s all like a facade. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah. Changing into this new role after the sale is kind of like finding yourself in a new job and there’s no instruction manual there. Did you turn to anybody for guidance about settling into what you’re doing, or just sort of like just experimentation and figured out eventually like this is the rhythm that feels good right now? 

Ben Landers: I guess I’ll answer that in a couple different ways. I was in YPO and I was in Vistage when we sold and then when I was newly exited. And I thought that I would get what you’re talking about from those groups. And the weirdest thing happened, like in my YPO group, and it’s all super confidential, so I won’t get into like names or hints of who’s who, but in my group, I was the youngest person by probably 10 years, just worked out that way, and we would go to schedule our our monthly meeting. And my calendar, of course, was like wide open, and these guys’ calendars, like it would take us an hour just to get like a time that would work for eight guys. And so, you would think that there was some part of them, that they have more money than they could ever spend, more success than they could ever have imagined, they don’t need to keep working. They’re 10 years older than I am. I’m 48. And yet- and so you would think that that group would say like yeah, I really need to like- I would tell them how I spent my last month and how great it was, and they would say like, man, that sounds fantastic. But then they would immediately sort of like, Ben, what are you going to do next? Like you’re not going to just keep doing that, like you got to do something. It was like, why? So I didn’t get any- I didn’t find- like when I would talk to entrepreneurs, almost everyone that I know that exited couldn’t stay out. They almost immediately jumped into something else. I do have one friend who was a Blue Corona client who had an HVAC company with two partners, they sold it. And I go to lunch with him on a pretty regular basis, and we have some of the same conversations, which is he has a desire to do something, but then he sits and it’s like, dude, I made 20 grand today just doing nothing, watching the money grow. I found myself saying, why would I want to go do this thing? I’m like, I’m right there with you. Why are we feeling this way type of thing. There’s that. But the other thing I was going to say is one of the things that I struggled with but very briefly when I was a CEO, there are people that are professional CEOs, like they’re groomed to become the CEO like maybe of a family business, or they go to school and the private equity firm puts them in as a CEO. Then there’s the founder who becomes the CEO of an ever-increasing business. And it’s almost like you didn’t plan for it, it’s accidental. And I think the CEO job is very nebulous, can be very nebulous, depending on the industry and the company and the situation. You get to decide how you spend your time, I mean, if you don’t have a board and all that stuff. And so, when I was the CEO of the company, I almost sort of invented a little system, like kind of created my own sort of construct. Like, how do I do innovation? Or how do I get customer feedback? How can I sort of mechanize it? I had a spreadsheet and a PowerPoint, and that was like my whole, and my Outlook, and that was like my little business system. And in many ways, I’ve done the same thing with this. I mean, I have a PowerPoint, which is sort of my visual like things that I’m thinking about, investments, health, my family, and then I’ve got a spreadsheet, and I got my Outlook. And so in many ways, it’s sort of the same thing. I just try to think of it, like I still, even though I don’t have a job, quote unquote, I still wake up each morning and from say six in the morning to 10, 10:30, I’m either reading or in front of the computer going, depends on the day, the topic. 

Tim Ludwig: Yeah, you have a schedule. 

Ben Landers: But I haven’t found, kind of to your original question, I have not found anyone who’s sort of living a parallel life. Almost everyone I know has sold and then they’re immediately super busy again. I almost can’t understand it because, again, everything that I’ve sort of read is like, I mean, you don’t know how much time you have, you don’t know how long, there’s how long you’re going to live and then there’s how long you’re going to live where you’ve like got all your facilities, you’re healthy and you can do the things that you want to do. I don’t know. 

Tim Ludwig: They probably can’t understand your decision either. So it’s probably a mutual level of confusion between you. But what would cause you, is there anything that would cause you to change your lifestyle at this point? 

Ben Landers: I mean, I think if I couldn’t- it’s funny, when I first exited, I, of course, got super, I started biking tons and hiking and lifting weights and playing golf and doing all this stuff, and it was kind of funny, all of a sudden, I’m at the doctor’s all the time, and it’s like my left knee and now my right knee and my shoulder and I got this problem with my wrist. And I’m saying this, and my doctor, my doctor’s like around our age, and he’s like, well, what are you doing each week? And I’m like telling him. And he’s like, you can’t do that. Like the warranty ends at 40. You can’t bike 20 hours a week. And I mean, of course, you can, but he’s like, you have to be different. And so one thing that would change, I didn’t bike or do much of anything, but I played a little bit of golf when I was building the company, hiked and played a little bit of golf. It’s funny, all my hikes, I would always listen to an Audible business book. So I was like always in the mode. But I think if I couldn’t, if something happens to my health where I can’t spend three to five hours a day sort of outside, then I would go back and treat business like a sport. I do find it incredibly fun, and I have a ton of fun. I will have like a CEO or entrepreneur will call me or find me or look me up. Either they have a similar business or a completely different business. And every time I have those calls, it’s like super invigorating. And it always is like I want to hire you, I want to pay you to do X or to do Y, and I always think to myself, like I don’t really want that, like you can call me whenever you want. I know you’re really busy, it’s like no, no, I’m not busy at all. But the minute there’s like a paycheck or a scope of a statement of work, then it’s like I’m going to deliver it, I’m not going to leave you hanging, but I also don’t really want that. I can hop on the phone for an hour at seven at night, but I don’t want to like have to come in and do something. So, what would change is if I couldn’t enjoy the things that I’m doing recreationally outside, then I would go back into like the game of business, I think. Or if something happened where like you and I have talked about this a little bit, and I’m really, I don’t know if envy is the right word, because I don’t know enough about his situation, but Andrew from Tiny, I sort of love this idea of having like a holding company where you have all these investments and you have a relationship with the company as an investor and sort of like on a board, something like that would be fantastic. But it’s just, I’m probably not there yet…. Yeah, a lot of work to get there, and I don’t know that, I mean, I don’t know that- people don’t want recreational board members, they want people who are kind of all in. And the other thing I was thinking about is one of my current struggles or things that I try to navigate through, which is my strong suit is probably as a startup CEO. I mean, I can do a lot of different things at a reasonable level. Like my weaknesses in the small business world are not, I can kind of do everything or I can find people that can do this stuff. Whereas when Blue Corona got to a certain size, I brought in a real executive team. And one of the guys that I brought in, who now is the CEO of the entire holdco that bought us, his strength, he’s like, he’s not lazy but sort of like the smart, lazy person. He is not going to do the on the ground work. He’s going to define or work with someone to define what it is, and then they’re going to go do it. He’s going to oversee it. But he is- when the business got to a certain size where it just always felt to me like fishing, like where all the line is just everywhere, I just couldn’t untangle it, he was the best I’ve ever seen at sort of asking questions to parse away the noise and really get to the heart of it and then find like who is the leader that’s going to define what excellence looks like. And then taking these little steps, little bit better, little bit better, little bit. Whereas I would say like, Mike, this is still like all screwed up, this is a mess. And he was like, buddy, you’ve got to get out of my hair. You’re like a perfectionist, like you want it all done tomorrow. That’s not how this is going to work. So he had that strength of like if he was the top of the holdco and had all these little portfolio companies with a million different issues, he would be fantastic at sort of getting each of the CEOs off on their- and serving as that guy in light. Whereas I would be like jumping in to hold co and like fixing the marketing plan or something. Which is a huge mistake, maybe good in the short term. 

Tim Ludwig: Different kinds of leaders required for different kinds of situations. And the wrap up to all this, given everything about your life’s journey so far, what aspect of it has been most surprising to you? When you were starting out as a kid and imagining what life would end up like, what was unimaginable then that has actually come to pass? 

Ben Landers: I mean, again, it’s sort of self-deprecating, but I was so disruptive, had so many struggles as a kid between school, behavior, health, all those three. And you and I talked about it briefly and I sort of said I didn’t want to get into all of it, but I had these childhood health issues that were, to me, catastrophic. Maybe to someone else, they’d say, oh, that’s not that big of a deal. To me, it was a big deal. And it carried on forever in my mind. And so, if you had said I was going to graduate from college, have anything resembling a successful career, that would have been unimaginable. To say I’d be running a company, successful company, win all these awards, have really smart people, way smarter than me working for me, then exiting. All the employees when they heard that we’re exiting, as we told them, it was like, oh, private equity, they say one thing and they do another. The company that acquired us did every single thing they said they were going to do and then some. Like, they did better than what they said. And that’s not what I had heard from any of the YPO, Vistage. It was always horror stories. So, that’s the big thing. It’s like, I want to go on like a speaking trip where I say, it really is, if I can do it with this IQ, these grades, all of these impediments, you can do anything. But of course, it never comes off that way. Like, that’s just a joke with my wife. Our kids are so much smarter than we are. It’s almost like we just spend most of the day hiding how much worse we were than them. And people are like, your kids are so great. What did- how did you do it? We don’t know. That’s what’s so scary. We don’t know what, going back to the data, we don’t know what part of our recipe caused this and what part they just dealt with. So we don’t know what to change. We basically just try to stay- 

Tim Ludwig: What a blessing though that they ended up like that, however they got there. And I think what a testament, your whole journey and sort of the place where you’ve ended up is a testament, I think, to the notion of perseverance, and there’s a resiliency there that I think in the conversations that I’ve had so far with this podcast is actually one of the recurring themes that’s coming up. People from all different starting points in life, this notion that hard work trumps talent and the fact that people just don’t quit and they keep going seems to be one of the commonalities across all these people so far, which I think is pretty fascinating. 

Ben Landers: I was in a fraternity in college. And probably one of the best things that came out of that, besides the relationships, was Calvin Coolidge was one of our like fraternity brothers. And so, we all had to memorize the Persistence poem, sort of this nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. And of course, we would have, this was like pre-hazing rules where we would be like blindfolded and people throwing stuff at us and we had to recite this poem. But I remember thinking about that all throughout my career and personal stuff. And I agree with you that it really is showing up and continuing and sort of that this too shall pass. No matter what you’re going through, it usually eventually gets better or ends. 

Tim Ludwig: Well, Ben, thank you for the conversation. This was awesome. I really enjoyed it. And I’m extremely grateful that you took the time to share all these experiences with me. 

Ben Landers: Thanks for having me, Tim. It’s been a pleasure.