Today’s interview is high energy, insightful and fun.

Wes Kao is an entrepreneur, marketer, coach, advisor, and fellow newsletter author. Wes has co-founded two companies: Maven, an edtech company that raised $25M from First Round and Andreessen Horowitz, and the altMBA, which she co-founded with bestselling author Seth Godin. Over 250,000 people follow Wes across LinkedIn, X, and Substack.

Wes is a force to be reckoned with.

Keeley and I (Peter) first met Wes back in 2016 when we both participated in one of the first cohorts of the altMBA.

For those who aren’t familiar, altMBA is essentially a month-long online leadership bootcamp. The work we did and the frameworks we learned during that month continue to influence our work - and we have Wes to thank for that.

Since our time in the altMBA, we have followed Wes’s career with interest, as she co-founded another company (Maven) and then struck out on her own to help individuals and teams level up.

Every week, Wes’s newsletter pushes us to hold ourselves and others to a higher standard. Wes is rigorous, thoughtful, and good at coining memorable frameworks (some of which we discuss today!)

This was a super fun conversation. Keeley and I enjoyed debriefing this one (which you can listen to after the interview).

Enjoy this conversation with Wes Kao.

Topics Discussed:

• [00:00] Teaser Clip and Introduction
• [03:08] Wes’s background
• [03:55] What it means to be a high performer
• [08:52] Wes’s career arc
• [14:03] Lessons that Wes learned from Seth Godin, and what they disagree about
• [21:07] “Spiky points of view”
• [28:46] The “state change method”
• [31:17] Wes’s big vision for her business
• [35:47] Coaching
• [40:37] Organizational resilience, leadership succession, and getting raises
• [48:33] Toronto
• [49:42] Newsletters
• [52:05] YouTube
• [52:46] Houseplants
• [55:04] Book recommendations
• [55:48] Post-interview debrief with Peter and Keeley

Please help this interview reach more people by rating Uncommon Business on Spotify and Apple or by sharing it with others.

We would love your feedback, comments, and questions. Please leave a comment directly on the post or email us at hello@lumogroup.co.

Thank you!

Peter & Keeley
Partners, Lumo Group

Our guest is Darren Marshall. Darren is the CEO of Smith Teamaker. Prior to Smith, he worked in high level roles at iconic companies such as Coca Cola and Steinway.

People have been drinking tea for centuries.

It is one of the oldest consumer products in the world.

Because tea has been around forever, the category as a whole is relatively sleepy.

The tea industry has only experienced low single digit growth on average over the past decade. But Smith Teamaker has bucked this slow growth trend by growing dramatically over the past five years under Darren’s leadership.

We have talked to founders on this podcast before. But the reason we wanted to talk to Darren was the opposite. He is not the founder of Smith Teamaker. He joined the company as CEO in 2018 and has overseen a period of transformation, growth, and adaptability, even through COVID.

Succeeding a founder as CEO can be challenging. It’s not easy to step into a founder-led business and keep excitement and momentum going. Yet that is exactly what Darren has done, and much more. Today the business is much healthier and growing more quickly than ever before.

Topics Discussed:

• Introduction from Peter and Keeley
• The founding story of Smith Tea
• Succeeding a founder and how to navigate it and how Darren approached his first few months on the job
• Best and worst parts of working at Coca Cola
• Darren’s time at Steinway and the ins and outs of the luxury piano market
• How the company is growing through agility, innovation, and culture
• Maintaining a business in central Portland despite the property crime
• The ownership of the company and the outlook for the future
• Managing upward (i.e. to a board)
• Hiring practices
• Leadership
• Darren’s favorite cities
• Classical music recommendations
• Book recommendation
• Darren’t current tea order
• Debrief on the interview from Keeley and Peter

Peter sits down with Ari Weinzweig, the co-founder of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In 1982 Ari opened Zingerman’s Delicatessen in Ann Arbor Michigan with just 2 employees and a small selection of exceptional specialty foods and sandwiches. Today, Zingerman’s has developed into a community of 14 different businesses with hundreds of employees and tens of millions of dollars in annual revenues.

In addition to being an incredible entrepreneur and leader, Ari is also a prolific writer and author. Ari has written multiple books about business, leadership, management, and beliefs, and every week he sends out a thoughtful multi-thousand word essay via his newsletter.

Through his writing, Ari has inspired thousands of business leaders and employees to think differently about their business and their operations. As we note in the episode, we think Ari is actually a philosopher disguised as a business person.

Last year, Ari and his business partners transitioned the company to Perpetual Purpose Trust ownership. They are one of the higher profile businesses in the country to have made the leap to Trust ownership.

Buckle up, because we cover a lot of ground in this episode.

TOPICS WE DISCUSSED:
[00:00] Teaser Clip and Introduction
[04:08] What Ari learned while washing dishes at Mauds
[05:18] Ari’s entrepreneurial path and starting his own thing
[06:36] Ari’s decision to hire a full time illustrator in 1991 + The Natural Laws of Business
[09:53] The process of writing the mission and guiding principles for the organization
[12:47] Favorite guiding principle
[14:21] Rule-breaking with a philosophical foundation
[16:21] Ari's pamphlets
[20:53] What does it mean to be anarchist? And what are some common misconceptions about anarchy and anarchists?
[31:44] Who is Emma Goldman?
[36:05] What are some things that Ari tried and failed?
[38:36] What is Ari focusing on lately in business
[39:13] What is the Zingerman's approach to business?
[47:35] What's one thing Ari has learned from Seth Godin?
[49:37] What is a vision, and how is it different from a strategic plan?
[54:28] Zingerman's 2032 vision
[01:00:37] Ari’s current personal vision for 2030
[01:03:51] Visioning process
[01:06:33] What recent beliefs has Ari changed? And how did he go about that?
[01:10:58] What are Ari's beliefs that he hides or he doesn't advertise because he feels they aren't socially acceptable?
[01:13:20] How does Ari personally handle transitions?
[01:16:31] The role of trust in organizations and strategies for building trust among team members
[01:26:38] The analogy of an old growth forest applied to businesses and communities
[01:30:59] What is the energy crisis facing the American workplace, and how do we fix it?
[01:35:20] How does Ari keep his head in the game? How does Ari manage his own energy?
[01:38:21] Ari’s reading routine and how he decide what to read next
[01:44:15] Book recommendations
[01:45:27] A good recipe Ari cooked recently
[01:47:31] Appreciations
[01:48:22] Post-interview debrief with Peter and Keeley

On today’s episode, we are talking to Cory Carman. Cory is a rancher, entrepreneur, innovator, parent, and the CEO of Carman Ranch, a regenerative cattle and meat company in Eastern Oregon.

Cory is a female leader in a historically male-dominated industry (however, as Cory points out in the episode, there are and historically have been more women in ranching than one might assume). What’s actually even more trailblazing about Carman Ranch is Cory’s holistic approach to running a truly regenerative company.

Cory says that she is in the business of raising soil, not just cattle. Soil health underlies everything - from the resilience of our ecosystem to the nutritional density of the food we consume, and Carman Ranch operates with that in mind.

One reason we are excited to have Cory on the show is because she does things differently, which is the theme of this show. Cory doesn’t care about conventional thinking and is more than happy to spend her time working toward a future that she sees as common sense but others see as risky or naive. She is also comfortable holding unpopular opinions, not because she is a contrarian, but because she thinks for herself.

This conversation gets into the weeds! Cory gets specific on how she runs her business, the ranching industry, the impact of our food choices, how she capitalized her business, what she is working on as a leader, and much much more.

As you'll see in this episode, Cory is a nuanced thinker. She doesn't think in black-and-white terms, which makes her refreshing to listen to.

TOPICS WE DISCUSSED:

• [00:00] Introduction
• [02:43] Cory's Spotted Owl Paper at Stanford
• [05:51] Unconventional thinking and staying focused on her mission
• [7:50] Cory's life and work on the ranch and background on the business
• [11:00] What Cory learned from her grandmother Ruth
• [13:20] Women in ranching
• [16:48] Carman Ranch’s competitive advantage
• [18:00] Factory farming and commodity beef vs. other approaches
• [23:00] The policy and regulatory landscape
• [28:00] Can you buy good meat at Whole Foods + general discussion about the impact of our food choices
• [30:00] Is vegetarianism/veganism in the name of climate change misguided?
• [35:12] “Raising Soil” - Using cattle for ecological health and regenerative agriculture.
• [37:45] What is regenerative agriculture anyway?
• [39:00] The nutritional/taste differences between grass-fed and grain-fed beef
• [46:00] Slaughter and processing overview
• [49:17] Complexity and challenges in the processing industry
• [52:00] Carman Ranch’s business model
• [53:25] Carman’s ranch’s partnerships with other producers
• [56:20] Financing Carman Ranch with mission-aligned investments and the structure and terms of those investments
• [1:02:00] Carman Ranch’s financial performance
• [1:03:40] Challenges that Carman Ranch is dealing with right now
• [1:08:00] What Cory cooks with her ground beef
• [1:08:50] Carman Ranch’s direct-to-consumer business
• [1:10:40] What Cory is working on as a leader
• [1:13:00] Cory’s role models/inspirations
• [1:14:00] Cory’s parenting style and philosophy
• [1:17:50] Should we rethink child labor laws?
• [1:20:25] Rural values
• [1:22:00] Book recommendations
• [1:23:15] Cory’s favorite vacation spots + Eastern Oregon recommendations
• [1:25:45] Cory’s favorite dinners
• [1:27:00] Where to buy Carman Ranch’s products
• [1:28:00] Post-interview debrief with Peter and Keeley

LINKS:

• LINKEDIN | Cory Carman
• WEBSITE | www.carmanranch.com

Enjoy!

For our first episode, I sat down with one of the most original entrepreneurs I know - Jason Fried.

Jason is the Co-Founder and CEO at 37signals, makers of Basecamp and HEY. He is also the New York Times bestselling co-author of multiple books including Rework, Getting Real, REMOTE, and It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work.

Jason also writes a blog and posts almost daily about business strategy and tactics on LinkedIn and X to his combined 400,000 followers.

The reason we wanted to kick off Uncommon Business Season 1 with Jason is because he is the epitome of a business leader who does things differently, which is the theme of this show.

For example, at 37Signals:

• They don’t make annual forecasts.
• They never plan more than 6 weeks ahead
• Employees often have multiple days per week without any meetings on their calendar
• They are a growth-oriented tech company that has been profitable since day one (which, if you didn’t realize, is quite unusual)

And those are just a few of the ways that they buck “conventional” business practices.

One of the things I really appreciate about Jason is that he takes the time to write down how they work and share it with the world. Not only is this brilliant marketing, but it is also a massive service to other entrepreneurs and business leaders who want real world examples of how they might do things differently.

One funny story: When Jason and I were coordinating this interview, I told him I would send some bullet point topics in advance that I was planning to cover. He replied and kindly rejected my plan.

He wrote “Please don’t send any topics ahead of time. Whatever you want to talk about is fine, but I don’t want to know. A true spontaneous conversation is the best kind.”

TOPICS WE DISCUSSED:

• What 37signals does and how they are structured and how they work
• Why Jason writes so much and why he feels “morally obligated” to share how their business philosophies and practices
• How he thinks about hiring, and why he loves hiring former freelancers
• Their compensation philosophy and the specific details around how they structure comp across their entire remote team
• The story of how they raised money from Jeff Bezos early on as a way to take some risk off the table
• His framework for making difficult decisions
• What current day Jason would tell past Jason about being an effective leader of people
• What Jason has been feeling frustrated about
• What he did for his recent sabbatical and what he is growing in his garden (and the 37signals sabbatical policy, which he muses about potentially changing)
• The value of Tom Petty lyrics and his favorite Petty song

Enjoy!

We launched Uncommon Business as a way to help small and medium sized businesses and business leaders level up.

Lots of business podcasts focus on either big businesses that are household names, or high-growth, small startups, usually tech related.

The companies we work with exist in this missing middle: solid, sustainable businesses who are doing interesting, important work - often without relying on venture capital or targeting a future IPO.

Uncommon Business is for those companies, and for the founders and owners that run those companies and the leaders and employees who work at them.

On the podcast we will share:

• Interviews with inspiring, smart leaders and operators.
• Case studies and book reports to help you run your business.
• Our own thoughts and reflections along the way.

We can’t wait to share the first episode of Uncommon Business with you.