Latest / We Built This Brand / Going Down the Rabbit Hole with Greg Bellinger

Transcript

Going Down the Rabbit Hole with Greg Bellinger · We Built This Brand

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You know, I saw that business model, and I was like, let's go all in on that,
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which is supporting creatives and digital agencies from the development side.
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Because if you look at a lot of the creative studios out there or
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agencies that are doing pretty good, most of them are founded by,
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you know, people that are creatives or are really good at marketing.
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There's very few of them that are created by development arms and
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technical people, and so we come in, and we partner with agencies.
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This is what we do now coming into why you're at the group.
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As a company, as a whole, all we do is partner
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with creative studios and agencies for engineering.
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So still to this day, our agency partners are out there, they have their
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clients, they're doing the designs, and we come in and we build it.
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Welcome to We Built This Brand, the podcast where we talk to the
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creators and collaborators behind brands and provide you with
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practical insights that you can use in growing your own business.
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Today, we're talking with Greg Bellinger, founder of
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White Rabbit Group, a development agency, specializing
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in supporting creative studios and digital agencies.
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Greg shares his journey from self-taught web developer to entrepreneur,
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starting with his early business ventures before co-founding White Rabbit.
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He discusses the company's unique approach to managing its
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international team and what they've done to be successful beyond that.
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We also get to talk about his company's work with The
1:21
Game Awards and some of their other recent successes.
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There was a lot to learn in this episode, and I'm
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so glad that Greg was able to spend time with me.
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So without further ado, here's my conversation with
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Greg Bellinger, CEO and founder of White Rabbit Group.
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Alrighty, Greg, welcome to We Built This Brand.
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Glad to be here, Chris.
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Excited to be here.
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Yeah, it's thrilled, thrilled to have you on the show today and be
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chatting with you about your work at The White Rabbit Group as the
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founder of that company and everything that you're doing there.
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I'm really excited to learn more, so
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where I typically like to start with these is just get into
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a little bit about your background first and figure out
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where you came from and how you got to where you are today.
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So tell me a little bit about your background.
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Sure.
2:13
Yeah.
2:13
Where'd I come from?
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So, I grew up in the Bay Area, Pleasanton, California.
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That's where I grew up, and I graduated from high school there.
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Moved to Northern California, eventually made it to Chico State,
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graduated from Chico State with business entrepreneurship.
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Basically right out of high school, I started coding.
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Started building websites, self-taught since, like, I
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graduated in 2007, and in about 2008, I started coding.
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Started building websites, started out with this old Microsoft builder,
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I even forget the name, this content management system that Microsoft
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used to manage, and that's what kind of started my journey into code.
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Once I was able to build a website, coded my first site, kind of told
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everybody and their mother, I can build you a website, this is what I do, and
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kind of put on my sales hat and just started, you know, building websites.
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I got into e-commerce.
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I don't consider myself a developer anymore, but you know, the first
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10 to 20 websites that I sold, I built myself, and got into custom
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development pretty, pretty early on as well, going from custom
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designs and coding them from scratch from the front end, and I
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remember writing the code for a lot of those, and I just love the web.
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Like, why did I get into it?
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I don't know.
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I love creating things from scratch and the ability to just write
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code, push it to a server and the whole world can have access to it.
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It just it blew my mind, and I quickly fell in love with it.
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And so that's, you know, started self-taught, but I graduated
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business entrepreneurship major Chico State, and through, you know,
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going to college, I was building websites for a lot of companies,
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small businesses out of Chico, and kind of across, you know, even
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in the Bay Area, there was some, some clients that I attained,
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and it was just kind of got me through college and paid my bills.
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And yeah.
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Yeah, that's cool.
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So, I mean, to have that passion early on and then to be able to
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leverage that into a career after college, I think is really cool.
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And I also find it interesting that you
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did a business and entrepreneurship major.
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Funny enough, I actually did a marketing entrepreneurship dual major in college.
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So I'm familiar with the path, and
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so that's really cool.
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Not a lot of schools offer that.
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So that's neat.
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Yeah.
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Chico state has a good, really good program.
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When I was there, Peter Straus was was head of the program, and I just learned a
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lot from the people that were in that program and that I surrounded myself with.
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So.
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Yeah.
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And having that business out of college, I mean, obviously that turned into,
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I guess, your first company out of college, which that was really neat that
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you got to be able to do that, and then move on into eventually White Rabbit.
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So what was that journey like?
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What took you from each business on until
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where to where you got to White Rabbit?
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Yeah, so I started building websites, and I started my own
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agency and that was called Golden Leaf, and I was doing SEO.
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I was actually pretty good at it back in the day, but, you
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know, we were selling SEO branding, websites, business cards.
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We were kind of doing everything, but it was full-service,
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but I was using contractors basically to, you know,
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to fulfill all the services that we were doing.
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And during that time also, I built and started a couple
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other companies, a buddy of mine, we co-founded a company,
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and I was a little all over the place I guess you could say.
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I just love building things, creating things, love working
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with people, but had a, you know, an epiphany that there.
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Was probably focusing on too many things at the same
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time, and all that, you know, building websites, being a
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technical person, you know, used to do front end development.
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You know, my co-founder Abhilash and I, we started White Rabbit Group
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with the tenets of going all in terms of like focus and also hiring
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everybody as a full-time employee, and so that journey, I guess,
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up until White Rabbit Group was just building a lot of websites
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and running an agency and building a, you know, a few companies
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and then just kind of went all in on White Rabbit Group with my co-founder,
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Abhilash, a whole, whole nother story and how we met and how that got going.
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But, yeah.
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Okay.
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I find it interesting that you said, you
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know, an intent on hiring full-time employees.
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What made that one of your visions for White Rabbit?
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I think experience.
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So getting ghosted from a developer somewhere, I mean, before White Rabbit
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Group and fulfilling, you know, all the services that we were doing, I worked
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with people all over the world and there comes a point of, like, reliability.
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Control over over hours and output.
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The, you know, the, all the reasons why we brought everybody in house is, you
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know, a big thing is culture, so retaining that culture and the people that
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we work with and having them full-time employees and focused on what they do.
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Culture is really big for us, and I just don't think when you have a fully
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remote in terms of not just being full-time, but part time employees, 10 hours
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on White Rabbit, but then 30 hours somewhere else that could be split up.
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I don't even know what's going on with their time.
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They're just not fully focused on, you know, what they're
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doing, what they're building, and the culture that
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we want to build and the team that we want to build.
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Another thing is quality.
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So, our hiring processes, you know, the hiring process is very important.
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And ours is, there's a lot of steps.
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We know how to hire engineers because we're both, you know, technical
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founders, and obviously our team, at this point of almost a hundred
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people, are architects and our hiring team is really good at what they do.
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So quality and the output of, you know, code and things that we're building
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through the hiring process is really important, and then cost is another.
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You know, when you bring people in-house and you have the, everybody
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within the entity, there's no middle person kind of taking a cut.
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So those are all the tenants as to why.
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That makes a lot of sense.
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I mean, we've definitely experimented with outsource,
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and yeah, we run into that kind of, like a third party.
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They're going to help you connect with someone in India, and
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it's like, "But I'm paying you. How much less are you paying them
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based on what I'm paying you?" Like, you always have to wonder
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what they're really getting out of the deal when that happens.
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That makes a lot of sense.
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And yeah, I mean, it hiring people, especially full-time versus
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part time and all that, like, I totally understand that desire.
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It definitely does make a difference when you've got someone on
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your team that's dedicated to your work, focused on your business.
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Yeah.
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So yeah, a lot of parallels there.
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I can, I can identify with running my own company because
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yeah, hiring contractors is a much different animal
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than, than dealing with the dealing with full-time folks.
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And it makes a difference in the quality of the work you do too.
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We just want to be reliable for agency partners.
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We are a contractor to who we work with, so it's not like there's not a use.
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You have contractors, right?
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They use and there's definitely a need for it if you don't have a specialty,
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you want to focus on what you do and you bring in getting outsourced.
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But for us as a company, you know, we want to be reliable and
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having the team there is key and having everybody in house.
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So yeah, like there's not a single service offering
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that we offer where there's a contractor working on it.
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And we're in, yeah, we're in three countries, too.
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So we're in
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India, Columbia, and the United States.
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We have entities set up in all three of those
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countries and operate in those countries.
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So,
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Yeah, that's a big difference, too.
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Being able to hire direct, hire those people there
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as opposed to those third parties and whatnot.
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So, yeah, I got you.
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So, yeah.
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So let's talk a little bit about White Rabbit.
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So you get to White Rabbit and you've got this business partner.
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I'm sorry, what was his name again?
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Abhilash.
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Abhilash?
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Yeah.
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And is he, based here in the States then?
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He does live in California now, but he's from India.
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When we started the company, he was in
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India, and him and I met actually on oDesk.
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It's just crazy how it,
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just one small connection can kind of change life and the trajectory,
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like literally met on a platform that basically, oDesk, it's like Upwork,
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it connects, you know, contractors and people to do work together.
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And anyways, again, I've worked with people all over the world
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and Abhilash and I met on the oDesk, connected, we worked on our
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first project, and there was just something that was different.
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You know, a couple of years go by, we ended up working
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on a project big enough to where I fly out to India.
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So I was out there for about five weeks, I think the first trip.
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So we were building a product together, and there's nothing like in-person.
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Our relationship changed obviously after that meeting him in-person and
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connecting in-person, and then just a couple of years after that, I was like,
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"Hey, let's, you know, I want to take a pivot on the agency, go all in on
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engineering, supporting agencies, creative studios." We both put in money.
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We both co-founded the company, and it kind of hit the ground running.
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So he's a technical person as well.
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More back end, more front end.
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So it was kind of a perfect match, full stack match, you could say.
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And yeah, he, you know, he was working on big web
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applications flying back and forth from Europe.
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So, you know, more big enterprise experience, and I had more small-to-medium
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sized company experience and, but yeah, both started the company with,
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you know, the tenants of our service offerings and everybody in-house
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and just going all in, and we hired our first, we incorporated in
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2016, hired our first developer in January of 2017, full-time, again.
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And now we're, you know, we're almost a hundred people,
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you know, and we've opened up Columbia since then.
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We've never taken on funding as a company, you know, self-funded, pretty
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much profitable since the first month that we started as a service company.
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And yeah,
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we've just been, been having fun.
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So, you mentioned being making money pretty much from the first month and that's
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a great feat to be able to just start with profit, especially if you've had
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to put money into the business and the funding and building and hiring people.
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What would you, would you consider that kind of your moment of validation?
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Just having that having that happen in your first month or was there
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something else where you're like, "Oh yeah, White Rabbit's are really a
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thing now. We know this is going to be better than just a two month company."
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Yeah.
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The moment of validation was probably a few years before starting the company.
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So I was, you know, I was building websites for people.
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Golden Leaf was a company that I owned and that I was building
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websites for, and I partnered up with a person named Helen Duval.
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She was a designer out of Chico, and I partnered up with her.
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She did the designs, and I did the code.
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I even remember, like this is, I was still writing code
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at this point, you know, so we built this relationship.
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She's a creative, and she owns her own studio, has her own clients,
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she designs the websites, does the branding, and then from the
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technical side, I would take those designs and code it out.
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And so this is where the idea and the validation
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kind of started with White Rabbit Group.
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And there's, you know, it's, as a technical
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person, like, I could stay in that lane.
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She does what she does best.
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I do what I do best, but there's also this natural reoccurring
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nature to the relationship because after one successful
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project, she continues to bring in more projects, right?
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And I remember actually like a month, there was like a month
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where I was kind of struggling and bringing in my own clients.
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And I was, you know, I was paying my own bills, my rent, everything was
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coming through the company that I was, you know, building Golden Leaf,
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and one month it was, I was kind of struggling and she continued to bring
15:13
in, I think she brought in like two projects that month, and it helped
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me like, you know, float and sustain and pay my rent for that month.
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So there was this reoccurring nature.
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It was also just a strong relationship.
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I didn't have to teach her what a domain was.
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I didn't have to teach her kind of like basic stuff.
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It was just a very smooth, you know, relationship, and so that's where I
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kind of saw the business model was in that moment, and I liked creating.
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Didn't, SEO is great, but it was, I wasn't
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like completely passionate about it, right?
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Or, you know, marketing, even though I do love marketing.
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And so, you know, I saw that business model.
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I was like, let's go all in on that.
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Which is supporting creatives and digital agencies from the development
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side, because if you look at a lot of the creative studios out there
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or agencies that are doing pretty good, most of them are founded by,
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you know, people that are creatives are really good at marketing.
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There's very few of them that are created by development arms and
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technical people, and so we come in and we partner with agencies.
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This is what we do now coming into White Rabbit Group.
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As a company, as a whole, all we do is partner
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with creative studios and agencies for engineering.
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So still to this day, our agency partners are out there, they have their
16:34
clients, they're doing the designs, and we come in and we build it.
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That was my "Aha!" moment.
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It was, yeah, a few years before, and we, you know, validated it and we
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got, you know, then it became an "Aha!" moment when we reached out to
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other agencies, did cold outreach and said, "Hey, this is what we do.
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We've done it before.
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We're happy to build it out for you," and then it just kind of snowballed.
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So I think today we've got like 138 plus signed agency partners.
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And I mean, that's definitely a need having come from the
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marketing world, having come from the more creative side of things.
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Like partnering with a good development arm that knows what
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they're doing, that knows how to help execute well on these types
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of projects, you know, means a lot from somebody on this side.
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So I think what y'all are doing, you know,
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has a lot of value for those types of folks.
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Yeah, it's a black box.
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If you don't know how to develop a right code, it's a
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little bit dark, so you have to have somebody trusted
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that knows what they're doing and everything's digital.
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Yeah, I've definitely seen the other side
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where he goes awry and you don't want that.
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You need a trusted partner.
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Oh, man.
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Stories I could tell you over a beer that are
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not good for the podcast, but that's really cool.
17:58
So then this idea for the White Rabbit
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Group happens, where did the name come from?
18:04
Why the White Rabbit Group?
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Man, I love the name White Rabbit.
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It comes from Alice in Wonderland.
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Originally stems from that, and then obviously The Matrix, you
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know, pulled it from Alice in Wonderland, Down the Rabbit Hole.
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And The Matrix really started, you know, the movement, Follow the White Rabbit."
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The digital world, writing code so it kind of stems from that whole realm.
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There's also the magical, kind of, like, magician's rabbit hat, because
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again, to anybody who doesn't know code, it is kind of like magic.
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It's like writing another language.
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It literally is.
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So there's that side to it.
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We're fast like rabbits, and we also do a lot of white label development, so
18:48
White Rabbit also is very fitting for that, but the logo itself, my friend
18:55
actually had an agency, which was the logo White Rabbit Group, and they shut
19:01
it down, and I was in the middle of transitioning Golden Leaf to White Rabbit.
19:07
And the brand wasn't right, and I was going through, like, all these iterations
19:11
on the brand, and it was basically a logo sitting on my friend's computer, and I
19:16
was like, "Hey, let me take the logo, run with it. It's perfect for where we're
19:22
going." And so I actually bought it off a friend for a hundred dollars, and
19:29
we hit the ground running.
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I don't think I've actually said that publicly.
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But that's not a problem at all, but yeah, we you know,
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bought it, hit the ground running, and it's a great brand.
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And was designed by somebody local in Chico as well,
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and he just did a phenomenal job with the logo.
19:49
So.
19:50
Yeah, you got a much better deal on your brand than I did.
19:59
Yeah, that's a really neat analogy and ,you're right.
20:02
Like it is like magic when you do development, right?
20:05
You know, technology.
20:07
I was talking to my six-year-old son the other day, and he was
20:10
like, "There's no magic in the world." I'm like, "Yes, there is.
20:12
It's called 'technology.'" You know, when you can't understand, when you don't
20:16
know how it works, and it just works, that's magic, but it's really neat.
20:21
And y'all have done, speaking of magic, y'all have done some really cool things.
20:25
Some really cool projects since the time that you
20:29
all have started, and I noticed one of those that's
20:31
probably near and dear to my heart is The Game Awards.
20:35
That's just as a video gamer in general and someone who loves that content.
20:39
So if you don't mind, I'd love to learn more about, like, that project.
20:44
What was the problem?
20:45
How did you solve it for The Game Awards?
20:48
Like, what all did you do with them?
20:50
We can talk about The Game Awards, which is awesome.
20:52
I'd love to.
20:53
You know, one thing about our company is like 90 percent of the
20:56
projects maybe 80 percent, close to 90 percent we can't even talk about.
21:01
So there's some cool things that, like, we've built that we can't
21:04
even really talk about because we do a lot of white label development.
21:08
We're under, you know, NDAs and what we build, and we don't really
21:11
push too hard and trying to case study everything that we build.
21:17
But really the white label development, you know, we've built
21:19
some really cool things and the end client doesn't really
21:21
know that we're the ones that actually built it out, which is
21:24
interesting, but that's kind of the world that we sit in, right?
21:27
The white label space.
21:29
And when it comes to The Game Awards, you know again, we partner
21:32
with agencies and creative studios, and a lot of our referrals
21:36
and a lot of the work that we do comes from our agency partners.
21:41
The Game Awards came to us from one of our agency partners, and you
21:47
know, they had previously, it was built from another engineering team.
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But we took it on, and it's headless.
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It's a really cool build, and I, don't know how deep I can actually get in
22:02
on it, but every year, man, we're our technical project manager, Michelle,
22:09
she's on the project, and she's, you know, for the couple of weeks coming
22:13
up to The Game Awards, the whole team is like, you know, ready to go.
22:18
It's a pretty big event.
22:20
Obviously live, and we've handled and do handle live events.
22:24
But again, publicly, what we can talk about The Game Awards is
22:28
probably the biggest that we could talk about, and it's very
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interesting seeing our whole team just come together every year
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and deliver and we're all watching it and yeah, it's a lot of fun.
22:41
So, and it's a cool build and how it's built and it being
22:45
headless, I don't know if you know too much about headless.
22:48
I don't, and I'm sure our listeners would love to know,
22:50
so please tell me, what does "headless" mean here?
22:54
So headless basically is where you take, so when you look at
22:59
like WordPress as a content management system as a whole, it's
23:02
not headless, it's attached front end and in the back end.
23:06
Taking it headless is basically using APIs and pulling apart the CMS and
23:12
having the front end running and then the CMS running basically through APIs.
23:18
And what it does is it gives you, there's kind
23:21
of two reasons why you would go ahead this.
23:24
The first is brand control.
23:26
So you control everything because it's, you control all of the
23:30
front end essentially, and you can put it on different frameworks.
23:36
So brand customization is one big thing, and then speed is another.
23:40
And when it comes to speed, you know, maybe a five to 10 million
23:44
company, it might not make a difference, but when you get into a, you
23:47
know, a hundred million dollar or billion dollar company, that's doing
23:51
e-commerce sales, you know, a quarter of a second makes a difference.
23:55
So, so there's speed there.
23:57
We do e-commerce headless integrations as well.
24:00
And it's kind of more for mid to large size companies to where it
24:04
makes sense to go headless and actually do headless integration.
24:08
So if I understand correctly, like with WordPress,
24:10
you've got kind of this overarching access to it.
24:15
Like as an editor or somebody, I can just go in and, you
24:19
know, write a blog post or whatnot, but on your side with
24:21
headless, it sounds like it's a little more separated.
24:24
It is, but you're still managing it through the content management system.
24:28
Yeah, so you're still writing it, but the
24:30
front end is pulled away, the HTML CSS.
24:32
If I had a whiteboard
24:35
and write on it'd probably be easier to show you, but basically the
24:39
front end is pulled away and is headless, is what you could say.
24:44
So that's where that kind of term comes from.
24:47
And it gives you manageability, like customization on
24:49
the front end and speed and control over the front end.
24:53
Basically is what it gives you.
24:55
So Shopify, we've had this on top of Shopify,
25:01
WordPress, one of the bigger content management systems, like when it, in terms
25:05
of headless is Contentful, we do a lot of headless integrations with Contentful.
25:09
So.
25:10
Cool.
25:11
You've developed this for The Game Awards.
25:14
You've developed this thing.
25:15
I mean, you sound like it sounds like you also did live streaming there.
25:18
So you were doing streaming on the website as well, correct?
25:21
Would that be?
25:22
There is some live streaming, and I'm
25:25
forgetting the platform that they're using.
25:27
It's not like we built that, but obviously keeping the site alive.
25:31
There is the voting platform which is custom that we've built and managed.
25:37
So there is that component.
25:39
Game Awards is just getting bigger and bigger as well.
25:43
We love working with them.
25:45
Yeah, I'm sure it's a bit of an adrenaline rush because maintaining that it's
25:49
not, you're leading up to this event, and then you actually have to make sure
25:52
the site stays live while the stream stays live during the event, and that just.
25:56
For sure.
25:57
Nerve wracking.
25:59
Our Technical PM, her name is Michelle, again.
26:05
She got invited to The Game Awards this year.
26:07
But it's like, I can't go to The Game Awards cause I
26:09
have to make sure that the site is live and doesn't fail.
26:14
Like, I can't be in the room watching the show.
26:17
I have to be, make sure that the site is working in function.
26:21
Cause you have that added layer of, like, the people watching The
26:24
Game Awards are probably going to have some technical knowledge
26:26
of what you're doing, and if that stream is down or that doesn't
26:30
happen, like it's just that much, I, yeah, I can, I can definitely.
26:34
Yeah.
26:35
Yeah.
26:36
A lot of gamers are also developers, so they're trying
26:37
to break the site and try to like make things happen.
26:41
Like for sure.
26:43
That I hadn't even thought about that part, but yeah, golly, man.
26:46
That sounds like a quite the challenge, but you've, but it
26:50
looks like y'all have done a good job and gotten it out there.
26:53
And you know, everybody enjoys watching The Game Awards.
26:56
I know.
26:57
So, well, there's a lot of other things we could talk about.
27:00
I mean, you all have worked with FedEx and Instacart and
27:02
a bunch of other big names I'm sure you can't talk about.
27:06
Is there anything else that stands out to you as like,
27:08
"Hey, this is one really cool thing The White Rabbit has
27:10
done that I just want to make sure people know about."
27:14
I love the company that we built is just
27:17
amazing because we have such an awesome team.
27:20
Again, everybody in the house, we have a strong culture,
27:22
and we were out there to support our agency partners.
27:27
We just care.
27:28
We care a lot and building a service company can be challenging and scaling it.
27:33
And we, we've done that, I think in part due to the service
27:37
offering that we have, it's not too broad and who we work
27:40
for and then just caring and putting everything in place.
27:45
For scaling our team has really worked out, so.
27:49
That's great.
27:50
Yeah, it definitely sounds like you've positioned yourself in a good niche
27:53
for what you do, and you've got the people to support that, so that's awesome.
27:57
So what, just thinking a little more broad now what is top
28:02
of mind for you in the industry as we, we go into 2025?
28:05
I have a feeling I know what you're gonna say, but
28:07
I'm really curious to know, what's top of mind?
28:11
Well, what am I gonna say?
28:13
Something about AI.
28:15
Yeah.
28:15
AI's taken over.
28:17
I just I have a weekly newsletter that I write every week, and I release it.
28:22
And last week I wrote about, I'm using it every day.
28:26
I'm personally using it every day.
28:27
It's kind of like my lawyer on the side, writing
28:30
clauses, editing clauses, copywriting, ton of research.
28:34
I've done a ton of research on ChatGPT.
28:39
It's kind of my go to, and it's quickly become a tool that I use
28:42
every single day, you know, as a CEO of nearly a hundred people.
28:48
And so when you talk about, yeah, what's ahead, I guess,
28:51
what's new, and what's taken over, it's these chatbots.
28:55
You know, I kind of held back there because it's not technically AI yet.
29:00
It's machine learning, and patterns, but AI's
29:05
what everybody's calling it, and it's, and it will be, you know, AI one day.
29:10
But it's taken over a site here for us as an engineering team.
29:14
There's not a, I'll just make this statement, there's not a single engineer
29:16
in the entire world that should not be using AI at this point as its assistant
29:22
for writing code, and our team for sure, is using it, and it's taken over.
29:29
So, you know, we're starting to do integrations on it and getting,
29:35
you know, some projects in terms of like machine learning.
29:39
And it's cool to see it's taken over everything.
29:44
Fathom.
29:44
I don't know if you use Fathom or have heard of that,
29:48
but it's a new app that our project managers are using.
29:51
It records the meeting, puts recaps for the whole
29:55
meeting, and it's, you know, it's AI driven.
29:57
It learns your behavior, and it's, there's
30:01
just really cool tools out there being built.
30:04
And
30:07
so, take it over.
30:10
Yeah.
30:11
I've definitely had my experiences with AI.
30:13
Just, I've been impressed.
30:15
I've actually been more impressed with Gemini lately.
30:17
That's the one that I've been looking at and going, "Oh.
30:20
Wow.
30:20
This is better than I thought it was," because it can integrate
30:24
with, if you have Google Suite for your office, you can say
30:26
like, "Look at my email and make sure I haven't missed anything."
30:30
You know, and just little things that otherwise you'd have to hire an assistant
30:33
for, and I'm a big verbal processor, so like having the ability to just talk
30:39
to something, basically a brick wall, and have it speak back is really nice.
30:43
Nice.
30:44
Yeah, for sure.
30:45
Yeah, I haven't used Gemini too much, but.
30:48
Yeah, it's fascinating, and we use a lot of ChatGPT here, too.
30:53
But but yeah, we try to, still, I mean, the balance, and I like the way
30:57
you said using it as an assistant to help, because we definitely try to.
31:01
I think it's very important that you don't have, you know, just assume
31:04
that AI's already at a place where it could just do everything for
31:07
you, and you don't need those employees anymore, or you don't need,
31:10
you know, that much team, or it's going to save you that much time,
31:13
because it's helpful, but it's still not the be all, end all yet.
31:17
Calling it a chatbot was a good way to delineate.
31:22
It's going to enhance all of our jobs, and could it make three
31:26
developers, you know, turn three developers into one, maybe.
31:31
But yeah, it's, people aren't going anywhere, and it's an enhancement for sure.
31:37
So it's a new layer that's going touch everything.
31:42
It feels a lot like when I was growing
31:45
up, like seeing laptops come into reality.
31:48
My dad worked for AT&T, so like, I saw
31:50
him bring home a laptop for the first time.
31:53
You know, I saw all this technology.
31:55
We got dial up and all that, and all these times people said, "Oh, this is going
31:58
to change the world," and then there was some fear about people losing jobs.
32:02
It never happened because it just always made us that much more efficient.
32:05
People figured out how to work with it, and it just created more
32:08
work and we're just doing that much more with the same people.
32:11
So yeah, it's a, there's a fascinating future there, but yeah, I can
32:15
see that being really applicable to what y'all are handling and doing.
32:18
So
32:19
well, yeah, as, as we wrap up always like to ask this question at the end.
32:22
I mean, this is marketing branding related, you know, but always want
32:26
to know from you, like what brand do you admire the most right now?
32:35
My go to is, and I don't know, maybe a lot of
32:38
people say this, man, but I just love the brand.
32:42
It's Stripe.
32:43
I don't know if you get that one a lot.
32:44
I know it's the question you ask a lot of people, but I love Stripe's branding.
32:50
It's clean.
32:51
Whenever I talk about branding and messaging and UI design and
32:57
their site and even UX simplicity, Stripe is one of my go to's.
33:04
Another is Nike.
33:06
Love the book Shoe Dog.
33:08
So as a company, we did hand out Shoe Dog to all of our employees.
33:13
I think we stopped in that a little bit,
33:14
but we're still handing some of them out.
33:16
But Nike and the company, they built Shoe Dog.
33:20
Have you read the book?
33:21
I have not read the book.
33:22
No.
33:23
It's a, yeah, it's a good one.
33:25
Shoe Dog, it's about the founding story of Nike, essentially, and my
33:31
favorite thing that I love about it is just, it didn't happen overnight.
33:35
You know, it took them many, many years to become the Nike that they
33:39
became, and the lesson is, you know, success stories, while they do
33:44
happen very rarely overnight, most of them are built over a long period
33:48
of time and through tenacity and just not stopping, continuing to go,
33:54
continuing to push for the mission that you're on and that they were on.
34:00
And so Nike is another brand that I love, and
34:04
the swoosh, and everything that Nike represents.
34:07
It's a really cool story, so
34:11
Yeah, I've had some personal interaction with
34:13
one of their former creative directors, Stanley.
34:16
He's a really cool guy.
34:18
Yeah.
34:18
Stanley, I think does he own Tether at this point.
34:22
Is that Stanley?
34:23
Maybe it's been a while since, since I've connected with him.
34:26
But yeah, he's a fascinating individual.
34:30
He's got very distinct hair.
34:32
You would know him by his hair.
34:33
He has like.
34:34
Yeah, he's out of Seattle, right?
34:36
Yeah, I think so.
34:36
And he's got like this, at least last time
34:38
I saw him, he was like styling it out.
34:40
Yeah.
34:41
Yeah.
34:41
Love Tether.
34:42
I'm almost certain that's Tether.
34:43
We actually haven't met, people on our team have, but love Tether.
34:49
He's done some really cool stuff.
34:51
Starbucks, and he owns his own agency now, and he's OG.
34:56
Yeah, really, really is.
34:58
Yeah.
34:58
I met him at a TED event back in like, golly, 2010?
35:03
Something like that a long time ago, but it was a cool guy.
35:07
I just thought of that cause I know he was there I think early
35:09
on in Nike when they were doing some of that early branding,
35:13
and the "Just Do It." campaign and stuff, so that's really neat.
35:20
Too, I will say Stripe for me, like I didn't think about them as a
35:23
brand to admire just because like, it's so ubiquitous, but you're right.
35:27
Like I, as you were saying that I was thinking back of like when
35:30
I first started HumblePod, we started with Stripe for payment
35:34
system, and I was amazed at how easy it was to implement.
35:38
Like, I was so worried it would be a very difficult process to get
35:42
payment systems implemented and all that, and they make it so easy.
35:46
Just good UX and all that.
35:47
Just a really good experience using their product.
35:50
And if you go to their site, their UI system is so clean.
35:54
It's, they've done a good job.
35:57
Even, even someone like me can use it.
35:59
So that that's saying something.
36:02
Well, Greg, thank you for your time today.
36:06
Where can people connect with you and learn more about the White Rabbit Group?
36:10
You can check us out at whiterabbit.group.
36:14
You can follow us on LinkedIn.
36:16
You can follow me on LinkedIn, and that's where you can find us.
36:19
So we've got some cool stuff in the books for the future as well.
36:23
Kind of got my head sound on future stuff.
36:25
So yeah, give us a follow suit.
36:27
We're up to, and.
36:29
White Rabbit.
36:30
Excellent.
36:31
Alrighty.
36:32
Well, Greg, thank you for your time.
36:34
Yeah.
36:34
Thank you, Chris.
36:35
It's a pleasure.
36:37
Thanks for checking out this episode of We Built This Brand.
36:40
Don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe on your player of choice.
36:44
You can also keep up on the podcast on our website at webuiltthisbrand.com.
36:49
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36:53
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