Latest / The Bold Lounge / Andy Pearson: Bold in a Can- Why Playing It Safe is the Real Risk

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Andy Pearson: Bold in a Can- Why Playing It Safe is the Real Risk · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today we have Andy Pearson.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Andy is the VP of Creative at Liquid Death, one of the fastest growing non-alcoholic beverage brands, and it uses comedy and entertainment to make health and sustainability 50 times more fun.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: As part of Liquid Death's evil vision to make the world healthier and more sustainable, andy helps oversee all creative output from the brand, from its viral video content to social content, to merchandise, to even their experiential events, to CRM and more Prior to his current attempt at global domination, andy spent 12 years as an award-winning creative at agencies like Dutch, la and Humanaut.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge, andy.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So we're going to jump right in and talk about your definition of bold.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: What does it look like in your world?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I think being bold is doing something which, on the surface, appears counterintuitive to everybody but you, and being assured in yourself that the path you're charting is while no one else may understand it.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: In that moment you have taken sort of a longer view and looked further down the road and see things that someone doesn't have the foresight to see yet.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: Right, so you could be misunderstood, you could be judged, who knows Like.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: We could think of a lot of probably other words that come along with that, but I think definitely being bold is not being understood all the time and, like you said, it was counterintuitive to everyone else but you and you were really the only person potentially that could understand why you're making the move or why you're doing what you're doing.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think as a result of that, I think there's a lot of opportunity in places that people aren't willing to consider because they are trying to kind of replicate success in the way that that is conventionally understood.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: And whether that's in career or whether the way that we do things in at liquid death with our marketing, or whether things that I've just kind of done in my own life, I've kind of realized over and over again that there's so much opportunity in these places that people just aren't willing to even consider as an opportunity to do something.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: Again seemingly counterintuitive, but actually when you look at it it makes so much sense but on the surface is not available because people aren't willing to go there.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's always like this sense of there's risk obviously involved in being bold.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: But I think it's very thoughtful risk, right.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: It's not like I'm just going to do it because I want to try it, but it isn't, you know, like the Superman type of I'm going to jump off a building and then you know the net will appear.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: But I mean, it's totally the sense of I'm going to do it because I've chosen it and I do feel it's the best route and it's not guaranteed.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: And I do feel it's the best route and it's not guaranteed.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: I actually think like doing some of these things are the least risky thing you can do, because for that reason I don't consider myself like an extreme risk taker.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: But I think if you look at some of the activities I participate in or the choices I made in my career, you would be led to think that perhaps but in actuality I would say it's like the, at least when it comes to marketing it's like the riskiest thing you can do is to be ignored.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: You know, I think taking risk, as you're saying, when you're calculating them, are actually way safer than not taking the risk to begin with.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Right, exactly.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So what's a memorable bold moment?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: You have a lot, but let's pick one.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: What would you say when you define being bold that way?
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: What would be a moment in your life that you lived aligned to your definition of bold?
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of fun ones.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: I think well, maybe do two, because I think they're like formative into where I am now.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: So the first was when I was in school at this place called the Creative Circus in Atlanta, Georgia.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: It's a school for advertising.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Students studying copywriting, design, photography, art direction, all kinds of stuff.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: We applied for this award show called the Cannes Advertising Festival.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like the film festival, but for advertising.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: That happens a month later.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: They have a category for students that is called Future Lions.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: They give out five of these awards to students all over the globe only five that year and myself and my partner, who is now my wife, liza we won one of the five.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And then another team from our school won another one of the five and we got this email from the organizers that were like congrats, you won a Future Lion.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: We just wanted to know if you guys are gonna come and pick these up in person or not next week.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: It's like this is how you know how green I was at the time the biggest advertising award show in the world and I had no idea where it was.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: It's a big deal, yeah, yeah.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Like oh no, it's in France.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: And so we calculated between the four of us airfare hotel.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: We were like we need $10,000, literally Tomorrow, to go do this thing.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: So we were just like how are we going to get Poor students?
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: How are we going to get this money?
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: We were just kind of chatting about it and we're like I don't know, how do they raise money In movies, like to save the frat?
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: it's like do a car wash or whatever.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: And I was just like what if we Did a bake sale and we just sold cookies for $500 a piece and then we sell like 20 cookies and everyone's like that's not a smart idea?
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I was like no, we only have to sell 20 cookies, we can totally sell 20 cookies.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: So overnight we did a little photo shoot and we put up a website which back at the time was a harder thing to do than it is today and we made this cookies for canned website, with us looking really sad and like us, our faces dusted with flour, and selling cookies for $500 a piece, and we blasted it out to everybody.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Nothing happened the next morning.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: We stayed up all night and then that afternoon we got a call from this agency, leo Burnett in Chicago, saying they wanted to buy a dozen cookies.
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And then I got a call from the organizer saying they wanted to buy two cookies.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: And then throughout the rest of the day all these trickled in, all these different agencies and people were buying cookies or parts of cookies, and we raised the $10,000 within basically 24 hours.
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: We got all this ad press in the industry and all this stuff.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: It was a really stupid idea, and this is sort of my definition of like bold as well as like doing something.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Again, that seems on the surface, quite stupid, but but there's real logic built into it, right?
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: It's like $500 means we only have to sell 20 cookies, and that there's like a logic to that, even if you accept this dumb starting place of $500 cookies.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: So we ended up going to France, we got the award, but that thing that we did that stupid cookies for can that moment made us more famous by the time we got there than the award did.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: We ended up meeting all these people as a result and it literally was what kickstarted my career.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Was that silly stunt to go get the award, not the award itself?
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: And I found out even later with my first job.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: They hired me because of that thing.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: That got passed around the agency and people were talking about it.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Look at what this group of kids did.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: So I think that was like a good baptism into this kind of the way you operate.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's funny you look back at hindsight on all this stuff, but it's sort of very similar to a lot of thinking that we do at Liquid Death, which is again taking something that feels like a dumb idea on the surface, but baking in all this at least semi-smart logic under it, and it hits you differently.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: It's not just a dumb idea for dumb sake, it's a dumb idea for smart sake, which is a hard thing to pull off, I think.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so would you say.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Now you say we're going to give two examples.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Did you want to give your other example?
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll make this one short.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: The other one was just like, later on in my career, my wife, who I said we we both did the same thing and we were talking about having having kids eventually and she proposed that we quit our jobs and just travel for a year.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: And so, in the middle of me being a creative director at a agency, I just quit to go, take off a year and go travel around Southeast Asia and parts of Europe and the US and we just fully put our lives on hold.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Like pre-parental gap year.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it's like do the stuff that you can do now while we can.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: I didn't know what was going to come of that, but that sort of set in motion, all of like, I would say, this whole second half of my career now, which has been started getting gotten me to freelance and got me inside of all these different places and eventually led me to end up at liquid death.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: But I would have never ended up here or would have had that sort of perspective that I have now if I hadn't decided to just like quit my job and and us go travel around for a while.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: And I'm just literally thinking of it.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: Yesterday I was like I'm so grateful that we did that, and I think that's been part of like what I love is kind of trying at every step of the way to pull my head out of the sand.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: We get like really wound up with the day-to-day stuff that we're always trying to do and I think it doesn't allow us to like step back and make these seemingly nonsensical choices that I think more people would make if they pulled back and had a little moment of perspective to reflect.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it also sounds like you have someone that supports being bold too.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: You're now wife, like.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: You've grown up together and also in seeing kind of each other be bold, or even maybe even encouraged each other to be bold too.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: So I think that's nice to always be surrounded by directly and then a community of people who you don't have to explain yourself to all the time.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons I created my membership was because life is messy and it's not always perfect, and when you're bold it doesn't always work, and I think that's something that is nice to know that at least there's a small portion of the world that you don't have to explain it to.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: They just go oh you're doing that, okay, cool, let me know how it lands, you know.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, having community around that, I mean I'm very lucky.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm in a creative field, so, inherently, I think there's a lot of people that understand that my other, my other community outside of that is my my other vice is, uh, ultra running and running ultra marathons, which is, you know, races of 50, a hundred, 200 miles.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: I have a 200 miler coming up in three weeks, so so, like I'm already in that community, which everyone's like you know I'm I'm trying to do crazy stuff within that world, but there are people that are doing far, you know, more insane things out there.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I'm lucky to kind of be always surrounded and encouraged by people who are pushing for that sort of thing.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: So why do you think people play it safe, whether it's in their field, like marketing and advertising?
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: I do think if I look at Liquid Death versus another water company, there's nothing even remotely close.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Why do you think individuals play it safe and then, from the sense of what made Liquid Death, want to actually be so different or really create the place that is now really known as a kind of your type of advertising and marketing?
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: I would say this isn't the right word but boredom with what is, I guess and I think a lot of the people here as well.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: It's like if we're going to spend all our time and energy in life doing something, I want it to be interesting and meaningful and worthwhile and the world doesn't need another water brand or beverage brand, right?
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: Like, as you said, you can walk into any store, there are coolers full of all kinds of beverages and you could spin that out to literally everything.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: There's no need to have another car brand, another clothing brand, another movie, and I mean there are so many things in the world.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: So to me it actually goes to this bigger.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: I don't personally find fulfillment in that.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: I think some people do.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: It's easy to just go along with like, hey, this is my job and this is the thing that I'm going to do and this is what people do.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: You have a job and you make money at it and you're done at five.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: But for me personally and for a lot of us here, the idea is like can we use this brand as a vehicle to bring something new into the world that has never existed before?
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Not to be too self-aggrandizing, but like it is our weird form of art in a way.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: A lot of people get to paint with musical instruments or paintbrushes or other things, but, like as people in the marketing industry, our art is like this weird thing called liquid death, and so, of course, we want it to be the most interesting thing that anyone's ever come across.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: In the same way that I think, like on a personal level, like this is funny Whenever we go out to a restaurant, my wife is always like oh, what you're going to get when we're looking at the menu, and it's just, it's just.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Uh, it's always whatever.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: The weirdest thing on the menu is Cause I'm like I may never be back here.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: Why would I not?
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: For me.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: I'm like I want to experience, I want to taste all the things.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: I want to eat, all the things.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: I want to go to the top of all the mountains.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: I want to like Do it all, do it all.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: It's out of curiosity and I think like doing these bold things are what cement our experience in life what's the point if we're not experiencing it right?
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: like I think that's part of being bold too.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: It's not always considered safe to be bold, and that's the whole point, because you wouldn't experience half of what you experience if you don't try it, if you don't step out, if you don't do the norm or expected yeah, it's why I run ultra marathons how did that start?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: So are you like?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Are you like want to be David Goggins, or like what?
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of started when I had this really crazy job.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: That first job that I got as a result of the cookies for can thing I was in ended up in Boulder, colorado, which is sort of the ultra running Mecca, but it was early days of the ultra running boom in 2008 or so.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: It's sort of another story, but I that I had a very extreme job where we were working 60, 70 hours a week, just bonkers hours, and I needed something to like distance myself from that and I started running and then I started running in the mountains and then it became this very like sort of stabilizing force, because it was equally as intense but totally opposite to what I was.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: Couldn't think about anything other than running.
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it helped me put boundaries on on what I was doing and turned into a kind of a symbiotic relationship over the years.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: But it was all about curiosity.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: It was like I ran my first marathon, sort of on accident I was trained up for and I was like, oh, go run this marathon.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: And then I finished and I was like, okay, I know I can do that, so I don't need to do that again.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: I guess I'm going to go run a 50 miler now, and then the next year I was like, all right, I'm going to run a hundred miler.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: And then now you're at 200.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: Now I'm doing 200.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: What's the max you can do?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: There's a race that just started this year they just did it seven weeks ago.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: That is the Arizona monster 300, which is 300 miles across the state of Arizona.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: The longest I've done is 314 miles across Tennessee.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: It was a race.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: You start in Missouri, you run, it's all on the road, and most, most races I do are all trail races in the mountains or desert or whatever, but this one is all on the side of the highway across Tennessee no aid and you're sustaining yourself by eating out of gas stations or taco bellss or whatever.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: I slept on people's driveways and ditches.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: People sleep on park benches and in post office and you're just.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: You're trying to make your way across these 314 miles any way you can and you cross through five different states and end up in Georgia in the end.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: So, but again, man, what an amazing experience.
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: Not what I want to do again.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: I don't think it was pretty dangerous, but I've had just an incredibly emotional experience doing that thing comparison.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: But what I find when you're in any sport or doing something that you totally are immersed in but I think sport is definitely one of them is there's nothing else to think about but what you're doing and to hone it and to concentrate on it, to listen to your breathing or whatever.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: But you also was like can I do it?
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Can I make the next mile?
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Will I?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: What will I do next?
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, that didn't feel good.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: How am I going to keep going?
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: What do you learn about yourself in 200 to 300 miles?
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: And you learn that anything is possible and as cheesy as that sounds, it's like-.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: It's real.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: It is real.
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, you are able to push past seemingly what doesn't seem smart.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I don't know that.
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: I learned stuff about myself as much as I internalize lessons.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: It's more about the idea that you can adapt to anything and that maybe the world isn't as, at least for me.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: The world isn't as serious as people take it.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: The idea of running 200 miles is extremely silly and doesn't make any sense and when you finish you get a belt buckle instead of a trophy or medal, like you get in a marathon.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: You get everybody just gets a belt buckle and there's a whole very silly reason for that that goes back 30 plus years.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I think the whole exercise is inherently, in some ways inherently meaningless, which I think is what is wonderful about it.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: It's sort of like a pure experience to be in the moment and experience the thing and you learn to adapt and be within it and troubleshoot.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: And I take that off into my other professional life and learn that anything we're dealing with is like we can figure it out, there's a way around it.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: By freaking out or by worrying about it is not going to improve the situation.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: So what can we do to remain calm and address it in a in an adaptive way.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: So I think that's kind of one of the lessons that I learned.
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: And then you also learn about, like, the race across Tennessee.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: My biggest takeaway was just the wonderful people that were on along that route that were giving of themselves.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: Whether it was like leaving a little chest of bottled water up by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere in a stretch where you're going to run 17 miles and there's no water and it's a 95 degrees, a hundred percent humidity in the Tennessee sun, and somebody in the middle of nowhere who is socioeconomically is in a much different position than I am, is like spending their own money to leave a little ice chest.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I like wept with gratitude in a way that I've never experienced before.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: So in any race, you have all these volunteers who are out there helping you to do this thing that you've chosen to do, and so I leave with a lot of gratitude towards other people.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: People assume you kind of have this big sense of accomplishment, which you do in a certain extent, but I much would rather focus on every single mile and the experience of those miles than the cumulative.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the journey of it, right, and you hear that a lot in a cliche way, that it's about the journey.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I always say, like I think, particularly at 53, like for me it's about becoming who I am, not so much about a finish line or a belt buckle or, you know, whatever it is.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: You know, to have that happy life.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: It's like being happy now while you're living it and making mistakes and succeeding and trying things that are new.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: But that's I think that's easier said than done for some at least that's been my experience.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: So, like, when you think about things that you've done and you look back and the groups of people that you were part of, do you ever think I can't believe I was ever in that club or I was ever like in that area.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Or or do you feel like you've always kind of been with the right people, being a creative and kind of being able to do what you want to do?
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: You might've always kind of been in the right path.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so, I think I've, like I said, I think I've been lucky and maybe in the instances when I'm not, you know, you kind of, I think you know energies attract and you're going to naturally, kind of find your people.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there's just gravity.
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: It's probably part of the experience as well as is having friends who are willing to push you to places that are occasionally uncomfortable and unhealthy because they want to laugh at you.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: I know I do that to my friends.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: You know we push each other mostly to like mess with each other.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: It's sort of a weird form of expression of love, I think.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: But I've had, you know I've had a lot of friends who probably pushed me into uncomfortable situations that I'm lucky they did.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so when you think about getting pushed, let's use that to be uncomfortable and do something new.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: How did you end up in the role at Liquid Death?
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Is it something like, oh hey, I'm going to go for it?
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Did someone reach out to you Like, how did it evolve that?
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: You went from?
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: You know cookies for can?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: There's a lot in between you know taking a gap year and traveling, and then you know the afterward of that, of coming back and then ending up at Liquid Death.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as a result of that gap here of sorts, I was freelancing a lot.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: So meaning I just kind of working for a different agency for a number of years and as part of that it all goes back to this Kikis for Can thing.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I actually met the founder, mike Cesario, of Liquid Death, founder and CEO at that first job that I got as a result of Canes.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: I did remember meeting him.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: And then subsequently some of the freelance jobs that I took were working for him or working for his agency here or there.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And I mean I remember when I saw that he started Liquid Death and I was like wow, he's talking about like bold things, I was like he's going for it and so I was kind of just watching from afar, kind of admiring, kind of like whoa, what is this guy doing?
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: And then he had my number and he texted me on the blue one day and almost, probably almost exactly four years ago and he was like hey, we always seem to be on the same page in terms of ideas that you are bringing and I need some help running the creative and marketing over at Liquid Death.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: But again, same thing, like somebody who really I would say didn't fit in well to the construct of the marketing industry, had seen a lot of frustration within that and essentially decided like hey, if no one's going to listen to me, I'm just going to go do it myself.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: And I think you know I don't want to speak for him, but it would seem that he saw a lot of that stuff in me as well, because he said we kind of always seem to get excited about the same things and be bringing the same very outsider ideas into whatever we're doing.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Because again, like I don't know, making the same thing over and over again, making like another commercial or whatever, is just like so boring to me.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: I'd rather break the stuff down that everyone's doing and reconstruct it into something new.
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's partly been what I've always been attracted to is like deconstructing things and then building something new from, like commenting on marketing in the first place, cause that was that's a lot of like what liquid death is doing, where we're making a satire of marketing in the form of marketing.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: It's very like wound up in meta, but it's more interesting than if we were just making commercials.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: I think we both had a similar perspective and that's what we and everybody else we work with really brings to what we're doing now.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: So when you describe your marketing, which is using marketing as something that you do a playoff of and then using it, then for your marketing, which is using marketing as something that you do a playoff of and then using it then for your marketing, which is brilliant, but also, I think, for some, confusing, where do you even start, like, do you sit in a group and it's like we need to, you know, run this and this is what we, the new product we have, or something that we're coming out with, or a collab, and then what does it look like?
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: What does the creative process look like?
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Is it similar to what you would see in other agencies, or is it bold and different, because you end up with a very different product?
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say it is different, pretty different.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: We have a very small team, very tight knit.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: I've never personally written in like a TV writer's room, but that's sort of more of the model that we do, where it's like a few of us on a Zoom and we just sit around and try to make each other laugh.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: It's not too much more complicated than that.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: We don't have a ton of structure or briefs or all the stuff that agencies tend to have or marketing departments tend to have.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: We're very loose with it, because one of the questions we ask ourselves it's like what's the dumbest thing we could do?
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: And again, that goes back to this idea of like what I was saying at the very top, which is, if you ask yourself that question, you're allowing yourself to consider things that no one has dared to consider yet, because a lot of times again, people are trying to replicate success.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Like you need to go back to.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: You're talking about different brands of bottled water.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: If you're launching a bottled water brand, you'd be like, okay, we need to put a plastic bottle, we need to put a mountain on it, it needs to have some like very ethereal name and because that's what sells, right?
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: And so if you're just trying to be successful, you end up doing what everybody has done.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: And so by asking this question, like what's the dumbest thing we can do, you're just starting from a place where there's so much more opportunity and energy and maybe 99% of the things you come up with when you answer that question aren't going to work.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: But maybe there's one that's a brand called liquid death.
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: That's water in a beer can and is all about sustainability and health but doesn't look like it.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: So a lot of times we're mining for like what's the dumbest thing we can do?
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And then we try to find that and then try to give it some sort of sense to it, some sort of logic to it.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: I call it liquid death logic.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: It's like present something on the surface that feels very stupid but then make a really strong case for it so that at the end you arrive where something feels kind of irrefutably smart but that a moment ago, when you started playing this video, seemed very stupid.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: We're going to have people lick sweat off of fat guy's back because somebody on the internet said they'd rather lick sweat off fat guy's back than drink liquid death.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: So let's test that theory.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: It's like a very stupid premise, but also you're like, hey, this person said it.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: If we take that very seriously, let's see what happens.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of a good encapsulation.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: So you're taking something that basically the intention of it is to entertain initially, or to create joy or curiosity, or even make fun of right.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: It sounds like it could be any of those.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: So the goal at the start is not like let's get seven gazillion downloads and let's sell I mean ultimately, sure that'd be great.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Or let's sell, you know 7 billion bottles of water, which that ultimately would be the goal, but it isn't the goal of what you're creating.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Is that fair to say?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to think about it.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, so would you say, then you then go into the process with less weight or less expectation or less.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of the word, because I think there's something to this in the sense of where you start, because you obviously end up being successful when that really wasn't the point, if that makes any sense at all.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Totally, absolutely.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I think we free ourselves to play.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: I think that's a big thing, that I think play enjoys, undervalued and curiosity.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: These are words like you use curiosity, love, laugh, experience.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: These are words you've used to really describe not only your life but the process.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to, because a lot of people say nice things about what we do with Liquid Death and I'm very grateful for that.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: But the thing that always means the most to me is when someone goes.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: It seems like you guys are having a lot of fun over there.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Always means the most to me is when someone goes.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: It seems like you guys are having a lot of fun over there, and that's what, like, I want people to feel.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Like through the work, through the things that they see, obviously, like the thing is great and amazing, but also when you take it all together, you're like man, there are people who are having fun, enjoying what they're doing, and I think that kind of like fun is an infectious thing and it's why we love create TV shows and bands and we love watching Saturday night live is because, like, people feel like they're enjoying the process of doing the thing that they're then giving out into the world.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: So it's not just we're going to make something and here it is, and we're going to, you know, as marketers in my case, we're going to force you to watch it, because we're going to interrupt the thing you're actually trying to watch by forcing you to watch this 30 seconds or 15 seconds of something that you didn't want to watch.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: If we're taking up someone's space, I'd rather that it be this like really joyful exchange, both on the level of like this thing that someone's watching, but also behind the scenes.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: It feels like we're having fun, because when you have fun, people will have fun back at you, and I've seen that again and again Again.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, go back to the cookies, for can thing.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: There's no reason why anybody should have given me or us $500 for a cookie.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: It is a objectively bad financial exchange.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: The cookies were not even good.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: It's illogical right.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: It's not logical.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: They tasted bad.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Honestly, the night before I was like, oh crap, we forgot to make cookies.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: And I ran out and I got some sliced and baked, put them in a Ziploc and by the time we showed up there they were all smushed anyway.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: But that wasn't about the cookies.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: It was about, like, recognizing this interaction between, like this really joyful idea and people who wanted to be a little bit of a part of it somehow, and so I don't know, that's the kind of work that I want to make.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: That feels meaningful to me and I think it's what people respond to.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: And I don't think enough people understand that that is a possibility, with every interaction we have with other people or with our jobs, that you can find that unconventional joy in doing something that hasn't been considered before.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a lot of people seeking external validation and I certainly like people to say, hey, good job, that was cool, or great book.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean I'm not longing for that or wanting it, but it isn't what drives me when I think about you or your brand.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: I mean you would rather be unforgettable than win an award, right?
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: It's funny.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: I have a box of all my belt buckles that sits in my basement.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: It's just huge stuff where it's got I don't know 20 something belt buckles in there.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: I've literally never taken them out, I've never looked at them, I'm never going to.
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: You should maybe frame them.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know Like you can do something cool with that.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess I've thought about it.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, it'd be nice to have something, but like it's not what I care about.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I'd rather like reflect on the experience than like have some sort of external validation, Like you're saying that that tells me I did a good job.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that happens in the world too, is that people are creative.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I think they get beat down a lot.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I think they at least my experience, like I came out of the corporate setting, which I would say I had a place to be creative between here and here, but don't go outside of that and healthcare.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: So I was in corporate healthcare.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: So I think, being an entrepreneur, now, like I, have the ability to be creative.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: But I also realized, like every idea I have is not a good idea, but it's still an idea, and how will I know if it's good or bad unless I try it?
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: You know, within reason.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: But I do think that we limit ourselves sometimes based on what we want, and that that's what I'm trying to get at here, because, like you, your brand, your personal brand, as well as the brand of liquid death, isn't about the end game.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It's about the end game.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It's about the now game, right, it's about does it feel fun?
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Did I make you laugh?
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, it's crazy.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: So, okay, we're on the right track.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: No one understand why.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: You know, what does that have to do with water?
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: So like, in that sense, like that's part of it, but it's.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: It's an uncomfortable space for many.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Do you?
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: No, I mean we.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: I would say like we feel pretty confident in what we're doing from, like, the marketing standpoint.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: We've done it enough that you you learn what works.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: And then also, when it doesn't work, you have a lot of tricks in your bag to to fix it.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: And then, beyond that, like yeah, we've had a couple things that didn't hit here or there as much as we want, but part of it is putting yourself out there and trying.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: If you're trying as many things, your hit rate is going to be so much higher than if you just select like a couple moments to shine.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: And I think it's interesting when you talk about like why don't people take risks more often?
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: I think when you're so precious about the risks from a marketing perspective or even from like a life perspective, there's so much pressure on that moment to succeed in our world.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: When there's a big marketing campaign and you put all this time and energy and money into like this one campaign that you're going to put out in the world and it's going to have to live for months at a time, that's a lot of pressure for one thing to perform versus the way that we do.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Is we I mean, we had three shoots last week.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: We're doing so many things constantly.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: We're putting out so many ideas into the world because we want to.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: Some of them do amazing.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: If some of them don't cool, we didn't spend that much time or effort or energy on it and so it, in a way, by taking more risks, it's sort of de-risk the whole thing.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: It's distributed across your attempts, which is really what you're getting at.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: The more attempts you make, the more hits you're going to get, because obviously that's just math.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you get more at bats too, which I think is important.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: I don't do standup, but I've understood that it's sort of the same thing, right?
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: If you are a standup comedian man, you're getting up every night doing an open mic, you're working new material, you're testing stuff out live on a live audience of people, and even you can go to the see the biggest stars in comedy doing their thing.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: They'll still, in the middle of a set in a stadium of you know arena of tens of thousands of people, be like hey, I've got some new material I want to test out on you.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: That's sort of similar to what we do, I think, and what I just do in general in my life.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: It's like let's just try stuff and see what happens and through that experience learning will get smarter.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: But if we don't give ourselves the possibility of failure, you don't get that ability to learn how to actually be successful either.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Was that nurtured when you were young, too, like in your household to try things by your friends, you know?
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Or was it be by the book?
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: And then you develop this later on in life?
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: I honestly have no idea.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, I had a really great teacher in seventh and eighth grade this like gifted teacher that, mr Mills.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: I just remember him like he was such a weirdo and we were doing just weird stuff in class.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: It felt like we were in this like secret society kids that like just got to go into this classroom for an hour and learn how to play chess on the floor or like make a.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I made like a 45 minute long video all about gummy bears.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: You need to pull that out.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: It's pretty funny All these different like segments and parody things and I don't know.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: I think I don't, I can't pinpoint it, but I do remember having one teacher that really purged it and it was funny.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: I got in trouble in seventh grade.
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: I got suspended the last week of seventh grade because I started an underground newspaper at my school.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: It was called the mudslinger.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I was a really good kid I still argue I am but it was a pretty crazy move did you just sling mud in it like, did you talk about people?
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: like what was it about?
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: I had people write like columns and do like movie reviews I had we made and then it was kind of almost like a proto onion.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: We like I wrote like fake articles about people and and obviously within a day it came out and I got suspended, got shut down.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was opening and closing night sort of deal.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: But I got, I was in suspension and I had to like do all these assignments.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: And this teacher, he made me read the Giver and he man I haven't actually I think I haven't saved somewhere he wrote this note about like one day this this is gonna make a great cover for the book that you write, or something about like he's basically encouraging me that I got got gotten suspended.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: And I tried to do something kind of crazy and he was like I remember that he was like this is going to be a memory that you're going to use in, like when you're writing your book or when you, when you do your other thing.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: So I think that was probably pretty formative in some weird, weird sense.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, people encouraging it, right, like even if it's your friends or people that you're around.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: But I do think it is nice, like I think of my second grade teacher, mrs Stover.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: You know, and just you know, some of the things that she said to me and some of the things that I've done throughout my life.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Like go back to some of the things that she had been granted me in second grade, which sounds so silly, but I think they do stick with you, and whether it's a moment in time or whether it's something over time, I do think that they are like moments that contribute to where we are today in some form or fashion.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: So, as we close out, I would love for you to share if someone's still kind of in that place of.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: I just feel like it's safer or it's more stable to do this versus that, although that looks really cool and is something possible that I could think about, but they're just not taking that first step, because I always you know what I write about in the book is you know, our beliefs, our ownership, what we learn and how we design our life.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: That's the acronym for bold is really what it's all about, and to do that you have to take the first step, but it doesn't have to be this loud, big one.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: Like you know, when I quit my job that was loud and big and everybody saw it.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: It can be the quieter one, which is like thinking about it, getting curious, trying a few things, doing it with a few people like maybe even tell you talk to yourself.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: But if someone's in that place of like just playing it safe and they think that's the smartest option, what would you tell them?
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: I think it's partly what you're saying is like it doesn't have to be this big declarative.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: I'm doing this now and honestly I would say, turn your brain off Like don't think about it.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Go on a run.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do the thing when I stand at the starting line of a hundred mile race.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: When I stand at the starting line of a hundred mile race, my head is empty and I don't think about the thing that I'm.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: If I tried to think about, hey, I'm going to go out and run a hundred miles today, or I'm going to go run 200 miles over the next couple of days.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: That's an impossible thing to understand.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: It could be overwhelming right.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's the same thing.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: It's like sometimes you just have to be blank and leap and know that you'll figure it out.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: But yeah, just turn your brain off and, like you said, go run the first mile and then you know you've already done something.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: You don't have to do anything beyond that.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Or go, you know, write your first song or whatever the thing is, and then check in after that.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: No one's asking you to do anything more than that.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: But I imagine, if you do that, you may want to go do it again tomorrow and you may want to do it again the next.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: But you don't have to worry about tomorrow because all you got to do is stay, be here now, the whole thing in that sense, be present, and then, as we end, what are you excited about?
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: With Liquid Death coming up, or things you're working on, or things we should look out for?
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: So many things.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Like I said, we just shot literally three different things.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: Next week we're shooting two things this week.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I mean we have tons of stuff on the horizon.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: You know I can't give any details, but lots of exciting new ideas that we want to put out in the world, things that I'm really looking forward to working with a lot of really cool brands and other collaborators that I'm very happy that we get to do stuff with.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: We're very lucky that we get approached by a lot of people or we can approach people to work with them, and so I'm just excited to bring some of the Liquid Death chaos into places where it doesn't belong yet.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm excited to see it and to continue to watch your journey and the journey of the company.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: All the information about Andy and Liquid Death is below.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: This is awesome.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey with you.