ARLYN DAVICH

>>Craig Gould: Arlyn Davich, thank you so much for joining me this week on the podcast. Arlyn you are a serial entrepreneur. You have for years gone out on your own, created companies, created brands. You’ve been an entrepreneur in residence at one of the world’s largest corporations and now you’re the CEO of a rapidly growing coffee company. Arlyn, I have so many questions about you, your journey, what’s inside your head, the expertise that you can provide others. But a lot of times, Arlyn, I like to start these conversations with taking it back to the beginning and asking you, what was your first job?

>> Arlyn Davich: Before I go into that, I just want to say, like when you were giving my bio, that was very complimentary bio. Thank you. I liked, you know, you said you created this, you created that. And that is what I, you know, going way back, that’s what I think is the defining characteristic is like I’m a creative person trapped in the body of somebody who’s not artistic. So, you know, forget about my first paying job. You know, going back to childhood, I really like to create things. I had a sketch, I was a terrible artist, but I had a sketchbook and I would like create ads for Nike or products that I liked. I created an invention called the, the brownie bar, which was a brownie that would come in a candy bar, kind of a wrapper and have different toppings so you could have a bite with chocolate chips and a bite with nuts. So I always, I always just like to create things. And my first job job was at a PR firm. I was representing Mostly magazine clients and helping them get more visibility on their stories and the like. And what I really liked about that was creating something out of nothing. This story exists in a magazine. How do you create awareness? How do you create buzz? How do you create excitement around something that already exists? So I think that’s been a through line throughout my career.

>> Craig Gould: That is a job where you really have to have people skills. Right. That’s really about the ability to pick up the phone, establish relationships, call on those relationships. I mean, it’s kind of salesy, but it’s really about relationship building in a lot of ways. Right.

>> Arlyn Davich: It’s funny, I actually would say the number one skill you need in that industry is communication, the ability to tell a story, because it’s a funny story. So I started as an intern at this PR agency and the work of being at this PR agency is, let’s say you’re representing a magazine, you get the magazine and you’re like, what stories in this magazine need to see the light of day? And then you sort of craft for journalists or for the tv, TV show or you know, what stories am I going to pitch and what is the angle that’s interesting to them, Right. And then from there it’s you, what you mentioned, it’s the relationship. So how do you get that in front of the people? So when I started, I was right out of college, it was 23 and it was very phone based. But I got promoted in my first week from intern to full time employee because I brought a very big innovation at the time to this PR firm and that was an electronic mail merge. So at the time, you know, you’d have to call the journalist one by one or we would actually print out the pitch and we would mail them snail mail to journalists. This was right around the time of email. It’s crazy. And so there was a little bit of emailing going on, but it was one by one. You have to copy paste, you’d have to personalize. I had remembered that like from growing up, my mom knew how to do a mail merge to print. I said, I called my mom my first week. I’m like, can you remind me how to do this? And we figured out how to do a mail merge to email. So I was able to like 100x the effectiveness of any other intern because I found this tool. So, you know, of course, relationship building, it was super important. But there are sometimes these sort of shortcuts that help you build more relationships faster.

>> Craig Gould: I’ve been trying to ask that same question to all My guests. And it’s really funny how those first jobs, they can be discards. I mean, just, oh, well, I did this. But it’s funny how often people have lessons they learned or things that they still carry with them from that first job. And when I hear you talk about finding the story, finding and communicating that, my gosh, I mean, I imagine you’ve applied that over and over the last 20 years, right?

>> Arlyn Davich: A hundred percent. Going back to what you’re saying about relationships is understanding what people are interested in and then shaping your story to appeal to what they’re interested in. and so I think, especially when you’re creating something from scratch, when you’re being an entrepreneur, you’re starting from a blank sheet of paper. How do you bring something to life for somebody in a way that it is compelling to them? And there’s so many, you know, different audiences as an entrepreneur, you need to speak to. And so how do you craft your narrative for an investor audience versus then a versus a customer versus a B2B customer versus an end customer? And so I think that is an instrument that I practice and try to get better at every day.

>> Craig Gould: I don’t want us to totally be chronological here, but I think it is interesting to kind of look at the step by step of your career. So, I mean, you’re in pr. You’ve made it out of the intern pool into a real job in the course of a first week. And so it’s almost like the Hudsucker proxy. You’ve made it from the mail room up to the C suite, you know, or maybe. Maybe not that quickly, but you decide to go back to B school. What convinced you that that was the right step? And how did you take that experience from pr? How did you carry that with you to B school? And what came of it?

>> Arlyn Davich: So one thing I loved about PR was that you were able to advance quickly, because on day one, you could secure something in the New York Times as if you had been there for 20 years. And my boss at the time, Lori Rosen, she really trusted us to swing for the fence. And I just thought that was so fun. So I was able to, you know, sort of have a seat at the table with some major clients in my first few years of having a job and have some success. Have failures, too, but have some success. And being at that, those executive tables, I. I felt like I wanted to contribute more than just execution. I wanted to be more in the strategic seat. And so that’s why I ended up going to business school. So I Went to Columbia and I remember in orientation they had a presentation from the head of the entrepreneurship program. And he said, you know, anybody can be entrepreneurial even if they’re not an entrepreneur. And so it’s a mindset. And I thought that was a really, that was a really interesting shift for me and just understanding and I said, oh, I might have some of those entrepreneurial skills. So that was a shift.

>> Craig Gould: Did you raise your hand and talk about the Brownie bar?

>> Arlyn Davich: Well, I remember on stage they brought up a whole bunch of prior Columbia grads who had started businesses. And it was really inspiring to see, you know, a guy started a wave park where like you could surf inside to a guy who started a recycling company to a consumer products company. And it started to like, get me thinking about being an entrepreneur in, in many different ways. And also showing, you know, a lot of these people were on their third venture that was successful, but they had had many failures along the way. And so that idea that an entrepreneur, you could be an entrepreneur as a career and have, as you said, like a serial entrepreneur, rather than what I had thought about before was an entrepreneur who was defined by their first idea and what they brought to life. So that was really instrumental for me in shaping what I wanted to do in business school and out of business school, which was sharpen that entrepreneurial skill set so that I could have that skill of bringing things to life.

>> Craig Gould: Well, that first venture was still in B school and that was pay perks. Where did the idea come from to get into fintech? Did you have exposure to that?

>> Arlyn Davich: It’s a great question. I’ve always been more interested and it was not a linear kind of idea. So there were different pieces of inspiration that led to the idea for paper. The first is my. I’ve always been interested more in other people’s problems than my own problems and in mass market problems versus like niche market problems. And I’ve always just been a curious person in that regard. I don’t know exactly how, but I learned about, you know, the unbanked and what a big problem in the US that was at the time. And some of the problems with, I mean, you know, from your background too, you know, the importance of educating folks on how to maximize their dollars. Right. Even folks that don’t have a lot, how do they minimize fees? How do they avoid, you know, usurious fees and the like. So that was sort of in my mind and an interest area that I had was supporting, you know, the financially underserved community. I was, you know, I come From I went to Bowdoin, which is a liberal arts school. And so I was, it was always in the back of my mind that broad inspiration is good. So I would just read a lot and somehow I came across an article coming out of Harvard Business, an economics professor out of Harvard Business School, about this concept called prize linked savings. And it was based on this behavioral heuristic that the more financially vulnerable you are, the more hope you’re willing to put in the chance in a chance. Right. That manifests itself in things like the lottery, where a very disproportionate amount of people playing the lottery are from lower income situations. And so this economist out of Harvard was using this in testing to sort of help people. Right. So buy a lottery ticket and the dollar that you buy it with goes into savings. And then you also get a chance to win this, this larger cash prize. And so it just kind of in my mind and then I came across the prepaid debit card industry and sort of those three things together were the. Together became the idea for pay perks. How do we leverage this behavioral heuristic, this insight about low income folks propensity to purchase lottery tickets and make that work in their favor to help them avoid fees?

>> Craig Gould: I, I feel like it was before we started even using the term gamification, but I feel like there’s a lot of that at play in terms of how to incent people to learn about making better financial decisions or financial education.

>> Arlyn Davich: Yeah, of course there were lots of gamification things going on in the background. Maybe outside of fintech, that there wasn’t a ton inside of fintech. So it seemed innovative to bring. Maybe that was a fourth pillar of inspiration to, to bring into the idea of paper.

>> Craig Gould: I think I’m a little older than you and I remember one of my first jobs, I worked seasonally at Neiman Marcus’s headquarters taking catalog orders. They would come around on Friday afternoons and hand out paychecks. It would actually be in the morning because at lunchtime an armored car would pull up out in the parking lot and people would go out and cash their paychecks that they got in the morning at an armored car that came around. And I hadn’t seen that before or since, but it reminds me of these people that maybe they didn’t have a bank account or maybe they didn’t want to take the time to go to the bank to cash it. The service was being provided right in the parking lot. I thought that was, that was interesting.

>> Arlyn Davich: Yeah, I mean, I think it, it speaks to something I’ve learned through a lot of, you know, one of the questions you had sent over was like, how do you know if something’s a good venture, right. How do you know something’s a business? And this idea that demand, like if you see demand for something, right, Demand is very hard to manufacture. So look for where demand already is and then think about how you can insert your product or service into where that demand already exists. And so when you look at, at the time, when you looked at the, the, the popularity of things like payday loans or you know, Free cashing your paycheck to, you know, cashing for your check for cash where you’re probably incurring fees, there was a need there, right. And so that was sort of a signal to me to like look deeper in that problem area. And maybe that’s how I came across the, you know, pricelink Savings and Peter Tufano at Harvard.

>> Craig Gould: How did you come across the opportunity in Omnichannel Direct to consumer at Walmart? I mean that’s, did you, did you know someone or. Yes, because it’s, it’s a shift. I think what’s really great about your story, and I think you’ve already touched on it a bit here is the people that are listening to my podcast. Some may be entrepreneurs, but a lot of them are, are living inside of some enormous corporate structure. And what I would love for them to know and understand is that you can have an entrepreneurial mindset inside of the world’s largest corporation. You can carve out something that is like what you have. So can you tell me a little bit more about that?

>> Arlyn Davich: Yeah. So I had been doing paperworks for about 10 years and in doing, in leading the team at paper, because I, you know, lived in New York and I had a great network of peers who were also entrepreneurs, one of whom was a serial entrepreneur like myself named Katina Muntanos. And she had joined an entrepreneur named Mark Laurie who had founded Jet and he Jet was acquired by Walmart. And so the two of them were working together at Walmart. Mark and Katina are both entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs and they really believe that like Walmart.com could innovate in the digital space. And they had a lot of ideas on how to do that. And so they were recruiting a team of other like minded people, entrepreneurial people, to, to bring a number of different initiatives to life. So I credit Katina with bringing me over to Walmart and she knew me from my pay perks days and saw that, you know, that entrepreneurial streak not, you know, and I think took the understood that I could maybe make a leap from Fintech to consumer products. And so forever grateful for, to her for, for taking that, that bet on me. She and Mark had identified mattresses as an opportunity within Walmart. And so when I started they were like look at mattresses, you know. And so the idea for Allswell we sort of created together and I led the strategy and the team for Allswell to bring that to life from there. But I really learned from the two of them on both like the this, the E commerce business, the consumer packaged goods business. But I also learned a lot about leading teams and you know, a different lens on entrepreneurship, which is more how to be an entrepreneur, you know, how to be more process oriented and how to be more big company because that was really my first big company job and how to marry that kind of big company process with an entrepreneurial mindset.

>> Craig Gould: I think it’s interesting that they gave you an opportunity in consumer goods when that may not have been an obvious thing to spot in somebody that’s coming from Fintech. My understanding is that mattress in a box space is really, really crowded. I think I’ve heard you say before something like 150 different brands and in the same can be said for, for the coffee space. So I feel like you find yourself cutting your teeth on how to differentiate a product, differentiate a brand in a really crowded space. And how do you do that?

>> Arlyn Davich: I think it goes back to the understanding the needs, right? And going being really curious about the needs of the customer, being really clear about what kind of customers needs you care about and then asking the questions, right? With, with all. Well, the brief was look at, look at the mattress space, right? But what I, when I was speaking to people about what they wanted in mattresses, the their brief was different. It was I want a bedding solution, right? I want mattresses and sheets and a cute blanket and a duvet and throw pillows. And I don’t want to have to go to four different places to do that, right. And so the, the brief back to, you know, Katina and Mark was we’re a home brand with a hero product of mattresses and we need to be esthetic enough so that people, it’s not just like, oh, you have white sheets, we have lots of beautiful coverlets and duvets and throw pillows as well. And so that was kind of how that differentiation came about for Allswell at Free Rein. You know, when I first started I was like, this is going to be very hard to differentiate because Coffee is coffee. But the more I got deeper in coffee, it’s not really true. Like our coffee is just better. it might be marginally better, but it’s better. And when it’s something you’re, you’re drinking every morning and certain people in the afternoon too, I think a, a meaningful product differentiation can be enough to differentiate in the space.

>> Craig Gould: I do want to talk more about Free Rein, but I really want to know about Little Fish. Maybe I’m wrong, but I, I feel like, you know, at Little Fish, you, you really have been able to condense your processes into something that’s repeatable and structured and have a blueprint and a plan that’s repeatable with different team members in different situations in different companies and different industries. I would love to hear you talk about fractional CMOs. What you learned in what is the magic sauce of Little Fish.

>> Arlyn Davich: So in building Allswell, some of it was trial and error, but by the end, you know, we had a pretty good rhythm. And the rhythm, the process enabled the business to run really smoothly and grow really quickly. And so my CMO from Allswell at the time, Andrew and I, we, when, when we left Walmart, we sat down and we said, what, what is repeatable about what we just did and we put down on the list of paper like, you know, a hundred things. And then we said, how do we systematize? How do we ensure that anything we do from now on leverages those best practices? And so we looked at a lot of EOs and scaling up and these other sort of frameworks for operating businesses. And there’s a lot in there that is similar across the two and also similar to our process. And then we looked at what was different. Know, a lot of EOs and scaling up are sometimes more focused on like, you know, single operator businesses or, you know, lifestyle businesses. So we said, what’s different about starting a venture style business than starting those other kinds of businesses? And so that was a whole other list, right? And so then we said, okay, how do we then synthesize this into a process that could be deployed into any company that was a high growth consumer business? And it’s that, that was like what we call the Little Fish operating system, right? So it borrows from lots of different experiences. We’ve had lots of other, you know, frameworks and methodologies. And then we just, you know, started doing it, right? So we started taking on clients where the pros, you know, we, we called it fractional executive work. And we typically either did fractional CEO, GM or CMO both Andrew and myself. And we designed it so that we, you know, those processes enable you to do any of those roles that I mentioned. And so when we would go into a company, we would do it for. We would do a seven month engagement where we would be the fractional person, we would teach the team those processes, and then the processes would outlast the fractional engagement. So it was really like a twofer. So we started doing this at different companies and each time we did it, we got a little bit better at it. And so after we had done probably 20 between the two of us, we said, hi, I wonder if we could teach other people this same process and that they could do it too. And so there was a story in the Wall Street Journal about the rise of fractional CMOs. And I was quoted in that story and I got about 100 inbound calls in a week of people that wanted to be trained into how to be little fish. And so that was how little fish scaled.

>> Craig Gould: It’s really interesting because it’s almost like consulting, but you’re embedding yourself in taking on the role, but also preparing the, the company to be able to live without you.

>> Arlyn Davich: Yeah, it’s really taking. Coming in with a process enables you to really lead a team, even lead up, you know, like manage up to a CEO. Because if they, if they need the process, then the process gives some people something to follow and it really shortens, shortens that learning curve to get, to get you in and get you embedded. So I think that’s a great word. Foreign.

>> Craig Gould: Hey there. If you’re enjoying today’s conversation, I’ve got something you don’t want to miss. Imagine having a daily dose of insights that can help you actively manage your climb to the C suite. With Master Move Premium, you can get just that. Our premium content dives deeper into the strategic decisions, cultural leadership and innovation that top executives like you face every every day. But the most valuable resources are those that help you find the next great opportunity in the C suite. As a Master Move Premium subscriber, you’ll get access to premium content, which includes my ongoing conversations with corporate leaders and talent acquisition as well as C level executive recruiters. These premium episodes provide unmatched insights on executive search trends, candidate best practices and specific job opportunities as they emerge. So why wait? Head over to MasterMove IE and become a member today. Now back to our conversation. You know, talking about marketing, marketing teams and CMOs. You know, my impression and my experience is that so often the heads of organizations kind of come from an operation side. And that a lot of times marketing is seen as this cost center. The marketing team can oftentimes real quickly be made the scapegoat. Right. It seems like the marketing guys are always the first ones to be let go if there’s a downturn in revenue numbers. Right. Marketing guys really have to have a thick skin and know that my tenure may not be very long, but companies are always transitioning marketing teams and you know, it’s a matter of like going from one engagement to another. So I don’t think it surprises me that, that there would be great marketing guys out there that would make great Little Fish. It doesn’t surprise me that there are companies looking to fill those roles. It’s, you know, from my experience, it’s one of those things you just kind of have to accept in a marketing role is that there’s going to be, there’s going to be change in your career.

>> Arlyn Davich: Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. Marketing capital and marketing. So, you know, broader than just like channel marketing. It’s just so dynamic. And so it’s really hard to stay current if you’re staying at one company for 10 years because you only know what that that company knows. And so what was great about Little Fish is we got a portfolio lens to see and we could still borrow best practices from all of our clients and sort of bring those into the toolkit.

>> Craig Gould: So how did you meet the guys at Free Reign? I want to know all about your entry into the company, but I also want to know all about your guys vision for, you know, what the company was, what the company is and what the company’s going to be.

>> Arlyn Davich: Yeah. So I’ll tell you the story of Free Rein because it’s pretty cool. So 20 years ago in a west Texas town called San Angelo, a guy and his wife started a coffee roastery. It was called Longhorn at the time and it had a cult following in San Angelo for its really smooth and flavorful coffee. They use ground spices, cinnamon, cayenne, turmeric, black pepper. And the gentleman who started it and his wife, they were ready to retire. They approached one of their largest customers who lived in town, who was known for doing private, being quite successful in private equity. Carl Pfluger. And they said, do you know like how we could exit this business? And he said, I love this coffee so much, I want to buy it. He teamed up with three of his friends, Paul Anderson, Aaron Marquez. So they were oil and gas entrepreneurs as well as a guy named Cole Hauser. Who happens to be the star of Yellowstone, which is the number one show on television. They all loved coffee. They all had a shared alignment to give back to those who serve our country and the community. And so they want. They. The first thing they did was they hired an amazing creative agency out of Austin called Preacher. They were Aggies. The enemy of the Aggie is the Longhorn. And so they couldn’t bring a brand called Longhorn to life, so they hired Preacher to rebrand into what is now Free Rein. So a guy named Seth Gaffney, who was one of the founders of Preacher, and I knew him from his New York days, and he said, these guys might need a little fish project. Would you be willing to talk to them? And on my first call with them, I told them all of the reasons that Free Rein wasn’t going to work. You know, very hard to differentiate in coffee. It’s very crowded, it has a low aov. And they were undeterred. And they said, we’d love to talk to you more. And so that was my first. Like, these guys are different, right? Most people, if you criticize their business, they don’t want to talk to you. But they wanted to hear all of my concerns about why it couldn’t work. So I started a little fish project with them. And one by one, first of all, the founders are just truly like Mark, like Mark and Katina, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs. And they had, they had all of those soft qualities that I know make a successful company and entrepreneur. And they were so committed to this company that that was my first instinct. Like, there’s something interesting here. Second, as we started selling, we put the product online, There was product market fit like I’ve never seen. Out the gate, 50,000 Instagram followers out the gate. Million dollar month, you know, and so I, that was sort of cemented what I was saying earlier, that just being better, having the coffee be better, is. Was enough to be differentiated. And I also think the brand and the brand ethos was kind of well timed for what the market was looking for at the. At the time, right? Or is looking for now at the time. Sort of the reason that Yellowstone is so popular is because people really value honest American values, right? And the American, the cowboy is the emblem of all of those American values. Honesty, integrity, hard work, grit, family loyalty, community. And that’s not like a small idea. That’s a big idea. There’s a lot of marketing juice in that idea. And so I was lucky enough to join the team full time, leave little fish behind, bring some of the processes From Little Fish, but now lead the team full time at Free Rein. It’s been an amazing two years. One of those rocket ship kind of success stories. We have 10,000 plus points of distribution in our first year. And, you know, people are really loving the coffee.

>> Craig Gould: So what I’m hearing is that the differentiation is a, you have to have a great product. And regardless of how great the brand or the ethos or what television face you attach to a mediocre product, it wouldn’t work. Right. You know, I guess the next step is tapping into something that people want to identify with, right. That’s something that they feel like it represents. And I guess that that could be said with a lot of brands. This is, you know, what I want to aspire to. This is what I, this is the team I see myself being part of.

>> Arlyn Davich: Free Rein is about values. You know, the. That was what I saw in the founders, was their values that these very successful entrepreneurs would work around the clock to do whatever it took to make this company successful. Right. So the value of hard work was something that they were living. The value of giving back to those who serve. I mean, Cole, going back probably more than 20 years, this is not something he posts pictures of. This is something that he does. It’s part of his way of life. And so they really lived those values. And so the marketing, the brand, the creating of the brand wasn’t manufactured. It was truly authentic. And it was just like as we’ve grown, it’s just been living those values on a larger stage. It isn’t. And I think that comes across to customers. So a great brand can sell you, you know, can sell you a product once. But what makes a good coffee business is earning that place in your pantry for every day or several times a week, being in your coffee rotation. And you can only get that if you have a really exceptional product.

>> Craig Gould: So tell me about cold brew.

>> Arlyn Davich: So I drink cold brew. Cold brew is a heavy part of my rotation. I drink cold brew probably four to five times a week. I make it, I like it more concentrated, like cold brew concentrate. So I make it from Free Rein grounds, which is very easy if people are overwhelmed by that, particularly in New York. But that’s what I drink. I drink straight cold brew concentrate with a little bit of half and half and often in a fancy rocks glass, probably four to five mornings a week.

>> Craig Gould: How do you see Free Rein growing? Where do you see the company being 10 years, 15, 20 years? Where is its place on the horizon?

>> Arlyn Davich: The other thing that’s really cool about our Founders is that they’re very patient and they’re in it for the long term. Like we talk about with a lot of companies, you’re looking at a one year plan or a five year plan. And our founders are like we want our grandkids to be proud of this brand that we’re making. And we say we want to be the next great American legacy brand. Right. I think about like Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren spans categories, they span price points, but the values are the same across all of them. I could imagine Free Rein, you know, being that in 50 years. So we’re very, very much at the beginning of the journey. We have a very, very long time horizon that we think great.

>> Craig Gould: And so is there, there’s going to be a clothing line? Is that what you’re saying?

>> Arlyn Davich: Do you sell some clothing on our website today? Very, very limited.

>> Craig Gould: When you think back on this journey, if you were going to share some advice for someone who is a female executive mid career, maybe general manager of a product or a category in a big corporation and that person wants to do more and wants to be more, what sort of advice can you provide?

>> Arlyn Davich: I think there’s sort of two, two things. So there’s the big picture and then there’s the day to day. I, I think it’s easy to get to be one or the other but the, the best leaders, the best entrepreneurs are able to do both and both consistently. I’ll tell you for me I set a five year goal. I have different categories of life, right. Career being one of them and I work with my, you know, Andrew, my CMO from, from Allswell who’s gone on to do amazing things in his career. You know, we sit together every quarter and we, we talk about where do we want to be in five years. What does that mean? Where does, what does that mean? Where we need to be by the end of, and then where do we need to be by the end of this quarter? So that’s sort of like the big picture stuff. So I would highly encourage you like to have a thought partner in, in com stating out loud where you want to be long term, then the piece of, then the next piece of that is like the day to day. So like how do you remember that every day is the first thing, right? So for me it’s a calendar invite that I put in the morning and in the afternoon and every. And it just forces me to look at it every day and re anchor me towards like where I’m going in the long term. And then there’s those processes that you put in place like scaling up or eos or that allow you to sort of go on, on autopilot, you know, as long as you’re like re anchoring to towards those goals on a very frequent basis. What are those processes that you can be in on autopilot for? Everything that doesn’t require that kind of blue sky thinking which just makes you more efficient and carves out more room for that big picture stuff. So I think it’s just a combination of, or figuring out what, that, that’s what works for me. But that’s not to say that’s the process that works for everybody. But I think having a practice that enables you to frequently think about the long term as well as automate what doesn’t require brain power and, and just crank out a lot more work on the day to day.

>> Craig Gould: What would you say to someone who is creative? Maybe they identify in lots of ways with who you are and your story, but maybe they’re scared to jump out on their own or they don’t know how to carve out a space inside of their corporation. What advice would you give someone that feels like they need to create and they’re not really sure how to go about taking those steps to carve out a space? Do they need to think more about entrepreneurship? Do they need to think more about product development?

>> Arlyn Davich: I think they need to think less, think less, do more. You know, my mom would always say that I like to learn, learn by doing, which is oftentimes the hard way. I know too much now about why all the reasons I wouldn’t have started a coffee company. But had I thought through all those things, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Just do right. And also just know that it’s scary. Like today I’m, you know, I’m scared a hundred times a day to do things, you know, but you have to just develop that practice of being scared and doing it anyway. And then that’s, that’s how you make progress. Everything is brick by brick. It doesn’t get, you know, it does get easier, but you just have to continue having like that bias towards action.

>> Craig Gould: A big component to success is, is your team. Do you have a particular heuristic or particular thing you use or go to when you’re choosing a team? How do you pick the right talent, the right people to put around you?

>> Arlyn Davich: There’s a framework. I don’t remember if it’s eos or something like that, which is you just assess people on three criteria. Get it? Do they get the job? Can, can do it. Like do they have the skill set to do the job? And three do they want it? Because attitude can really solve for a lot. A lot. And so it’s really that simple. Like when I’m interviewing people, first of all, I’m very, very clear on what the I think I’m big on accountabilities and so I always document in a job description like what are the accountabilities of this job? And then I, I sort of just talk through the those three things and on each dimension I score somebody on those three dimensions. And you know, I don’t always get it right, but I have a no policy. And so I also really value people that I can communicate well with. And so, you know, you, you clear those two hurdles and you, even if you’re missing, you know, you score someone a number off on the some of the other ones you’re, you’re still in an okay spot.

>> Craig Gould: Awesome. Well, Arlyn I really appreciate the time you’ve given me today to talk about your journey. I appreciate your transparency. I really respect what you’ve accomplished and it’s obvious the the fruits of your efforts over these decades. I really appreciate you being on the podcast.

>> Arlyn Davich: Thanks for having me. It was fun.