Jason McCann (3:19)

This is awesome. So glad to connect.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (3:22)

There's a lot I want to get out of today's conversation, Especially around culture and company building. But I think it would be best to start with just the foundation of how very even came to be.

Jason McCann (3:35)

Yeah, I was blessed to be president of my good friend's company. And Dan had founded a company called Jemmy industries back in 1985. Fresh out of college and selling Christmas and Halloween product, he and I met in 1999 and it was in the dot com days. Fast forward and Dan's got back pain and turns into a cardboard box idea and the journey of varidesse began. And so you connect those dots and it was quite an amazing kickoff to that. When I was. When I'd walk into Dan's office and Dan's standing at a cardboard box and you're friends with somebody and you're like, what's going on? He's like, I've got back pain and this is turning into something I gotta do. And when he went and saw his doctor, she said, well, if you feel better standing up, then you should just stand up more. And Dan is a product guy. He'd created all those inflatables you see on people's yards for Halloween and Christmas and that crazy singing big mouth Billy bass fish on the wall. And he's really good at product ideas. And so Rosemary, our assistant at the time, was going online and tracking down Google trying to get him a standing desk. And these contraptions would show up and Dan would show them to me. We're just like. And he's one day walks in and he goes, I got an idea for a product. And something happened as he was just talking. And so I grabbed our industrial designer. I said, hey, let's just talk. And it started to. I was almost like a conductor pulling this idea out of his head. He said, what if it could just like slide out of a box and go on the desk and not attach to anything and be a real simple thing? And I was talking motors and contraption. He's like, no, no, even simpler. And really, the idea for what became Varidesk was born in that little two or three hour conversation. And we were working on Christmas and Halloween product, about to launch it for Walmart and Lowe's, and we're on a plane flying to Asia together. And Dan and I jokingly never really flew together, never really sat next to each other on a plane, but we happened to be sitting next to each other on the same flight. And it's 24 hours to get over to Asia. And we know our prototype's being built of this standing desk. And we're sitting there with the Wall Street Journal passing it back and forth on the airplane. And in it, The Mayo Clinic Dr. James Levine says, Sitting is the new smok. And we're like, aha. It's like a sign from God there's something here. We got off the plane and we review our Christmas and Halloween product for the upcoming season. And like, do you have the standing desk ready? Is it ready? And the prototype came out and I kind of joke it was almost like a newborn. So it's beautiful to us. Like, oh, this is cute, but it's pretty ugly if you looked at it. It just kind of functioned. It wasn't really sexy, but it worked. And so we built some prototypes and tested them and got them in our office. And we liked it. Dan's like, oh, I'm starting to feel better. I'm standing up. And I'm like, yeah, this is nice. Kind of weird, you know, I hadn't stood up all day the way, the way outside of the restaurant industry when I was in that. And we should gave some to our employees and they're like, oh, I feel good. We could kind of move them around. We'd take it from one and give it to another person. And one of the employees said, well, I'm a little tired now. Can I get back to standing desk? And it was. It's almost like that echo chamber that happens when you're with your team. Yep. And they're saying, oh, I love it. This is a great idea. And you're kind of like I needed to really hit the battlefield of commerce. We got to show it to some people outside these four walls. Because it's one thing when we love it, but it's another thing if you got to show your kid to somebody else. So we were like, who has, like, a place with a lot of people sitting down? And someone knew somebody. We said, like a call center. Somebody knew somebody that got us connected to Pedro Carrera. He was the president of Verizon's call center in Irving, had just been promoted, said, I can get you a meeting. So we said, great. And it was like, it'll be next Tuesday at 11 or something. And so Monday night, I'm laying there, and I'm like, oh, my goodness. I've got, like, a meeting tomorrow. I don't even. What am I going to say? And as I'm laying there, it just came to me. I said, I'm going to help them create a happier, healthier, more productive workspace. So we had our Wall Street Journal. We got our prototype of the standing desk. We're sitting inside the lobby with this big cardboard box, or lugged it out of my Tahoe. Dan shows up at the last minute right before the meeting, and he's like, what are we going to say? And I gave him my pitch. He's like, all right, let's roll with that typical entrepreneur style. And we walked in, and we get to show it out, pull it out. Standing desk, and we hold up our Wall Street Journal sitting as a new smoking. And he's like, I have no idea what the hell you're talking about, but let me get my ergonomist and let me get my head of people into the room. And I'm like, what's an ergonomist? Like, I didn't. I didn't know. And they gave us great feedback. They said that back pain was the number one reason that people miss work. And the ergonomist gave us great feedback on the product. So we kind of shifted into growth mindset. And they asked them magic words, and they said, how much are they? And suddenly we were off and running with our first order.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (8:42)

Okay, I want to go back real quick. You had the luxury, because you were already inside of a company, of just having an industrial designer kind of come in. Yeah, help me out for a second. I think every entrepreneur that hasn't actually created a physical product deep down inside has that idea of something to create.

Jason McCann (9:01)

Yeah.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (9:02)

How would I even go create something right now? Because I know you do this now within your Business. But if you had to tell me, hey, if you have an idea, here's how I would go. Get a prototype made.

Jason McCann (9:12)

Yeah. So today, even when I'm dreaming of product, I've got the pro version of, you know, Chad GPT and AI and some visualizer tools. And you can literally go in and start typing in ideas and blends out there today. And you as a sort of thinking about something can do that. Because you're right, everybody doesn't have just a industrial design team or prototype shop in their office space today. That's literally what I'm seeing happen here in the last six months. That wasn't even possible two years ago. Two or three years ago, when people asked me, how do I get a prototype made? And I'd say, well, there are design people in town and they're all out there available for, you know, for hire. And there's project people always looking for that. And there's sourcing with Alibaba and sourcing at the time. This would be sort of pre all the tariff disruption that happened in the world. You can get prototypes produced. You can start to figure out factories if you need to make it from a global supply chain through the Internet search. But you're getting those initial prototypes made. But you get down to the down and dirty of proving anything. All these great ideas. You look at the way that Sarah built Spanx, you know, and she's taking pantyhose and cutting the ends off, and those are the first prototypes. That's how prototypes are made. You're taking Styrofoam and you're kind of gluing some stuff together and showing it to people just to see if that idea even has merit. But AI today, those visualizing tools and that and Nana Banana and all that is incredible.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (10:42)

And will it just create like a 3D model rendering for you that you can kind of view from different angles? Or is it a 2D thing, 2D stuff?

Jason McCann (10:49)

But then there's other tools now that, that people are pulling into 3D render. It is in that those tools are right out there. So for the layman, you know, I was working on some soft seating ideas and I was just playing around in ChatGPT trying to figure out some stuff. And this was the early days. I was like, oh my goodness. So we've got designers working on new lines and I'm like, what about this? And it's incredible what's happening out there for product ideation.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (11:16)

We're getting into what we'll, we'll talk about, but let's Just continue going on that thread and then we're going to get back to the story in a second. But so AI so funny. I had my ypo forum meeting yesterday and we have it once a month, I would say in the last two months it went from everybody talking about AI stuff and kind of testing and playing with stuff to now. Each meeting, everybody is bringing very specific light bulb moments that now it's. It feels like it's starting to happen just around the table. Uh, how else are y' all using it at Barry right now?

Jason McCann (11:55)

So we're in with working with clients. So it started off working through process improvements, right? The simple models of saying, hey, how do we improve some processes? We've got a bunch of spreadsheets, even though we have SAP S4 HANA and Salesforce, and we're still pulling stuff out in Excel. Is there AI tools that can simplify some of that? Oh, that's working okay. That simplified inventory reports and some of those things. Then we said, oh, well, we're taking forecasting models and our teams are thinking about what's going on in the future. And then Claude started layering in new Excel files and said, oh, how do we do this? And all of a sudden it's building out forecasting models. You also start taking visualization tools. So we're using Revit and the team's got CAD files and we will create over 10,000 designs for clients for workspaces. This year we're going to install a thousand offices. How do we take all that data into something? Individualization tools. Because a lot of clients can't look at a 2D rendering and they want to see it visually. How's my space going to interact with all those visualization tools are now happening? The product ideation process is now starting to happen. All of that, I would agree with you, has literally been in the last 12 months, then six months, then two months. And so we're in there pushing the envelope on it every single day. I had some questions on even having Claude teach me some of the NOI stuff on these buildings, right? As I'm continuing to grow in my real estate knowledge with experts like you guys. But, but you know, when, when our team at Cushman brings in something, I can just kind of double check or if I've got a question or people are pitching us business ideas, you can pop that Excel into Claude and ask Claude questions about the model you're looking at and it'll poke holes in it for you. So I think all those little checks are happening across Our team has been, they're literally rolling out visualization tools for clients to help take the look of their space. And how do we transform it into something that we can monetize and turn into products? And then people talk about future proofing their. So they say, hey, today we want a cool sound studio and tomorrow it may be offices. What could it look like in a future state? Oh my goodness, we're about to shoot a TV commercial here in the next three weeks. And we were renting space to put product in. We're like, what's it going to look like? Literally layering in all the visualization tools versus us plugging in all the samples and going, oh shit, it doesn't fit. It doesn't look right like that. Why is this. This leather doesn't match with that rug we picked. Instead it's all done pre shoot visualized with AI that would have taken thousands of dollars. So instead of a $400,000 commercial that we shot 12 years ago, I can do it for 25 grand. Like the game's changing overnight. So I think we're early in it and I'm, you know, trying to, trying to keep up. And really as an entrepreneur, you know, with the medium sized business, how do you lean into it and not be afraid of it?

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (14:58)

How did you approach it as CEO? Because I can imagine every CEO was put on notice a couple years ago. AI or die. Like just put AI in your company. I don't even think, I still don't think most CEOs even know what that even means. But the directive is do it. How. How many employees do you have?

Jason McCann (15:19)

About 150.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (15:20)

Okay, so how did you think about delivering this message into the company? Was it go, tink, start tinkering with stuff, Everybody start tinkering. Was there a deliberate strategy or like how have you let it kind of manifest within the company? Because I think what we'll see is some companies, existing cultures will learn to adopt it, some won't. And the other category will just be AI native. You'll just start companies with AI embedded at the beginning. It sounds like you're having success bringing it into an existing culture. How did you think about bringing it into the team?

Jason McCann (15:58)

I think the team started to. Individuals started to pop up and use it. And I think his chatgpt was probably the first thing I personally started to play with. I said, I think it was 18 months ago or something. My wife and I took a road trip. And I hadn't taken a trip in a while. We took like a nine day Road trip from San Francisco up the coast. And I just wanted to see the redwoods. I was like, I just want to for some reason touch nature. And all we had booked was the car and we had one hood in the flight, on the return flight. And as soon as I landed, my wife wanted to drive. So I just got on ChatGPT and planned the trip. And my team had been talking about it early. People had been saying it's going to happen, all these things. And when I used it and I said, what's the best thing I should do for the next two hours while we're riding and where should we stop and where should we eat? And we want something healthy and we want to hug a tree and all these things. And it was so fast. How it planned out our entire nine day road trip. That was the moment, the aha moment. 18 months ago or whatever that date was. My team started pushing it in the technology area first and saying, hey. And there were leaders, key leaders in my team, my coo, my head of technology. There's something here. LLM, the language learning models. We gotta, we gotta be here. And me again, it's, it's like we're not big enough to be like bleeding edge. But I also recognize you either build companies that are disruptive, you build cultures that can withstand disruptions and disruptions are gonna happen. And I kind of looked at it like, okay, we're constantly building, you know, we're trying to build this disruptive business. This is the next thing. And it reminded me of the dot com thing when it happened. And we're all wondering like, why didn't we buy all those URLs when they were for sale for $9? Like why didn't we buy real estate.comhomes. why didn't we? And so I looked at it like, this is one of those moments. And for the next generation of entrepreneurs, this is the thing. And so I sort of treat it like, y' all pitch me some stuff, like let's try a bunch of things. And they have done an incredible job. And you see the team members that leaned into it and sat on their homes at night and worked a bunch of stuff out, just like a startup does. And I give it to my team for driving it forward and for me just giving them the freedom to try a bunch of stuff. And now the guardrails have started to come up. We started to figure out the framework. They also were very good about saying, let's open this up to key members of the team and see who naturally has A gift for it because it's not in everybody's DNA to do it. And so different people in different departments from product, our Internet, our team in Taiwan, the finance team in forecasting, some of the salespeople like give it to individuals and they started playing in it with subsets of the. Of the model built in, all protected inside our database. And so we've kind of got it all locked up because we've done a good job with that and it's like working. And now we're seeing the cream rise to the top. So now how do we monetize these things? And that's literally they're rolling out stuff today and like yesterday they were rolling out modules for our team to try. And we're hitting the battlefield of commerce and some of it's going to work. I'm probably going to skid on my face a few times and make a bunch of mistakes, but I realized this is where you got to try and so I'm just pushing it out, embracing it. We've got two young people in there really messing with some edgy code. We're rolling out how to find leads online and all these things, the tools. And we're kind of going up against even what, you know, you've got. Salesforce has got recommendations, SAP's got recommendations. But our team's creating some stuff that I think is going to work really, really well. And so we're in a growth mindset with it. I'm not afraid of it. I'm trying to embrace it and go with it. And that's. That would be my direction. As, as I think about it.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (20:03)

Will you go expand a little further on? Maybe. Unless it's private, like what modules you're really leaning on. Like you said, we're going to bring some stuff.

Jason McCann (20:11)

Yeah, I mean the, the baseline stuff is there's a lot of the new as. As Claude and as the Nana Banana. The visualizing tools on workspaces is starting to roll out right now for our clients. So you walk into our showroom today and we've got, We've got a 42,000 square foot headquarters where we're based in Capell. And then of. Of that 4,000 square feet is product all set up. Well then we've also taken those products and put them into visualization tools so you can actually see it all into spaces. And it's not just like 10 spaces, it's hundreds of spaces in different applications for the product. So a studio set up, a boardroom setup all, all with the same 400 products that we brought to life today. So now you're seeing those products come to life visually as clients are talking about product ideas and hey, we're trying to create this. We're instantly within minutes coming back and saying, is this what you're talking about? So those visualization tools are already rolling out. That's hitting the battlefield today. And so the team's being trained on it. How do we use it and then we will react to how do we monetize it? Does it help us serve our clients better? And I think the more and more visualization tools that keep coming out, that's going to help on the internal process side, the way Claude and Excel and all that stuff works, I'm just seeing incredible process simplification. And so all of that has already been rolling out. You can see the teams being freed up of this, like, wow, I've just freed up eight hours a week. And so we're already seeing those benefits there on the chat side, talking to clients, you know, instead of it's always a human talking to them, it's always an email that's going out from the salespeople. All those interactions are already starting to roll out this week and next week with. And in the upcoming months, literally with technology there and leveraging AI and so all those pieces are being built in house that we're rolling out.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (22:11)

It's kind of, I can already feel like the offices are just going to get better themselves. One because people can iterate so many more times on what they want at a cost that's one quick but not expensive. I feel like a lot of times when you're designing something, you just tap out. Eventually you're like, we'll just do it this way. Even though you kind of know there's something. But it just excites me to think like the way spaces will be planned going forward will be so much more detailed because people will get through the rep. You can go through 10 iterations in a day now instead of 10 iterations in a month or something.

Jason McCann (22:48)

Yeah. And I think too as some, everybody reacts to a space differently. I was touring clients today and they, they walk into an empty 20,000 foot floor plate and they're like, what am I looking at? So to have that and to say, hey, today we're going to be at 25 people, but we're going to be at 50 and we might be at 40. We might end the, to sort of design future proofing space and give those iterations and map it out the what if scenarios in a visualization tool, I think will help a lot of people and then to hit the button and know what the cost side is going to be. And ultimately, on the building GC side, when all those dots connect very quickly, that's going to help. And I'm sure these big developers are laying out entire neighborhoods and figuring out the best ones and all that. So, yeah, I think it's only going to help us all get better. It's going to be a little choppy and a little ugly, but, you know, if we're in the cell phone phase, where it's a big block and it's a buck a minute and you gotta, you know, it lasts for 15 minutes before it dies, like, okay, just imagine, like, 10 years from now, what it's really gonna be like. It's gonna be incredible. So I think we just. We're in the. You know, and we're here, and we get to be a part of it. You know, I'm a little later in my career, but you're here, but we're here. So it's awesome to see and be a part of it.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (24:08)

Okay, so you. You pitch the call center. He asks you what it costs. I don't know how many prototypes you had, but you're probably already thinking, like, we got to go make some more of these things.

Jason McCann (24:18)

Yeah.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (24:19)

Did anything change from those first conversations over those first few weeks of messing with it, or did your.

Jason McCann (24:26)

Your first.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (24:27)

Did you iterate on the prototype or just go order what you had and start installing them?

Jason McCann (24:31)

Yeah, we started. They asked for about 10 of them, and they asked how much they cost. And we did the classic. We didn't quite know. We said, well, what would you be willing to invest in your people? And, yeah, about 500 bucks. And we're like, oh, I think we can make that work. And so we came up and it all worked out. We had some prototypes come in, and so we got those over there, I think 10 of them. The Container Store was the second person we showed the product to, and they're right down the street from us. And Capel and Dan knew Kip, and I met him one time, and so we kind of got in the door and. And I figured they would give us very good feedback on the design of it. I'd never done furniture, and as a. As a product person, even as a software developer, somebody said this to me a long time ago. If you can find a small group of people to love something, a lot of people can like it. Like it. That could be a really big idea. But if a Small group of people. Like the idea. It's just okay. It's probably not that big of an idea. And we weren't really sure what we had yet, so I wanted to double check it. So it was okay. Verizon, that's. We're one for one. So we went down the street, same thing. I was like, oh, my God, this is the top place to work. This is 13 years ago. This is a great culture. I walk in, there's like a restaurant inside. I'm like, oh, my God, these people are amazing. There's people running around everywhere. And I've got my big box and I'm lugging this sample. And I didn't realize when they had bought Elfa, they already made their own office furniture. I just didn't know it. And so I'm walking around and they've got standing desks in their offices. And I was like, shit, I guess the fad's over. Like, I. I guess it's a fad. Like, we missed it. And I'd been bussed a few times on fad, so I was a little nervous that it was over. And we walked into a room and they had about 25 people in kind of a boardroom type thing. And they're all sitting on like folding tables and stuff. And she said, you know, the challenge is, is we have these standing desks, but then if anybody walks in there with different shoes on or we move somebody around, it takes hours to adjust this thing. It doesn't adjust well. Ours just popped right up and down. And they said, and we're expanding. We have all these desks. Actually, this makes a lot of sense, what you're showing us, this varidesk and just goes right on top and it adjusts any height. How much are they? We'll try some and we'll take about 10. It was literally like 10 and 10. And that was our. Those were our first two customers. And it, it told me it was. We had something there for the product idea, but over time we iterated it. We figured 22 times until the final product. As it, as we learned getting feedback, we adjusted it. The first ones, I didn't know anything about the office furniture industry and Dan and I knew retail, but this giant box, we said, well, we're not going to sell this. We showed it to like Home Depot and they're like, what are we going to do with this fair desk thing? And Walmart wasn't the right customer. And I wasn't sure about Office Depot and Staples. And I was like, oh, I Guess we're going to have to sell it online or do something. They said, oh, there's a big trade show. It's neocon. It's up in Chicago where all the furniture people go like, oh, my goodness, when is it? It's in June. And this is like, May. We're like, oh, my God, can we get a booth? You know, I don't. And I don't like trade shows. Like, can we get a booth? And like, oh, we've got these booths. And I was like, oh, we'll take the one. Those two that are right across from each other in the aisle. And we'll look like we're a really big company. And so we print some Varides T shirts, and we got our jeans on, and we show up at the trade show, and it's all union, so you got to wait for them to come set everything up. We're like, okay, so we're. It's toolless. You don't need any tools. So the union left us alone. We put the stuff together, and we were across the aisle. So we just stood in the middle of the aisle, and then everybody's, like, in a suit, in a black suit. And I'm like, oh, my God. It's all architects and designers. And I'm like, oh, my goodness. We're in the. Like, I'm in. I'm in, like, apples and oranges here a little bit. But we won Contract magazine and Building magazine's hottest new item of the year. People were literally like, oh, my God, I've never seen anything like it. And they said, what's the list and discount on the furniture? And I was like, what do you. What's. What are you talking about? We were at the time, this is, you know, 2013. We're 350 bucks and 50 shipping and handling. So that was our price. We're like, it's $400 delivered. And we were. This is kind of pre Amazon selling every, you know, free shipping. We were learning. We had turned on our little. We had a $99 website selling Vera desks. And we're standing in the aisle, we got our T shirts on, and nobody's like, in a logo T shirt. We're literally those people. And it just. It. It dawned on me. They said, we got to double the price. And then you discount it off that. That's how the furniture industry works. And then you got to. You got to have rebates for the dealer salespeople. And this is how the game works. You just don't understand the game. And I'm like, oh. So I drove, you know, I drove to some dealers and they, you know, we showed em the product and we tried to sell through the dealer network and they were all great, but they were selling like one a week. And I'm like bringing donuts to the sales meeting. And I, and I'm so, I'm 43 probably back then, right. I'm 56 now. So I'm like, I'm like, I, I'm not doing this. Like, this is not a business. And we're still running this beautiful Christmas and Halloween company. So we're like, okay, there's gotta be a better way. So the dealers weren't really gonna sell it. They said, you gotta sell it for 800 and then really sell it for 400 and real.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (29:48)

They successful selling it.

Jason McCann (29:50)

They just had other products to sell

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (29:52)

and you just weren't.

Jason McCann (29:53)

We just wasn't high on the priority list.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (29:55)

Got it.

Jason McCann (29:55)

Okay. You know, and they were selling Herman Miller Steel case and these brands. And I, and I didn't know any of the furniture brands either. And everybody I talked to that was normal, like me, I was like, hey, what kind of furniture, office furniture do you have? And they're like, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, Office Depot, nobody knows. But everybody in the neocon was like, oh, they had all the brands and they, but everybody normal, you know, outside the 50,000 people in that world had no idea what brand of furniture they use. So I, it was just kind of dawning on us. We're like, okay. And so we put a nice big varidesk on the side.com and put it on there. And nobody was putting their name on any of the furniture except Sean at Lovesack. And we're like, okay, well we're going to put our name on our furniture like. And all of a sudden, you know, we were selling them online. We're like, okay. And I'd gone bust in the dot com business. I was really nervous about doing an online business again. So we're like, okay, $10 bet on Google and we didn't sell any. And we did $100 bet on Google Ads and we sold one. We're like, okay, you know, this, this may work. And one day we sold three. Dan I were like, oh my God, it's a thousand bucks. You know, we're like high five. And down the hall, you know, we're just like, oh, this is so cool. And then we're sitting there during one of these crazy ice storms in an airplane for like four Hours on a tarmac at DFW and we're stuck. Nothing's moving. We're all just sitting there, kind of waiting on a bunch of stuff to happen. And this is 2013, no Wi Fi. So we're flipping through a SkyMall magazine over and over and over, and we're like, wouldn't it be funny as hell if we did an ad in SkyMall where somebody was standing? Because we're all sitting. So we'll do somebody standing in SkyMall at a Vera desk. And so we called SkyMall in Arizona and we're like, hey, how does this work? How do you do an ad? And they're like, it's 30,000 bucks and you can be in for three months. And we're like, okay, let's go for it. So, you know, not every entrepreneur will go for it. We're like, ah, it's worst case. What's going to happen? We do the ad in SkyMall. They're like, We've got a remnant page 30. You know, they're closing the deal. We got a remnant page, but you got to pay today. I was like, we're like putting it on a credit card or something. We get this ad placed and we quickly do an ad standing desk, write some copy. Somebody standing in like the. You know, there was a woman standing in this photo and it goes to print and we overnight become the number one selling item in SkyMall's history. It was like lightning in a bottle. And what you realized and it's logical today you go, well, business travelers were sitting there. Wasn't really WI Fi and airplanes. Everybody would flip through those magazines. You flip through and it was like that crazy pillow that you reclined or that giant gorilla or whatever. It was like they had all these weird things in SkyMall. And then we did a full page ad because it was a remnant and there's somebody standing. And everybody had kind of read the sitting isn't who smoking runners recognized. If you sat all day after you ran, it was negated your run. So we hit lightning in a bottle at that particular moment. People were tearing the page out saying, hey, my boss asked me to order it. We had one salesperson who was just taking orders, like sitting in a cube in front of me. So we've got this Christmas and Halloween business we're running. We're selling inflatables and Home Depot and Lowe's. And then we've got this little tiny business and we've got it in Capell there. And so The. The giant container would show up, and I think there were 600 VARA dust on a container. And we would go out in the warehouse, and the guys are just unloading it, putting a FedEx label on, and walking it to the FedEx trailer. And then they would drive it to the drop off every night. And all of a sudden, FedEx was dropping off an entire trailer every day. For us, we were all the. It was just every day, we're like, oh, my God, we sold. And we're. Now we're just producing varidesks. And we were at Neocon. The first ones we called the single and the dual because it's held a single monitor and a dual monitor. And we thought that was really clever. And then all the people are like, well, are y' all from Texas? Like, dual? Ha ha ha. We're like. So we're sitting there like, what do we. We can't call it the single and the dual at some point. And so somebody said, well, you know, maybe it's just like the professional or something. Like, oh, yeah, I guess we just call it the Pro. And then one was 36 inches and one was 36. And so we're like, okay, we'll call it the Veridesk Pro Plus 36 and the Pro Plus 30. And that was literally our branding strategy. And you go on Google now, we've sold millions of these things, but it was those little ideas and listening to the customers. The Verizon feedback on back pain, their ergonomist giving us tweaks on how to do where the keyboard should be, and me us not knowing what our ergonomist was, but asking questions for the Container Store here in town to give us feedback, for us to roll the dice at Skymall or stand there in that trade show aisle. It was like all those things. As an entrepreneur, those listening moments, you're just gathering feedback and getting your product and your idea right, and you're honing it in, making all those little changes. When we were shipping in all these FedEx boxes, our stuff was breaking, right? Because I. I personally never shipped that many FedEx boxes. And these things are 50 pounds. We didn't have it quite packaged right. So we would open them, adjust the cardboard, and ship out another one and try to see until all of a sudden, we got it right. So again, making changes to the packaging. And then if you listen to your customers, so we all of a sudden we're getting calls like, oh, I need a ver. And then they would go, hey, do you have like, a Standing mat or something, an anti fatigue mat. I'm like, what are they asking for? Anti fatigue mat. Like what's an anti fatigue mat? So we had turned up, we were selling some on Amazon. So I did what everybody does. This is R D. So we go on Amazon and I was like, okay, look up anti fatigue mats. And all these mats show up. We just ordered them all. Like there's like 50 of them. We just started ordering everybody's all these mats and we got them all, we un packaged them and like, God, this one smells funny. It looks funny. And like what, what are we going to do in the mat business? And Jimmy makes all the pumpkins that you see at a Michael's craft store. And that's the same factories that make the soles of running shoes. So we said, well, let's just create an anti fatigue mat. We know what we want. We want it to be a little bit like this one, a little bit like this one. But we don't love any of them. It's like baby bear. So we just kind of created our own and got it just right. And this is how the packaging will be. And overnight we're shipping in mats and become the number one selling mat on Amazon. And I think those moments of listening to your customer as an entrepreneur and throughout life are just so important as you're going through these product ideation processes. But that's how it happens, especially in the beginning and I guess the whole journey.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (36:40)

Oh, this is one of the best stories ever. And one of the through lines is every time you and your partner get to sit on a commercial plane for an extended period of time, great things happen.

Jason McCann (36:51)

That's right,

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (36:54)

obvi. Y' all weren't manufacturing these yourselves. So did I'm assuming there had to be a point when that Sharper Image order came in where you broke the system. Like were you already set up for the capacity to be able to manufacture those as quickly as possible? And where was manufacturing?

Jason McCann (37:11)

Yeah, so at the time we leveraged the same factories that were making the Christmas and Halloween product for Jemmy, which were where in China and all over. But primarily in the beginning was in southern China. And then as, as factories and production in China. This is again in the, in the 2013, 2014, 2015 timeframe moved throughout China. We were sort of following that and we. So our, the people that would help us build those products were the same people. We said, hey, find us a factory to make this. And the factories in Asia are very good, especially if you only want to make one thing they can make a lot of it very, very fast. They're very efficient at production. And so we were able to lean on them today. A lot of our products are actually made in Taiwan, but we were able to lean on those partners. And so, yeah, it was a little bit of like, wow, you're out of stock right in the beginning. But we're. I think, you know, I always say that growing pains are much more fun than shrinking pains. And so those were good problems to have. Was like, okay, we've got all these orders. What do we do? How do we. How do we keep up with it? At first, we were shipping them out of our. With our sample warehouse team. We were just, you know, hiring some temps and we're all back there. And on the. On the weekends, we were just kind of loading up and we had the printers going and we just got FedEx in there. And everybody just. Everybody just figured it out. And that's kind of how you grind through it. That doesn't. That's not a strategy. That's like a. You know. But it's fun, right? And then in Capel, because there's so many third party logistics companies, a lot of warehouses, one of our team members just reached out and said, hey. And they just started calling them and said, yeah, we got some capacity. Yeah, we can ship for you. We're like, sure. So we just got a bunch. We had printers and we would just print the FedEx labels. And it was a little weird. Cause I walked outside one day with my envelope and there's like 50 FedEx labels. And it looked like an Uber driver at the time. I mean, it was just a kid pulled up in his car and he's like, hey, I'm here to pick up some labels. And I just hand it to this guy and he drives off and I was like, where's he going? You know, in my mind, I'm like, what am I doing here? And so I went over and saw the warehouse and we. And all of a sudden you start recognizing. You got like, we have containers flowing of these things and there's stacks and people's. We're just. And we had like five different three Pls and Capel going, just shipping out these products. We had emails coming in from people, from our fans now that were saying, hey, do you have. They were showing us how they were jerry rigging monitors to our. To our product. And nobody liked monitor arms or they wanted monitor arms, but they were jerry rigging how they were attached. We're like, oh, we could. We could come up and we got some good patents around how to attach a monitor arm real easy so you could attach it to a desk. And then we leveraged the same factory that makes the monarms for 3M, had some patents there. So we just took their idea, licensed that, and then we designed a new contraption of it so that you and I could just easily hook on monitor arms. And all of a sudden we're in the monitor arm business, selling millions of dollars and again just started shipping them out. Figuring out with all these three PLs as we scaled it, we had to get a little more mature and put some guardrails on. We had the company inside of of Jemmy Industries. So we've got now this beautiful Christmas and Halloween business that, that Dan founded back in 1985 and then this little startup. And the beauty of that is you can leverage the internal infrastructure to a point. And then at some point, like you got too many people in the building. Hey, the bathrooms, the shower, you know, all the stuff, right? And you have two different, a little bit cultures going on there. And so we said, okay, we're gonna have to move the team. And so as the, as the team grew, I think to about 60 employees pretty fast, we moved it across the street kind of, you know, I was like, okay, we're gonna sign a lease. You know, we reached out to Lucy over there in Cypress water said, hey, you got any space? She was like, I looked at your financials. I don't know. You're a startup. I think I'm going to take a Toyota lease versus you guys. So we got a little tech building across the street, an old Michael's planogram center or something. So we walked in there and just kind of had the vision of just rip out the ceiling, open it to the, to the decks. It's like 20 foot ceiling. Buildings Polish had polished concrete floors. Once we ripped up the concrete, we're like, oh, it looks pretty good. They just kind of glazed over it for a buck a square foot. And we didn't have walls in it. And we had at Jemmy had built sort of this modular walls. And it was similar to the way walls are done in factories in China, because a factory in China at the time is just a giant concrete box. And when they need an office, they would just almost think of Legos. Build an office out of Legos. And then when they didn't need it because they're going to change the production line, they just move the Legos. So we shipped a few of those over. Well, the labor on that is just a beat down. It would take you like 20 hours to build this LEGO office. So we said, hey, why don't we build some of our own walls that could move? So we built walls that moved. We did the first phone booths that looked like London phone booths. Like, yeah, if you got to call mom in an open plan. And we built these giant London phone booths. Metal, heavy, 1500 pounds. Said, yeah, we're gonna do that. We wanted standing meeting tables because we knew standing meetings. So we in the prototype shop, they're just building furniture for us. And we said, okay, if you want. And people say, hey, do you have an office or just can I see the Varidesk, the product? They would walk into the office across the street over there on Denton Tap. It's now the Dave and Buster's headquarters. They'd walk in our office and we've got music playing, coffee in the front. Because I'm in. I've got like a hospitality background. So the energy is incredible. And they're like, well, I want this. And they weren't describing the desk anymore. They were describing the energy of the space. And I said, we're no longer in the standing desk business. We are literally now monetizing the transformation of culture through workspace design. Like, this is what we're selling. The energy, the culture, the people. This is what we're doing. This is the business that we're entering now. This is our new phase. Because they would walk in and they would literally just kind of whip their hands around and go, I want this. And it was the feel of the space. And this is the early days of we work and people trying to figure out, you know, what's. What's these amenities, amenity, rich environments. And I was not at all from the office space industry or anything like that. I just knew culture and people and building businesses. And we were just building it for us. But it resonated with other companies and that started to get us into this other journey. So we made full standing desks. Like, hey, can we just buy full desks from you? So we built. The initial ones were manual. You would lift them up because we're like, ah, electric desks are too slow and too expensive. And these manual ones are great. The market had a different opinion and said, no, no, no, we want electric desks. And so with the electric desk category, we kind of did what Steve Jobs did. He didn't create the MP3 player. So other people were already making electric desks, as you think about them today. And so we bought them and we took them apart, and they would take 45 minutes to assemble, and some took, like six hours. And we said, could we create an electric standing desk, a height adjustable table that you and I could build in five minutes? Just like a consumer. We always joke that, like, IKEA is the worst Saturday of your life. Like, I just want to get out of here, and it's too hard to build everything. And we got patents on the assembly of the electric desk, of the ease of it. And then we said, just like a consumer. So the way that Steve Jobs did the iPhone, it just opens, and it's just this beautiful thing. It's like we just mirrored our idea after that. So our box comes, and it's like a giant pizza box, and you just open it up, and we watch people build it. And we learned over time. It's like, oh, ship it with the top already down. Now I bring in the legs, and they easily attach, and they click right in. It's got a real simple tool that we included. You know, nobody would include tools back then. Now it's common. Include it. And then professionals just pop it together. And then you and I just flip it over and you're done. And it's like, oh, this is great. And so now we're selling full electric desks to clients. And suddenly the business just continues to grow in a positive way. And we had corporate clients like Southwest Airlines. We knew somebody over there, and they were like, hey, we're looking at redoing some space. Do you guys want to show us some of you? We heard you got some desks, and they had their steel case desks and these other desks, and we shipped in our product into the room, and they said, you guys got to come assemble it and put it together. And I said. I literally said it. I was like, well, you have facilities, people. It's takes five minutes. You guys build it. Like, no, no, no. What's the design? The workspace design? I was like, what do you mean? You just put them in a row? Like, I. This is pure ignorance on my part. And you assemble. And they said that, no, no, no, no, you do it. I was like, okay, we need a workspace designer. Like, who's going to. Somebody needs to do the design. So we hired a kid out of Texas Tech. Just like, somebody knew somebody whose son was like, hey, you're an architect, okay? Or you're. When you do the. So he did a layout, and then we went over and assembled the desks. That was like our quote installation services. Like, yeah, we. Yeah, we Install furniture and lit up. We're in black T shirts with the Varidesk logo. And we build the desk, we set them up and like six of them. And I was like, okay, so in a corporate environment, we're going to have to do design services and we're going to have to do installation. And these were just us going through this process of, oh, we're like growing up now. We're going to be a different type of company. We're not just going to ship you a desk. Now we're starting to do B2B and it's a little bit different than where we started our journey. That kind of got us to some other challenges out there.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (47:18)

The common thread is that you didn't. And again, we haven't gone through the entire story, but it seems like the products and the services kind of just kept coming to you. Meaning like you just like you said, we just listened to customers and it became the obvious next thing. As you're scaling that quickly, how would you make it clear to the team that this is going to be a new thing that we do? Was it already, because you were kind of already doing it and hearing it from customers that it didn't require a lot, or would you go into exec meeting on Monday and say, we are now building clamps to hold monitors. We are now in the selling of culture, we are now in the installing of. How does that happen when you're constantly being these light bulbs are going off like this is the natural next step?

Jason McCann (48:15)

Yeah, I think in the days when you're. We were probably at. This is probably a period where we're 50 to 100 employees and we're scaling from zero to tens of millions to a hundred million dollar business, like in years. Like it just happened quick. Very, very fast.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (48:30)

It was the fastest growing business in Dallas at one point.

Jason McCann (48:33)

Yeah, we won SMU's fastest growing. Yeah, I think in 2016, 2017. Right. In that time period. Right. And won. Like shocking. It was. We get to the stage there and they keep counting down the number. All these people ringing cowboys. I've never been to the event and I'm like, oh my God. And we're still up. And all of a sudden they ring, they keep ringing the bells. And I go, we need the top 10 to come up on stage. And they hadn't called us yet. So we go up there and as I'm walking up there, I lean over to my CFO and Dan and to Craig and Dan. I was like, I'm going to call an audible And Craig goes, what? I was like, I'm going to call an audible. And he's like, he has no idea. And I don't even know what I'm going to do. I'm just like, God, if we win, though, I'm going to go crazy. And we get up there, and. And we're. And we're standing there, and they count down. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two. And I'm standing there with. With arc six, golf. And we're standing on stage, and Blake, who I just met on stage, and we both say something funny and inappropriate to each other, I think, because we're just like, what are we. What are we doing up here? This is ridiculous. And all of a sudden, we win. And I give a very emotional, like, oh, my God speech to it. And I said, if you have a business card and you're here tonight, we're going to give you a free Vera desk. And the whole crowd jumps up and runs to my team at their table, and people have their backpacks open and handbags, and they're just giving us business cards. And that Oprah moment right there, I think we gave out 800 desks. We got 800 cards. We drove around DFW, met all these great companies, gave away a whole bunch of furniture and even. And I recruited people from it and all these things, like that crazy moment when we won. But you're right. Those are incredible moments as an entrepreneur. And then it's another thing to get into Monday morning's meeting and try to execute all these different things, because the plays start moving really, really fast. Suddenly you're putting out a whole bunch of cash on bets. You're starting to make shipments out to people. You're getting fraud attacks on your website. You're like, which. Which channel are we going to pick? And so there's a moment where, as an entrepreneur, you're. You're firing on all cylinders. And so I think we hit 100 plus in revenue, 120 employees. And also, we're having, like, meetings, and they're like, we're having HR challenges, and we're firing people and hiring people, and I don't know everybody's name. And it's a very scary moment. Like, as I'm standing, I'm like, oh, my God. Am I. Am I about to come off the rails? Personally, professionally, like, am I in the right seat? Like, am I. Can I even do this thing anymore? And so struggling with that, my CFO was amazing. He was like, we got to get, like, varidesque University going like, we got to hire some leaders. We got to teach people, have a one on one conversation. Like, what are you talking about? Just work harder. Sell desks. Like, I was. Put the monitor arms. Like I was, you know, it's like I was not going to be successful. And so I was reaching out and I was like, does anybody know, anybody that knows like a chief people officer? I'd read all these books and you know, I was like. And I'm just like, I don't, I don't know if I can do this. Like, we're struggling in the people department. And it was probably, it was, we called it people, but it was, you know, HR for older companies. And I was like, we're really struggling in it. I was like, does anybody know a real chief people officer? And somebody knew somebody. Again, you reach out to your network and God works in mysterious ways. And they're like, oh, the former chief people officer, Southwest Airlines lives in Capell. And he said he'd pop in for coffee and we did tours all the time. And at the same time my marketing team was like, we need to define our values. We gotta. And I was like, it's work hard, you know. I was like, what do you tell. Why do we need to. Why do we need to worry about you? I mean, you read it in business books and Good to Great and all that stuff, but I'm like, no, we just need to ship today and make sure the money's in the bank. And we're still on like QuickBooks and NetSuite. And we're just like, I mean, it's, it's crazy. And I, and I was like, okay. And so Karine at our, who is a consultant who is great helping us create our leadership training program and how to have onboarding, how to have tough conversations. She said, I can help you with your values. And I said, how are you going to do it? She said, just give me a list of people. And I gave her a list of 17 names and she interviewed all of them and six core values came to the top. And she was going over these words with me and it was embrace, change. And it was raise the bar and you know, and create lifelong fans and these words. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is great. And then like, hey, your. Your chief people officer's at the front for a coffee tour. And I was like, okay. So I hit the print on the printer and I print the thing and run up to the front and I. And I meet Jeff Lamb. And he was the former chief People officer of Southwest Airlines. And, hey, Jason, he had a country accent, little twang, little great guy. And he comes on a tour, and I. I do the same thing. We go to the coffee bar, and the music's playing, and he's looking around, and I'm talking about people and culture and shared kind of the journey. And he's asking all these great questions, and he's walking around with me, and. And he. And he. And I said, hey, I just got a question for you. Like, you know, at Southwest Airlines, I think y', all, I googled, you have, like, 70,000 employees. Like, how did. How did they maintain the culture? Because I'm like. Like, we're talking about culture and people, and I'm not, like, coming off the rails here. And we've only met each other. We've been together for 40 minutes now. We're like one cup of coffee in. And I think I just hit the vulnerability, you know, message pretty early on with Jeff, because he's just a very humble, trusting person. I. And I. I. He probably recognized I need a little bit of help. And he was just. And he was. And he goes, well, at Southwest Airlines, it's all based on your values. And if you hire and fire and celebrate to your values and use that as the filter, the culture is ultimately the DNA that's created from that, from all those people based upon having the same values. I said, jeff, I've got my values on the printer that Karine just helped us do with the 17 people. And I go, would you just take a look at them? And we sat down, and we're. You know, he's got a meeting or whatever coming up, and we're wrapping up, and I'm going for the hard clothes and trying to. And he's reading him. He's like, these are good. Like, this is. This is good. And he goes, you're on. You're on it. You're on the right track. And so he goes, I live down the street. I'll come back by. I was like, thank you, and come by. And so he's really good. Coffee. I was like, yeah, coffee's free. Just come on by. So he came by a few more times, and. And really we talked about culture and people. And he said, have you heard of Patrick Lencioni? And I was like, no. And I'm literally texting the name L E N C I O N I. And he. He said, have you. And I said, I've read Good to Great and Zappos and all these books on people and culture. He's all you need to read his. His book. Hungry, humble, smart, you know, and the ideal team player and, and, you know, the building an ideal team and. Or building teams and having meeting. I was like, five dysfunctions of a team. I'm like, oh, my God. So I literally read all these books that he gave me before I saw him. And he comes back and I'm talking about Lencioni and, you know, and he's like, okay, I've done my homework. And he said, do you need some help around here? I was like, oh, yeah, do you know anybody? He goes, well, what about me? And so I can't afford you. He's like, come, I'll help you. Let's do this. So he joined as COO and ultimately became president and was really just, you know, along with Craig and Dan, just added foundation and some. Some discipline to the business and the culture and helped us solidify a lot of things in that and to help us sort of navigate, you know, and, and so that was. It was just a great chapter. I think Jeff was with me for about six years, you know, and before he was called to go run Lionheart, which breaks my heart, but I'm excited for them. Um, but it, but it, you know, just great to. You start to recognize if you get the right people in the boat and you're all rowing in the same direction and it starts to work, like a lot of great things can happen. And so. And that kind of got us into

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (57:00)

buildings before we get into buildings. So do you remember he shows up his first day on the job. Were there things that he came with that were like, we are going to stop doing these things immediately? How did he integrate himself into the process to create that change? Like, what. What do you remember from those first weeks, months, year of him taking that role?

Jason McCann (57:26)

Well, I think there was. There's a. There's a natural thing that happens because you've. You've got a team, somewhat of a team in place. And so now you're saying, hey, we're going to split up some of the roles here. And so I think that's a human nature for. For each of us as leaders to give up something that you think you're doing a good job at and driving to kind of say, hey, we're going to allow this person to help run some of these other areas. And so there was conversations around that that weren't easy to have. But Jeff's humble and I think kind of came in and I think like great leaders listening and asking questions and trying to understand what's working and what's not. And I know he was on one of your, your earlier podcasts and so to, to hear his story of how he worked for some of the greats out there, like real CEOs, I'm, I'm a CEO, but he's like, he worked for some greats alongside them. And so to go in and, and really help the team start to think about putting the boulders in. I described it as I was like shoveling sand and growing up in Galveston, I, you know, you just, you shovel sand. But Jeff kind of came in and put some big boulders in place and so we were able to start thinking about, okay, let's look at the ERP system and maybe there are some bigger, there's maybe another step that we can do with, with our infrastructure. And the team had done, he and he and Craig had done some incredible work around operations and just solidifying how are we going to do that and relooking at those things. And so I think coming in and listening and then starting to put some big boulders in place, helping make some personnel changes and upgrading some of the talent and kind of making some of those harder calls because there's certain people that kind of get you to here and then there's another group that kind of gets you to there. And so I think coming in and starting to think about departments and a couple things on the process side that I was probably not going to get to. And it's not the way my brain works. So I've never been a part of a giant company. I mean we done hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of sales but never, I've never ran a, you know, multi billion dollar company with all these things. So a few of those foundational pieces in the org structure to get right and to kind of challenge like let's talk about a monthly strategic meeting and how to have it versus I'm just, I think I'm like in days, I'm in hours like the way my brain works. And he's talking okay, over the next year, over the next three years and starts to help roadmap some of those conversations out where to your point, in the beginning I'm like reacting, responding to the market needs and demands like a trader almost and flipping a trade and doing a deal. So it sort of helps sort of build a longer term vision for the business.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (60:11)

How did he work specifically with you?

Jason McCann (60:15)

In my mind I, I couldn't believe he was working with me because he was so good and so smart and so it's kind of one of those. He's only a little bit older than me, but way wiser and so. But never, never he was as, as Lencioni talks about vulnerability based trust and humility and being. And leaning into that he, because he's got so much of that, there's an immediate trust factor that's built and so there's no ego, political, all that. There's none of that stuff. So that's, you know, the radical candor if you've read that book. Like it's, that's how it is with him. And so he was able to just say it like it was and to call me out and that iron sharpens iron and just sometimes it was hard, but just to say it like it was. And it also helped sort of challenge my thinking of how do we do it so it'll last beyond this year. Like how will it be in five years or 10 years? Some of those bigger thinking moments. So we, we literally sat across from each other like 15ft away. I'd see him every single day. And so yeah, we, we had a regular interaction. There was, you know, yin and yang and all that stuff and with you know, Craig and my other leaders too. But you know, it was great. Where Dan is chairman, is running another company and he's got other stuff and we didn't, you know, we were doing creative ideation on product ideas every couple weeks or whatever and dreaming in that dream state. Jeff's got that tenacity discernment type stuff and to get stuff done and drive it through.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (62:02)

Well, you hear this storyline in very companies that do really well. Like maybe the most notable in our generation is like Zuckerberg. When Cheryl came on how does it work when you're the CEO self admittedly you're kind of like I need a ton of help. A wise sage comes in that reports to you. How does that dynamic work? Obviously you're the leader, but you, I would imagine in some ways you look up to your coo. So how does like how does the communication work in a relationship like that?

Jason McCann (62:45)

Yeah, I think it's. Yeah, well, you know, I think being completely honest all the time and being very comfortable calling it out and just. And saying what you're struggling with and what your ideas are in a space where you can and put it out there, I think is very healthy.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (63:04)

Yeah.

Jason McCann (63:05)

And I don't know that you realize that just like your relationship with your spouse, you know, if you can have that relationship of total comfort and vulnerability and hey, here's what I'm dealing with. And here's what I'm thinking about. And you start to go through the natural dance of I know when I'm in the creative flow state. I know when I'm in the heads down state, I need to just focus. I also know when I'm personally very stressed. And I think you start to realize that with people that you build relationships with, with your senior leaders, that they can start to feed off of you and recognize during those conversations like, hey, you're not, we're not ready to talk about this or we need to talk about this. And so I think that's how I would describe how the relationship and it evolves over time. And so it, you know, there, there are moments when it's really good and there's, you know, we got hit with COVID in the early part of our relationship or the first third of it, and it's hard. And how do you deal with the stresses that hit the business and you personally and all the stuff that's going on and, and then we're also all dealing with life. Right. Parents and other things that are going on. And to be able to also have those kind of conversations with people that you work with, I think ultimately is part of life's journey and helps us all get through the good times and the bad.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (64:32)

We'll get to Covid in a second. So you now have 300 products. So how do you think about. I'm assuming at this point not all 300 are just continuous customer insights. Maybe they are. How do you think about innovation versus just making one product a little bit better or just leaving some stuff alone? With 300 products, it's, there's gotta be a lot going on there. So how do you think about your product line? What's, what stays, what needs to be innovated on and how much time do we need to spend developing new things?

Jason McCann (65:12)

Yeah, so the, yeah, it's. You hit these maturation cycles and I, you know, you could call it the innovator's dilemma. Right. If you're the, if you're the book fan out there where you do hit pockets of like, okay, you've got. I mentally operate under the mindset of we got to innovate or die. That's just how the game works.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (65:31)

Right.

Jason McCann (65:32)

Got to continue that. But to have 300 products, but know that 80 to 100 of them drive the majority of the revenue because now you're talking about, oh, you have a soft seating collection because it needs to round out the portfolio because we're going to Install a thousand projects this year. But if I was just a soft seeding company, I would be broke. Like, there's not enough margin and profit, and it's not big enough for us. Us to continue to know that we are the innovators and sit stand height adjustable. But then everybody started to come to us and talk about seeding and the innovator part. Dan and I kind of joked, well, you shouldn't sit down. So our first chair was like a really hard stool, Just a metal stool. And then people complained about it and said, this is the worst chair. But Chip and Joanna thought it was great. That's kind of one of those metal stools. So we added a pad to it that would magnetize and then ultimately a back. But now, recognizing that we're a part of the office conversation, it's like, how do we curate and create a seating line? And so we've kind of got a broad seating line. But my ideation team, Hannah and her group are now. What is the next sit stand chairs that we come out with? What's the next thing in height adjustment? They're like, literally coming up with items inside these categories. Our desks, we had clients come in, and so we've got our core product that we sell a lot of just like, you know, black T shirts or whatever. You know, kind of your basic core line. But then we've had clients ask for and our team come up with other products. And so the latest big desk, we launched the big L desks that wrap around your entire space. Because we had a lot of people say, I want my whole thing to go up and down. Well, the team cracked the code on that. And so we were doing so many projects. We've done about $50 million plus worth of projects in the last couple few years here. I'm sorry, almost $500 million worth of projects. Cause we'll do over a thousand this year. But as we're doing all these projects and people are coming back to the office post Covid, they started to ask, could we have. We want cubes, and we don't sell an office cube. But that listening point right there, you start to do the research. Now you say, well, it's a $2 billion industry plus. So my team went out. We're like, we're going to innovate that category. So now taking categories that we can reinvent and attack those, and then we start to retire one. So now you take AI and the data tools, and you're like, you shouldn't be in this category anymore. It's not profitable. So there's some that we're just going to either exit or partner with other companies or we'll sell their product, which is a little bit different. But it's just part of our maturation of the brand, of the journey that we're on. And so we're innovating where we think we can win. We're partnering where it might make more business sense now, which is different than the way I would have operated back in the mat days and trying to look at the business and go, okay, what does it look like in the future? We still sell primarily direct. And so that's got its blessings and its curses out there. In some aspects, it's amazing. In some, it's very challenging. Well, you think about. There's an entire. It's just like the automotive industry and Elon. So we're just like Tesla. So we're. We're as big. We're not quite that big. But back in 2013, think about it, his model, he said, hey, I'm not going to have auto dealerships. I'm going to sell direct. Well, Texas has rules against that, and other states have got rules against dealers or you have to have a dealer network. And because we couldn't get. We weren't successful in that vertical. We said, well, we're just going to have to be scrappy. Just like Elon. We're going to be like Elon. He's obviously been a little more successful than us, but we're both here in Texas. But you're still. We're still. We're still huge. Yeah. And so we said, we're going to sell direct. And so as we started to go through that process, we actually, in 2018, 2019, said, we're going to open up dealers or, I'm sorry, we're going to open up showrooms across the country, similar to what Elon was doing. And we built out a strategy. We're going to rebrand the company from Varidesk to Vari. We're going to go for it. And we just said that way we are going to be right with the customer. We're going to be in their markets and be closer to them. And that would allow us to compete so that you have a relationship with us and you can touch and feel the product again. This is 2018, 2019. And as we entered that model and we realized that would be a competitive strategy for us, we thought that that would be very good. And then obviously Covid hit and changed it. But the idea that you can have a Direct relationship with a customer base is very important. I think that's why the dealers are successful. But I think the world's continuing to change and Amazon's disrupting a lot of things and Wayfair and others and very. We're trying to do that as well.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (70:24)

I'll pick on the product just because you mentioned cubes. When I think, when I just hear that on the surface, I'm like, how innovative can you get? It's a cube.

Jason McCann (70:32)

Yeah.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (70:33)

And maybe it's different for each product, but can you walk me through just a little bit how you identify a legacy product that's been around forever? And you say, we're gonna do that and we're gonna innovate on it and do it better. And also maybe at the end say like, how long that process would take, like, what is the process a very team would go through to get to something that you approve of and say, okay, we're good to go.

Jason McCann (70:59)

Yeah. So the team, we started to work with other companies selling their cubes and so they went out and we said, hey, we've got clients that are asking for cubes. And so we worked with them and, and we installed them in projects. And then we, when we sat down and talked to these cube manufacturers, they were like, well, there's 1800 parts and it takes six weeks to train. It's going to take a 14 week lead time and which color. And it was just, oh my goodness. Like, well, it's space division. The top selling height is 52 inches for seated privacy. Okay, let's simplify this down to its core. If you own an office building and you've got a bunch of cubes in it and you say, hey, move them. Oh my. Everybody that's owned an office building or a company is like, how it's a 500 to 1000 to 1500 bucks. Everybody in the dealer world loves it when you want to move your cubes because they're going to charge you a fortune. And we said, what if we created a product that you could move? Any install crew could come in. Could it be less than 10 parts total? Could it just be in a simple size? Could it allow power and data to go through it? And we walked in and just attacked it, simplified it, stripped it down to its core and launched Quick Flex cubes and said, okay. And everybody calls it systems furniture, but we said, we're just going to try it, just see what happens. And we got it down to seven parts and you and I can build anything in minutes. Like it's simple. And it clicks together and we got some patents on it. It clicks together. And then the latest in power integration. Once your electrician attaches the whip, there's just a quick connect system that just clips them all together and they run the. And you just pop the little panel. It's so simple. And so we just start showing it. We've sold millions of dollars worth of these and it's starting. And so it's not a billion dollar category for us yet, but I'd love for it to be a hundred million. You need a big order of them. Come on, come on. Bringing it. But, but we're installing them and it's working and it's been simple. And then what happens is it future proofs a space. Because sometimes you're like, hey, we need to expand it, we need to change it, we need to. We just have. It's simple. It's 36 inches or 30 inches or 42. You just order more. We'll come in and just adjust the space for you. Put soft seating at the end. Think of it as like just creating space division and creating spaces with partitions. Cubes is what normal people would call it, but that's what it is. Same thing with the walls. Our walls are seven and a half feet tall. What we were trying to do was just say everybody talks about demountable walls, but then they all kind of, they all kind of wink and go, but you can't actually move them. It costs so much money for the contractor to come back in and move these things. We said, well, what if we could create a wall that you and I could move? Now you got to be a little bit taller, but you just pop the panel off, it's got clicks. There's no tools required. They're in 36 inch lengths. Got a door now, it doesn't address the ceiling. And if you need a soundproof room, that's Sheetrock and you spend 250 grand or 20,000 a room, like that's a different product. But we've created for 70% of spaces, products that work. And we don't need to be. 100% of everything is how I think about things. And our team does, but that's how we innovate it. Our big challenge now is can we get the word out right? If we had 200 dealers across the country, they'd all start selling our cubes and overnight would be Hayworth or Steelcase. But that's, that's the challenge of us selling it direct. We've got to go to our current fan Base build awareness that we've launched this new product, do our best to earn their trust and come install it in their space. And if they love it and they oh this is great and now we're the standard and they start using us with all their spaces. So that's the nature of being a small or medium business. I guess for medium size business I think you're medium big would be a billion. We're not quite there. Yeah, we're hundreds.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (74:55)

You know, we're going to get there.

Jason McCann (74:56)

We're going to get there.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (74:57)

Yes, we can talk about COVID and I think it's, it's.

Jason McCann (75:01)

We don't have to, we don't.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (75:03)

Well, I think it's obvious that being told don't go to work and never go to the office again, we can gloss over that was probably not the greatest messaging. Well, a few questions. We are in 2026 now. What is the future of work right now? I think we're kind of past the like. Is work going to happen? How's it going to happen? How is it really shaken out? Where do we stand right now?

Jason McCann (75:33)

Yeah, so most clients that we do business with are three to five days a week in the office with a lot more flexibility and change. They're you know, on our office portfolio they want much longer term leases than they did just a couple years ago. We're talking seven to 12 year leases versus two to three year leases. And we're not really sure what we're going to want.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (75:53)

Right.

Jason McCann (75:54)

We were doing spaces that were 5,000 square feet, 7,000 square feet. We are now touring and talking to clients about 35,000 square foot spaces on 10 year deals. And the, the market is shifting very, very quickly back to sort of. We recognize the, the benefits of having people together for some period of time. We need spaces for collaboration, for connection, for culture, for communication. But we also need spaces for concentration. And so how do we create those spaces? AI will disrupt things and, and how does it. But I think the idea of a space being flexible that if builders and designers can limit the amount of ti doll tenant improvement dollars that go into a space, how much of the space can be the actual bones of a space versus can be flexible for teams. How do we incorporate all the hospitality stuff that's happening out there and all the benefits of event type space, of food and catering and entertainment, all inside the ecosystems and the walkability factors and the fit well certification, like all of those things, health and wellness in the workspace, both mental and physical, I think are all continuing to move in a very positive direction. And so we see it as furniture people. You kind of go, wow, we just doubled our total addressable market. Because when you're at home now, you don't want to be crunched over your laptop on the kitchen table, although that's an option. But you do have to kind of have an ergonomic setup if you're going to make people have some days at home, and then when they're in the office, they got to, hey, these are the areas we're going to be together. These are the quiet zones. This is heads down space. Like all of that's going to happen. So I think all that churn in the marketplace is actually good for the innovators. It's probably not great for the people that are afraid of disruption and change, but for brands like Vari and products and developers like Kali and all these people that are, like, cracking the code and what John's doing in Fort Worth, John Golf, all those spaces that they're creating, they get it and they're really leaning into it in a big way. And these developers that are coming in and saying, okay, we have an opportunity to really be a part of the future of the transformation of cultures and communities, and work is a piece of that. And so the idea that we're working to be productive, that things are happening, but also that human interaction happens. And I think a lot of that research came out and said, hey, the place that you meet somebody different than you, that speaks another language, that may make more money than you, they can teach you or you can help bring up, maybe at a university, maybe at your church, it's probably at work, right, where you meet your significant other. Like, these are the moments. So we, as entrepreneurs and developers and all the. We're creating those spaces for humans to interact and serve each other and help each other. And I think that's what's happening right now, versus everybody staring at their phone and being at home and in the PJs like that. That whole movement back is definitely happening now. Dfw, you know, you know this better than I do. I mean, we're benefiting from that. We are the tip of the spear as far as that's going. Our team at Cushman's, like, the leashing activity. I mean, I just came out of our leashing here. It's. It's. It's amazing. I wish I owned another building, you know, and maybe we will. But, you know, the. The idea of that, I think, is all very healthy and to walk around. I was in Our building at South Lake today and I'm just walking around, people are having lunch, people are, some people are just chilling on their phone, people are talking. It's like the energy is incredible. And so if you get that right, I think that's just good for society. And so I think the, the people that are creating buildings like that and spaces like that and environments like that, whether it's repurposing class B to class A or these, the big risk takers that are tearing down stuff and building some incredible things in the future, like that's what it's going to be. I think that's all going to be

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (79:53)

positive, moving laterally real quick. You manufacture a lot. You said tariffs earlier. The narrative is re industrialization of America. Is that really from a manufacturer's standpoint, how much of that is lip service versus you can actually really see a world where America becomes a major manufacturing hub.

Jason McCann (80:14)

Again, if the, you know, pre Covid, if you were to tour the factories that produce furniture everywhere, it was very manually driven. Post Covid, I was over in Asia touring factories literally right after Covid. I've never seen so many robots in my life. Instead of a production line having 400 workers on it building furniture for everybody that, you know, of all the brands in the U.S. yep, they would have 40 workers and robots everywhere. And they said they have a. They have an issue where people don't want to work in the old factories, the old type. So you're stereotypical of what you think is a. Is a factory is probably closer to what you see pictures of what Elon's doing. It's got to be closer to that with robotics and people building things, then it's possible. It's not going to be people, you know, making a low wage that are doing a repetitive task over and over and over again. It's not, that's not what the future of it is. If you go down to Mexico and you see the factories that are down there, they're actually all Chinese and Taiwanese owned. It's just a very different thing because they know production very, very well and they know how to build production lines. But it's all German engineering, robotics and Japanese robotic and US robotic firms. Like it's going to be those things. The tariffs were very disruptive. You know, I always say it's, it's companies like us that are importing products that pay the tariffs. Like it's, you know, and it's millions and millions of dollars that overnight everybody's paying it. So you can't. We went around. I went to all the factories in the US and they couldn't find workers to assemble furniture. Struggling with it, you know. And they're competing with Amazon delivery wages or in. In these factories. And so. But they were too. They weren't automated enough. And it's expensive for robots, but it's coming. Like the robots are coming.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (82:00)

So it's coming to America.

Jason McCann (82:01)

There are. It'll just be very different. Yeah, it'll. And I think it'll. But I, I think we benefit from a global supply chain versus we have to make everything. Because I. It's got to be different. But it is. It is. Elements of it are coming.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (82:15)

There's a guy named John Arnold that did a podcast on Patrick's Invest like the best the other day and he basically similar story to what you said. He had just gotten back from a tour throughout China and he just. He was just highlighting how unbelievable manufacturing actually is over there. Like as Americans. I think he was just really driving the point home. I certainly took it home. He goes, it's almost.

Jason McCann (82:43)

I've never seen so many robots. I've never seen so many. And they're little tiny ones like the size of this mic boom. Like little tiny ones welding and tacking. And the humans are just quality control. Well.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (82:55)

And their ability to spin up a factory and get it in production quickly.

Jason McCann (83:00)

So I'm, I'm, I'm optimistic. There are companies, but I think it's got to have to be joint ventures and stuff with global entrepreneurs too that have expertise. This. It can't be in isolation. You know, we've got to have global partners to produce different things or to bring in the automation and to learn from each other. And I think that'll be healthy for the world. But there's going to be some downside, you know, and we're going to. We're navigating through a lot of the challenges there. Okay.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (83:26)

The thing I'm very interested to know and it really from paying attention from the outside, some of the research, I think Covid kind of spawned this, but you have a unique leadership style, it appears. And I wanted to just kind of pick that apart a little bit. I think we can start with what did Covid instill in you and require you to become that you weren't prior to Covid.

Jason McCann (84:01)

Yeah, I think, you know, I went into Covet and, and I was like when everybody went home and there was, you know, probably 10 of us in the office, the people that didn't want to work at home or just felt like we needed to be together. And we took that moment and as a, and I was literally up every night 2:00am and I was, and I just hired 50 people, just opened up 12 showrooms across the country, just put $15 million in a TV bet for our rebranding campaign that we're going to deliver furniture to your office in less than 30 days. And Varidesk is now very. And we're on Bloomberg and we've got all these office. And I, I, I was like, I'm, I'm gonna go broke again. And it was a very dark period. And at 2am every night my wife finally said to me, well, if you're afraid, I can only imagine how your people feel. And I, at that moment, that crisis creates clarity moment happened. And I realized that as an introvert because it's in my head constantly spinning. Oh, I just run multiple plays and best case scenario, worst case scenario, I'm literally running. I was like, I gotta talk to my people. Lencioni today would call it the chief reminding officer. And I didn't, I didn't know that term back then, but it was like I started daily emails to the team and I started talking about, here's our revenue number and here's what we're trying to get to. And this is the, like, I would never talk about that stuff. I was just like, sell more. We're gonna be, you know, put the thermometer up 100 temperature. Let's, let's, you know, fever's good. And now I'm like, oh my goodness. And I started all hands zoom meetings every week. And I'm, you know, I'm like, what am I going to tell everybody? Like, I'm looking around the room and I'm like, oh, they're looking at me. I gotta actually talk.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (85:54)

Thermometer bit's not gonna work anymore.

Jason McCann (85:56)

Yeah, hey, everything's great. Skymall, rip the page out like at that moment. So in a 48 hour period, we pivoted our TV ads and said, hey, we're no longer, you know, we just said, we're your work from home partner. And we tried, we did our first discounts online because I was just not a big couponing discount person. And I was like, we got to do something. We got to not. We got to survive. Like you got to survive first there. At that moment I realized there's hundreds of families counting on the decisions I make. And you don't take that lightly. And so I just started sharing stories. And you would call those rallying cries today. But one of the Stories what My dear friend was going through SARS or H1N1 in Hong Kong years ago and told me a story and I shared it with the team and I said we've got to keep rowing until the wind catches our sails. And that became like our thing, like keep rowing, you know. And I'd say keep rowing, you know and, and we weren't, you weren't fist bumping or anything, you weren't touching anybody. And one of the Edmund was like holding his hand over his heart when he'd walked down the hall and I was like, oh my God, you know, we're like human again. And people started bringing in oars to the office and it was like hashtag keep rowing and we're signing them and it was like okay, we're going to get through it. And so I think as a leader the first thing I did was you got to do something and you got to communicate it to the team. And I think I just leaned into forcing myself to over communicate. And I'm not perfect at it, but I try. And so that was probably the first thing that happened. We also said, well you know, if Asia's 12 weeks ahead of us on the COVID curve, what are they doing? This was back when Nobody, you know, 2 meter distance based design. I was like well all of our walls move and all of our desks move like got power drops from the ceiling. We just, I, I told our, our architect, our Texas Tech grad, I was like hey, our space planner. I was like lay it out. And the team started laying out a new layout and then I was just like talking about it on LinkedIn and I wasn't really on LinkedIn back then so I was like, everybody kept asking me the same thing, are you wearing masks? Are you doing a vaccine? What are you guys doing? I was like, God, if they're all thinking this, then everybody's thinking. So I started, I just started putting it out there. It's like, hey, just put it into the world, whatever. We're just do my best and good things will happen. And so I shared it and I was like, hey, we're we spread out everybody and now we can all come back. And it turned into other CEOs like oh, we can come back now. And it, we started to monetize pain, right? You start to turn that into a business solution. So I think as a leader I over communicated as a leader I leaned into like trying to stay in growth mindset of okay, as dark as it is, it's going to be okay. And get us through and let's just figure out another way. And so those were the things that were. That I sort of started with and worked myself through.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (88:52)

How did you make the decision to wear all black?

Jason McCann (88:55)

Yeah, I think in the, in the. When I was in my, I would call it late 30s, I was struggling with a lot of stuff. And so I would go into the closet and for some reason have like anxiety in the closet. And I don't know why, but I would just be like, what am I going to wear today? And you kind of. You're back. Then you're like, okay, okay. You know, whatever was at Costco, probably mustard pants and a black shirt was like my favorite outfit. But then you can't wear it every day. And so then I would mix it. It was causing me stress. And one day I started kind of wearing it on Monday and Friday. I was like, I'm gonna wear the same outfit twice in a week and see if people notice. Like it was an anxiety thing. I was like self conscious of it. And I realized I just, I felt like this was my uniform. Like when I put on this all black outfit, it was just like I was one comfortable. If I spilled coffee on, I wasn't. If I was sweat and I wasn't worried about it. Like, I just, it's like, oh, I can just wear this so I can do anything. And I started wearing it all the time. And it in my. Yeah. And it. So I, I said I got to simplify my life. I was, I was drinking too much and so I just. And I was traveling back and forth to Asia all the time and going off the rails, I think in my mind. And it was just too much jet lag and too much pressure and. And I just said, you know what, I'm just going to simplify my life. So I started wearing all black. I. Right after I turned 40, I literally, I tried to quit when I turned 40 and I didn't. But on. It was my birthday's end of September, but November 13th, on a Friday the 13th in 09, I quit drinking. And I, and I just felt like by simplifying my life and wearing all black, it took out all the decisions in the morning. And I have no anxiety in that. Like my biggest stress. Like today I was like, am I wearing a T shirt on his podcast or the collar. That was literally the only stressful thing. I was like, is it the built tee, long sleeve, short sleeve or the collar? I was like, I'm gonna wear a collar for him first podcast here today. You know, and I said, and the jeans fit. And I got five pair of page jeans and I got a couple different. Like, it's a pretty simple layout and it works, works. And it drives my wife crazy that I can pack in five minutes. And then when I quit drinking, I realized I lost like £20 in a month or maybe two months. But it was like. And I didn't change anything. I just quit drinking and I quit snoring, you know, at night, and I slept better. And. And then I realized. And you start reading and I hadn't. Craig Story. My CFO turned me on to the stoic readings and all these things. And I was like, once you start getting into the simplification of things and you realize other people have been through these journeys and you start to simplify and really focus on what matter. Your relationship with your spouse is better, your kids are better, your friends, you're a better leader, you're more present and CEO. And so I think this just helps me. I'm like, game on, right? And then I read like Steve Jobs Word. I was like, oh yeah, Steve Jobs did it. I can do it. It was like, it validated at the beginning, but now this is just me. That's it. So it just works.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (91:57)

What does a week look like for you? Because, and maybe this was something Jeff said. I'm trying to remember. But you're a very, you're like a people first CEO. Like when you think about a week, how do you know maybe a week, a month, a day. How do you know you've done your job irrespective of the numbers. Of the numbers. And we're growing, we're doing that. How do you think and approach the company each day?

Jason McCann (92:30)

Yeah, I do the management by walking around the nbwa, I think was like,

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (92:34)

okay, this is where now. Okay.

Jason McCann (92:36)

Yeah, yeah. So I like. And I don't know if that was like in my MBA class or my undergrad. I read it and good to great or something, but I just. Watching my mom in her hair salon and working for her. But I always. There was something about walking around and engaging with people. Even as an introvert, I can feel energy of people and I can, I can feel when I think you're having a good day or a bad day, I can feel, feel their energy. I just, I just can feel it. And so I, and I, you know, what I realize is I think I'm helping people when I talk to them. And it, you know, and, and maybe it was like when my mom was, you know, doing people's hair and they just felt better when they left her chair. Right. And so I think for me, I want to walk around and take care of people and help them. And so to walk around every day and several times a day and do the energy and talk to them or there's a tour of a building and One of the CEOs is going to be there and I don't know who he or she is and they may want to lease the space from us. I love to be there and just feed off the energy and talk to them about what they're trying to do and accomplish and see if I can help. And so to be a part of helping my team be successful and take out my thing. My job as a CEO is to knock down all the silos to reduce all the friction points. If I get people and strategy right, oh my God, then I've, I've done my job. And some days I haven't done my job, but I'm doing the best I can in my mind. Like, can we navigate in a very challenging market? Can we continue to, you know, on the battlefield of commerce, just like every CEO battles in different ways and the highs and lows of that. And then on the people side, am I recruiting great talent? Am I growing great talent? Am I doing my part to help them build the lives of their dreams and what are their, what are their dreams and to get to know them and do what I can. And I try to email them on their birthday, you know, because you don't get to see everybody. And so I, you know, send them a note or hey, happy variversary on your third year, you know, and just. It's via email. I would, I used to write notes, but that's too much.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (94:44)

Do you have like a CRM or you have something that, that lets you know who's.

Jason McCann (94:48)

It's in my calendar. I've got everybody's birthdays in there. And so yeah, it's on there. Poor Pam, my director, she's got, she's got it all in there. We pull it from the hr, but I've got, you know, everybody in there. And so Edmonds was today, I think, and I sent him an email to walk random. Yeah, it's.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (95:04)

Do you know where you're going to walk around that day?

Jason McCann (95:07)

Well, it's in our building. It's 42,000 square feet. So it's my one. I've got some loops there, but I, you know. Yeah, but I kind of. It's random, you know, it's throughout I. And I Kind of just feel when I need it. I think if you've read the Creative act by Rick Rubin, he talks about getting in the flow state. And so I know when I'm in my flow state and I need to just be heads down working on something. I'm in this moment of I'm trying to grind through a project there and for me it's early in the morning. Sometimes I get up early. This Morning was at 4:15 and I had this painting in my head. I was doing some, just kind of, I'm starting out a painting to raise a little money and so just trying to work on that. And then I was just like in this, sort of working through some financials and Craig and I are working through the numbers and I was like, okay, I'm in this really cool state here this morning. Morning. And then I popped out. I knew we had a big tour so you know, so you're in that and. But I haven't talked to my team yet. Like I haven't actually got to walk. But then just, you know, so I'll get to see them later today and tomorrow morning and just I'll be able to walk through. Most of my team is physically in the building. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, sales is in Monday, Friday's a little light. I just, it is what it is in today's world, but I like it, you know, and I, and I talk to people and some are random, you know, and some are a fist bump, some are just quiet. Summer has and so you just, you feed off the energy of the people. And we've also, we're in a multi tenant building now because we own, you know, in Capell. And so I'm down there at the coffee bar. So we intentionally put collision points. So we have a, we have a coffee bar in the lobby. And so the Gap teams rolling in and QXOs rolling down and you just kind of bump into some of the people and just see what's going on in the marketplace today. And the CEO from the, from the Gap, actually I didn't get to meet him, but he stopped in yesterday to, to rally his team. And I'm like, okay, so he's doing it, I'm doing it. So I think as leaders, people feed off the energy of you and you have that choice. And so you can be heads down, walk the same stairwell, buzz to your office, heads down all day. I don't, I kind of think of it as you've got to lead from the front. You're on the battlefield in the arena with your Team, you're back to back with everybody and you're fighting like mad to grow, and they see that. And as an introvert, I also know I've got to have moments to recharge. And so if I need quiet time, I'm fairly close to my house. I can, like, chill out. I don't have a lot of busy meeting lunches. And, you know, I try to have enough just, you know, I might have lunch with my wife and just chill for a few minutes or meditate or something, but those are my sort of moments to recharge.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (97:42)

Do you have a weekly meeting, like an exec meeting?

Jason McCann (97:44)

Yeah, so I have an 8:45 with my. My executive leadership team every day, 5 to 10, 15 minutes. Just a quick touch base. And that's the Lencioni model of just, hey, just a quick little, hey, anybody measure, you know, so there's no bullshit email that's been flying around that, hey, don't forget, we got a big tour. Like, it's a little quick touch point. Yeah. We have a. We have a staff meeting for about 90 minutes on Tuesdays. It's kind of our sort of deeper dive, a monthly strategy meeting. That's kind of our rhythm for my leadership team. And. And I'm coaching up some others. So others are coming into certain meetings now. And so we're going through that process there. And. And so we're coaching them through some other means. But that's kind of my big three. And then it's.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (98:26)

It's a 5 to 15 minute 8:45 every morning. Is that structured or is it kind of just go around the room every time?

Jason McCann (98:32)

Go around the room. Any. Yeah. Anybody? It's quick. Anything? Yeah, real quick. Yeah, I think. I think it was the. It was part of the. The table group, did some work with us, and it's just the way that the Lencioni kind of rolls out meetings. And it was like, okay. And it's almost like when I waited tables at Papa Doe or Chili's back there was like the red book. And you'd sit with the gm, right? The shift change. Right. And you're in there when I used to own a restaurant, nightclub, back in the day. And here's a shift change between the two, and the cooks are coming in and leaving. And don't forget, we're running low on shrimp. And tonight's special is whatever. And, you know, you got to sell that papado special and hit your quote and maybe get the $25 gift card. I'm like, come on, man, let's get this, I'm going to sell that lobster at lunch. And so you did the shift and it's kind of like that. And I think something happens in the meeting. So we'll enduring Covid. We learned how to do it with teams. Right. You know, with zoom there for a little bit. Now it's on Microsoft Teams. So like this morning I'm at South Lake 4 or 5, my team, you know, Craig and everybody in the crew, Pam and everybody's in the, in the boardroom and a couple other people are patching in, but five or six of us jump on. Double check. Okay. Don't forget. Bye. You know, and, and if you're not in town, you're not on. But that's a quick way, a quick touch base. Anything major and hey, we need to talk about something. We can get five minutes together and rarely it lasts 15. Yep.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (99:54)

And then, and then do you have a. And then you have a monthly 90 minute meeting?

Jason McCann (99:58)

Oh, we have a. So a weekly staff meeting for 90 minutes every Tuesday. That's the exact team. Only every once in a while there might be a spot, you know, we might have a, hey, we've got 30 minutes. We want to deep dive on something. There may be some guests in there. And then the strategy meeting. So we kick off in the morning with a big group on our financial forecasting. Kind of there's a big rev meeting in the morning. Kind of rolls into sort of a deeper revenue team. There's a little bit more smaller group and then we roll into an ELT strategy meeting. So it's kind of almost a full day of that once a month. And we're working through, I'm still working through how to make that better.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (100:34)

What's an elt?

Jason McCann (100:36)

The executive leadership team. Yeah. And I actually didn't know what that acronym was, so thank you. Way back when, they're like, oh, you're part of the elt. And I'm like, what is elt? And I think big companies say it.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (100:45)

I like, you're supposed to know this.

Jason McCann (100:46)

Yeah, I didn't know. I didn't. I actually didn't. Yeah. So hopefully that's not just our acronym.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (100:51)

Do you have a way that you run your 90 minute meeting? Does it run the same way every time?

Jason McCann (100:55)

So, so now some models will say you roll in and there's no agenda. And what are the top three things you're working on? We worked that one for a while, that, that one didn't quite work for us. There's other models we've tested. We're in a model right now going through sort of here's our key, the boulders, the big projects that we're working through right now and there may be a couple updates there on the big two or three things for this quarter. Those initiatives. What are some of the key performance indicators, those KPIs that we just need to double check on. Are we in line? And some weeks it's a lot of red and some. There's a lot of green and just kind of double checking. Is there anything in here we need to dive into? And then we've got some free flow in there in that 90 minute session.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (101:37)

Are you a big goal setter like for the company?

Jason McCann (101:41)

Yeah, it's been a little tricky I would say the last couple years just with a couple shifts and tariffs and a couple things sort of beyond your control, but trying to really lay out sort of here's the big thing we want to knock out, you know, this year and next year. Yeah. And I'm working through sort of a three year with my team right now redoing it. Ah, it's curveballs but it's okay.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (102:08)

Are the three boulders that you are working on, are they always like pretty obvious at this point?

Jason McCann (102:14)

No, no, I, no, I think, I think AI was a big one that wasn't on the, even on the radar.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (102:19)

Yeah.

Jason McCann (102:20)

Six or nine a year ago, you know, it was just kind of penciling in. So we just had, we just had it yesterday, a big update there this week on our monthly. And it was just to see. And that was not in, you know, that was not obvious. You have sort of product key strategy things. If we can innovate these categories and something. And then on the people side, some stuff we're working through and so to kind of go through those probably three or the, the three that we're working through this sort of quarter here and we're working on some other ones for the year. Just you know, like you were asking about the future of work and navigating it for all of us in real estate and office space and office furniture and global supply chain. I mean there are way more moving parts than I thought there would be this year in the last year. So it's been a pretty interesting dynamic to see the pendulum swing back and forth because about half our business is online and about half of that goes to people's homes. We have a real sense of what the consumer's feeling now. We're an upper end product, you know, but you can feel it right when you have daily revenue coming in and daily product reviews. Right. And I still get the weekly summary. So I do read them all. So you know, we got 4.54 stars and I'm got them yesterday for last week. And and I'm flipping through and I'm looking at the ones just to see where we screwed up on if there's something in there that we have a, you know. But AI can now summarize all that for me. But I'm still kind of, I'm still in there peeking at that stuff just to, just to see if there's some crazy idea. But yeah, we're all sort of navigating a lot of moving parts there. And so I even in my all hands I'll I've got an all hands email. It now goes out every Friday. So I was riding it in your parking lot earlier. I was drafting and some of the my thoughts while I was driving over here. But to lay out the thoughts, here's where we're at for the, for the quarter. We're about to wrap up surging hard. We're right now in a big accelerate piece. We're all around Automotive racing right now is a, is a rallying cry theme for us. And so the, the team is, is rallied around some of those really those initiatives but then also reminding people, hey, there's a lot going on in the world and to remind us what we can control versus what we can't control. And I talked about six months ago, I said hey, we have an employee assistance hotline, just like a lot of companies do. It's free. And I told the team, I said hey, I actually used it. I called it about something and shared that story with the team. And I said, hey, I was just kind of like I need to ask somebody something that I don't want to ask Chad gbt And I just wanted. And it was. I'd never called it before and, and so I called it and you know, I'm talking to somebody in Omaha who I'm from Omaha. So that was kind of a nice surprise. But it was just, it was incredible. It sort of helped me think about something a little bit differently as I was dealing with some, some kid issues, some adult kid issues. And it was just like a cool. And I shared it. And then you, you get a couple one off nudges from an employee when you're walking around a week later it's like, hey, thank you. I knew I was dealing with something I need, you know. And so there's so much going on in the world and you don't know what everybody's going through, but, you know, we're all battling it. So to look at our business and I can see what's going on online, I can watch our project business. I'm watching our leases. I'm hearing what our friends in the. In the industry are doing and learning from them about how their businesses are and realizing, hey, we're all. We're all doing the best we can and sharing that with the team and. And I think that helps us build a better business and with other CEOs that we do business with or that are competitors of ours and frenemies just to get in there and know that we're all helping create jobs to do some good in the world, to give back, to raise some money for nonprofits. We donate furniture to nonprofits. All those things kind of raises everybody. It's good for the world.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (106:16)

Is the market generally good right now?

Jason McCann (106:19)

Yeah, I think it's good, right? Yeah, Yeah, I think that. I think the market is good. I think the. I've been pleasantly surprised by the growth in the project business beat plan last year, which I didn't expect because I was just like, I don't know. That's been a pleasant surprise. And, you know, the leasing activity in the market from DFW has been unbelievable. So I don't. That's incredible. I think the consumer's been a little shell shocked with the amount of layoffs. And so the. You can see we have a. We have a portion of our business that's on Amazon, but a lot of the Amazon stuff is very low price point. Now if you go on Amazon, they got $2 items, so it's a. And that's. We're not in anything inexpensive. So it's just interesting to watch the dynamics that's going on in. In that piece of the business. But our very dot com business is great.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (107:09)

Y' all do any resale? Like, if somebody wants to get rid of their desk or they just go sell it on ebay on their own?

Jason McCann (107:14)

Yeah, we don't actually, we don't transact with it now. We've helped clients donate a lot. You know, we've. We've donated a little over $8 million worth of furniture to nonprofits here. A lot in this area. And that's been a great area. If somebody's exiting old furniture and we're replacing, it's like, help them do it. There's third parties that are great about that. We might have a scratch dent or we're exiting a category. And that's been a fun way for us to blend it, kind of give back. But, yeah, we don't. We haven't created a market. There's so many other options out there for people to do those things.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (107:47)

All right, man, this has been awesome.

Jason McCann (107:49)

You're great. This is so fun. I'm so glad we got to. I watch your podcast, I read all your stuff, and I'm like, this is so good. So it's fun. Like, I felt like I knew you when I walked into your thing, you know, I was like, I know this guy. I was like, this has been.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (108:01)

This has been in the making for years.

Jason McCann (108:04)

So thank you so much for making this happen. I appreciate you. I'm really. And you do amazing work. I was talking to Zach Bean today. He's like, dude, I listen to every. That guy. I love him. And I was like, because you're doing his fine. I was like, yeah. I don't know how I got in the room, but.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (108:17)

No, it was.

Jason McCann (108:18)

You're awesome.

Patrick O'Shaughnessy (108:19)

It's been great.

Jason McCann (108:19)

You're great. Thank you.