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SPEAKERS

J&L Distilling 2, Jeff York, J&L Distilling, Brad Werner

 

Jeff York  00:10

Welcome to Creative Distillation where we distill entrepreneurial research into actionable insights. My name is Jeff York. I'm the research director for the Demming Center for Entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business here in beautiful ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ, Colorado, at the University of Colorado. And I'm here once again with my co host,

 

Brad Werner  00:29

Brad Warner, and I'm the Faculty Director for entrepreneurship at Leeds school. But I'm really excited about our podcast today, we have two amazing founders, local founders, well, local and not so local, that we'll talk about in a minute. And then I think that presenting a really, really cool paper that would be of great interest to our audience about in a sense, dissecting new business models and talking about innovation in new business models. Hopefully, we can shed some light, taking it from that academic tower that we talked about all the time, down to the streets and see if we can help some folks

 

Jeff York  01:02

Taking it to the streets like Michael McDonald said something like this. There you go guy with a face for radio, I know my yacht rock. So this is by far our most ambitious podcast ever. We decided just to skip past having a guest and have three. Because you know, why not? And you know, we've done very little to prepare. But still, here we are, and really excited. Today's topic and the topic of today's paper. And what we were going to talk to our guest entrepreneurs about today was business model innovation and business models, like, you know, what the heck is a business model? anyway? Brad, in your in your sense?

 

Brad Werner  01:38

Well, actually, before we even get to those models, I think to talk about business models, if we can combine alcohol, chocolate, and cbds are going to be a much better spot in our life, for the understanding,

 

Jeff York  01:50

maybe will be an embarrassment or life? I'm not sure. So true. I'm not sure our clarity of explanation will be that enhanced, but we'll see what see what happens. So

 

Brad Werner  02:00

back to your initial question. For founders and early founders. Establishing in landing and proper business model is a really difficult challenge upside. I think it's an evolving challenge. And I normally talk to people that I'm helping and even in my business, the very, very early stages of a new startup, you are, in assumption searching for a business model. So I think to have you here to actually talk us through some of these techniques and findings that she's found through her research may provide some clarity, and also some structure in identifying which model is appropriate, right? I mean, every business needs to make money at some point in the business, we have two foreigners here that can actually speak to that as well. But bringing on the money is awfully tough. And sticking to model sometimes is very tough as well, because there is traction that has to happen, right?

 

Jeff York  02:49

As well as knowing when you need to change your business model and innovate. I mean, we I Gosh, I mean, how many students you probably teach twice as many students as I do in a given year, but but right now, I think I have about 150 students and I see their opening salvos and their opening teams and their business model assumptions and a trying to convince people that they need to change what they're doing is often very difficult. And so I think I think today, I really enjoyed reading the paper we're going to talk about today, which is forthcoming Academy Management Journal, which so you know, Brad is one of our premier journals in the media, and I'm really looking forward to talking about but before we do that, let's have our tasting of elements and introduce our guest entrepreneurs for this podcast this week as well. So first up, we have Michael Caine's, who is the founder and lead chocolate maker and wasn't a bigger company than Mike labs.

 

J&L Distilling  03:40

Our main company is called mocha, chocolate and mocha, Sanskrit word meaning freedom from samsara. But our overall project is called Chanel cacau, which is our 501 c three, which is based around the town of Chanel in, in Peru in the Amazon basin.

 

Jeff York  03:55

Wow. Fascinating. So speaking of interesting business models, that's, that is not what I expected you to say. So that's really we definitely want to delve into that some more. And then we also have another entrepreneur here with us today who's been kind enough to host us Seth Johnson, is the founder distiller He told me to introduce him this way, the founder, distiller and head janitor of jnl distilling. So welcome, Seth. We're really pleased.

 

J&L Distilling  04:18

Thanks for having me. Yeah,

 

J&L Distilling 2  04:19

boy, I didn't know what I was getting into here. You're reading a lot that we actually, I don't know. Michael, did you spend a lot of time thinking about your business model when you were

 

J&L Distilling  04:28

sort of more doing but yeah, it's an evolving process. Yeah. I

 

J&L Distilling 2  04:33

don't think I really thought a whole lot about what business model it would end up being

 

Jeff York  04:36

really so like you didn't when you start off you were just what were you thinking when you started off? How did you get into the distilling business?

 

J&L Distilling 2  04:43

I had, I'm no longer married, but I had a wife who made more money than God. So I no longer needed to work for a paycheck like I had the rest of my life. Awesome. So yeah, that's kind of what allowed me to

 

Jeff York  04:56

just say, hey, I want to do something that I'm passionate about and enjoy. Did it Yeah. And this is where and you started here in ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ. Right? Right years. Yeah,

 

J&L Distilling 2  05:03

in the same location since 2011. Fantastic.

 

Brad Werner  05:06

And interesting fact about Seth is that he's a physicist, turned distiller. And I love that and talking before we started recording today, this was a kind of a passion for Seth in his life to understand the the process of distilling and all that. And I love the fact that you've taken something that you've really loved that was near and dear to you. And I've turned it into this business. And I think it's evidenced by the success of your products, too, that that type of passion has resonated through everything that you've done. So congratulations there,

 

J&L Distilling 2  05:35

right? Well, that's something that every entrepreneur has is they have that authenticity. And I think identifying that and leveraging that to the fullest extent is, it took me a while to figure that out, actually. But that's your silver bullet that the big boys can't do.

 

J&L Distilling  05:52

That's right. Especially when you make something that you and other people put in their mouth. Spirit or, or chocolate, you know that their passion for that thing is, as something you created, you know, from scratch with your own hands. So that's what makes it so meaningful, but bringing it to a business bringing it to market. And you know, that's a much harder thing that we could probably can get some insights from you. Yeah,

 

Jeff York  06:18

yeah. Well, we should, we should introduce our third guest, JoJo snow, her is a Associate Professor of strategy and entrepreneurship correct at Toulouse Business School in the south of France, and she is in town, she already gave a lecture at CU earlier today. And we were like, well, that's not nearly enough work. So let's, uh, let's take you out to a distillery to sample CBD chocolate.

 

J&L Distilling  06:42

So, you

 

Jeff York  06:42

know, we figured that that's never a bad, a uniquely bolder experience, in many ways a much. So being here on Creative distillation. So let's sample some products. That's what we usually do on this part of the show. And maybe you guys can talk to us a little bit about what we're gonna taste and and, and I'm really curious to learn more to Michael, you said that your your, your company is a 5013 c?

 

J&L Distilling  07:01

Well, yeah, so so our main, the main part of our business originally was trying to find a way to bring products from our Valley to market but at the same time, actually teaching the people in the community to actually become a business so that they could bring them to a port of destination that therefore capturing the full amount of of the value of the asset in country rather than the linear process, the linear system of supply chain, you know, where generally farmers are paid the least and, and most of the money then goes up the grain loader, so to speak. So, so when we, when we started with that our intention was to try and find a funding model through charitable organizations. But of course, our products are commodity, right. So we had to just realize, and so that was one of the first main pivots. So then I realized that I actually had to build a chocolate company, in order to process potentially 2030, maybe 40 tonnes, which is the amount of chocolate that comes out of our Valley, and at the same time, facilitate that export model. So that's how we went about and that was our first main change. But we've raised small amounts of money through our 501 c three, like Originally, we raised some money from, I think, the last group through one of their smaller grants, which built 25 to 30 fermentation chambers. So that was something that kicked us off originally. So there is money in the system, but unfortunately, it's bound up in government contracts, mostly in our area. And in the rest of it, of course, it's in the actual commodity. So having a fully integrated system from from the farm from the farmers right through to the consumers made the most sense. So that's why now we produce this there's four types of chocolate here. There's a 65%, which is a lighter chocolate, a 72%. They're all two ingredient. And then there's two, this is a matcha flavored white chocolate, and this is a raspberry flavored, and these have coconut milk cream in it.

 

Jeff York  08:59

Wow. So so no dairy.

 

J&L Distilling  09:00

No, we're fully plant based company, we have kept it that way. And we have to put a warning on on all of our products that were we processed tree nuts, but it's squinted and all that a coconut which is not a tree or if not, is considered to be a China. So we take that with great pride.

 

Brad Werner  09:19

I actually take with great pride, the social mission that you're doing and trying to provide this value to farmers, which is normally been taken over by the larger compressors and people doubt are up the the food chain, how many individual farms are you working with in Peru?

 

J&L Distilling  09:34

So there's 65 in our Valley, we're a very small valley that leads out of the Andes into the Amazonian plateau. So at the top of the valley is about 1000 meters or 3000 feet and where we are is under 1000 feet so it drops quite precipitously. And then it becomes shortly after the that area becomes the Amazon. So we're now little part of the valley there's about 200 farmers. There's currently 60 in our Co Op The more value we can bring to the product, the commodity from that the more farmers we can append to our cooperative. So we use a three tiered system. Generally, it's $2. a kilo is the commodity price of cacao, we pay the farmer $2 a kilo base it based upon their wet rate of the dried product, we pay them roughly $2 a kilo, we then also pay our cooperative $2 a kilo for the processing. And then we have another $2 portion which we keep in country. So if I have to use processors to get it to port that is deducted from that part of the model. And if I get them to actually facilitate bringing it to port, they keep the whole lot. So basically, I created an incentive to get them through and onto the taxation system, because that's the scariest part for certainly small freehold farms. And these are all mine people. So, you know, they're talking about farmers of five or 10 acres,

 

Brad Werner  10:53

and how do you maintain quality.

 

J&L Distilling  10:55

So that's the most important part is when you can actually pay someone for a job, meaning you actually employ them to do a process, you can put dictates on what you expect of them, when you're generally just saying, bring everyone together and do all this work. And in the future, there might be some incentive that I could offer you. Generally, that's where you get very interesting quality. So we've developed an application, which has four different layers. But the most important layer is that what happens in the cooperative, so we have daily temperature testing, we have pH testing, we have cut tests that we do all the time on all different batches. But our transparency goes from 920 liter containers, through to 63 kilos of cacao in a sack. And that's our traceability so we can actually see where our chocolate comes from, how it gets to market and we just use simple database collection tools

 

Brad Werner  11:49

and wizard taste this Yeah.

 

Jeff York  11:52

Michael questions all day, but I'm gonna sit here and stare at the chocolate and like to eat it. So any particular order you would suggest

 

J&L Distilling  11:58

this is the 65 is definitely more more accessible. The 72 is is darker and it's fruity. Sure, and the two white ones opal letter outsprinting that much so I'd say start here and and find your way around. Okay, I'll stop there and come around to this one so I can do that.

 

Jeff York  12:17

Over Simpson Yeah.

 

12:23

Absolutely. She came all the way

 

12:26

from chocolates for this meeting. So enjoy myself.

 

Jeff York  12:30

I'm making an assumption here as we talk about this that our listeners know what the heck CBD is and why we would want to eat it. Maybe Maybe you could explain a little bit about that Michael cuz so boulder we just take it for granted but

 

J&L Distilling  12:42

sure that CBD cannabis oil as part of the endocannabinoid system. And the reason why particularly I put that into chocolate is because of the amazing similarities between chocolate and the chemicals in chocolate, there's up to 400 different separate chemical agents in chocolate depending on fermentation. There's an endermite, there's, you know, which is what they call the bliss molecule, which is where they actually found I believe the endocannabinoid system originally from so we find that the synergies between cacau and CBD are just so perfect his story and then the taste combination is is again, something quite unique. It

 

Brad Werner  13:23

is very, very good.

 

J&L Distilling  13:24

Oh my gosh.

 

Brad Werner  13:25

Yeah. And actually, I think it's really cool the parallels about the two businesses that you have with both distilling and creating this chocolate product. And listeners should also know there are no federal bans on CBD through the US are there.

 

J&L Distilling  13:38

So again, in the area of CBD as an edible, there's still a lot to go, but the CBD itself, we meet all the requirements of law when it comes to less than point 3% as a concentration. So

 

Brad Werner  13:54

So as a threshold, yeah.

 

J&L Distilling  13:57

Okay. And so you'd have to wait probably a kilo of chocolate before you'd even get a buzz from smoking, you know? Right. Right. And so,

 

Brad Werner  14:06

right and that's not the intent. The intent is there. So there are a lot of really supposedly physical benefits from CBD to a human being inflammation, those

 

J&L Distilling  14:16

types of things. Correct. Yeah. Well, the way that the and again, when they talk about CBD, they talk about terpenes that come from plants which are, you know, flavoring and taste and smell agents that actually pin to the endocannabinoid system through joining with CBD and CBG and other cannabinoids. So, because of that, we just think that, like I say, the synergistic properties of the free you know, when I said an end of mine, there's also re uptake inhibitors as well which inhibits the ability for for the Indian divide to actually work in the brain, which is why people feel good when they eat chocolate. So then adding potential analgesic properties of the CBD. It's just a better complaint.

 

Brad Werner  14:57

I think I need a dictionary to understand A

 

J&L Distilling 2  15:02

common thing in this industry is called the entourage effect. Okay? So it's just that the the the concept that, you know, this individual compound will do something to interact with your endocrine Kevin cannabinoid system or other parts of your body to do something. But when you start adding all the other things that are present, making, they can enhance the things you're going after.

 

Jeff York  15:25

Right? Just like whiskey would enhance the tasting of chocolate, as you gentlemen have found and the partnerships you've engaged in, right, like you were talking about Valentine's Day event that you've done.

 

J&L Distilling 2  15:36

Yeah, I believe it was Michael, that came to me, I was a chocolate neophyte, and he really taught me to appreciate chocolate. And we had an event in which we paired cocktails with chocolates. And he had a very interesting array of very unique specialty one off chocolates that he'd made for the event. And coming up with the cocktails was, I don't know if you want to call it work. But

 

J&L Distilling  16:05

there was still a couple of afternoons where we got to sit around here and sample cocktails and then I went back to work very.

 

16:13

Yeah.

 

Brad Werner  16:15

warm and motivated. Absolutely.

 

Jeff York  16:17

This is delicious. It is delicious. Holy cow. And working. Where can people find this chocolate? Where can they buy it?

 

J&L Distilling  16:22

It's a mixture products. predominantly a spa product, it's definitely aimed at the relaxation market. So in the industry, a lot of CBD massage going on, because again, of the, the absorption properties of that, so, so it's also definitely our normal chocolate here around boulder liquor stores and like Petey John's, and, you know, coffee shops all over?

 

Brad Werner  16:46

And could our listeners find you online to find

 

J&L Distilling  16:49

chocolate.com? Could

 

Brad Werner  16:50

you spell that please? Because I'm not sure the spelling luxuries.

 

J&L Distilling  16:52

MOK sH a, and then chocolate perfect.

 

J&L Distilling 2  16:57

probably didn't have very, very major problems getting the website.

 

17:02

Being in France, can I buy it from friends?

 

J&L Distilling  17:04

You can as well, again, we can ship our chocolate anywhere? You know, we can currently do that. So fingers crossed?

 

Brad Werner  17:12

Have you done some international business?

 

J&L Distilling  17:14

Yes. So the thing about the moment? I think the UK is very crazy for CBD at the moment, too. So we're in talks with a number of people that want to operate in Canada? No, okay. We're just not at that scale. Yeah,

 

Jeff York  17:26

I was in the UK two years ago, I actually saw that happen over time, I was living in some smaller towns, and you just saw more and more of the pharmacy windows and the chemist having CBD products predominantly feature really just took off. It's kind of amazing to see certainly here in ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ. It's a big industry. Well, so should we taste any of those products? Or do you think we'll end up on the floor? If we do that?

 

J&L Distilling 2  17:51

Well, let's not go through them all,

 

Jeff York  17:53

but or we can just talk about it too. That's fine as well. I

 

J&L Distilling 2  17:57

do have some available.

 

17:59

Oh, fantastic. I'm

 

J&L Distilling  18:00

sure you know,

 

J&L Distilling 2  18:02

we're talking a little bit about what sets us apart, you know, our authenticity. And for me, my background is a physicist, I didn't plan on being a distiller. So,

 

J&L Distilling  18:13

you know, I

 

J&L Distilling 2  18:14

came out here to go to grad school in 96, and didn't start the distillery until 2011. Wow. So for me, what I do differently than others is I bring a lot of science into that I had to build all my own equipment, because what you what I wanted to do, you couldn't, you know, couldn't just buy out of a catalog. You know, it all falls to our the ethos of the company, which is that the craft of distillation is an art and a science. And at the intersection of the two is the true mastery of the craft. And so, you know, that's a lot of marketing mumbo jumbo once the big boys get ahold of it, and whatever if it doesn't mean anything, right for what it means for us is our products are very unique. And what it means for the vodkas, my vodka doesn't have the bite that other vodkas have. Okay, that's technically challenging, it requires an enormous amount of energy in the distillation. Sure, that's something the big boys won't do, because it cost and then the small guys can't do it, because they also don't have the equipment, right? So why don't we just taste the vodka?

 

19:09

Sure,

 

Brad Werner  19:10

from there, and I actually think that your authenticity is resonating because I see a bottle of vodka in the corner, hanging with metals. So, so some somebody is really validating your process and your your vision.

 

J&L Distilling 2  19:25

Yeah, you know, I've got mixed feelings about competitions. But you know, it's really hard to evaluate spirits when you got to taste 100 of them in a day. Sure, Rose, but, you know, everybody needs their medals for their marketing.

 

J&L Distilling  19:40

It's right. metals are

 

J&L Distilling 2  19:41

better for that. That's right.

 

Jeff York  19:43

Seth, do you have like, we're here in your tasting room? Is this open to the public all the time, like people just can't hear get a drink or is it mostly your sales or retail?

 

J&L Distilling 2  19:54

Most of the sales or retail in ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ tasting rooms are largely a vanity project. I'm doing some renovations here and

 

20:02

beautiful. couple months.

 

J&L Distilling 2  20:04

Yeah. But yeah, we're still working on things.

 

Brad Werner  20:07

That's beautiful. What about as a venue? Are you available if someone wanted to rent this out in for parties, or something

 

J&L Distilling 2  20:13

like that, currently, I can't do that for that purpose. But we do a number of events for nonprofits. Awesome. So the way the permanent is now I can't charge retail sales. So I can, I can give away all the alcohol I want, but I just can't take money for it. So we've got events coming up, you know, we're actually putting something together for event that's not going to be at this venue, which is the chocolate lovers fling. And that's a benefit for the boulder safe house. Another thing was Habitat for Humanity. And, and, you know, that's awesome. When are those events coming up? Next month,

 

Jeff York  20:45

next month? Okay, so hopefully we'll get this out by then.

 

J&L Distilling 2  20:49

If not, you know, there'll be more events in the future. Fantastic.

 

Jeff York  20:54

So so I'm kind of a beer nerd and registered beer judge so I always just whenever we taste anything, I think of it like beer, but I think it's largely the same process. You know, we smell stuff first. I don't get any like hot. Like he did alcohol. He sure kind of stuff off of this, like you were saying, it's

 

J&L Distilling 2  21:10

like, people are thinking vodka. You know, the alcohol itself is a very mild component. And it's all the other stuff that you taste right? Because the stuff that gets by gets bites detectable on your palate at parts per million levels, so it's really hard to get rid of. So you know, the big boys won't do it because energy in the small guys don't have the equipment, but mine is also made from cane molasses. So that's very unique. Generally, you use what's local and cheap. And in America, that's corn, and corn, you need to add a lot of additional nutrients to get it to ferment Sure, appropriately. But with cane molasses, it's a superfood for yeast. So it keeps the yeast really happy. Right? Right. And it's the yeast that produced the compounds that give back it's bite so you know, having a very rigorous distillation and my stills, a monster. But, uh, you know, and also having a clean ferment is really what sets it apart. Well, I

 

Brad Werner  21:58

really caught your tongue don't shy by an all honesty, and I am a semi professional drinker. And normally not beer but with spirits, whiskey, vodka, very happy. Um, this might be one of the best factors I've ever tasted in my life. I think it's really incredible. I've never had anything like this before.

 

J&L Distilling 2  22:16

Well, when you get rid of the bite, you can appreciate the underlying character of what are layers, and it's very slight, but you know, the cane gives it a little soft sweetness or floral sweetness, right? We're

 

Brad Werner  22:26

getting a thumbs up over here. Yeah, two thumbs up. Yes.

 

22:30

Yes. Vodka fan at all. I come from Ukraine where a lot of vodka Bara? I always was reluctance. But this one is very, very nice, because I guess it doesn't have the bytes. So that's the that's more accessible, I guess to people who don't really drink water? Yeah,

 

J&L Distilling 2  22:47

well, the reason that the bytes detectable on your palate at such low levels is because those are poisons to us. And we've evolved to be sensitive to it. You know, I'd like to call it a hangover free vodka, right? And sometimes I do, but I always that way. This is not a legal statement. definitely gonna prove wrong.

 

Brad Werner  23:07

What about drinking vodka today sat at room temperature versus kind of I keep my bottles of vodka in a freezer. Is there a difference? Am I doing it wrong? Is it just a wives tale? Or how would you say no.

 

J&L Distilling 2  23:19

A couple of reasons to cool things. There's two main, the main one being that it does deaden the, the aroma, not the taste, but most of taste is aroma. So you put it in your mouth cold, you don't get the aroma so you don't identify those byte characteristics. So this in the freezer would basically be tasting like water. But you know, that also deadens the other things that you might want to taste? It also affects the viscosity and not so much with vodka but with gin a lot of people put the gin in the freezer to alter the viscosity which I'm not sure how much I really believe that because you know once you put it in a glass with ice and whatever I mean, temperature is the temperature

 

24:05

doesn't right?

 

Jeff York  24:06

Yeah, but unless you're just pulling it swinging it right out of the bottle. I don't know the viscosity thing is so much water if people want to find this on the shelf it looks like the labels has snow on it. Yep. So that's we'll get that up on the video but and then you you make other other liquors as well. Right.

 

J&L Distilling 2  24:23

Yeah, make a gin and then an ER a and then an herb that's also called snow gin. Okay, and then a European style herbal occur called fire. Wow. The Europeans are kind of all over the place. When it comes to making liquors like American liquors tend to be a single flavor note where the Europeans, some of them can have 100 components. This does not have that, but it's got a bunch, you know the dominant flavors and that would be vanilla, clove and cinnamon. We can taste that as well.

 

Jeff York  24:52

Well, if we must.

 

J&L Distilling  24:57

So

 

24:57

if you feel free to just

 

Jeff York  24:59

do So I started signaling us if we keep the tasting going,

 

Brad Werner  25:04

or no, no. So for so for people listening or watching, this is worth a stop and ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ. This is really the product so far as incredible both in the chocolate and in the, the spirit. So I'm really just thrilled to be here. And thanks for both of you guys. Yes, thank you for joining us,

 

Jeff York  25:20

and really interesting business models to like, I mean, you know, it's, um, you know, we didn't tell these guys, we're going to talk about business models. And I think the fact that that we didn't, yet they both have described, in my mind at least very unique aspects of their business model that came from their own found, right, Danny, their background, what they cared about what they were interested in, I find that coming through in the products, as we were talking about earlier, the authenticity of the products. This is not like, no, this is not like drinking absolute or some other Oh, no big brand. You know, high quality quote unquote, vodka. It's a different product.

 

Brad Werner  25:54

It's a different product, but it goes down great. And like I said, as a person that really loves spirits. Oh, wow, congratulations. I

 

Brad Werner  26:01

thought it was just awesome.

 

J&L Distilling 2  26:03

Well, this one's I'd like to plug the industry in general. Craft distilling is definitely exploding at this point. And in Colorado, there's a lot of other people doing a lot of unique things. And one thing that that Colorado has is distillers Guild. And they put out a map which has all the all of the 61 distilleries on it, and you can go around and get stamps. And if you get 10 stamps, you get a free t shirt. If you get all the stamps, you get two free bottle drawings for 53. Bottle, my

 

Brad Werner  26:34

bottom drawer. Yeah. So it's really, if you want to put in a lot of hard work, if you want to call it that. You can visit all Colorado, where people come through the distilleries that I've seen more of them than I have. Is it a pretty tight organization? Are they helpful in outreach for you and resources?

 

J&L Distilling 2  26:52

The brewers organization for beer brewing is much stronger and better lobbyists. But we're small and growing. And we tend to help people out and even the brewing and brewing industry does to, you know, view it as like, all boats rise.

 

Brad Werner  27:12

So more of a collaboration,

 

J&L Distilling 2  27:14

or clarity to a certain extent. Yeah,

 

Jeff York  27:17

I remember Avery had a beer a few years ago called collaboration, not litigation. Because another company was making a similar style beer, I think even had the same name. And they found out about each other. And instead of what we would normally expect an onslaught of lawsuits like, hey, let's brew one together and call it this. And I thought that epitomized at least, you know, not always but but definitely I've seen in the craft brewing and other craft markets here in ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ and Colorado, and in ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ, specifically, you know, people tend to try to collaborate and you know, as you said, a rising tide lifts all ships.

 

J&L Distilling  27:50

It's a wonderful thing about about the beer industry, you know, you'll see a guest Brewer rising to a brewery, the chocolate industry, not so much. People in the chocolate industry think they're very much they hold these secrets, okay, no. bs, or they're very specific backgrounds. And they hold a very unique set of skills. And if anyone was to learn them, they would know the secret. And so they they're very, yeah, there's lots of people out there still that do teach. But it's not quite as much as as you know, I think the craft beer industry, I don't know necessarily about distilleries, but but I just think that's a very big distinction between my world and sets.

 

Brad Werner  28:25

You give people a couple shots, and they'll start talking. Because Holy

 

Jeff York  28:32

cow, this this fire, why are Yeah, this is amazing. Like, I've never tasted anything like this. And it's nothing

 

Brad Werner  28:40

like the festival, right? No.

 

Jeff York  28:43

It's already inherently more successful. Right?

 

J&L Distilling 2  28:46

Glad I didn't pay any money to be some sort of sponsor.

 

Jeff York  28:50

Oh, gosh, I've been awful. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for the amazing samples. And thank you for sharing with us about your products and your companies. We've really enjoyed talking to

 

Brad Werner  28:59

you. And Seth, where could where can our listeners and viewers find you online? Jl distilling.com awesome. And yeah,

 

J&L Distilling 2  29:07

we're pretty much a lot of liquor stores around the state.

 

Brad Werner  29:10

Great. Well, congratulations to both of you. Thank you for stopping in and sharing your stories. Yes, thank

 

J&L Distilling  29:15

you. Thank

 

29:15

you so much. Cool, right.

 

Jeff York  29:22

That was great. It was really interesting. We didn't tell either of those guys that we were going to talk about business models today. Yet, I found both business models to be really interesting. And actually linked to the the topic of the paper we're going to talk about today, which I was not aware of because it is impressed will be coming out March but you can access it at the Academy of Management Journal website. It's really nice that in academia, when papers are impressed, they're actually more accessible than they are when they're it's pretty much open access right now. But the paper we're going to talk about is the Genesis and metamorphosis of novel The imprints how business model innovation emerges in Young ventures and the lead author of the paper is Julie Julia snicker of the Toulouse business school and university of Toulouse in France, along with her co author, Christoph zahlt at IESE Business School in Barcelona. And we are fortunate enough to have Yulia with us, as we introduced earlier. Thank you

 

Brad Werner  30:17

for joining us now. Welcome. Thank

 

30:18

you, thank you for inviting me to ºù«ÍÞÊÓƵ to give a talk, but also to meet very interesting intrapreneurs. And to see this cluster of distilleries, and not chocolate makers that I'm finding, finding fascinating. So thank you also to make me discover other things that I haven't any idea about.

 

Jeff York  30:36

That's what we always try to do on Creative distillation, we're trying to go out and find the more interesting businesses around town and then mix gives us a good setting to try to talk about academic insights. And and and, you know, I'm really glad to have a guest here because i have i've been trying to distill things down for Brad, like, I'm getting better as I go. And Brad is certainly more than capable of understanding of the research. I talked to him. But the question always comes back to, you know, how do we tell entrepreneurs, or more broadly, entrepreneurs, investors and non academic audience like what's interesting, this paper, and I think I found it in this paper, like, to me this paper, spoke loud and clear, much more so than much of my own work like, you know, in fact, I plan to use it in class, this coming Monday, but but it's your paper, Yulia. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how it came about what you were trying to do? And then how you think it's useful for entrepreneurs or others?

 

31:30

Yeah. So this is a paper that comes from from my dissertation work, where I followed several companies and I was originally interested to understand why some companies launched innovative business models. I looked through many local companies, and then chose some that I found more innovative, and others that were less innovative. And the end result of this, that I didn't think that would happen at the time was me following these companies for many years, which ended up being nine or 10 years, 10 years. Over time. Yeah. And that resulted in this paper, trying to look at the process and overtime, realizing the strong role of the founder imprinting, the novelty arts on the innovative companies, which was, in the research talk, this was a bit counterintuitive, at least for for me, where imprinting usually is associated with a lack of change. in print something, it's a stamp, you stamp it on a company or you stamp it on the dock in biological terms, or you stamp it on, let's say a PhD student that works with an advisor and is imprinted strongly by what the adviser says. And then the counterintuitive part here was that the innovative companies Well, they kept innovating. And so over the several years that I followed them, well, they kept introducing new things. So for me, that was frustrating in in a sense, because I thought that's what their business model was. And then a couple of months later, I would come back and they would tell me, well, we have changed that now it's something else. And I was a little bit worried in the beginning thinking, Well, what does this do to all of my research setup?

 

Jeff York  33:14

invested five years? changing what they're doing?

 

33:17

Yeah, no, yeah. Then the insight came, after years of thinking of figuring out okay, where do I go with us that actually the imprinting particles imprinting, the novelty of by the the founder, giving the company the employees an incentive to keep changing to keep innovating. And that was the insight that made this paper work in a sense of that, that came to me later that came to me after finishing my PhD. And again, so this is more academic side, I'm not sure I'm talking to the practical intrapreneurship side.

 

Brad Werner  33:49

So it's very, very interesting to me. And I think business model and discussion of business models is incredibly relevant to entrepreneurs. And I am here though to represent how would this actually help someone that's starting a new business, and through our previous discussion with these two really cool entrepreneurs, you heard one of them say that they love the business and got into the business and then decided they didn't have a business model in mind. And then as the business evolve, the model evolved. And I think that that's actually very common with young entrepreneurs and new companies and innovative companies. So kind of how do you how do you reconcile those two things?

 

34:31

Well, the changing the business model in the entrepreneurial education, there's a lot of push today towards this, this question of pivoting and experimenting and quickly changing. And that's part of what my paper is about that the business model is not fixed, but has to be updated. But again, I'm not sure I'm I'm trying to say that you should change your business model all the time, either. Because there there are moments when it's needed, and moments when maybe it doesn't. makes sense to change too much either. So the from, from my research, I mainly look at the novelty aspects compared to what happens in the industry. And the the interesting. The interesting part about the business model innovation from these from these founders was that they, not only they thought about their own industry, how it functions, who are the players, how do I fits with these different players. But also they tried to figure out what happens outside my industry, and getting ideas from outside the industry helped them to come up with a business model that was new enough to get enough bargaining power with other players to position the company well enough.

 

Brad Werner  35:39

Let me just stop you there for one second, because now I'm going to totally agree with you understanding your industry as a first, it doesn't happen that often ever happen to me. Congratulations, Julia. But understanding how your industry functions is a vital importance to a new entrepreneur. And also having this open mindedness to what's going on in the industry, I think are really, really important factors which you identified in your paper. And then also, the other thing talking before we were sitting down here is looking at other industries as well. Can you speak to that a little bit?

 

36:12

Yeah, sure. I mean, we talked about it with SAS here. And he mentioned that his question about working with distributors and how he could should interact with them. And I think part of part of the story here is for entrepreneur entrepreneurs, it's maybe not so obvious to figure out what is the best position in the industry and how to find the twist that will help them to, to make money in the in a difficult spot where you're a new player, and you're don't have much with you. So this first of all, understanding the industry is probably the first part. But second, getting inspiration from somewhere else that will give you some ideas to do things slightly differently, or even in big ways different from the other players might be might be helpful. So learning from beer industry, for example, or learning from somewhere even further away for for fast might be might be interesting approach to take to this problem, let's say how what next steps to take

 

Brad Werner  37:06

right, and that creativity could actually provide a long term sustainable competitive advantage, wouldn't you say?

 

37:11

Yeah, I would definitely agree on on that, that. But again, it's innovation, not necessarily only from the product side. So here, we have talked a lot about product innovations, introducing CBD based chocolate. And this is this is definitely innovative. But then the question about how do I distribute it? And how do I organize my business around it is also relevant. So my point would, would be that innovation can come from both products, but also from the business model side.

 

Jeff York  37:37

Right. And this is something we struggle with a lot in teaching entrepreneurship. So you know, the classic, gosh, what my start doing is like, you basically would tell people who don't have a patent? Well, you don't have a defensible competitive advantage. Sorry, right. And then then the the close, the close second place would be, oh, well, you just get a scale really fast. And then you have a dominant brand, and you get acquired. Yeah, but I think you know, okay, those are both great if you have them, but kind of very difficult things to do. I think what I like about this research is it points at the idea that like, you know, and this paper to be clear, feel free to straighten me out any point, it's not saying, hey, business model, innovation, is the thing you should do all the time. But there are prior studies that suggest now business model innovation, I say that's been stayed for, what, maybe 10 years. So in terms of academia, it's a baby. But you know, there is, and I think we all just kind of intuitively know that a business model innovation can lead to competitive advantage, and may situations Not always, but to me, it's something we can teach, right? It's something we can tell students and tell but burgeoning entrepreneurs, hey, thinking about how business models from outside your industry can be applied in your industry would allow you to differentiate and perhaps reduce your overall cost, or maybe increase the the price you're willing, you're able to charge or differentiate your product in a crowded market, all

 

Brad Werner  38:55

customer connections, so many, so many different things. And I also look at yuliana, I talked about this earlier about new startups are actually they're an idea searching for a business model. So early on, you mean, you may not even have a clue of how you're going to monetize whatever the heck you're doing. And so but somewhere you have to write, and so how does that kind of fit into your research in the evolution of a business coming up with an idea? And then doing this research, understanding the landscape, both within your industry and maybe looking at novel ideas outside of your industry? How would you say that that kind of process flows?

 

39:32

Yeah, there's definitely learning in the process. So in all of my cases, I saw the intrapreneurs the founders learn. But there was also a part that was interesting to me was the selection of other employees that were like minded than the founder. So there were several of the early employees that I'm in selection by the founders selection by the employees that join the project that well had a strong influence from the founder on how to find And were to bring this company. And so this, let's say collective learning, in a sense, led to some companies being much more innovative over time, not only because the founder was willing to do that, but also because the employees took the founder as a role model to try to behave in a similar way with their teams.

 

Brad Werner  40:17

So setting the culture early on.

 

40:19

Yeah, so in a sense that we were we come back to this imprinting idea. So that was that innovation is not a one person game or in, in a company. That's, that's something that has to be nurtured. And often the the founder can be a role model for the team to follow up or not in those footsteps. So in our sound, in minority of cases, that that's what happened, and in cases that were not innovative, again, it's coming back to Jeff's point, not every company will innovate the business model. And that's, that's fine. And in the in the cases that were less innovative, well, then please, we're more focused on being as efficient as possible. And that also gave an advantage to the company in this space where they were but with a different focus. And that's where the imprinting was important from the founder, and selecting these early employees to influence where the company goes.

 

Brad Werner  41:10

And part of your research also touches on strength of personality.

 

41:15

Well, I'm not sure it's a strength of personality, but more in terms of cognition of how thing how the founder does things that is reflected or especially in these early experiences, so early on, when the first and please join, they seem to often take part of the behaviors of the founders in their own DNA, let's say, Okay, so I'm not sure it's the personality, it's more in terms of while the founder tries to a presence

 

Brad Werner  41:43

even bigger than that, right?

 

41:44

Well, it's more cognitive. So it's a cognitive in terms of thinking outside the industry, and the founder brings examples outside the industry during the meetings, and well, then the employees will also start to get those those kinds of behaviors. So I wouldn't say that his personality, it's more that type of kind of thinking. So

 

Brad Werner  41:59

is it licence to fail? In a sense that try these things? Is are my Am I overthinking this?

 

42:05

You're overthinking. Okay, good?

 

42:08

That's why we do this at a bar?

 

Jeff York  42:10

No, no, no, by me, I think I think what you're driving at, like, is this. So? So if you go back in the lab, Okay, I'm gonna try not to get too academic. You just kicked me if I do, right. But like, you might get a prior literature on like imprinting. The basic idea is that, Oh, look, the founder did some things. And they were this really powerful personality. And then that holds through the organization. And it carries through even after the founder is gone. these are these are kind of early theories. And what I think is, is really interesting about what Yulia and Christoph have found here, is it's not that simple. It's the founder does have that impact. But also, when they recruit people who think similarly to them, when they are a more active role model and mentor to those first hires early on. That's how this happens. And they refer to that as cognitive imprinting, versus structural imprinting.

 

Brad Werner  43:08

I love that you just brought up that term mentorship, though. And I think that that actually is a very big mechanism

 

43:14

in the paper.

 

Brad Werner  43:14

And it's a big mechanism in real life, too. So

 

43:18

that's why I didn't agree with your personality side, because I don't I don't think it's really about the personality, it's more about the behaviors and the thinking that it's not that I will have the same personality as the founder does, that will never happen. But you can get influenced by the type of behavior The company has. So if every two weeks, we have a meeting where we think about how more innovative we might be, right? Well, that will reflect on how the employees also behave.

 

Brad Werner  43:44

Right. And it's a great practice. So that's a great practical practice as well. So I love it

 

Jeff York  43:48

well, and highlights, like some of the things you found about founders getting integrated into the way a company operates. So so there's basically three mechanisms here I love in this paper, because I'm like, hey, it's always three. Right? And for students, they love it when there's three things right. So we talked about the first one, engaging in industry spanning search versus, versus industry focused search, right? And so a lot of times our students get so focused on, let's say, the beer industry, right? I know everything about the beer industry, like that's great sodas, every other Brewer in town and in the country, right. And that's still in business. So let's start thinking about totally different industries, that students may be aware of that that I mean, you know, I'm old. So I can say this is older folks may not be aware of, Hey, I can leverage Tick Tock to get my beer out there through viral videos, featuring a local celebrity. I mean, that's not gonna occur to me, right. It's a very different way of thinking about the other aspect that I want to talk about the complex system thinking style versus internal efficiency, thinking style. I think that really relates Okay, wait a second. Okay, hold on. I'll get to that. Okay. I haven't had too much CVD yet. Okay. Good, I need a lot more than that. But But if we were having meetings, right, and our meetings were focused on, let's think about, let's think about how what we're doing relates to other industries here that we know of, or other businesses, we might partner with thinking about partnerships. That's a really different meeting, then Hey, you guys, you were less efficient last week, and our costs are going up. Yes, I mean, and that's kind of intuitive. But this paper brings it I've never seen that before, of like, how we think about what we're doing as entrepreneurs?

 

45:34

Well, I think it comes also from the following these companies and being present, they're looking at how ratings really work in the companies. That's something that shocked me or like that, I was surprised seeing the differences in terms of what kind of meetings that two different types of companies had and know, where efficiency was much bigger issue or the, for the managers and the founder in one set. And it's not that the other types of companies didn't pay attention to efficiency, but the the thinking was different. So the cognition again, was, was focused much more on figuring out really how things work in the industry and where the the leverage could be found with different participants. And who are the partners? Who are the competitors? And should we maybe even shift in to our partners and competitors are. So this was one of the companies that was in the mobile payment. And originally, they thought they were developing a platform for merchants and customers, but then they realize maybe we're developing a platform that works for banks. And that was a very different way to think about what their business was. And the meetings were more about reframing. What actually are we doing who our customers rather than thinking about? What is the most efficient way to be a platform for paying merchants? Right. So this, this shift of realizing that we can be many different things I think it's important for for innovation in general and business model innovation particularly. Absolutely.

 

Brad Werner  47:04

I totally agree.

 

Jeff York  47:05

The other aspect.

 

Brad Werner  47:09

One point, yes.

 

Jeff York  47:12

And I think that actually ties into a lot of the a lot of the shift in the entrepreneurship literature, away from traits and into process. And what I mean by that is like, if pretty much everything we thought we knew about certain types of people are good entrepreneurs and other types of people aren't, that's sort of all been debunked. I mean, in a sense of I can show I can show extroverts are good entrepreneurs. And then I can also show in another day, it doesn't matter at all. I want to be really misogynist. I might say, Oh, well, men are better entrepreneurs and women are some nonsense like that. Turns out, that's not true, shockingly. But even things like oh, I'm more risk tolerant things and people still believe this. Really great entrepreneurs don't think they're risk tolerant. They don't think they're taking on any risk at all. They don't they don't particularly think in that way. And what I love is getting away from like, you know, oh, well, you got to be this type of person. But rather, these are steps you can take if you want to have business model innovation, if you think that's important in your industry, then these are some steps you can take.

 

Brad Werner  48:17

Right, so transferable skills.

 

Jeff York  48:18

Exactly, exactly. And that's why I really like about this work in this paper.

 

48:22

Thank you. Thank you. So originally, we had the table of what leads to business model innovation, then this clear steps, but the end result of the academic work, was that the statement was

 

Brad Werner  48:30

that right? Do you have the Can you talk to us about your biggest surprise, personally, through your research? Was there? Was there one moment or one component that stood out to you?

 

48:40

Yeah, I think this this third part where the I mean, for me from reading a lot of innovation literature, it was I was expecting that there would be a lot of this participative decision making and innovation will come from your co creation, etc. but the end result was usually in these innovative companies that I followed, the founder took the decision and said, okay, we go in this direction. And I was That was unexpected to me. So I found it very surprising. Where the there was this this Yeah, creativity. But on the other side, there was someone who had to take strong decision. upkeep this this novelty in the business model, at least. So I mean, again, I'm not talking to all innovation people. So if you want to develop an innovative product, maybe you don't need the power that founder that says you should do it this way. But in these in these companies for business model innovation, it seemed like a strong decision maker is is needed. So this organic, decentralized decision making didn't really work well for business model innovation, right?

 

Brad Werner  49:44

And that is that can be terrifying for a young entrepreneur. Because in a sense, you have to make a decision you cannot sit on the fence and just say well could go this way or this way. You have to just say this is the way we're going sometimes. And that that's that's very scary, especially early on for for younger people that are starting business.

 

50:00

Yeah, I mean, for me that was also curious, this this strength of this imprinting. So the founders, even if they're young, they still do a lot of things that strongly influence their team and their company and that they might not realize it at the time. So the more research I do on intrapreneurship, the less willing I am to start a company.

 

J&L Distilling  50:22

I so agree with that. I

 

Brad Werner  50:24

totally disagree.

 

50:26

You disagree?

 

Brad Werner  50:29

It's but it's not for everyone.

 

Jeff York  50:30

No, it's not. And I think when we try to teach entrepreneurship, I mean, it's almost I think it's quite irresponsible actually, to be like, a cheerleader for entrepreneurship. Oh, you guys should all be entrepreneurs, and we'll measure success by how many of you launch a business? I mean, I'm not actively starting any businesses right now. And I don't really want to, I mean, and, you know, it's funny, I started to move my classes and my teaching much more towards a competition where people were allowed, you know, they didn't fail the class necessarily, but their venture could absolutely fail in the class and be very clear signals to the point where I have to have tissues for the tears in the office. And they're like, Oh, my God, you know, I never ever want to do this. I'm like, that is actually a wonderful lesson for you to learn.

 

Brad Werner  51:11

Well, so. But it's not all about starting businesses, even though we're talking about business models here. Right. Entrepreneurship, to me is just a creative way of thinking. Right? And now we're talking about a subset of those creative thinkers that now want to launch something Sure, I

 

Jeff York  51:23

think of it more broadly, as you know, in the words of herb Simon, this is science of the artificial I mean, it's how we bring artifacts into this world. Right. And and what, what I think this paper does that I just love Is it is it, it takes something that we really don't understand much about everybody's like business models, but the lean Canvas, and let's talk about your business model, but we only think about where the good ones come from, or the innovative ones, I should say, because there's no, you know, that's the thing with qualitative research, I think it lets you get it mechanisms that we wouldn't uncover otherwise. But it's not the same as going out and like, Hey, we did a we did a survey, we studied 3000 entrepreneurs, and we tracked them on all these survey metrics. And we can say these things statistically, are likely it's a different kind of, yes, in my opinion, oftentimes much more interesting.

 

52:15

Well, it gets at the process of how things happen. Yes. And how and why is it validity is definitely the problematic side of this. So I can say, this happened in these three companies. And I'm pretty confident that this could be happening again. But then again, this is where we put a lot of caveats on the academic research. That's right now one

 

Brad Werner  52:37

shoe doesn't fit everyone.

 

52:38

Yeah. But again, this is a method to get at the really the nitpicky details of the role modeling or the mentorship or the what kind of meetings do these companies have? Which is the I think that we don't really know that much about intrapreneurship? It's, for me, the fascinating part is the question of, of design, or how do the entrepreneurs design the business models? So it's about artifacts, but it's also about this agency of entrepreneurs designing really social systems, and not only new products, but also impacting employees, the people they work with, around so that's, yeah, and for me, looking at those processes is interesting,

 

Brad Werner  53:16

right? It's very interesting to me, actually. And I love the passion that you bring to this as well, I can tell that you really believe it, and love and and and really embrace what you're doing. Is there a next step from this paper? Do you have your eye set on another piece of research moving forward?

 

53:29

Well, yes, it's a new research. We always have many, many projects. And the more I work in research, more projects, a

 

53:40

VC portfolio,

 

J&L Distilling  53:41

there you go.

 

Jeff York  53:42

Yes. Feel they just hang around forever.

 

53:46

But there's this question of how business models change in a question of pivoting is something that is? Yeah, we were talking about this this morning is fascinating to me. And I think we don't know that much about the what goes on between the the company started and success. So yeah, and on the entrepreneurial side, that's that's very much what I what I look at Bara, other things that I do, in terms of business models, I also often look at industries where there is disruption happening and how the existing companies react to these newcomers that introduce innovation and bring these new business models that sometimes can can have very strong consequences for for industries. So this is either the the dark side of business model innovation, if you will, the creative destruction that the old gets gets destroyed and has to change as well. That's also very interesting.

 

Brad Werner  54:37

What about identifying stakeholders in the business model when you're when you're contemplating a business model, thinking more about stakeholder and the wide universe of stakeholders versus shareholder return? Hmm,

 

54:49

no, that that's another very, very interesting part of thinking and I think the the stakeholder theory this is very much under represented in the strategy intrapreneurship research as well. So this is, for me, I'm also working on another project and where we look at platforms. So we look at Airbnb or Uber, for instance, that introduce new business models to an ecosystem to society. And then there are several negative externalities to stakeholders, for instance, in in Barcelona, where the while the neighbors, they have to deal with noise, and then the apartment prices go up, and this this new business model, that makes money for the shareholders, well, for the community, it has positive and negative consequences, and

 

Brad Werner  55:36

the government may step in, and there's gonna be some regulation and all those other things that then can follow.

 

55:41

Yeah, so that's, I mean, some of the of the research that Jeff has been doing as well on the social movements and how the community can react also negatively to to new business models. To me, this is an interesting thing that I'm playing around or thinking about, from a company perspective, how do you adjust your business model to these negative externalities that it might have on the community? And that's, to me not so not so obvious? Because the answer is Yeah, I should be innovative, etc. But how do you take into account?

 

Brad Werner  56:12

practice?

 

Jeff York  56:13

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's funny, I'm just getting ready to go help kick off our social impact track of the campus wide entrepreneurship competition. And what they've asked me to talk about is not to talk about triple bottom line, or sustainability, but a stakeholder approach. And they're actually trying to judge the social impact track this year, according to a stakeholder approach. So it's really interesting to see these, this, this concept catching on and, and that that stakeholder has already I mean, it's been

 

56:40

around for

 

Jeff York  56:41

you know, it's it's, you know, a handful of papers in the in the business ethics literature. And that's kind of a right to because it was originally, you know, Ed Friedman wrote it as a strategy theory.

 

56:50

Yeah, I know, it's, it's interesting in that there have been three papers or four in smj, or in in amj, about this, but I find that there's much more we could do with this theory, the business model world is, I

 

Brad Werner  57:01

think, the next time that you're in town, we're going to focus on stakeholders. Thank you very much for coming in today. Hopefully, it was very informative for me, hopefully, you shed some light on people working on their current ventures right now. So thank you. And to

 

Jeff York  57:16

live up to my my role here, as distiller here, I'll make sure. So bread, if you're starting a venture, and you're seeking to have a more innovative business model, you want to engage in industry spanning search, not just focus on your industry. But look more broadly, you want to engage in a complex system, thinking style means think about multiple elements of the business and their interlinkages. Rather than just thinking about how to maximize your internal efficiency. And you want to have a dog on premise, of course, sure. As always, and you want to actually centralize your decision decision making around the around the founder and around leaders rather than having a more broad and decentralized and make lessons.

 

Brad Werner  57:55

Let me add one takeaway in a practical standpoint that I actually am taking away is that founder as a mentor, their team is extremely important. Yeah, right. It can be negative, it can be positive. And hopefully, we're talking in the positive way. But I think I think founders need to think more about mentoring teammates, and, and early hires than just, yeah, they bring them in for certain roles normally, but beyond that, there is one extra step, I think that will actually give you a much greater chance of success. And I think that that's that mentoring.

 

58:28

Thanks. And I think that's, that's one of my surprises as well, this strong role of a role model of the founders of the employees really look up to the founder of the founder might want it or not, but they still have a role modeling perception from their different early stage employees in particular. So the founder has to be careful about very careful these early first days, as well as what continues. Perfect.

 

Jeff York  58:51

Thank you so much for being here. And I really enjoyed the paper and hope you enjoy the rest of your visit here and

 

58:59

nice conversation and very good tasting as well. Oh, yeah, I'll remember that for sure. The CBD chocolates.

 

Jeff York  59:06

Yeah, our liquor is really

 

Brad Werner  59:09

successful and bringing to light some actual techniques for entrepreneurs today. So hey, all right.

 

59:18

Okay, all right. Thanks

 

Jeff York  59:18

a lot. Join us next time here on Creative distillation. And we will next be talking in our next episode to the dean and Leeds Business School. Sharon McKusick, about some of her recent research, looking at the state of the field of entrepreneurship. So we're really looking forward to that. That should be a lot of fun, and we really look forward to hearing from

 

59:37

you next time. Thanks

 

59:37

a lot.