TSP034 | David Howitt – Transcription

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TSP035 | David Desharnais – Transcription
TSP033 | Todd Herman – Transcription

John Livesay:

Welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today’s guest is David Howitt, the founder and CEO of the Meriwether Group and the author of Heed Your Call. In his book, Heed Your Call, he talks about the journey that founders take that’s very similar to the journey of the Wizard of Oz or the Joseph Campbell journey of the ‘Hero’s Journey’ where you start your idea and you go from a black and white world and suddenly it’s color and everything is wonderful and then you meet a witch who gives you some obstacles and that could be many different forms of customers not buying or there’s more challenges than you thought, but you find some mentors along the way who go on the path with you, but you still have to walk your own path and then you realize when you get to Oz that you still have to find all the answers inside yourself.

His company, the Meriwether Group, has an accelerator program and people graduate from that and they invest capital and then they continue and help them with an exit and he has several examples of how he’s done that. The power of the word ‘and’ is his big philosophy, so profits with a F and prophets with a PH is the key to being successful; Left brain and right brain, thinker and dreamer, artist and scientists. I think you’re going to love this episode as much as I do.

Hi and welcome to the successful pitch podcast, today’s guest is author David Howitt of Heed Your Call. He’s also the founder and CEO of Meriwether. I’ve had the honor of reading his book and it has so much great information about how to be a successful founder and also a successful person. David, welcome to the show.

David Howitt:

Thanks so much. I really appreciate you having me, John.

John:

I want to start at the very beginning like most things do that give people a little context of texture. You obviously have quite an impressive background. You worked at Adidas, both in their legal division and then went to licensing and then you and your wife launched Oregon Chai and sold that successfully in 2004, but there’s a lot of journey that you talk about in your book, Heed Your Call about what made you, you know, where so many of us are told do this and you’ll be happy and then you’ll find that career path and you’re like, this isn’t making me happy and you’ve managed have multiple careers.

You now have Meriwether Group which helps founders through a variety of things that we’ll get into, but I want to just, if you would, give us a little context of what it was like when you were miserable as a lawyer and where did you find the courage to leave that and start your business with your wife.

David:

Yeah, so I appreciate that introduction. Thank you very much and I so appreciate what you do being on the show and having the opportunity to speak to your listeners, so thank you for that. In terms of the law firm and my journey, you know, I think like most of us, you know, I sort of stepped into what Joseph Campbell, we’ll speak more about him, refers to as the ‘known world’ and Joseph Campbell was the foremost authority on mythology; looked through a variety of cultures, spiritual belief systems, time, and geography and came away from saying there’s one central mythology, one central myth that’s been prevalent through all of those things which in of itself is, you know, powerful. In that myth, which he refers to as the ‘Hero’s Journey’, he built a road map and this road map was kind of the articulation of one person’s journey in life and what I found in reading that is it’s truly applicable to all of us and applicable to business.

So for me in answering your question directly, my known world was growing up in a middle class conservative town in Michigan and having parents and grandparents and neighbors and friends and teachers all of whom, you know, I listened to and respected and admired; all had kind of a central thesis which is you should go do this and for me that ‘this’ was you graduate from high school, you go to a four-year college and then you go on to some form of grad school, you graduate, you go get a great job somewhere that you may or may not like, likely you won’t like, but that has high level of earning potential, you meet someone, you get married, you have 1.2 kids. Buy a house and check all the boxes and so I subscribed to that and my known world all the way to the point that I found myself in a very large law firm.

One day, you know, sort of woke up and said, boy, I’m miserable. This is really not a happy place for me. I don’t feel like I’m in alignment with what is sort of my truest self and it’s starting to show itself physically, emotionally, and spiritually and I need to think about what to do. Now, of course, at that moment ego jumps in and starts screaming at you, well, there’s nothing you can do, you know, people will think you’re insane if you quit this job. You’ll go broke, you’ll be homeless; your wife will leave you, your neighbors will think you’re mad. So, I struggled with it for a while, probably close to a year, before I got to a place where I finally decided to surrender and let go, because it was just so painful.

John:

Well, you talk about that in Heed Your Call about, you know, we’re so concerned about worrying about what other people think about us and wanting other’s acceptance and that we live our life from a place of fear and trying to control things all the time and I think everyone listening can relate to that no matter where you are on the startup journey whether this is your first startup or your fifth startup, there’s a journey and overcoming fear is a part of it.

David:

A huge part of it and it’s interesting, John, you know, in our society in business and in our personal lives, we’re told that fear or that letting go or that surrender is the equivalent for failure that if you allow yourself to be sort of humbled and to say, you know, I actually need to let go of this or I’m afraid of this or this is no longer surging me, I give up. That that is sort of waving the white flag and admitting defeat and being a failure, but in Buddhism, it’s exactly the opposite.

You know, one of my mentors and guides, Deepak Chopra, who is very successful in business and in life, said, you know, when we surrender, when we finally let go, actually that’s when possibility is at its highest. That’s when creativity is at its highest and that’s where our ability to co-create a result in our business and in our lives is at its highest. It’s by surrendering, it’s by letting go that in fact we invite in the potential to actually align ourselves with our highest and best.

John:

That’s great. We’re going to tweet out that. That will be one of the first tweets from the show. When we let go, possibility and creativity are invited in. That’s a great line. I love it. Thank you.

David:

Awesome. What I want to say also, everything I try to put forward in Heed Your Call and that we’re talking about now is stuff that I’ve seen illustrated in the world in business. So, I felt like there were a ton of great spiritual books out there and a ton of great books out there on business, but maybe not one that had built a bridge between the two and I, you know, having grown up in a, you know, home where there wasn’t a lot of woo woo spiritually around and having gone to law school, really wanted this book to be grounded in actual business case so that maybe the ego for your listeners and for some of the readers could sort of let down a little and so that concept of surrendering and letting go and that allowing for creativity and for possibility is something I have seen demonstrated in many successful businesses including Oregon Chai.

John:

Yes, well one of the things that I really resonate with what you just said that’s in your book is, I’m going to quote, “When we dial up too much of our left brain tendency and ignore our more empathic and intuitive nature, our relationship with the collective consciousness diminishes.” I’m personally really fascinated with that, because what I do is I help the founders, tech founders in particular, which are very left brain about how something works, when they’re pitching, what they don’t realize is they have to move to the right side of the brain, which is the spiritually, the storytelling, the emotional engagement. That’s where all the selling occurs.

So, you’re able to left brain lawyer till the cows come home and shift that into a right brain story. So, speaking of stories, let’s jump right into one of my favorite stories in your book is about your grandfather and this great line about instead of why is this happening to me, why is this happening for me, and everyone has had that question that they ask themselves in their life, in their startup, so please tell us about that story in your grandfather. What an amazing influence.

David:

Thank you. Thank you for that. So, my grandfather was not a traditionally educated man in the sense of western culture. He didn’t have a big college degree or grad school degree, but he was a very successful entrepreneur and a very successful person and he credited that with what he referred to as using common sense and when I dug a little deeper on what he meant by that, effectively what he started to articulate and I later really came to understand is that comment that you mentioned about what you do, which is help people to toggle so seamlessly between the left brain and the right brain, what we refer to at the Meriwether Group as the power of ‘and’ that you need to have analytics, but you also have to have artistry. You need to have intuition in addition to intelligence. Prophet spelled with a PH and profit spelled with an F and it’s when we combine our whole brain, when we bring our truest and fullest self that the magic happens and with regard to my grandfather, I think he embodied that.

You know, he had enough of sort of that left brain chops. He understood how to build a profit and loss statement. How to look at an income statement, margins, supply chain, the consumer. You know, he probably wasn’t the best at it, but he was certainly capable, but he also had empathy and he had the ability to understand his consumer deeply and his audience and as you put forward so well, when you’re working with your clients to help them understand deeply – in the book Heed Your Call, I speak of deep empathy; our ability to be connected to the other is so present at any given moment. If we just allow ourselves for ego to quiet down, we truly can walk in another person’s shoes, sit in their seat, truly appreciate and understand what it is that they’re living with and/or looking for and then we can shape our message, we can shape our pitch, we can shape our business, our product, our service, in a way that’s going to be mostly likely to be embraced by our audience, our consumers.

So, my grandfather talked about these subtle shifts that were really pretty powerful and so the one in which you commented on, when you look at life and certainty in business, you’re going to have multiple times, I certainly still do, where you’re going to hit a wall, where you’re going to have someone in the organization you’re butting heads with, where we’re going to have some type of challenge or hardship that is really in your face and I think for most of us when that happens, we go into this victim mentality of why is this happening, woe is me, this is so hard, why do I have to deal with this every day, but if you can shift that as my grandfather taught me and ask yourself, why is this happening for me? What is the lesson here. What is the mirror that is being held up to me that’s going to allow myself to grow as a professional, as an individual, as a boss, as an employee, and I think when we look at life through that lens, suddenly the shift allows us to actually approach these challenges through a lens of possibility instead of a lens of, you know, being restricted.

Carlos Castaneda in his books refers to guides and mentors and I think for most of us we always think of a guide or a mentor as someone who is there to really help you, to is your friend, who is there to give you positive reinforcement and tools, but Carlos Castaneda talks about guides and mentors that are actually there to create impediments for us. They’re still your guides, they’re still your mentors. They don’t do it in a way that feels as good, maybe, but they’re there to help us overcome elements of our personality or of our journey, that are going to allow us to move further down the path. So, when you find that in your work, in your job, think of these people as a guide or a mentor and what it is that they’re there to teach you about yourself or the world.

John:

There’s so many things you said that I want to recap. First of all, I’ve never heard this phrase you said and I love it, we’re going to tweet that out. Prophets with a PH versus profits with an F. With this prophets and profits, that is absolutely brilliant, because it’s the whole ‘and’ philosophy, you know. Your book talks about you need to be the thinker and the dream. You need to be the artist and the scientist. You need to have prophets and profits with the two different spellings and your analogy in the book of even music has light and dark keys, so you need both sides to make that sing for the investors when you’re pitching. I mean, it all ties together in such a great metaphor that you said, so thank you for that. Your book is broken into three different categories, sections, initiation, mentors, and mastery.

So, I want to touch briefly on each one of those sections just to tease our audience to make sure they go out and buy and read it. The initiation, the thing that really stands out for me is, you not only have to hear the call, but you have to Heed the Call hence the title of the book and then the mentors that you just touched on is most people just assume that mentors are only going to be your cheerleader, if you will, right and help you and not give you any obsoletes and what you just said is so interesting that, you know, somebody might not have the label of guide or mentor, but if they’re giving you a challenge, if you shift your perception they can absolutely become a mentor and then, of course, the whole mastery. So, let’s dive into mastery a little bit, which is what you do at Meriwether, which I really want you, if you wouldn’t mind, walk the audience and the listeners through all the different options that you provide founders from the accelerator to giving capital.

David:

Yeah, thank you John. No, I appreciate it. So, our firm the Meriwether Group was really based on the power of ‘and’ and based on being with an entrepreneur and a business owner through all facets of their journey. So, we ground it on the left brain side with what historical was called a merchant bank, so merchant banks back in the day were very high touch consigliere partners to business owners and folks who were birthing businesses and they basically locked arms with you and said, we can help you understand how to grow your business and actually be there to assist you with the work. We can add capital if that’s necessarily as part of your growth and then when you’ve reached your defining moment, we can assist you through an exit that is high water mark economics.

Those groups were largely bought up by large multinational financial organizations because they were so successful and then has it often happens, the very things that made them special were lost in those acquisitions, so we felt, again, from the left brain side that this model of a more, I would say, connected and more holistic partnership in helping these business owners made more sense than forcing them to talk to one group about growth, a different group about capital and a totally separate group about preparing for and going through an exit that is very disjointed, it’s very disconnected.

It has apparent risk and for people like your listeners who were working 70 hours a week trying to start up those different relationships or juggle three different relationships is often very tiring, so that was the left brain concept, the right brain in addition to that, again, back to Joesph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey and I’ll use an illustration that hopefully your listeners will sort of identify with.

So, the Hero’s Journey has been a central sort of thesis for many of the biggest movies and books. Lucas cites Hero’s Journey as the basis for Star Wars and all of the storytelling, the Avatar movie, Lord Of The Rings, The Hobbit, the list goes on, but I’m going to use the Wizard of Oz as a way to kind of explain what we do at the Meriwether Group and how it ties back to this notion of the Hero’s Journey.

So, we define at the Meriwether group the entrepreneur as the modern day hero. It’s our belief that entrepreneurs, your listeners, people who are birthing new businesses, disrupting the status quo, looking at the world and asking themselves where has the consumer been deprived of innovation, of relevance, and of a really good choice, and then bringing that to the market. That those people are modern heroes, more so than politicians, more so than maybe even folks and NGOs. So, we want to be in service to that hero. We want to be a guide or a mentor to them.

So, you have this founder and they live in the known world. From me, it was growing up in Michigan. We talked about that, but for some of us that desire to listen, that quiet spot inside of us that tells us, hey, this isn’t what you should be doing or this path isn’t your highest and best. For some of us, we actually get to a place where we open ourselves up to listening to that voice and that voice is always there. It’s always present, but we do things to try to quiet that voice, because that voice is a voice of change and a voice of risk. Ego doesn’t like that so we employ tactics to try to keep that voice at bay and we say things to ourselves like, I could never follow my heart, I could never start this business, I could never do this because, fill in the blanks. I have a mortgage, I have kids going to college, I have car payments, and as a result, we live our lives in the known world and we don’t ever take that shot.

You know, as a side, in writing Heed Your Call, I spoke with a number of end-of-life caregivers and mostly through the hospice care and the single biggest regret people have as they’re reaching the end of their life is I mailed it in. I didn’t take my shot. I live my life in accordance with other people’s view of who I should be and I played it safe and I really wished I hadn’t.

So, back to Wizard of Oz. So you’ve got Dorothy and she’s living in Kansas, that’s her known world and Dorothy feels like there’s got to be something more than a dirt farm in Kansas and she finds herself leaving her known world and we all know she ends up in Oz, so this is the founder leaving their job, leaving their career, leaving the vestige to the known world and taking the leap and starting the company.

So, initially it’s pretty euphoric. Dorothy – there’s beautiful colors, there’s all this people singing and great for her, she’s excited, she’s left the bonds of the known world and we all know this as business owners, we know this moment and we celebrate it, but it’s pretty short lived is what mythology tell us and eventually you have, as Dorothy did, your “witch” shows up in a puff of green smoke and says, I’m going to get you my pretty.

Now, for the business owner that might be, well, this business idea is cool, but I didn’t think through the supply chain or how I was going to market or is there enough margin or can this product actually be made and so you fall into what Campbell refers to as the abyss and the abyss is that moment of despair where we have to actually surrender and let go.

We have to give up, kind of drop our arms and literally say, you know what, I give up. I don’t know that I can do this and interestingly, it’s that moment in time when the mentors and guides show up and the reason is, I think, that before that moment of humbling, you’re not going to be open to the advice or counsel of people around you, because you know it all, because you just started your business, you’re all that. The Buddhists say that when the student is ready the teacher appears.

John:

I love that.

David:

And so it’s this moment of surrender, yeah, it’s this moment of surrender where we are now truly open to possibility and that’s when people show up.

John:

Most investors are constantly telling me we need to work with people who are coachable and so when you’re telling this story, they must be humbled to surrender in this abyss that they’re coachable for the first time maybe.

David:

Coachable, open to advice, self-aware, they know what they know, but they’re also very aware enough to acknowledge what they don’t know and where they need help. We will not consider working with or investing in a company until the founder has been at that point and so at that point your Obi Wans, your Yodas, and in this case, the case of Dorothy, your lion and your scarecrow and your tin man show up and they’re there to walk the path with you.

They can’t take the journey for you, but they’re going to be on the yellow brick road, literally the path, alongside you on your journey and they’re going to help you to learn what Campbell refers to as the tools of transformation, so for Dorothy, if you recall the tin man, the lion, and the scarecrow were there for heart, brains, and courage. Those are the three things she was going to learn about herself on the journey.

For our clients and for your listeners, some of those tools of transformation are going to be finance, operations, sales, marketing, go to market strategy, licensing, business development. So, these are what we at the Meriwether group bring to our clients when they’re in that process of transforming the businesses truly becoming and where the founder and the owner is deeply on their path of growth. So, you’re walking down your path, you’re on your journey, you’re learning the tools of transformation and now you reach your defining moment.

So, for Dorothy her defining moment, so she thought it was, was going to see the great and all powerful wizard. She had this notion that the journey was going to be something outside of herself and of course, we know the story, she gets there and there is no great and all powerful wizard and initially she’s destroyed. What is this journey all been about? And one of her guides and mentors, Glenda, the good witch, says silly girl, all you have to do is click your heels together three times.

You’ve always had the power. You’re the hero of your own journey. You are capable of doing whatever it is you want to do when you’re in alignment with your truth and that is truth of all the businesses we’ve worked with. They feel like that defining moment be something outside of themselves, but ultimately it is about them getting to a place where they’re finally in flow and that may mean that it’s an exit, a sale of the company, it may be an IPO, it may be an ESOP or succession plan or it may be bringing some executives into the leadership team that allows that founder to start thinking about their next journey, but it’s true, because of the journey, the world is better and you are better for have taken it and so the Meriwether Group, for us, the three main places on the journey are we can help you build the strategy and help you actually execute on that strategy as a group of former founders, as a group of former business owners and entrepreneurs, we have walked the path, so now we’ll walk it with you. We can assist you with capital if that’s one of the tools that you need along the path of growth if you need capital we’ll make it available.

John:

Let me ask you about that in particular since for so many of the listeners that’s what we’re interested in is if someone is going to pitch you for Meriwether Group to invest in them whether they’ve gone through your accelerator, I mean, ideally, somebody would start in your accelerator, hits some milestones, and then you would know them and believe in them and then you would continue the relationship and invest them and then help them exit. I totally love that journey you just took us on with the Wizard of Oz, but if someone says, you know, I think I don’t need an accelerator, but I do need capital. I want to pitch David at the Meriwether Group, what do you look for in a pitch?

David:

Okay. I’ll speak to that, but I’ll say that’s not our sweet spot. As a person on my journey, I’m not entirely interested in just being an investor. For me, I derive a lot of personal satisfaction for being part of the journey and it’s just, okay, we need a check and thank you we’ll be on our way, you know, there are times we’ll do that, but it’s pretty rare. It’s usually that we’re working with you, we’re in the journey, we’re part of it and hey, we identified together you need x amount of dollars to really get to the defining moment and we can make that available.

Having said that, to answer your question, I think a few things are really important in a pitch and again I’m going to speak to this in terms of the left brain, right brain. We want to see that you clearly understand the business and you can speak to the financials, you can speak to a plan and articulate the critical components of how you’re going to reach the plan. We want to see that as a founder and/or your team, that you have enough self-awareness to know that they’re going to be probably areas where you’re going to need help and be aware of those areas, be humble and not pretend that you know everything.

We also want to see and these are really important that the business product or service is disruptive and we define that either as creating a new category or one has not existed or looking at categories that are tired and complacent and are in need of evolution or revolution and I’ll give you a couple of examples. So, Oregon Chai, there wasn’t a chai category. There was tea and tea was a mug of hot water and a bag of chamomile or Earl Grey.

John:

Not even like the British do it. The American version was very – yeah.

David:

And that’s all there was. No one had created a new way to consume tea that maybe gave the consumer an experience that was a bit more like a latte or a cappuccino, so you know, we had this dynamic prior to chai where you’d walk into a Starbucks or a cafe and your choices were have a really fun frilly sort of aspirational, experiential coffee drink or get a mug of hot water and a bag of the same stuff that my great grandmother used dipped into her hot water. We wanted to change that. We defined the site way of being disruptive as looking at categories that are tired and stale.

John:

Oh, can we pause one second? I just want to acknowledge your wife’s role with you in Oregon Chia, because in the book you talk about it so much and it was her passion and her tenacity that kept you believing even when you didn’t believe, she still believed and I think that’s really important for the listeners to know that when you’re pitching, you gotta have the passion and tenacity that you’re the people and to hold on that dream.

David:

It’s a great point. So, Heather was the right brain and I was the left and unknowingly we sort of came together and whether you have a partner or whether it’s just you, in any pitch, make sure you have equal parts passion and equal parts presentation and so, have the person whether it’s shifting your own role in the presentation or a partner or a key manager that can speak to sort of the boring stuff, but the important boring stuff, but you have to have that founder energy that is truly about authentically needing to birth this.

It’s truly like having a child and Heather was that incarnation and every one of the best pitches that we’ve seen that has been successful, every great brand and business has had an incredibly strong founder that is imprinted their DNA on a company. Phil Knight at Adidas, Jobs, you know, these different people who have birth these companies on – I’m looking at categories that are tired and stale, one of our favorite client Dave Dahl’s Killer Bread. This guy spent 15 years in prison and came out and decided he was going to launch a bread company and he looked the category bread and pun intended, it was stale and there was brown bread in the same wrapper, nothing differentiating them and he created a brand that cut through the noise and as a result, he went from Portland Farmer’s market to having sold his business three weeks ago for $275 million dollars.

John:

What a success story. Congratulations. I know I saw that he’s on your website as one of your clients, so that’s just being – you’re being a little humble there. So I just want to shout out that you guys helped make that story come true, it’s not him by himself. We’re going to tweet out equal parts passion and presentation, it’s great, really great.

David:

Yeah, I think you gotta have both. We want to see both in a pitch to us. You know, if you’re too left brain and you’re just super buttoned up on that stuff, it’s going to capture our attention because there is nothing about it that is aspirational, nothing about it that is sort of, there’s no passion in it and you’re going to be a company selling widgets. If you’re too right brain and you have all the beauty and all the meaning and purpose and all of the storytelling, you’re an art gallery or a non-profit and that’s wonderful, but we’re not going to be interested. It’s when you combine the two that’s where the magic happens.

I mean, interestingly, Google is hiring MFAs than they are MBAs right now. Nike, worked very closely with, their senior executive team tells us we’re not a company that sells shoes and apparel. We’re a company that shares experiences and, oh, by the way, we have this product that you can use and so I think those pitches, businesses, and business owners that know how to encapsulate that. How can you be beauty and art and also be profitable and scalable? You know, how can you have passion and also have P&L and when you can braid those together, you are going to create something that the consumer is going to yearn for.

John:

Yes. Beautify said. We’re coming toward the end of the podcast already. It goes so fast with all your great stories, thank you for giving us a whole another description of the Wizard of Oz and looking at it as the founder going through the yellow brick road and having all the obstacles to overcome and then really realizing what the defining moment is, it’s still inside, even if it’s an exit, you have to keep your path growing, you can’t just stop there, because it starts all over again. David, is there one book besides Heed Your Call obviously that you would recommend to founders to read about investment or not?

David:

So, yeah. Can I answer with two? Two books?

John:

Please. Yes.

David:

Okay, so, I reference a bunch of times in this conversation and in our discussion Joesph Campbell and it’s a think one, but I think there’s so much in there that can be helpful to a founder and learning about themselves, their business, and that’s the Hero with a Thousand Faces and it’s a wonderful book. The other book is Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. It’s a quick read, but again, I think there are so many takeaways in terms of how you approach life and business that can be really powerful for a business owner and founder. So, those are two that I would recommend.

John:

Fantastic. We’ll definitely put your book, Heed Your Call as well as those two in the show notes for people to be able to click and you’re book is obviously available on Amazon and if anybody wants to reach out to you to be part of the accelerator or just follow you on social media, can you tell us what’s the best way to keep in touch with you or watch you?

David:

Thank you, yeah. So, our business the Meriwether Group, we have a website and it’s just MeriwetherGroup.com and there’s a way to reach out to us there. There’s a Heed Your Call Facebook community and we try to update that pretty regularly and that’s just Heed Your Call. We have an Instagram account as well at Heed Your Call and Twitter as well at Heed Your Call, so those things should be available to your listeners and I just really appreciate this opportunity to connect with you John and with your listeners and would love to hear from you guys and if there’s questions, follow up if you want to talk with us at the Meriwether Group about how we can work together, comments on the book, anything. I’m here.

John:

Fantastic. David, you’ve been a great guest. We’re so honored to learn your life lessons not only by what it takes to be successful, but this huge takeaway of prophets and profits, the thinker and the dreamer, the artist and the science. You are someone who walks your talk and it’s been an honor to have you on the show. Thank you.

David:

Thank you, thank you deeply. Have a great day.

John:

You too.

TSP035 | David Desharnais – Transcription
TSP033 | Todd Herman – Transcription