Transcript:

Welcome to another episode of the podcast. Today we have Alex Clark with us, game creator and YouTuber. Alex, tell us where you’re from, what you do, and for what people might know you from.

Hey, I’m in Los Angeles, in the United States, and in addition to making that card game we were just talking about, I’m also a big YouTuber. I’ve got four million subscribers on there and I’ve been growing that for the past 10 years.

I noticed that you started your channel in 2009. Can you tell me a little bit about it? Well, actually, I noticed you started your channel on the second of December. Was it? 

Yeah, that sounds right.

You uploaded five days later. Is there any reason why there was that five-day gap?

Uh, I wish I could remember. These are going to be some detailed questions I can tell already.

I usually notice when I upload things or when I start something, I already have something prepped or sometimes when I start something, it’s like: “Oh, I want to start!” And then you start it, and then you realize you don’t actually have content to upload. So I just kind of wanted to go back to when you first started, how it went through your mind.

Yeah, I’m of the mindset like, just get it. Just start doing it. The first time you do something, it’s going to be awful. So who cares if you’re ready or not? Just give yourself a deadline, hit the deadline and then learn from it, improve the next time around.

Nice. So probably that’s what I have. So how was it when you first started in 2009? Obviously with completely different… How was it back then?

Oh, it was the glory days. I feel like an old man, but there was no one online like you could. It was a lot easier to stick out and the market wasn’t as competitive, so it was easier to get ahead. That said, I did not get ahead quickly at all and I wish I knew everything I knew now because I would have skyrocketed right away if I knew now what I knew, if I knew then what I know now.

What do you know? Obviously will probably cover things a bit later, but just a couple of bullet points?

You know, just I’m better at producing content. I know to make stuff more relatable and talk specifically to the person on the other side of the screen. I’m better at editing and animating. I’m just better overall at everything.

And when you first started, what was the process like? Where were you mindset wise? Like also, were you just starting out? Did you come from a career? What was happening in your life?

So, I’m in addition to making that game and being a YouTuber, I’m also a comedian, which is why I started the YouTube channel. I was performing a lot at like small corporate events and little clubs. And I was like: “There has to be a way to reach a wider audience.” And so I started posting videos as a way for when people saw me, they’d be like: “This is great, but we can only see it right now. How can we see you every day?” And so I posted videos as a way to stay in touch with the audience every day of the year.

And was it just stand up comedy in clubs and kind of all we can imagine now if you see a Netflix special or…but smaller?

Say that again?

Was it like what we see now with the Netflix specials, like people on stage, just talking, except the size of the audience would be probably smaller? Was it kind of like that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what it was. I also came from a circus background. I also did like some juggling acts and stuff too, because when you’re starting out, that pays way better than being a comedian. So, I did a bit of that as well.

But so OK, so let’s kind of go way back because there’s a big background before you started YouTube, which I think would be probably necessary to know to see the terms and yet twists that you had during your YouTube career, being a comedian and animator kind of probably comes from somewhere. So where did you study? How did you start your journey or…?

Fair. I got picked on like crazy in school and so I was always a loner. And then…

Where was school? Was that in L.A. or…?

No, it was in Massachusetts. There’s a lot more bullies. So I was there. And then, I used to watch Aladdin and I loved Robin Williams. So it was like: “Oh, he’s really funny. I want to get into stand up.” And then around the same time I found out that there was a performing arts school near me. And so, I actually made a couple of videos about that. So, I got into the art school, which was very exciting. And then I found out that one of my English teachers had been a comedic juggler. And, I was like: “Oh, you got to teach a juggling class so I can learn to do that, if that’s what you do to make it.” And so, that’s where the juggling came in.

How old were you when you started?

17, 18?

So you learned juggling in high school?

Yeah.

When you enter an arts program like that, how does your day look like? Is it all arts or do you also study math and…?

So, that school was run by hippies, which was a blessing because we didn’t have grades. Instead we had…

How did that work with the government?

So, they had a written evaluation. So, at the end of every semester, you would get like a three paragraph summary of how you were doing in that class. And then…Yeah, so that’s how that worked. And then the day was… It was a longer day. So the first six or seven hours of the day was just regular academics. And then the last two hours of the day was an extended period performing arts class.

So…what kind of things were you doing throughout the week in those extra things, obviously juggling, but can you give a few more examples?

A lot of improv theater. I remember we also, uh, we have this thing called Piedea, where you could in between first and second semester, you had two weeks to create your own curriculum. And so, a friend of mine took that and submitted a proposal to make our own game. And I think that’s probably one of the first games we made.

What kind of game was it?

That was… It wasn’t a card game like. There was a point and click adventure game about surviving and… (I’m having a brain fart right now) Oh, about the Underground Railroad. And it was trying to get through the Underground Railroad successfully.

So is that kind of where you started to stand up, uh, part of your journey or…?

Yeah, at that high school we were… We started like the first comedy after curricular, after school activity curriculum.

You start it or somebody of your teachers started it or…?

Um, the school had only been open for a couple of years. And a friend of mine and I, we started like the first comedy club at the school called “Headgear”. I actually went back a couple weeks ago… a couple of years ago to give like a speech with, like with other alumni. And I wasn’t expecting this, but there was a bunch of kids that were still in that group and they’re like: “Oh, my God, you’re one of the founding members.”And it’s like, I feel so old. I feel like like the first president of the United States or something.

But, I mean, that’s pretty cool. I think it still shows like an entrepreneurial spirit starting something during school. That’s kind of how it starts.

Yeah.

I mean…You just told me you were kind of a loner, which, you know, when I was growing up, kind of similar introvert here. But, I was quite scared during my school time to start some things. So, what was happening in your mind that you were like, no, we need… I mean, unless you were extremely passionate about comedy, why found something? Why not just follow your normal classes?

Um, I think at the time we just wanted an outlet to perform. We were like, this doesn’t exist, so let’s create it. And I’ve always had that mentality.

And so it was just…How did that club go? You would literally just do stand up in there, or was it more than just stand up?

Uh, there was maybe… So we held auditions and cast all our friends as that’s how everything works. And, then we spent a couple of months writing a show and it’s on tape. If anyone wants to watch it, you can. It’s awful. Uh, but, uh, yeah. So it was a combination of sketches and stand up and improv games, if I remember correctly.

You can find it on your YouTube channel or somewhere else?

Uh, I think that was pretty YouTube. You’d have to break into my house and get the VHS, I think.

You can also upload it. Cool! So we kind of now understand where it started all, so now high school finished for you around eighteen years old, right? So what, what then? What was the next?

I went to Emerson College in Boston which is a great film school.

Why film school?

Uh I really, I was like I don’t need to go to school to be a comedian or be an actor. I’m already talented. I need a backup plan. So I went to school for film, and I also got a degree in Web design because those are things I felt more like you would need a degree to help you succeed.

Do you still think so?

No.

Why not? I get this question a lot, so I want to hear from you.

Which question do you get?

If people should go to film school?

Oh, um, I feel like that it’s more I mean, there’s certain things you definitely… Oh, this is weird because it also depends on the person. Like if you’re self-motivated and you start projects on your own and you outreach to people, I don’t think you need to go to college for film school. But if you’re the type of person that needs time to learn and you need to be, um, that time to grow, then I would recommend it. But for me, I kind of feel like it’s more about networking and meeting people and being a good example and learning from your mistakes. So,  for film school, for me, I think it would have been better just to move out here and grow as an artist. But then, I’m I also now that I live here, I also hear from people all the time that they move here and they don’t know anyone and they end up leaving because they’re all alone, whereas with my school, I came out with a network of like dozens of friends and we all still live here and support each other.

Really? All the friends went with together?

Yeah, yeah. All my closest friends, I would say… seventy five percent of my school moves from Boston to Los Angeles at the end of school.

How come? Just because the industry is there or…?

Yeah definitely, because I’m here! No, because of the industry for sure.

But it’s, I mean we’ve actually been looking to scale, I mean companies, video agencies and we’ve been starting to look… We kind of wanted to go to New York from Amsterdam. It’s a bit closer, but it just kind of seems like everything that is film related is happening in L.A.. So, if you compare…

Well, I think it’s. I think it’s different now for sure.

Yeah, the East Coast and West Coast, like, how is it different now?

I would say there’s just more in L.A. than in New York, but there’s still plenty in New York. I mean, I would definitely say go there. If you’re just looking to expand, you’ll still get a lot out of that.

And then… Cool! Then for you after. Well, actually, still film school. How long was film school and what were the biggest lessons that you got out of film school?

Uh, film school. Yeah. Again, I’m more of a do it yourself guy. So freshman year when everyone was still in orientation, some kids I met in my hallway, we started… This was before Internet, TV and stuff. So we started a half an hour sketch comedy show that we talked to the station manager of the college TV station and we started airing that within two weeks of starting school.

Where were you airing it?

On the local college TV station. So as a half hour sketch comedy show and we produced an episode, this was when you had to, like, digitize tapes, like let the tape playback and record onto the computer. So we were digitizing tapes, editing it all and producing a half an hour episode every week for like the first six months of college.

Wow!

Um. Yeah, and then at the end of the college, same thing, self starter, we took like our final: “Let’s make a film class film three or whatever it is called” and we were like: “Sweet, this is our chance to make a movie.” And so, we wrote this like very Indiana Jones inspired thing with like a plot and a Mayan temple that rises out of the park and this guy dies in a pit of lava. And then, we showed it and our teacher was like: “Is this really what we’re going to do?” I’m like: “Yeah, why else would you take a movie-making class?” And so, we brought our project in on the last day. And there was like… the first guys did like a man eating a sandwich on the bench. The next one was like a guy roller skating. And then, ours was like this 20 minute action adventure film. And we’re like, oh, we overdid it.

How were you able to film that?

I have no idea.

Or did you partially animated?

No, the whole thing was filmed. We built sets. I can probably give you a link. I think there’s a trailer up somewhere on YouTube that you can include in the notes of the podcast. But yeah, we we built an actual physical model for the temple rising out and we composited it on the footage to make it look like it was rising up. Then we built a set out of Styrofoam and wood and paint from Home Depot that looked like the inside of a temple.

So you really went the extra mile.

At the time, we had no idea. We’re just like, we got to get this done.

But it kind of also shows what you meant then with: “Are you self-motivated?” Because it seems to me like the other time, you know, people you were with in class, they kind of just did their assignment. But you guys were doing the sketch. You were doing this movie, that nobody had. And so, do you feel like the film school opened up doors for you outside of the friends? Obviously, the network is valuable, but do you feel like film school opened doors to put your creativity to something, or do you feel like you would have done it anyways if you weren’t in film school?

That’s a good question, I’m not sure. I don’t know on that one, I plead the Fifth.

No worry. It’s always tricky because you never know. Obviously, the environment is a big stimulus. I noticed when I’m not in the office, I just work a little bit different. But OK, let’s move on then from film school. So you got a degree and then you continued with your life, but obviously you just finished film school, and then how do you end up going? Like do you still continue doing your sketches where the stand up comedy come in or juggling?

My college has a satellite office or a satellite school in Los Angeles. So, the last semester I moved to Los Angeles and I got an internship on a on, uh, a show on the TV station Comedy Central. So after that, I just ended up staying in L.A. and got an apartment and struggled for several years like everybody.

What do you mean you struggled? What was happening?

You know, just trying to find a job and figure out, like, what direction you want to go. And like, when I was growing up, I was like, oh, yeah, you do everything you ate at the movies, you write the movies, you starred in the movies. And then as you get older, you’re like, oh, there’s one person that edits it and is really good at editing. There’s one person that writes it and they all like work together. So it’s like, which one of those things do you want to do and how can you make money at the one that you’re the best at?

I mean, technically now you also still manage all of it.

Yeah. YouTube didn’t exist yet. So that happened, I was like, this is my destiny.

So let’s go back to Comedy Central. You got an internship at Comedy Central, like a six month internship or one year…?

Yeah, I would say I was about six months, those for the semester.

Was the internship worth it? What did you learn there?

Uh, yeah. I wish that there was one spot where I wish I was more outgoing. I wish I had asked more questions to people and, um, been more nosy about what everyone was doing. But when I got there, they’re like, you’re going to help the writers. And so basically, I would just scrub the news to try and find headlines for them to think about what they could write about. And I would just go in and leave at the end of the day. But I wish I’d been more nosy and proactive there for sure.

How come you weren’t? Because obviously so far you’re telling me how your high school went. And obviously, if you’re telling me ‘hippie’, then I’m assuming, you know…connecting with people, that’s probably something that is…

I think it was, uh, I was probably a little nervous. Uh, I was like a young kid and every one else there in my eyes was like this big working fancy professional. But now that I’m older, I’m like, oh, we’re all the same. We’re all we’re all the same dipshits that came out of some school somewhere and got picked on.

For the people who are getting internships, let’s say they get in like a big company like Comedy Central or a Disney or whatever. So what would you tell them that they should do?

Uh, just constantly find ways to support the people that you work for and go above and beyond because they’ll remember that forever.

Do you recommend doing more hours as well and putting in more?

Uh, I don’t think you have, like, more than are required. I don’t think you have to do that. I think you just actually have to take the time to think about the person you’re working for beyond what they’re asking you to do and figure out extra ways you can deliver to them something that’s useful to them.

Cool. I mean, I would maybe add to that as well from my experience to walk around and connect also with other people a lot, because you never know down the line if you see them. Do you feel like you’ve met some people that helped you down the line there or…?

No, I don’t know anyone from that job at all.

Sad.

I wish I did, yeah.

But so, uh, sorry, I forgot it was a six month or one year internship?

It was about six months.

After the six months you said you stayed a bit in L.A., but you, I assume, didn’t get a job with Comedy Central?

No. After that, I got a job at Fancy Film. It was like a really small post house editing videos. Um, and this was like the beginning of my slow transition to being like a, uh, self-employed performer.

I would that job was really flexible. So they’d like me take time off whenever I had gigs. And there’d be times where I’d take like two month stints off because I’d have a slew of gigs. And so they’d let me take that off to perform and come back and. I owe them a lot.

In the job they allowed you to do that?

I was just like a post PE an assistant editor, I’d edit projects when they needed them and help out around the office and that was a really small company. It was like maybe five people.

So then you get out of the internship and you got that job. But you just said that you were doing stand up act or something like that.

I was doing a lot of performing.

Why was it an itch that you were trying to scratch or was it more like you needed the money because it was L.A.?

Why was I performing?

Yeah. Why were you putting in the hours in something else?

Just because I loved it. One hundred percent, I was like, this is what I like the most. I just have to figure out how to make money at it. And so I just kept doing that whenever I could.

So can you tell me more about that journey when you first started in L.A., the first acts that you did, how did they go? Why do you feel you wanted to continue?

Uh, and that is all a blur.

Do you remember your first one maybe?

I’m trying to remember. One thing I do remember is I was like, even though I wanted it so badly, I was still petrified to go on stage. And so for the first while I had a partner that I do all my acts with just because being on stage alone petrified me. And so we’ve been working together for a couple of years and he was kind of giving me this look like he wasn’t going to make it much longer. I was like, OK, I got to figure out how to do this by myself. So after, like, five or six years of performing professionally with a partner, I remember the first time out on stage by myself. I was like shaking and was holding back tears in my eyes because I was so nervous of it failing and coming from that. Like last year, we sold out a tour in twenty three cities. And it’s like crazy to think that even with all that experience, I was still nervous.

Was it really just because suddenly you were alone and then…?

Yeah.

How long did it take you to get used to it? Or did you get a coach or a mentor?

No, I didn’t have a mentor. I just kept making … I like pain, I guess. I just kept going. If I don’t feel a little fear, I, uh, I try to find a scary performance space, I guess, but, uh, yeah. I don’t know. I just, um. I wanted it for myself, so I kept pushing myself to do it.

How long did it take before you finally got: “OK, I’m really maybe not the best, but I’m kind of good at this. I should definitely keep doing this.” Because I know a lot of people that start, I mean, including me. There were many moments where I thought: “Uh, I don’t think I’m good enough” with the impostor syndrome is so famous. So, for you, you say you really wanted it and the struggle is real, like I can feel like obviously you really… You went through a struggle, but some people give up in the middle. So, for you…I can imagine you were feeling that impostor syndrome. When was it slowly, finally getting away? When did you feel like this is really…?

I think when you start you’re like one day I’ll feel good enough and I need to work to that point and then when you when you’re finally a pro at it, you’re like, ‘Oh, you never get to that point.’ You always feel like you’re not good enough and you just keep pushing. But yeah. And you just accept the fact that you always want to improve and I think that’s part of what, um, that’s what makes people succeed, is that they always want to improve and they see what they suck at and they’re like, how can I make this better? And they constantly go back to the drawing board and figure out how to, uh, make a better product, whether it’s being on stage or creating a company.

How long were you in that job, the flexible one, while you were doing the act?

I would say about a year and a half and then I had another job, uh, for about a year and a half. So I’d say about three years of, like, flexible jobs and then I went full time performing around like twenty three.

How much were you … Can ask maybe financially, like, how much were you earning before you said, I’m going to cut the cord and then work for myself?

I have no idea. I would imagine I would imagine, uh, thirty thousand dollars a year minimum, I would guess, but I honestly….

Pretty much your rent and your food and maybe and some other stuff covered and then you’re… So you were just like, that’s it. I’m done. I’ll just do this full time.

Yeah.

Weren’t you scared that some gigs would go away?

Uh, no, because I also, uh, I’ve got to be the most random person. I also learned how to street perform and so, there was a time when you could go outside with other people. And so, for me it was like, oh, at any point if I really need money, I can go out to a street corner and gather a crowd and continue to pay rent that way.

Wait, so OK, you were doing the act.

Just blow your mind out.

You know, you hit something really important because what you created for yourself was a mental backup, which is : “If I quit my job, I have something to fall back on. It’s not the main thing I’m doing, but it’s a backup.” But like I know for for instance, ourselves, like me… To create that backup, it took years to realize the product that you’re really good at that no matter what, it will always be there to cover rent, which is a huge step that most of the population doesn’t have because they’re in the job and they want to sometimes cut the cord, but they don’t have that backup. So how did you get to street performing? When was it even happening? Because obviously you’re doing the act. You’re doing the job. That’s flexible, of course. But like, when did this street performing happen and how did you get into it? How did it become something like a backup in your mind?

Um, well, in high school, I had that, uh, English teacher that I talked about. There was a comedian and juggler. And so that kind of put the idea of street performing into my mind. And then in Boston, uh uh… You are you’re in the Netherlands, right?

Yeah.

There’s a dam square that has all the street performers.

Yeah, well not right now, but I mean…

Right, right. Yeah. So, in the United States, pretty much there’s only like two or three places in all of the United States that has street performers like Dam Square does and one of them is in Boston, Massachusetts and Faneuil Hall. So during college, I would see those guys and I’d be like, oh, that’s that’s interesting. It looks like they’re making a good amount of money. Um, and so, in college, I was a bouncer at a comedy club. And then…

You were a bouncer, as in security.

Yeah, I’ve shrunk down since then.

OK, let’s back up. How did you end up as a bouncer at the…?

Right, so my good college buddy Adam Junior Visión, who is a big comedy agent right now, he started out there with me as well and he was he is like six and a half feet tall and bulky. And so he got a job as a bouncer and thank God for him. He said to his boss, I have another bulky friend that could bounce with me, but that’s how I got that job. Um, yeah.

Cool. So then, OK, so you have that in Boston. You see all these street performers. Are these like… Do you decide in Boston to already try it a little bit?

Yeah. It was the summer after my I want to say junior year we stay. We stayed in Boston for the summer and tried straight performing while I was working as a bouncer at the comedy club at night.

You tried to street performing with friends?

Yeah, that that partner I talked about with whom I performed with the first couple of years.

Were you then juggling or what were you doing? A street performer.

Yeah, I think we were juggling. Yeah.

OK, so you tried it in Boston and then you moved to L.A. Are the rules different in L.A. for street performer because I know city by city in Europe it’s…

Yeah. In L.A. it’s, um, not fun with it. There’s a lot more. Uh, what’s the best way to say this? Free spirited, uh, free spirited vagabonds to compete with, I guess. Yeah. So and then just in general, in the United States, I’d say street performing is more frowned upon than in Europe, so…There’s just not as many opportunities, like I feel like in Europe, the arts just in general are way more accepting. So, every street fair in my mind, every street fair in Europe is like, yeah, we have a street performer. He’s right there and it’s free, and here it’s like if you show up to a street fair to street performer, you’re going to get arrested for breaking and entering more or less.

And you still need permits here? It’s not everywhere like that but in some places, I mean, places like Amsterdam are pretty strict. Rotterdam was so, which is a second city. I know other countries like, you know, the UK, Germany, they’re a bit stricter. But I think if you have a permit, you can do those things. But so, you’re… OK, so right now you’re kind of saying something interesting because in L.A. was different and then how did you decide that that was going to be able to pay your rent? Like was your act preplanned? Did you know that if you do it this way roundabout, you would be earning this much even in a city like L.A.?

Uh, to move on from the street performing because for us, that was more like a starting point for the career and the backup plan. At some point we started booking gigs and got an agent that was really just wonderful, and they would get us … They were a reliable source of income with a lot of gigs that traveled across the US.

You got an agent! How did you get the… Like what was happening that you got an agent?

That, uh, that I was performing at an event in Wisconsin and I noticed that every single other act…. Oh! This is actually a great story for entrepreneurs. So, that gig was the Wisconsin State Fair, and they have… It’s one of the best performance fairs, I would say, in the country. They have, like I would say, over two hundred bands performing every day of the week for like twenty days, and then on top of that, they have all sorts of performers and comedians. But, that booking came because we had sent out a mass mailing like three years before, and never heard anything from any of them. And then one day the guy calls up and he was like, yeah, my boss said, we need it all new entertainment, and I’ve had your folders sitting on my desk for two years. Can we hire you?

Like, a mass real mailing? Not like email?!

Yeah, it was like a folder with like our pictures in it and a DVD. And we had spent thousands of dollars sending hundreds of these out all over and didn’t hear anything.

Really? Where were you sending it to, like … Agencies?

Agencies, fairs, colleges, performance venues, comedy festivals, just like anywhere we could think of, and we never heard anything until two years later when one guy said he’d had it sitting on his desk for years. And so he booked us, and then when we got to the gig, I noticed that every other act at the event that was in our genre had the same agent. So, I was like, all right, I’m going to start sucking up to all these people. So, they had put us in a separate trailer and every day I was like Dave, my partner, I was like: “Dave, we have to go hang out on that other trailer because they’re all represented by the same agent.” And then, so we started doing that, became friends with them all. And what I said about the internship, like be friends with people and over deliver, that’s what I did with all those people in that trailer, like every day I was being super friendly. And like, any time I felt like they needed something, I got it. Like, there was one day the trailer ran out of something simple. It was like it ran out of water. So the next that day during lunch, I ran to the store and got several gallons of water just so they’d have it and like huge change. And after the gig was over, like a week later, the agent called us and was like the people in charge of the fair were raving about how great you were. And then I checked with all our acts and they said you were so nice and easy to work with and like you just were like helpful all week long. So we want to represent you. Um, so that is something I learned probably during those internship days of like just over deliver with everybody.

Was it because of that internship that you were like, OK, I need to overcompensate because because I really want this? Or was it just something inside of you?

I’d say it was a subconscious thing that I probably learned from making mistakes.

Yeah. Cool! So the agent pretty much calls you from that, which is you got in touch with them by cold print mail and then the agent gets in touch with you a couple of years later.

Oh no. That was a… So I got in touch with the event with cold front mail. The event got in touch with me a couple of years later. And then I noticed doing the event that everyone had the same agent. So then, I sucked up to everyone that was from the agent who are now some of my best friends. And then after that, the agent reached out to us.

Nice. And then the agent reaches out. I mean, at this point you’re kind of like, well, not at the beginning, but also not really like jumping up or something like that. So how do you negotiate with an agent like that? Was he just like, “OK, yeah, we’ll do it.” And then they get a certain percentage and that’s it? Or was there a negotiation? What was happening?

They got a percentage and they are just… So that particular agency ‘GELBERG’ is just so this is how we do things and we do it in the fairest way possible and everything is out in the open to discuss. And I just found from working with them for so long and so many other agents that have they just seem the most genuine and literally care about every single person that they represent, like it’s a family member. And so I, a hundred percent trust them with anything.

They are L.A. based or…?

No, they’re in Minneapolis.

And so just for me to know, how does… Maybe you don’t want to mention their percentages, but in L.A. in general, what are the percentages for good or bad agents? And how can you spy or bad agent?

I don’t know enough about that to say.

And then maybe the tips on how would you know what to do? Because you said a couple of agents you’ve seen already and then this is a good one. What makes a good and what makes a bad one?

For me is I mean, it’s this the same thing, as I said about being an intern, like they go above and beyond and show that they actually care.

Um, how do you test that, though?

That’s something that I’ve tried to get better at when working with people is like… I said a couple of years ago to my wife, I was like from now on, whenever I work with anyone, make sure before I sign the contract to do whatever I make them prove themself. Like just give them some sort of simple test to see if they follow through. Because when you’re first in business, when you’re first working with someone, everything’s a promise, like, yeah, we can do that and this and it’s going to be amazing and we love you and everything is great about it. And then once you sign the dotted line, like they can totally screw you. So for me, it’s like, oh, you want to work together? Cool. Could you put together a list of like ten? I don’t know if it was my stand up. Could you put together a list of like ten events that you have in your roster that you think would be a good fit for? And give me a paragraph description of why I’d be a good fit for each one, like that is not something that would be hard to put together, but it is something that I think if I asked people to do it, a lot would fail at it. And so it’s just because they wouldn’t do it, you know?

So, by that small thing, you pretty much just qualify if they’re going to do big things as well?

Yeah, it’s just do they care enough to put in the effort to help? Because, uh, whenever I work with someone, I want to make sure it’s someone that I care enough to help with. And so I just try and find people like that but feel the same way.

I mean, that’s nice, though. Like we do something similar when we hire people, like a smaller recruitment where we test for the motivation is real because motivation tends to go after a week or two, and then you’re stuck in the company

A hundred percent!

But it’s fun. You kind of also do that with agents, which just shows that technically the agent becomes part of the family, like you said.

Yeah, I wouldn’t I don’t do that just with agents. That was just advice for working with anyone on anything.

True. You have multiple agents or how does that work? Or is there one agent?

Uh. Yeah, um, I would say… Can you ask the question one more time?

Yeah. Do you have multiple agents or do you advise maybe agents for everything, everything that you do, like stand up or YouTuber?

I would say that every agent has a special field, whether that stand up or commercial acting, or TV acting or book writing, whatever you want to do. There is an agent that specializes in that field. And so you should find an agent that does that, like there’s agents that specialize in live touring, but there’s agents that specialize in getting you Netflix specials, right? So, it’s like getting a plumber, right? Some plumbers are specialized in commercial plumbing for major real estate, and others are like more handymen. You want to find the one that specializes in the the field you’re looking to, um, move forward

I didn’t know that. OK, so then let’s move on to the next part. So the agent finally gets on board. Does your life change a lot after that, or what’s the difference before and after?

Yeah, they got us gigs non-stop all the time, and I was just full on performing, traveling all over the US, getting sick of airports and having it be worth it once you got on stage with like a good audience and then from there, I was like, how do we expand this audience? And so, that’s when I started getting into YouTube and posting videos regularly.

So when does it (year wise) when does the agent get onboarded?

Let’s see…I’m going to say, around 2012.

But YouTube started in 2009.

OK, so that maybe it was like 20… I don’t know, it’s all a blur.

No worries, but in your mind, was the YouTube first or the agent first?

I would say it was all around the same time, but I would say that the agent took off way before the YouTube channel.

Cool. So OK, so then you’re doing… OK now I get it. So you’re doing the gigs, and then obviously…It’s not obvious actually, because what you’re saying right now is you were doing the gigs, which is by the way, you said your dream and you’re performing and doing something you love, but then something in your mind goes just, well, if I’m assuming right now, kind of like during high school, something in your mind goes off and it’s like, let’s found this this club. And then suddenly you’re saying like, let’s scale this audience. Why? Was it people approaching you just saying :”Hey, I want to see more of you or what?

That was it. It was like years of people being like: “Oh, we come to see you every year, but we can only see you one day of the year. Like, how do we see more of you?” And I was like, how can I give…? And as I thought about that more, I was like, that’s true, like even if I did a show every hour of every day, I’m still performing for like one small group, whereas on the Internet you can reach the entire world in one click. And so, I was like, I have to scale this audience, and that is why I started posting on YouTube.

It sounds to me like it was a gradual mindset shift, like it wasn’t happening right away. What happened for you to know? How was your reaction at the beginning? Because YouTube existed already.

I always watched YouTube from like the day it started and I think similar to like how I was afraid to be on stage by myself I was probably afraid to post a video. And so I think, um, eventually I was just like, screw it. I’m just going to do it and I’d say I posted videos for like five or six years before one took off.

And how does the animation tie into it? Because for the people just listening and not on computer or something like that, you obviously make animations, and as well you produce and film yourself sometimes. Where do you did you learn that skill from film school and why?

My first job I wanted as a kid was to be an animator, and that’s because I was really good at drawing. That was like the first thing I remember being good at, and, uh, then I started taking some animation and drawing classes and realized how long and arduous and boring being an animator was. And I was like, oh, maybe I don’t like art. Like I said earlier, maybe I don’t like the art of Aladin, maybe I like Robin Williams. And so I transitioned to comedy, and then after doing my YouTube channel for a while, I was like, I used to draw as a kid. Maybe if I try switching to animation, um, that’s closer to comedy. Maybe that’s the move I need to make. And so I tried making one animated video after posting live action videos for a couple of years. And the animated one, I went from getting like a thousand views, a video to like fifty thousand overnight. And I was like, oh, I got to make the switch. And so, I think that was in 2012, December 2012. And then from that point on I was like, I got to go all animation and I learned to draw again.

So it’s pretty much the audience telling you this is what we want to see and then you just make the switch. But isn’t it…? So we actually do some animation as well. Corporate work. It takes a while, like it’s not easy. And what you do is very custom work.

Yeah.

How long does it take you to then make a video or something like that? You can’t just whip it up or…?

Yeah. So I’m like a very analytical problem solver person. And so for me, I’m like… I’m more interested in the back end of animation, which sounds really weird, especially since I just said I hated how analytical and boring it was. But, um, so for me, like, I’ve perfected, like, reusing assets. And so we have like a super organized library of backgrounds that are like categories categorized by like location and type. So like if we need a scene in a bedroom, I can go in a folder and there’s like every angle of a bedroom possible with like our backgrounds are like everything is a separate layer. So they’re completely customizable and reusable. Our characters are super rigged puppets that are like two hundred layers. So the main character that represents me, Alex, is like one hundred and fifty layer puppet about… And we can even drag and drop animations on to him to make him walk or talk or act like all that stuff was animated once and now it’s just urías like as easy as like searching for a gif online.

Right. So you animated it. How did you animated it? Which software did you use?

We use Tune Boom which if you’re interested in animation, I would be impressed if you could show me software that was better suited for it, because what what Tune Boom does is just to me, mind blowing.

What does it do then?

It has, um, it’s hard to explain it with just words, but it just has so many feat. Custom features and its feature-rich that as far as I can see, there’s no other software that has as many features in it as Tune Boom does. Like it has 3D character, 3D camera, which gives you depth, it gives you character rigging, which lets you bend into form drawings in an easy way. It has, um, I mean I could talk endlessly about it, if I could remember the words, but, uh, I would say the most basic explanation is that the amount of features it has is uncomparable.

I mean, you can go pretty technical on this one, but so all the features in there but that’s when you animate new assets, right?

Yeah.

Once you’ve animated them, I can imagine the software that you’re using is pretty intense. You’re switching to a different software. That’s less…

No, we just, uh, we do all the animation in that software.

Really?

Yep.

And can I ask like how… What kind of computers you can use because the expert time must be pretty long?

Um, we, uh, just do it all on like base model or not based model. The whatever the like mid tier IMAX are.

Really?

Yeah. What I would say we do have one PC because we had a PC master race person work here for a while and I would say that’s the route to go just because it uh, the graphics card and those are way more affordable and um, that renders are a lot faster on that.

Really? Do you …Did you try an external graphics card as well? You can buy them online.

Uh, no, we haven’t tried that yet. No

You should definitely try. You can get a lot faster in those things. It’d be interesting to hear maybe later also: what’s faster? A PC or a Mac with an external graphics card? Because you can buy one for, I think three hundred bucks on Amazon, and then you can exchange the actual so you can buy the rig and then exchange the graphics card from Nvidio or Reagan, and then that’s good, because you can upgrade it. So, it’d be interesting to hear because I know for software that is strictly strictly Apple, you definitely need a Mac. But then if you use graphics, I’ve always heard Windows. So you kind of saying the same thing right now.

Oh, I totally say the same thing. Um, yeah.

So the graphics card would be the most important part and that’s rig?

Yeah, for sure. I think for anyone just starting out like any computer you have is going to be fine. Don’t worry about having the most powerful computer, but we’re so into the program with the compositing and how taking it to a super advanced level that I think we need more power.

How come it’s different now? Is it just because there are so many layers?

Uh, yeah. We require more power just because we use, um, so many more layers and the puppets we use have so many deformers on them. Um, I would say a puppet probably has like 10 to 20 deformers that can bend and move the puppet around, and so and you have that many deformers on a puppet and then there’s three or four puppets in a scene. It just starts to become taxing on the computer.

Correct. So can I ask then you have a video like, let’s say a five minute video. How long does that take you?

If we were starting from scratch, it would probably take us a month, I would say, if we had absolutely nothing.

But with the library that you have right now?

With the library we have right now, we can…One or two people can pump that out in about a week.

Wow! How do you get…? Because you publish more than once a week, so how do you..?

No, we’re publishing once a week right now.

OK, that explains it, because I saw that you were…But you usually also post live videos. I just saw you posted that as well.

Yeah. The live video we just posted was because we’re launching that card game on Kickstarter, which we’re getting a great response on, and I just wanted to quickly answer some people’s questions. So I did that live video as well.

Tell me about the card game. So…wait, maybe let’s keep that for a second. So you got the agent, the YouTube is kicking off. You made the switch to animation because it gets more audience. So now you’re doing this card game, but you did a card game before and in high school, you said or in…

That was like a point and click adventure game on the computer.

But the game-making has been kind of in you for a while. Have you done any other games since then or is this your first one since that old one?

I would say the love of games has been there forever. And this was the first one that we we actually made. My friend Zack, that I went to college with, his wife and my wife, we’d always play games together and be like: “we’re going to make one, we’re going to make one.” And then he had his twins. And I was like, uh, if we don’t do this now, we’re never going to do it. And so that’s that was what inspired us to make the game.

So this is the first game since pretty much last time.

Yeah.

And then when you’re doing this game, so you’re doing with a friend, which is always nicer. How does that work? And maybe also the dynamic of doing it with a friend, because obviously I have a best friend and we laugh about things and doing a YouTube channel together, but then you actually do it. Is there a difference in your collaboration? And you know, how you work together… Does it help?

Uh, uh, the friend that I did it with, um, or remember earlier when I was talking about starting that TV show in college?

Right.

That was the guy I did that with. And then when we made that ridiculous action adventure movie, it was that guy as well. So like we’ve always collaborated together on projects. So, I think we just like each other and respect each other a bunch so that working together, it’s like… It’s very easy for us to throw responsibilities at each other and know who’s in charge of what.

So how did it start? OK, so you’re playing the games. That’s how it started. But when did it really get to the nitty gritty: “You’re doing this. You’re doing that…?”

I would say about a year and a half ago is when we started taking it really seriously and just getting together every week and playing the game over and over again to find out how terrible we could make it. Just like with performing or starting a company or anything, it was like, let’s be really bad at this and keep making it better until it’s at a point that we can share it with everyone. And then I would say maybe six months ago, we’re like, all right, we have something that’s cool. It’s time to start doing the artwork and getting the balls in motion and sharing this with the world.

So it’s pretty much one year and every week on like a Saturday you would get together and play would became this, uh, card game…?

“Sugarheist”, yeah.

And then how is it at the beginning? Like was it really bad or something? Or how did you even come up with the first try?

Right. So, uh, for the mechanics of the game, we looked at all the games that we’d play all the time, like, what do we like about this? And like, well, we like trading cards and we like wreaking havoc on other players, like instigating arguments. Basically, I love card games that instigate arguments, so we are like we have to make a game that instigates people getting upset with each other in a fun way. And so that, uh, was how we started. And then we set up a bunch of rules and played at once and were like, oh, this is not fun. This is fun. This sucks, this doesn’t suck. And then we just did that over and over again until we had more “doesn’t sucks than does sucks.”

How long how long were those games initially?

What do you mean?

So you started in the beginning a year and a half ago. Every week you sat down and then you were playing these kind of beta games. How long were you playing it… For 20 minutes together or..?

Yeah, I would say games would last anywhere from a half an hour to an hour and a half. Sometimes we’d play it all the way through. Sometimes it would be so bad that after ten minutes we’re like, we have to stop. This is awful.

OK, so half a year ago it becomes something fun. Do you then get your life together? Like who’s the first person who actually saw it outside of you two?

I would say, uh, my animators are probably the very first people to play the game. Um, that wasn’t the core group. Um, one day they stayed after work and we all played the game, um, and they gave some feedback and we went back and improved it again.

Why the animators?

Uh, just because they were here already. And I know that… And they play games all the time, like they have, uh, game groups where they go out and play cards and board games with their friends.

Nice. And then, uh, OK, so then the animators… Then you actually design it professionally and then you start printing it. I saw in the video that you also had… You printed it in the printer first?

Yeah, I have some of those right here, actually.

Those look actually pretty good! Why not create like a digital experience where people can just print the card? Well, probably bad for copyright.

What was the question?

Why not just create a digital experience, like they just download the cards and can print it themselves?

We are going to have that but this is more meant to be… We wanted people to have like something that could last a while. So there is going to be a print in play available where they can print it out. But it also requires a ton of cards. There’s one hundred and eighty cards in the game, so I can’t imagine someone wanting to sit there and cut out one hundred and eighty cards.

Cool. So, OK, so then you have that the animators take over. How does the process work, like, you know, to to print something like that to you, go to a printing shop?

I’m in the US. There’s a couple… We’ve been I mean, as everyone has like, uh, made it more difficult to make this all happen with Covid-19. But because the one print shop we were going to use, uh, like, they just aren’t in operation right now. So it took some researching to find one. But there are a couple of when you’re prototyping a game, there’s a couple of great websites that will do. It’s hard to tell, but these are not as high quality as something you’d buy in the stores. They’re pretty close, but it’s not an exact match. But there are companies that will like do basically print on demand games for you and that can include games with like little miniature figures, games with cards, games, boards, like all of that stuff. There’s a couple of great websites that can put together mockups for you.

And then you just Google that or…?

Yeah. The one the one we used if people don’t play games is the one we used for these and I’d recommend them. It’s good quality and fast turn-around. And then the other major one is the game crafter, and those both offer great resources for building prototypes.

Cool. So then, you know, you started kind of in your friends circle and then they gave you the green light. How do you scale that? When it’s the light bulb going on? Okay, this needs to go to the world like… Do you first test it out, try to sell it to your friends and family, or do you right away go to the Kickstarter?

Um, well, uh, the goal was always to share it with my YouTube audience. Um, I’m in a lucky position that I already have, uh, a fan base to that will help bring it to that next level of letting everyone know about it. So, um. The goal was like: “let’s get the fan base excited about it” and hopefully that is enough of a push that it can get it more into the mainstream of other games on Kickstarter.

Do you have a proper strategy in place, as in obviously the strategies in videos? Who are you going to do paid advertising and stuff like that to get it to people that don’t know you yet?

Yeah, we’re going to see how the first day of funding goes. And then based on that, we’ll possibly invest in like Facebook and Instagram ads.

Nice. And the whole infrastructure is done by the providers. So then you don’t have to worry about the whole logistical part, right?

We have a separate company that’s in charge of all that stuff. So the ones I mentioned, uh, print and play games and game crafter, those are more just to print mockups. But we have a separate company that’s helping us with the logistical stuff.

OK, is there like a number you have in mind of…OK, if we achieve this number, then you know, it’s worth it for us to take this to the world. Or if we don’t achieve that number, it’ll just stick with my friends.

Um, I personally I mean, I hope it’s super successful because the game is awesome and I know when people play it, they’re going to love it. But personally, I… It doesn’t matter to me how well it does. Like, it would be a dream if it made lots of money. But me, I’m more excited about just the people that want it get it. Um, just because it’s it’s fun. And I would love to give them something fun to share with their family and friends.

I saw in your last video that you uploaded just before the call. There you said it’d be a dream that if it’s in the stores, um, I think your wife has your dad and then. But don’t you have I mean, you’re doing it with a with a friend. So there’s a partner involved. Don’t you have a strategy to get it into stores or is that something for after you get feedback from the Kickstarter campaign?

The company that’s handling all the logistical stuff does have relationships with stores, but that’s still like… Lots of people make card and board games, especially these days, where, like anyone can do it. So getting it into a store, there has to be enough of a demand for it. We have to prove ourselves basically because we’ve never had anything in a store before, right? So we have to say, look at how many people bought this game already. If you have it in your store, you’re going to have the same success. So, so…

So it’s super important to have your audience.

Yes. One hundred percent. Um, I think we have a huge advantage and I’m confident it will end up in the store. But at the end of the day, like, it’s not up to me, it’s up to everyone coming together and backing the Kickstarter to make it happen.

So, pretty much in short, your audience plus all of their friends, and then, yeah, if they just keep enjoying it, I mean the Kickstarter is thirty days, right?

Yeah, and I have a sizeable audience too, like I have four million subscribers on YouTube, so I’m not at a disadvantage by any means. But um,…

How do you how do you get in touch with your audience, because with YouTube after you hit a certain number, especially like above the millions, I can imagine, not everything pops up in their feed. So how do you interact with all? I’m imagining you’re trying to interact with almost all of them. So how do you get directly to them?

One thing, two things that I love are “Discord”, which for anyone that doesn’t know, um, is this great chat app where you can set up communities. And it just is it’s basically a chat room app, but it’s the current trend. And it’s been a great way for everyone that’s involved in my community to be able to talk to each other. So I’ve been loving that. And then as recently as this week, I just started using this thing called “Community.com”, which gives you a … Do you know what that is?

No, I’ve never heard of it.

Oh, it’s great. Community gives you a phone number that people can text message and then it’s still it’s not in beta, but it’s like slowly coming out of beta. Um, and it gives you just all the resources to be able to respond to people one on one, but in a way that can scale to thousands of people. So I get to have one-on-one conversations with people, but also be able to scale that and text people in a way where it still feels one-on-one, but I’m reaching a mass amount of people.

Because the interface of Community.com is on your laptop so you can message…?

It’s on the laptop and it’s on the phone. And it just gives you… I don’t know how to explain this, but it does give you a way to like respond to messages, uh, multiple messages at once, but still give it that one on one feel.

OK, so it’s just a little bit more organized, gives you a little bit more features and it’s not all over the place like a WhatsApp or an i-message?

Yeah, exactly. So like I can search for keywords and everyone that uses that keyword in a message, I can respond to them all at once, and they get it in their text message as in like an individual message just to them.

So how much does Community.com cost?

Um, I believe it’s one hundred dollars a month for the first thousand users. Um, but I think their pricing structure is still something they’re working on. So that could be totally off. But that’s just what I remember.

And then OK, so again, I’m assuming you’re not getting everybody on text. So what do you do that gets you the most amount of interaction with your audience?

Um, I would say…four million

Like, how do you hit all four million, I imagine you can’t hit all four million?

No, it’s impossible. It is literally impossible. I’ll make… I’m sure even though I’ve been talking about this game for months, um, there is still people that will be like, what do you mean you’re making a game? And it’s like or every single time I post a video, I would say there’s at least one hundred comments. They’re like, why don’t you post videos anymore? And it’s like, I’ve been posting a video every week for the past five years.What do you mean? Why don’t you post videos anymore? And so it’s just, uh, especially with all the competition for eyeballs these days, it’s just you have to accept that not everyone is going to know everything.

Do you have ideas on what the best practices are to actually get as much in touch with them?

I don’t know but if you figure it out, let me know first.

I will. We’re actually looking into it as well. That’s how I was interested, but I’ll let you know if I discover something. So OK, so to give me, like, a little bit numbers wise. So you have these numbers, community.com and stuff like that. Instagram I saw as well. Do you feel like your audience, like, it if let’s say you would start an Instagram today from zero and you would say, hey, audience, have new Instagram, how many of those four million do you think would convert onto an Instagram platform?

None. Yeah, yeah. For me, I mean, I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but for me, getting people to go from platform to platform is really hard. Like…

Really? Why?

I don’t I don’t know. I would say for me, like if I was like: “hey go follow this new Instagram!”, I wouldn’t get any traction. But if it if I was on YouTube and I was like, “hey, go follow this other YouTube!”, that will get a lot more traffic. That would get a ton of people because it’s within the platform. But to get people to switch, like, I don’t I don’t understand that at all. Yeah.

And have you ever tried, like, getting them from YouTube towards an email or something like that, something where they have a newsletter from you?

I would say the most recent conversion I’ve tried to make platform to platform is this card game. And so we announced that… And the card game got …I’m looking right now. Ten thousand sign ups about from reaching out to an audience of four million.

But at start you said in your last video, was like twenty thousand, but not all of them confirmed.

Yeah, yeah.

Why do you think that happens?

They didn’t know they had to confirm. It went to their spam, they didn’t see the email, it could be anything. I’ll send out emails. Like, for instance, last year, I went out on tour and I’ll get emails, and we sent out an email blast being like, hey, we’re going on tour and I’ll still get emails to the day. They’re like, hey, I just saw this email that you’re going out on tour. Sorry that I missed it. I’m like, who checks their email from eight months ago?

Yeah, I get that. So, how interesting, we’ve tried some stuff over the over the past couple of months because since MailChimp changed a lot of things which was made last year, I think, a lot of these emails don’t get into the inbox. And what we’ve noticed is if we build our landing pages a little bit different, warning them that there is going to be a confirmation link and they will arrive in the next one or two minutes, it seems to help a little bit. But we also have… Sometimes we just skip the double opt in and we go straight for the single opton. Have you ever tried that?

Um. Yeah, I do it for my personal email list, but for this, since we’re working with a company, we had to do the double up and…

What’s the difference between… If you noticed, like double opt in and single opt in. Do you notice the difference?

Um, personally, I don’t I don’t I don’t know why we need a double opt in. I know it’s the law sometimes, but for me, I’m just like if they put it in their email address, let me send them e-mails.

No, the double opt in is not for the law, I think. Well, now would you DPR might be a bit different, but before that, I think it was more of making sure that they put in the right email. Yeah, because if you’re sending to 10000 subscribers, but nine thousand of those are like Brian with two N’s or something like that. And you screwed up and suddenly you’re paying for a subscriber that doesn’t exist. Yeah. So that’s usually…

In that regard, I’d say the double opt in is worth it for sure.

Cool. OK, so a lot of the card game I’m probably going to add.

It’s so good. Get it guys. Yeah. Kickstarter 26. That’s going to be awesome.

I’m definitely getting it. I’ve been excited but I’m definitely going to ask a bit more later about it. But let’s go a little bit back again because I was super excited where we were going with the whole: “she got the agent thing and now you’re doing the YouTube thing.” So, your first couple of years you’re doing live videos, right? You’re not doing animation yet. So how many subscribers did you get before you made the switch to the…Well, yeah, before we made the switch to make an animation?

I don’t remember exactly, but I would say when I posted my first animation, so from 2007…When did I start the YouTube channel?

2009.

I’d say from 2009 to 2012, I had like ten thousand subscribers total. And then once I switched to animation, I jumped up to like, uh, maybe like one hundred thousand and then within a year or so, it just started getting into the millions.

You think it was because of the animation? So what were you doing that was so attracting them? That was so different even than the live videos.

I mean, at the time it was different. There was maybe two people posting animated videos on YouTube, um, and the similar format to me. And so at the time that stuck out as individual. Now there’s like there’s so many that I couldn’t even name them all. But at the time it was a very unique genre.

That’s fun. And then obviously, YouTube started growing outside of posting weekly. You were posting weekly, right? So outside of posting weekly and then switching over to the animation, were there any big things that you were doing that gave you a light like “Aha!” moment where you were like, OK, if I do this, they will give me more subscribers?

Um. I can’t think of anything now.

Because I saw I saw, for instance, you talk a lot about your life, but then I saw also that that one video about the gun policy with the cats.

Oh, yeah, that video exploded.

Yeah.

And I’ve tried to make other videos similar to that, and they just haven’t clicked as well. So for people tuning in, then I have no idea what we’re talking about. I did a video called “The Guns Explained with Cats”, which was just a little parody of like if having a cat lady on your street and how absurd she gets with cats, but that’s the way people are treating guns in America and that exploded. But I think that was also at a time when that was… It said what needed to be said and, uh, an appetizing way. So people that didn’t even care about the comedy of it just shared it because they’re like, this is the point I need to get across. And it’s getting it across in a way that is easy to consume.

But were are you always looking for trending topics? Like what got you to that first ten thousand and then what got you from ten to hundred? So, from ten to one hundred. I’m assuming it was the animation that you were unique and everything, but to ten thousand you were probably doing something that still… Were you talking about trending topics? Was it relatable subjects just because it was your life?

I would say the video that really blew up was I made this video called “My hot babysitter got me in trouble.” And it was about the story from school, um, in middle school. And I dated my babysitter and who is about the same age as me. Anyways, it’s a ridiculous topic, but I think that scratch the itch of like a relatable story. So people connect with it and see themselves in the shoes of me. It gave them excitement of like, “Oh my God, I wish this would happen to me.” And then the third thing was that it ended on a cliffhanger that was like, oh, I want to see more. And so when you make content online, like as much as you want to make something that’s good, like that matters very little. Unfortunately, what matters is you make content that people watch to the end, that they leave comments on, they watch another one. So when you make your content, those are the three most important things. So that video got a lot of people to leave comments. It got a lot of people to subscribe because they wanted to see more of the story, and it got them to click on other videos, which is as far as YouTube is concerned, that’s literally all the algorithm cares about. And it’s the same with Tik Tok or Twitter, Instagram, like as much as you like: “Oh, I want to make this a good thing.” It doesn’t matter. What matters is making stuff that turns on the buttons on YouTube that says I have to share this with more people.

So do you make then a series about the baby sit? Or like if you make content now, do you think out a series of content: part one babysitter, part two baby sitter and then to trigger those three things or…?

Yeah, that’s one… That’s been interesting. So the baby sitter thing we wrapped up in December with a movie, uh, which is crazy. We posted like an hour and a half long movie that…

I saw that.

Yeah. I can’t believe we did that still, but. So… They love like as far as the algorithm is concerned, it loves the continuation and like getting people to come back for more. But the audience in the comments, they like what’s with all these cliffhangers? So it’s been interesting figuring out an approach that makes them want to see what happens next, but doesn’t get them upset that the story isn’t finished. So the most recent one, as I’ve been telling the story of how I met my wife and, um, it’s we’re trying to scratch that itch of like I want to know what happens next, but also give them a conclusion that doesn’t leave them upset, which is weird because TV is so episodic and like the next episode.

So how do you do it then? Because with TV there are cliffhangers, which is why you keep watching the episodes. And obviously like for instance, I watch things like Suits and get super angry because it’s like “No! Why?!” Why now…?

Yeah. Yeah

But so YouTube you’re telling me is different and you don’t really want to do such cliffhangers because your audience will get upset, you’re telling me.

Well, I think I mean, it’s hard to say because, like, their reaction might be as trivial as the way you just were talking about Suits or whatever you’re talking about, like: “No, why now?!” All I can see is the text of the comment, which is why did you do that to me? which I can read many different ways.

Um, so, um, one thing I found that helps is instead of just ending it right on the cliffhanger, like leaving it up to the audience and, like having a conversation with them one-on-one at the end of the video, that’s like “we could end the story here”, or if you want me to continue it, let me know that and we can continue in the next one or like letting it become more of a “choose your own adventure” than a cliffhanger, right? So at the end of the video, being like, on the next one you could go in this direction or that direction. Which way… Which part of the story do you want me to tell? And we’ve seen success with that and, uh, pleasing people.

So it’s kind of like a new generation TV series where at Netflix you pretty much get your TV series with a cliffhanger. And here it’s more like you make a full rounded story with a conclusion. But then at the end, you have this question: do you want to explore more? If so, what do you want to explore?

Yeah.

Interesting. How did you come up with that or was it just naturally came up?

Lots of trial and error similar to… Yeah, I think my whole life is trial and error actually.

Sounds like it. But it sounds like you’re learning which is the most important part.

Yeah.

So… Sorry… So those first ten thousand was about those topics that you were just mentioning then? Do you think the ten thousand two hundred thousand was because you introduced animation on top of that?

Yeah, for sure.

Then what do you think got you from one hundred thousand to your first million?

Totally that babysitter video, that first babysitter video got me like a million subscribers and a couple of months or a couple of weeks, I’m sorry. It was the growth from that that was insane. It was unbelievable.

So… Is literally just you got lucky with a certain topic and then it just hit home?

Yeah.

Do you wish that sometimes you could produce more than once a week just so that… You know…?

Yeah. I wish I could produce every day of the week. It would be great. But it’s just especially the animation. It’s impossible. Even with a video a week. It’s a real… The animation part is challenging and as difficult as it is, that’s very like paint by number and so it’s easy for us to accomplish. The thing that is most draining for me is coming up with the scripts and interesting stories and topics, because with YouTube, they want personal personal experiences and personal stories. And so, to come up with something fresh and interesting every single week on top of directing and producing all these videos, that’s the most challenging part. So I don’t know how one person could do that.

And why have you never thought (just out of interest for me)…? Because, you know, we deal more corporate, so I get to see that part. Why have you never thought of it as a studio where you get, you know, a couple of screenwriters together, you think out your ideas for the next year and then you get like an editing team or even maybe outsource the editing? I don’t know.

So we did that for… I’ve hired writers before and trying to get people to match my voice has been very challenging. Um, I even went as far as to make a really detailed and thorough, like script Bible with like, this is the voice that needs to be in and this is how it needs to be written and this is what it needs to include and not include. And like, I don’t know if I just didn’t find the right people, but it was just… It was difficult to find people that wrote in the same tone as I am. And because YouTube is so personal, like I’d say, that’s the most important thing.

And what about mentoring somebody or?

What do you mean?

I don’t know. I’ve noticed that delegation is being one of the hardest things also for some of the team leaders in my team. And that, um…

Like they have a hard time telling people what to do?

Yeah, they have a hard time translating their voice, like you said. Yeah. And then I’ve noticed that it just is difficult when especially when it gets more personal when we do creative work. But when you get people like really as a blank slate in the beginning of their careers and they stay with you for like let’s say a year or something like that, um, suddenly it just becomes a little bit easier to… To explain these things to them, because they haven’t gotten outside perspectives or something like that to have a different voice. You know what I mean?Have you tried something like that, like interns?

I would say writing wise I haven’t, but animation wise I would say one of our best… I work with the animators all the time and I would say my best success story wasn’t someone that applied for a job, it was someone that kept sending in fan art. And I was like, hey, you’re really good at this. Do you want to come in an intern? And they came in an intern and they were great. And I was like, hey, do you want to possibly, uh, start out assistant animating? And then they did that and they totally killed it. And then I was like, hey, you’re really good at this. Do you want to be a full time animator? And that’s similar to what you’re saying, someone that like was mentored and grew up within the system of what we do here. And so they just get it. And I think that was our most successful person we’ve worked with, I would say. I mean, I work with so many great people, but that one was just like it was such a pleasant surprise for both her and I, I think.

What’s the… What’s the issue of doing that for writers?

Um, I just it’s hard to… Well, one thing with writers…

I mean, I’m struggling with the same thing. I have to say for writers specifically, it’s quite difficult. But, yeah, I’d love to hear from you. Like, why?

Um, well, writing is hard. I hate doing it myself. So I think that’s the first problem. But the second thing is it’s, um. A lot of the writers we hired would write it more in line with the traditional TV show with like, dialogue and scene changes and a story arc, which there is a story arc, but with YouTube, it’s more about personal antidotes and telling stories. And as many times that be like we have to take all this dialogue out and make it directed at the person listening, like it just wasn’t conveyed in the scripts. And so. Fine.

What if you what if you take like a retreat or something like that, you do retreat where you sit down with screenwriters and you literally plot out the next year of content?

I think, so we did do that when we were using writers a lot. I think the other thing is that I’ve also gotten way more efficient at writing scripts, and so I have less of a need for that. But the other thing, we did do that for a while, where we’d meet once a month and we talk about what their script would be about and then they’d go out and write it. Um, and like I said, I put together that really thorough, um, writer’s guide and Bible that like detailed how many lines of dialogue should be in a script and how it should be written. Um, and the perspective and voice and how each character should talk. Um, and again, like all my stories are based on real life. So it’s not like they’re making stuff up, but, um, it just still wasn’t it wasn’t in the right voice and in a way that worked for me. So I would love to try it again. It’s just something we’ve put on pause for a while.

Interesting. Cool,  so um. Yeah, so then one hundred thousand to a million was the babysitter. Obviously, you’re going now one million to 10 million or even five million because you’re close. Do you feel like there’s a different thing you’re doing now?

What do you mean?

Are you focusing on different things or maybe you’ve piled up everything you’ve learned and you just keep doing that, or have you introduced a new learning lesson to it?

Um, for the like, what is my next phase of my career? Is that what you’re asking?

For YouTube specifically. So the first ten thousand was about getting those three topics in order, something that they comment on, that they come back and stuff like that. Then afterwards, you introduced the animation and then afterwards you introduce these topics that are very clickable. So, now that you’re going into your next phase of YouTube, so to say, do you feel like there is another learning lesson that you’re doing? Are you doing more training?

Oh, yeah, totally. So, as I said earlier, like, the whole reason I started my channel was to scale my performance audience. And so, we did it last year for the first time, we did 20, 30 cities, and it did great. But we got lots of emails that were like, we didn’t know you did stand up. We didn’t know you were a comedian. What are you going to be like on stage? And then I’d finish the show and I’m like, that was really great, but that’s not what I was expecting. And so from that, we’re like, “oh my God.” The whole reason I started this is not clear to the audience. So now, it’s been all moving forward. I want to make sure that it’s very clear in every video that I’m a comedian and that what I build my persona on stage, because I guess it’s a little bit different than it is in the videos. And so originally, I was just going to start recording all of my sets and talk about similar topics that are in the videos and kind of interweave those with the stories that I tell, similar to how… Do you ever watch Seinfeld?

Yeah, I did.

Do you know how like at the beginning or the end of Seinfeld, there’d be like a little clip of him doing standup?

Yeah.

I was going to do something similar to that, but animated. So that would be the animated story. And then there’d be like a little clip of animated standup that would be related to the topic. And so that was the plan. And then every comedy club in the entire world closed because of the pandemic. Uh, so that idea has been put on pause right now, but that is what we’re going to do as soon as we can.

But why not do an anime like you said yourself, just do the animated skits so you not being like just you like this and then just animate yourself doing your…

Because I think what’s because I mean, that’s what we were already doing. I feel like four years and they’re still not getting that. I’m a comedian. So I think actually having the feedback of a live audience and like seeing me at a microphone is what will, um, make that clear.

To pretty much making that sound fall. So, I guess the next part of your journey is making clear what you really do and getting your whole audience on board. And I guess the transition that you’re then making is getting your offline world connected with your online world, where before it was very much about growing your online world. And you’re off the world. But now it’s about bringing them together and connecting them.

Yeah, exactly.

It’s really cool. So outside of the card game…

And just to give you a heads up, I have to go in about 15 minutes…

Yeah, sounds great. We’re about to wrap up anyway, but I guess that’s partially what I wanted to wrap up with was going into the future. And the next thing that you want to do, your YouTube, it’s pretty clear. The card game that you’re doing right now, that’s kind of, again, bringing your offline and online together as well.

I’m so excited about it. It’s so good.

But outside of the card game and your YouTube, have you thought about a Netflix stand up on Netflix or something like that? I can imagine that could be interesting.

Yeah, I think that is the next kind of area I want to go to is, uh, a standup special or some live performance more and getting it back to that, because the past couple of years have been all about growing the online audience and like where my heart and like true passion is is and performing for people. So, I mean, all these other projects we’ve talked about are super fun and I love them and I put my heart into them. But I feel like the the most satisfying I ever feel is when I get off stage. And so I was like, that was the best thing I’ve ever seen, that just like it gives me life and it makes me feel like I did something good for a person to, like, give them that much joy. So that is what I want to share more of.

For people who would be looking and thinking that they have that, you know, live entertainment. But they would maybe like speaking or entertaining or something like that. But obviously now with Corona, YouTubers are a little bit better off than than…So, how would you tell this person to transition into digital and what tips would you give this person?

Do it and trial and error. Just do it over and over and over again. And good luck.  Cause it’s so oversaturated right now.

Any like practical things you should definitely be doing or not doing?

Um, be be ready for when it’s I would say, I mean I’m a very interesting person because I’m interested in both the YouTube, which is a very secluded life and the performing which is very in front of people. And I think most people don’t have both itches, both bugs. Um, but I would say if you are a live performer, like there’s so much you can be doing right now to be ready for when this is over. And I think when it is over, people are going to be so desperate and excited to see live entertainment that they’re just going to explode and you’re going to have so much work.

So how would you tell them to prepare already for that?

Update your promo material, reach out to people that are in your industry that are affected by this and just be like, I’m thinking about you and hoping you’re OK, just like the same story of like how at that fair I got water for all those people. Like, just because you can’t get money from someone doesn’t mean you can’t connect with them and be helpful to them, right? Uh, yeah.

Cool. I think that’s a really good one. Um, maybe the last question that I’ve been getting is a request a lot. Are you reading any books right now? Do you have something interesting to recommend that has helped?

There was …I just finished the Robin Williams biography, um, which was, uh, for a performer like it is a very sad book. Uh, but, uh, as a performer in major, I realized, like, why are we all trying so hard?

What do you mean?

The whole book, like he was my Robin Williams was my idol and like he is just like the most talented comedian on the face of the planet. And like half the book is him talking about how, like, critics hated him and he never felt like he was good enough and he felt like Jim Carrey was going to ruin his career because he was so talented and like people didn’t want to work with him because he wasn’t a good actor. And I’m like, you are like the most phenomenal actor comedian I can think of. How could you even be having these thoughts? And just to see that like someone and as phenomenal as him was also struggling with being accepted was just mind blowing to me.

How did it affect you? Were like, what did you get out of that learning?

Um. Well, it made me a little depressed. Uh, and then, uh, then I felt, uh, I was like, it’s good to be depressed, I guess, because he was he felt the same exact way. So, uh, yeah. It was just good to not feel alone.

Right. I guess that’s a good one to close with because… No, it’s a bit depressing, but hear me out. I think I think, you know, knowing that we’re not alone is partially why we’re doing this in the first place. I can tell you, like from our end, like the reason we did we did these events and doing the podcast, just realizing we’re not alone, no matter how big you’re becoming, everybody’s struggling, which is kind of also what I learned. But at the same time, maybe the conclusion wouldn’t be, oh, you know, everything’s bad and everybody’s going to hate us. But it’s more like, you know, we’re not alone. Everybody’s struggling. But at the same time, it’s trial and error. And if you keep just learning, then maybe we’ll have those learning lessons that you’ll have as well, going to your ten thousand subscribers and hundred thousand, a million. But also, at the same time with your audience and how you learned from Comedy Central compared to like that gig that you got and eventually ended up being your… Becoming an agent that came to you. I think it’s just I would add to that just to trial and error, you know. We’re not alone. It’s hard, everybody  is struggling. But as long as you do trial and error, you’ll kind of get ahead.

You know, one thing that is similar to that, the I think it might be a little bit inspiring. There was a series on Netflix. It was about… Like, I can’t recall what it was called, but it was about like, uh, movies and where they came from.

Oh yeah, I forgot it. Explain or something. No, I remember what you mean. They did one on ‘Home Alone.’

Yeah, that’s the one I’m thinking of.

If you type in ‘Home Alone’ in Netflix, you’ll find the series, um, ‘Director’s cut’ or something? Was it that one?

Home Alone Netflix….Oh, turn that off. Stop now. Where is that coming from? Stop talking. Uh, ‘The Movies that Made Us’!

‘The Movies that Made Us’, right.

Uh, ‘The Movies that Made Us’ is all about these huge blockbuster successful movies and how they became huge successes. And pretty much every single one of them at some point or another was a complete failure. And the people that worked on it, uh, were not expecting it to be even a success at all. Oh, and it just kind of reminded me of that Robin Williams book and how… It makes me feel like absolutely everything everyone makes sucks. Always. Everything everyone makes always sucks. And the only time something is successful is like winning the lottery. Like you get lucky with that one thing and the people that get lucky on it, capitalize it and try and get lucky again. But if you’re making something or working on something, it does suck because everything sucks and it’s just people that keep making sucky things cash out when they get the lucky one. So just keep working on whatever you’re working on and keep hoping you get lucky. Like, the more times you try something, the more chances you have to get lucky. So that’s kind of how I felt about everything I’ve ever worked on lately.

That is so that’s so true also in business that you’re going to do so many failures. And it’s usually that one then makes it worth it for all of the failures. With investment, same thing. So it’s just interesting that also in the creative arts, it’s pretty much the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. I think it’s the same for everything. Everything sucks, you guys.

But I think that’s a good… That’s a more positive one to to kind of close with. I really enjoyed this. I’m very happy that you came on. I really hope the Kickstarter goes really well, will definitely promote it. Well, I’m definitely going to be buying one. So…

Yay! You’re going to have a lot of fun with it. It’s a great game.

I’ll, uh, I’ll definitely give you a testimonial and see how it goes. But thank you so much for coming on. And I hope to invite you once again after the Kickstarter or something like that.

Yeah, that’d be great.

Good luck.

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Transcript:

Lova

Welcome to the Impact Talks Podcast. Today, we have a cool guest with us today, Ynzo, introduce yourself and for which company do you work for?

 

Ynzo

Hi. Yes, it’s great to be here. Thanks for that. My name is Ynzo van Zanten.

 

Ynzo

I’m the Choco evangelist of Tony’s Chocolonely, a Dutch choco company that’s trying to change the cocoa industry from within to make sure that chocolate becomes 100 percent slavery-free. So that’s our mission. And my role as an evangelist is to simply spread our values towards the consumers of other businesses to make people more aware of the issue in the cocoa industry, but also to show the way we want to change the industry from within and also mostly to inspire other organizations to change their ways and hopefully also consumers to change their buying behaviors.

 

Ynzo

So that is my role within the company.

 

Lova

Ok, so I’m super interested in specifically more, I guess. First, let’s go into the background of the company because it’s growing a lot. And then I would also love to know kind of your background, but so how big are you guys and how many countries are you active and how global are you?

 

Ynzo

Right. So we’re I would say we’re small and big at the same time. So because even though we became the market leader in the Netherlands in chocolate in a very short timeframe, we launched our first bars in 2005 and as a business started picking up in the last seven or eight years. And we do about a 70 million euro turnover and we’re available now in Holland, Belgium, Scandinavia, Finland, Germany, France, the UK and the US, and some exotic places like Dubai, Japan, and Taiwan.

 

Ynzo

And that sounds big.

 

Ynzo

But on the grand scheme of things, if you look at the total cocoa that is bought in the whole world and our part in that, I mean, we now work together with about 6600 farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast alone. But in those two countries, there are more than two and a half million farms that grow cocoa. So there’s a long way to go for us, we are a drop in the ocean, if you look at the total industry that we want to change from within, but we’re working hard on that.

 

Lova

And how do You fit into a company? How did you start? What is your background? How did you get recruited or did you just join it?

 

Ynzo

So I ages go… let me go back in my personal nutshell, I studied economics in Groningen, and there I became friends with another guy. And after our university years, he first started working for Heineken and I became a management consultant. And after about five or six years, I literally burned my grey suits and started traveling the world. And during my travels, I ran into a guy, a British guy in Belize who was on holiday.

 

Ynzo

And he told me about a little British company called Innocent Drinks. And they are a company that makes fruit smoothies and now bought by Coke. And it was very inspiring to me. It was fast-moving. It was very sustainable. It was very positive and young. And I brought a business case together with a university friend of mine. And well long story short, we launched Innocent Drinks in the Benelux and ran that together as country managers for about four years, five, almost five years.

 

Ynzo

And in the end, we got this entrepreneurial urge again to do different things because we were growing so fast. And for us, it was slightly too much at the end being led by the British. So we decided to sell our stocks and go our way again. I became an independent consultant in the field of strategy, sustainability, and communication. And that friend of mine, after about two years search of what he wanted to do, he bought the minority share and then the majority share in a company called Tony’s.

 

Ynzo

So that is the chief chocolate officer, Henk Jan Beltman.

 

Ynzo

And from day one that he took over at Tony’s, I became involved as an external advisor. So I set up the whole brand values and the HR handbook, all that part. And I always used to run the quarterly meetings as a facilitator, et cetera, et cetera. So I knew the team inside and out, but I wasn’t officially on the payroll of Tony’s. And then about four or five years ago, Henk Jan gave me a call and asked, Ynzo, you’re busy?

 

Ynzo

I said, Yeah, is that you want a job? I said, no. And then we got to talk about the fact that at Tony’s, we don’t do any paid media. So it’s always been word of mouth. And the mouth used to be well, Henk Jan, our former CEO, Eva, our value chain bookie, and sometimes the people that would do marketing at Tony’s, but it became almost a full-time job doing in that way.

 

Ynzo

So, Henk Jan asked me to come on board as the Choco evangelist or the chief evangelist of Tony’s to have somebody that is well then part-time but not full-time involved in spreading those values of Tony’s.

 

Ynzo

So in a sense, my job is that some companies would call it the spokesperson or the word for in Dutch. But we say that everybody at Tony’s needs to be the spokesperson of Tony’s. And also the job is slightly different because it’s one of the channels to also just engage other organizations and consumers. So I tend to say that we communicate on-pack, which is our packaging, which is our brand story and individuals.

 

Ynzo

It’s online. So we have a social team that’s constantly engaging with people online and it’s on stage and that’s my part. So there’s a lot of conferences, there’s a lot of podcasts, a lot of interviews that I do, which is part of being a spokesperson, but also, well, broader and also different in a certain sense.

 

Ynzo

So that is my job and how I got involved with Tony’s.

 

Ynzo

And in the meanwhile, a couple of years ago, I also was head of people and culture. So that’s what some people would call the HR department at Tony’s. So I’ve been around the blog within and outside of Tony’s for the last years.

 

Lova

super interesting!

 

Lova

A lot of terms packed here, but my interest mostly fell… Well, I’ll start with the culture and the HR, because you said that you have laid out that, one of the things that scale-up, I mean myself as well as big changes happened in the company, there’s so much trouble happening in HRs, especially when you make big jumps, doubling a team over summer. That’s something that happened here. It was quite hard to establish something, which I always look up to people with more experience.

 

Lova

So where were the first steps, especially coming, being a country manager for Innocent and everything? How then you now,  restarted with this new company and you were laying out the HR principles. What were you exactly doing?

 

Ynzo

Right.

 

Ynzo

I mean, honestly, the first thing we did is to realize that HR in itself might be the lamest word you can imagine because human resources to me have always sounded like the most dehumanized word you can imagine. Right, is if you could turn humans into resources as if you want to turn humans into resources like tin, copper, lead, etc.. So the first thing we did, we tend to do at both industries but also Tony’s Chocolonely is to get rid of the words.

 

Ynzo

So, at Tony’s, we call it people and culture. And I think those are the two pillars that are so essential in that part. And it’s also it means it’s a lot more forward-looking proactive kind of thing than in my experience, where human resources tend to have been over the last decades.

 

Ynzo

For me, it sometimes feels like a very reactive part. Whilst at Tony’s, it feels like it is the one team that is not working in the company, but it’s working on the company. So it’s forward-looking at how to create and establish a company culture and maintain a company culture that makes sure that, well, in my opinion, culture and company culture has always been that the invisible glue between the separate parts of the company. Right. It’s the lines that connect the people within the company that makes sure that together you are more than the sum of the parts.

 

Ynzo

So it has to do for us with making sure that there’s a well, let me put it like this.

 

Ynzo

One of our core values at the company is making you smile. So you’re working on a very serious subject, which you need to make sure that for the team, it’s the most fun experience that you can have. I mean, you spend more time at work than you tend to spend at home and in an awake state. And so you better make working on that serious subject as fun as possible. So make sure that when people come to the office on Monday they actually come to the office skipping of happiness, so it tends to evolve around three pillars within the culture.

 

Ynzo

I would say there’s a personal purpose that you have as a person, which I would normally tend to call meaning in English. So what is your personal meaning within that company purpose that you have? And we try to really connect those two things. There is a sense of personal growth so that you can actually achieve and grow as a person and as a soul within a company, and it tends to evolve around personal relationships. So, for example, a very clear ritual that we have at Tony’s is our lunch.

 

Ynzo

I mean, we don’t lunch with a melted cheese behind your laptop to be able to continue working. No, lunch is an institutional thing. So you come down, you sit at lunch with the people around you. We have the most amazing lunches made by Titsi, our cook at Tony’s, to make sure that you actually relate with people, see how they’re doing, see what they’re doing and what they’re up to from all different teams and all different places within the company.

 

Ynzo

So it tends to evolve around these rituals, the fun things. And sometimes for people, it sounds like, you know, the fun things we do are just fun things. But I disagree. If you keep connecting fun things consistently, your whole job and hopefully, therefore, your life becomes more fun.

 

Ynzo

So this is the rituals that we do.

 

Ynzo

But it’s also the symbols, that you have. Those are the visual things that you have. So everything at Tony’s is utterly tonified.

 

Ynzo

Our tennis table is actually completely branded Tony’s and says ping pong on both sides. It’s just a stupid fun thing that we have that makes everything. Well, it makes you smile, which is important, I think.

 

Lova

And what are the second and the third pillar?

 

Ynzo

So it’s your personal purpose, so that’s your meaning, how does your meaning connect to the purpose of the company? Our purpose is first and foremost within the company and in these times where sometimes there’s an exceeding amount of purpose washing

 

Ynzo

I would say ours is as authentic as it comes. So for us, our purpose is 100 percent slave-free chocolate and that is first and foremost in everything that we do. For us, our financial success isn’t an end goal. I mean, don’t get me wrong, why commercial is hell! but it is a means towards a goal.

 

Ynzo

The goal is crystal clear, 100 percent slavery-free chocolate. And in everything we do, we relate to our purpose. We relate to our mission.

 

Ynzo

So in the question, we could do, we could say, so how does that help us become closer, get closer to our mission? We also look at that.

 

Lova

Where did the mission come from? Because we were just talking about laying out the practicalities of HR. But…

 

Ynzo

yeah,

 

Lova

I can imagine, you know, the founder didn’t just come up with the idea. Oh, that said, I want to make a chocolate slave-free or something. Maybe like what’s the background behind the mission?

 

Ynzo

But then we need to go back. Yeah exactly, we then need to go back to the day to the why we were launched because, in the early 2000s, there were journalists from an investigative Dutch television show looking at the reality behind certain food marketing. It’s called “Keuringsdienst van waarde” which is like an equivalent of the 60 Minutes of food or the Food CIA. And they saw a very tiny article on page 12 of a newspaper that spoke about child slaves in Mali, being sold to work in the cocoa industry.

 

Ynzo

And they were like they were flabbergasted. They were like, how can this not be front-page news? How can this not be a full-page article? So they started investigating and realized that there’s a very bitter reality in the cocoa industry, which has to do with more than two million children alone in Ghana and Ivory Coast working under illegal circumstances, of which tens of thousands work in situations that we consider modern slavery, which is ridiculous in it, in the industry, in a value chain of a product that we all eat almost daily in Western society.

 

Ynzo

So they wanted to shed much more light on this. But the cocoa industry wasn’t very open and prone to speak to them. So long story short, in the end, they just simply launched their own chocolate company to change the system from within to show that it could be done with them.

 

Lova

Who is them? Who was it?

 

Ynzo

So this is “Keuringsdienst van waarde” a television show with the journalist “teun van de keuken”

 

Lova

Oh. So the television show launched their own chocolate company?

 

Ynzo

Exactly. Exactly. So Tony’s Chocolonely is derived from the first name of Tony, the international version of Tony’s, and Chocolonely for our lonely battle in the chocolate industry. So he simply launched his chocolate brand to show that it could be done differently. And that is Tony’s Chocolonely, which was launched in 2005. So you could say some people sometimes ask us, so where did your purpose come from when you were a company?

 

Ynzo

It’s been the other way around. Our company was launched, was born out of this purpose. That was to change the industry from within.

 

Lova

But how can you say… this is extremely interesting. So I don’t know how much you were involved with that, but how are you just like that and train what I can imagine being a very traditional market?

 

Ynzo

Yeah, I wasn’t involved in that at that moment. Nobody was at Tony’s because this was launched from and within the production company of the television show.

 

Lova

Yeah,

 

Ynzo

 and it is. And we still see that it’s hard to change such a huge and a traditional and slightly rusted down industry from within as a small company.

 

Lova

because it is still happening like, is it getting better, or is it there today?

 

Ynzo

It is still there today, unfortunately. And in absolute figures, it’s even become worse over the last two decades because there’s more demand for chocolate. So you could say in relative terms it’s diminished, but in absolute terms, it has even increased. So it means, even more importantly, for us to make that difference and showed that it can be done differently and inspire other companies to follow suit. It is still there. Today is there still more than two million children working in illegal circumstances. Today there are still more than 30,000 children and grown-ups working in situations that we consider modern slavery, which is ridiculous.

 

Lova

Yeah, but then ok. So let’s shift back to the practicality of it. So the company starts and then obviously, I’m assuming it’s started growing because people started buying, so teams now started growing, so, ok, the first question that pops up in the whole thing, why not start as a charity? Why does it have to be a commercial company? And then how do you onboard people that for such a mission? But then explain oh, no, but it is a commercial company.

 

Ynzo

I don’t think they are mutually exclusive, honestly, so that is an important message, I think. So, I think you can be a commercial company and have a very clear purpose to change the world. We consider that the only way we could actually change this system is by showing the system from within, that it can be done differently. So we are a commercial company. We have shareholders. We have very clear KPIs and how we want to grow, where we want to grow to and we need to make a financial profit because we are convinced that we can only make that impact year on year again if we are simply commercially viable.

 

Ynzo

So we have three very clear performance indicators and one has always been a 50 percent year on year growth. The second one has always been a 40 percent gross profit and a third one and that is where we slightly differ from the rest of the industry has for us always been at least 4 percent net profit, where the rest of the industry is always working towards 20, 25, 30 percent net profit, we think, to divide that that financial success within your value chain.

 

Ynzo

So making sure that the farmers at the beginning of that value chain actually earn a living income and are fairly paid, which we call a living income reference price for the cocoa beans that they grow, that is a much more equal and fair division of that value within the value chain.

 

Lova

But so if everybody striving for 20 percent profits and then you guys are striving for 4 percent, doesn’t that beat the whole purpose of you? I mean, I guess then you. Well, I don’t know exactly how it works, but I’m assuming you’re making less money. So then if another chocolate company looks at you, they think, oh, but, you know, we want 20 percent.

 

Ynzo

But if we grow 50 percent year on year, isn’t that the more interesting number?

 

Ynzo

Isn’t it in the end, the absolute amount of euros that you have in your bank account as a commercial company, that might be more interesting than a relative amount, isn’t it a note about doing business where only you profit in your value chain and other people are actually working in situations like modern slavery? So I think for me, as from the human perspective, it is absolutely unacceptable to be in a business where people are actually suffering on the other end of the value chain.

 

Lova

I agree.

 

Ynzo

 And I think those things are much more important than financial figures on your bank account today.

 

Lova

But so when it got started, how many years after it got started, did you start joining in?

 

Ynzo

 Me personally?

 

Lova

 yeah,  when you started writing the plans that you said.

 

Ynzo

so let me think back, I think overall that must have been about 10 years ago. I think.

 

Lova

So that is …

 

Ynzo

Because I got involved …

 

Lova

into the inception of the idea.

 

Ynzo

Exactly. Exactly.

 

Ynzo

So it is about five, six years into the start of Tony’s when Henk Jan Beltman as a chief chocolate officer first took over the minority share and then the majority share.

 

Lova

Ok, and so you walk in and what do you see? How big was the team? What were they struggling with?

 

Ynzo

I think the first time I was got involved was when the team was about five, or six people I think.

 

Lova

 Wait, they were five years old as a company, but there were only five people.

 

Ynzo

Yeah,

 

Lova

How? Because obviously when you look from the outside, it looks so big, so then you assume, which is, by the way, what happens all the time when we run our events, you see all these successes and they have all exponential growth. And somehow I don’t know why, when you look at Tony’s, you also think, oh, my God, this is exponential growth.

 

Lova

But yet now it’s like, oh, five years later into the inception, there were only five people.

 

Lova

How…. why was it only …

 

Ynzo

Ok, But if you take the technical term of exponentiality, you think back from today and then you end up at about five people after five years.

 

Ynzo

So if you start with half and you go to one and then to two to four and into eight.

 

Ynzo

So we were I think there in a year, four or five at around that amount of people.

 

Ynzo

And now we’re at about 160 people.

 

Ynzo

So I think that line is more or less exponential.

 

Lova

Yeah, so so actually five people after five years, you would say is a pretty steady and healthy growth?

 

Ynzo

Well, it depends on, No. It depends on where you come from. And for us, you know, growth in a sense isn’t our goal. Our goal of growth isn’t just to grow. Our goal of growth is to make an impact. So for us, growth has to do with making more impact year on year. And it’s been a while.

 

Ynzo

I mean, in the first years we were struggling as a company and only in the last six, seven, eight years have we grown so incredibly fast.

 

Lova

And what changed?

 

Ynzo

 I think the change was when Henk Jan took over as chief chocolate officer. I think then did the whole entrepreneurial side of the business much more accelerated. It was then that we realized that we needed to grow to make that impact, to make sure that we could show the industry that it was a proper, viable business that you could run in the chocolate industry.

 

Lova

But so what were the changes that you saw happen? Because of our experience, it was very much ok, so we could start as a small kind of charity event, give back wherever possible. But then on the other side, it was very much like, yeah, but if we don’t go as big as we can, then nobody will see or hear that these changes are possible and what I’m hearing from you is a very similar thought process.

 

Lova

Like it has to go big just to prove a point.

 

Lova

But then …

 

Ynzo

exactly

 

Lova

Why?

 

Lova

And especially when it’s so impact-oriented…

 

Ynzo

because in the end, you need to show within, and I mean, if you need to show in an old system that you can change towards the new system, but still within the parameters of the old system. So we need to show the chocolate industry, which is a very competitive and commercial industry, that you can change within their parameters, which still has to do with being commercially sound, being on shelves in the supermarkets, being visible.

 

Ynzo

We need, it’s our end goal in our strategies to inspire other companies to act themselves and to take their responsibility when it has to do with human rights when it has to do with eradicating any form of forced child labor within your value chain. And by showing that you can do that, being a very sustainable company, being one of the best employers within the Netherlands, that you can also move within those parameters of the old economy.

 

Lova

Ok, so let’s go a little bit back because obviously, we can talk quite long about the growth and the impact, which I truly believe will eventually happen, uh, because you cannot ignore when it’s being done. So you’re mentioning things like becoming one of the best employers in the Netherlands, as well as walking in when I was five people. How do you go from walking in five people to now one hundred sixty people and these clear culture? Well, I guess shifts or you know, there’s a clear culture that you can see even when you walk into supermarkets and you see everybody’s packages. How do you go from five people to 160 and the best employer, like what are the practicalities of it? Do you write a business plan? Do you go to the CEO and say, hey, like what are the tiny experiments that someone like me with a small team can, you know, really implement in the company?

 

Ynzo

Yeah, and I can imagine the question. The thing is, we always get asked, what is the magic trick? Right. What are the three key things to you, what makes you successful? And I gotta honestly say much of the stuff we have experience has all come from the gut and didn’t have a clear pre-written strategy behind it. So a lot of our growth has been organic.

 

Ynzo

But I would say that if you are looking for the magic wand, I think one of the most important things is this very clear mission that we stand behind, this purpose that we have that is such a huge driver in everything that we do, they can use as an acid test for anything that we do.

 

Ynzo

The second is to realize that your team is key here. So we always say for us it’s two pillars, team and impact. Yes. In the end, it’s making that impact, but it’s by having the most inspired and motivated team that you can imagine. So that’s why there’s so much focus on our team. And often when I speak about what we do within our team and what we do in our company culture, people are sometimes challenged by saying, yeah, but in the end, it’s got to be the sales figures, right?

 

Ynzo

In the end, I got to make a profit. And then you see that often those entrepreneurs, the first thing they cut is the effort, whether it’s financial or time, towards making sure that your team is as good as it is. And I think that should be the other way around. So I always take this quote by Richard Branson, who tends to say, I’m not happy because I’m successful, I’m successful because I’m happy and I don’t put my customers first.

 

Ynzo

I put my employees first because they create happy customers. And I strongly believe in that.

 

Ynzo

So by keeping folks on our team and that doesn’t mean always throwing shitloads of money against it.

 

Ynzo

It has to do with a focus on your team, on those company values that you have on that mission that you have. So it’s always first and foremost and you see that everywhere within our team. And it’s really on focus on each other. You see it in these times, in strange times that we’re all working from home during the Corona happening around us. It’s constantly this focus on the team, on each other. Is everybody ok?

 

Ynzo

How are you doing? Checks, body checks, friendship, love, and empathy around you.

 

Ynzo

So it has to do with focus, I would say one having your purpose. So that is the impact. Side two is that team and making sure that you’re right within the details. I think everybody is so focused on making sure that everything is authentic until the smallest detail.

 

Lova

Yes. So I want to cover a little bit of the whole Corona situation, because obviously with a bigger company, it’s different. But, a little bit later, I guess my question was right now, so what I ask maybe in these type of situations because obviously, culture is very hard to explain, but have you done experiments that were really like pivoting or I can imagine when you’re hiring, we have a recruitment funnel that is almost three weeks long for employees. And in there we test personalities and not specifically their grades or anything. So what were the experiments that you did where you thought, whoa, ok, this is really going to be pivotal or, and what do you do when you know somebody slips through? How do you catch the person that doesn’t live the mission or the vision?

 

Ynzo

Well, I think those are a lot of questions in one. Honestly, I think, yes, onboarding, but onboarding is also such a strange term.

 

Ynzo

But that has also grown organically.

 

Ynzo

I mean, in the last three years, three to four years, we’ve grown from, I have 30 people to 160 or something, so you have to set up some kind of processes for people and we call that in our case, the typical Tony’s time. So for at least one week, you get a deep dive into the background of cocoa, into how you make chocolate, into how we work as a team. You have this body assigned to you that helps you through any technicality.

 

Ynzo

Where can you find the files you need, etcetera… and how do things work within Tony’s and you drink as much coffee with as many Tony’s as you can.

 

Ynzo

You can within a week just have an automatic deep dive into the company culture. That is one. But it’s also about having these four company values that we have.

 

Ynzo

So that has to do with being entrepreneurial, being willful, being outspoken and Tony’s makes you smile to use those as, I don’t know, the bar’s measurements to see how anybody would fit anyhow within it, within the recruitment process. And obviously, with it, I mean, sometimes there’s not a fit and we do this constant check every year, you know, is it still a good fit for where you are within your job?

 

Ynzo

Because it often doesn’t have to do with you being a quote-unquote wrong fit, it also has to do with the company around you evolving and changing. So your job might change more quickly than you could change or maybe you change more quickly than your job does. So there’s a sanity check on you or your job also very often. And within the company, there are people that go sideways, go up ways, go everywhere and it has to be with it just plain sanity check on there as well.

 

Lova

And you do that check every year or every …

 

Ynzo

At least. So you have at least once a year. But we used to have two moments a year that you really had this check. But I think it’s an ongoing process between you and the people you work with around you, your team, anyhow.

 

Lova

Ok, so, just out of curiosity, would you ask them then and what happens if the person says, yeah, I don’t really like it here, my boss sucks or something like…

 

Ynzo

[Laughing]

 

Lova

yeah, how do the conversations go?

 

Ynzo

Oh, it’s a conversation like you would have with anybody else. I mean, there isn’t a very huge rigid structure behind it. You just make sure that at least twice a year you have this chat and this check-up with how you’re doing.

 

Ynzo

And we used to have a rating that was linked with it. We dropped the rating and just to have a sanity check on how are you doing?

 

Ynzo

But we do have what we do, for example, we work with annual goals and we work with quarterly goals for you personally.

 

Ynzo

And we see whether how you set up those goals together with your manager and see how they actually work out every quarter and every year.

 

Ynzo

And I would personally advise people to have this almost on a weekly level so what you are focused on. So that also helps you with your focus. We call those the big threes and we see how that works out and sometimes it doesn’t work out.

 

Ynzo

And then we see how anybody can help you around you to make you reach those goals.

 

Ynzo

But the discussions, the checks that we have are just discussions, literally.

 

Ynzo

You just have a cup of coffee with your manager and or the person that works with you and see how that’s working out.

 

Lova

Why did you try to rate though?

 

Ynzo

Yeah, because it was a bit too rigid in an old school, we felt it just needed a more open discussion. We do have 360 evaluations around the company as well. We also ask input from people around you that you can use in these discussions and see how people can measure up to company values and their own goals and how it works out for them.

 

Lova

Ok, cool. So it’s a pretty much a checkup twice a year maybe to make sure that everybody fits

 

Ynzo

Exactly.

 

Lova

Yeah. And then within the teams, obviously you probably have the lunches and the talks and then things like that happen. Interestingly, you dropped the ratings, though. It’s very interesting that it became just like a discussion. Which kind of shows also a little bit of a rebel spirit against the traditional? um. Yeah, things which are good because that’s obviously within the industry needs.

 

Lova

So, again, back to the start, you walk in,  five people there. What was the kind of the first things you were doing?

 

Ynzo

Now that you shouldn’t ask me, you should Henk Jan ask the question, because he was the entrepreneur walking in and what I did when I saw the team, in the beginning, was work with them to establish those, for example, those core values that we just spoke about.

 

Lova

So you were the facilitator behind those core values?

 

Ynzo

Exactly what we worked. It came and comes still from everybody within Tony’s. I got to tell you, I think things like the core values of a company never stand still, right.

 

Ynzo

You need to always keep evaluating them and see how it works within the time frame that you’re living in as a company at that moment in time.

 

Lova

So, ok, then you were facilitating those processes and they came. Yeah, usually those core values come from the employees or the founding team. So you were pretty much in the next 10 years of that growth facilitating most of it, or were you also part of some pivotal moments that changed the course of the company?

 

Ynzo

Both, I would say, I mean, I was there externally and then internally and I think the biggest pivotal moment that I would name in the last five or 10 years was real this realization that we’re working towards becoming a global movement. I mean, five years ago, I could not imagine speaking to you today, talking about actually literally becoming a global brand.

 

Ynzo

And in the end, for me, it’s not about Tony’s becoming a global brand. It’s about the thought, the thought leadership that we have that the changing the industry from within, and that movement that comes behind it. That is what is changing at the moment. I see that as a very pivotal moment.

 

Lova

 And, maybe an interesting part for me, how do you see Tony’s being, you know, based in the Netherlands? Is that something that is because the Netherlands is very small. So,

 

Ynzo

yeah,

 

Lova

considering the mission

 

Ynzo

or not even the biggest chocolate consumers.

 

Lova

Yeah. So and considering the mission, would you want to be in a place like San Francisco or in…

 

Ynzo

Yeah, but you can’t choose where you’re born. Right. So this is we were simply born in the Netherlands.

 

Ynzo

But that is the reason why we went, for example, the first country we went to outside of the Netherlands was and is the U.S.

 

Lova

 Really?

 

Ynzo

Yeah, yeah. And that is not the most logical step normally from Holland, you would tend to first go to Belgium and Germany, Scandinavia. First was the other way around. We realized that some of the biggest chocolate producers had their headquarters in the U.S. and we figured, if you want to be copied, you need to be noticed, and to be noticed, you better make a sound in the backyard.

 

Ynzo

So that’s why we went to the U.S. and launched in Portland, Oregon, and as a first place outside of the Netherlands.

 

Lova

But, I mean, Oregon doesn’t sound like L.A. or New York. Why?

 

Ynzo

But Oregon is a very food conscious area of the US.

 

Lova

Really?

 

Ynzo

Portland is a city where there are very conscious foodies. Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of early food movement comes from Portland, Oregon.

 

Lova

So you were part of that growth when you were going to the US? What was happening when you first decided to scale there?

 

Ynzo

We launched in Portland, add several natural chains, so these are supermarkets that are focused on very well, for example, organic food, very conscious food, delis, and we launched there same as we would do in any other country, honestly.

 

Ynzo

And also in Holland is a ground-up movement. It’s a lot of reaching out to consumers, reaching out to people that are involved in the food industry, showing this, telling the story at any stage you can find, and grow it from the ground up. And that is how we launch from Portland in the US. So it’s going around with chocolate and telling the story.

 

Lova

But so you guys flew there or did you hire an agent or?

 

Ynzo

 [Laughing] you tend to do … you tend to fly to Portland, Oregon, nowadays. So we have Peter, a Dutch guy who had been living in the U.S. for a long time, who was our sales guy in Portland. But then we simply opened a full organization and company and office in Portland with somebody responsible for marketing, somebody responsible for sales, finance, operations. So it’s a skeleton over a company that was set up in any country that we launch.

 

Ynzo

And then indeed, you approach retailers, you approach the best stores you can find. And but since as I said in the beginning, we have a zero paid media policy, we don’t do any advertising.

 

Ynzo

So it’s finding the right people, finding it right. And newspapers, writers, journalists to get in touch with and talk to these people with about our mission.

 

Lova

So, you don’t pay at all for any ads, also not …

 

Ynzo

At all. Zero paid media,

 

Lova

But also not like Facebook ads or Google ads?

 

Ynzo

No, zero paid media. 

 

Lova

Isn’t that like starting a business with the kind of like, you know, one hand tied down or something like that? Isn’t that hard…

 

Ynzo

Uh, it might be harder, but we think our story needs more than the 20 seconds of attention that you would get in an ad or the five seconds that you would get in a newspaper or a magazine. For us, it’s going directly into this longer-term relationship with consumers, with organizations, and that takes a bit more time. We might not be the easy path, but we felt it was the path that merits that it has to do with how we work, with the making the impact.

 

Lova

Do you know a company called Charity Water because they released…

 

Ynzo

Yeah. 

 

Lova

that documentary videos as Facebook ads and went viral. Did you see that?

 

Ynzo

No, I haven’t seen that, but I do know charity,

 

Lova

so, yeah, but what they did is they also don’t advertise that much, I think, but they have this documentary video that was like 20 or 30 minutes about the founder and why he believes in clean water and everything.

 

Ynzo

But have you seen our documentary?

 

Lova

No, I haven’t. I thought,

 

Ynzo

Oh, there you go. So that’s documentary that was online.

 

Ynzo

And if you become a serious friend of Tony’s on our website, there’s a page with a whole toolbox where also you can find a documentary.

 

Lova

So it’s Tony’s…

 

Ynzo

And it’s been aired on national television in Holland.

 

Lova

What is the website then? Tonyschocolonely

 

Ynzo

 Tonyschocolonely.com

 

Lova

Ok, so the way you spell this, Tonyschocolonely

 

Ynzo

Seriously,

 

Lova

 It is more for the listeners.

 

Ynzo

So it’s Tonyschocolonely.com

 

Lova

Great, and I am on the website right now. So where do I scroll for the documentary?

 

Ynzo

 You become a serious friend. That is the most important step.

 

Lova

Where is the serious…

 

Ynzo

On our website, you become a serious friend, is that consumers that are spreading our mission amongst their friends and family, for those are in our core of brand ambassadors, I would say.

 

Lova

So you have to click on our mission and our…

 

Ynzo

Let me have a look together. So it’s our mission, no “Doe mee” in Dutch, let me switch to the English website so we can do this in English. It’s “join in” and then let’s be serious friends. You join us, become a serious friend. And once you’re logged in, you can find our documentary, which you can see.

 

Ynzo

But I would also recommend people to have a screening with their friends at this moment. I would say have it from your home with your friends at the same time while you’re munching down on a bar of chocolate.

 

Ynzo

And then so as serious friends, you can watch a documentary. But it’s you can also, I think, find it on Google Play and other pay-TV sites. If you want to watch it for free, you need to log in as a serious friend.

 

Lova

How come it’s behind “sign up” well. Why do people have to sign and why is it not like on the website?

 

Ynzo

Well, I don’t know what the reasoning behind that was.

 

Ynzo

I think in the beginning it was simply because it was a documentary. It was on pay-TV. It’s been aired on national television on Holland a couple of times. So there was visible and also after the fact and I think left and right, you might find it also directly.

 

Ynzo

But what we want to do is engage these people and ask them to join in. And that’s why we have it in our toolkit as a serious friend.

 

Lova

Clear. But you’ve never thought about running those types of things as the document, sorry, as paid ads because I can imagine those things going viral, like…

 

Ynzo

Yeah, but again, we have a zero paid media policy, so we don’t do pay that.

 

Lova

Yeah, I guess so.

 

Lova

Note interesting. But and I guess it works because you’re growing so you just have to be more strict about who you reach out to and how you portray yourself.

 

Ynzo

This is exactly my answer when people ask me, so does it work, I said, well apparently it does. Yes. We became the market leader.

 

Lova

Yeah, true. I like the focus on the mission as well. It’s on the main website right away. So you can only see that, I am interested now. So I know the mission, everything. I have not gone into the background yet, but before we do, I’m still interested in it, now it’s the 25th of March 2020. So obviously Corona has gotten pretty bad in the Netherlands.

 

Lova

How especially… like from our perspective it was like from one week to another, things were changing now on our side were mostly digital already since January, which was a policy that we’ve been adapting to for the last, I think, nine months, and officially rolled out in January, but we are a much smaller company. So how does that work with like our sales up, our sales down, how is the team performing, how what is going through your minds when this happened?

 

Ynzo

Right. Well, it’s had a huge impact overall. I got to tell you, and those people that have been stricken by much more than we have, so there’s no pity necessarily on our end at all.

 

Ynzo

I think if you look at sales, we do see a decline. There’s we don’t know yet because we’re in such early stages how long term that decline is, because what you see is that supermarkets are being replenished after they have been completely emptied in the last one and a half weeks by consumers. First being replenished with the most necessary goods.

 

Ynzo

So vegetables, toilet paper, cleaning material, etc.. We did see a complete sell-out on chocolate as well because I presume most people still will keep eating chocolate.

 

Lova

Yeah, I can imagine.

 

Ynzo

Perhaps even more …

 

Lova

I can imagine Tony’s would be sold out. So how are these sales declining?

 

Ynzo

We were sold out. If I look at supermarkets around where we saw us being completely sold out, but we don’t know whether that was because there were more sales or whether there was just no stocking from the back end. Right. There was no replenishment from the back end. So we don’t know that yet.

 

Ynzo

We, on the one hand, you could assume that there are more sales because people are more at home. So would eat more chocolate at home.

 

Ynzo

But we don’t know yet. For example, we have a big chunk in our business that has to do with travel and duty-free. There is zero there at the moment so that those sales have completely imploded. There are direct sales from our stores.

 

Ynzo

That is not existent at the moment because our stores have closed.

 

Ynzo

But the biggest sales that we have are supermarkets.

 

Ynzo

So we’re just looking at what’s happening over there. There is still the opportunity to buy online from our webshop, which is still going on.

 

Ynzo

So we think that overall it will not have a huge impact on sales in that part of the sales because the majority is done through supermarkets. But at the same time, we’re a business that is still very much in a growth base. So the new supermarkets coming on board are more hesitant. You don’t have a face to face talks with the new supermarkets. So that is on hold. So…

 

Lova

Why is it on hold? though wouldn’t you as a supermarket want more chocolate if it’s getting sold out?

 

Ynzo

No, but I mean, at new supermarkets, I’m talking about your discussions with new supermarkets now because they are focused on their logistical chain at the moment, I can imagine they have bigger things to focus on now than put in new materials on their shelves. So they are focusing on their logistics systems. They don’t know where this is leading to either. So everybody’s slightly hesitant at the moment and not knowing where this is leading.

 

Ynzo

So that normally means you’re kind of in lockdown and a standstill and we see that happening. We completely appreciate and understand why that is happening. And at the same time, though, if you look at us as a company, it’s 160 people that are all working from home.

 

Ynzo

So that does have an impact.

 

Lova

Every single one from home? nobody goes…

 

Ynzo

every single one.

 

Lova

And since when? since the announcement or before already…

 

Ynzo

Since, what are we Wednesday 25th for one and a half weeks since the Friday one and a half weeks ago, almost two weeks ago.

 

Lova

And was that like a shop or did your guys have systems in place already? Like how was the step towards that?

 

Ynzo

Well, normally nobody is prepared for a situation like this, let’s face it. But we do have a system where we all work through, for example, Microsoft Teams. So for us, the infrastructure was already there to be able to work from home. We all have laptops so we can all work from home anyhow.

 

Ynzo

But for me, in my job, for example, I tend to travel the world and be on stage at conferences and they are all canceled.

 

Ynzo

So I’m doing Tony’s talks online now in a live stream from my home, which is completely different than what I was used to. And this counts for many people. I mean, the people that are normally running our offices, the people running our stores, things are changing quickly.

 

Lova

And so …

 

Ynzo

So it has a huge impact there.

 

Ynzo

And then you don’t have face to face physical meetings and sit-downs. What we now have is in the morning we have our online meetings and Huddles to see how everybody is doing. We sent a current Tony’s survival package as a bit of Tony’s cheek last week to everybody within our team, tried to keep the spirits up. We did a pop quiz from home trying to keep the spirits up.

 

Ynzo

So it’s making sure that everybody is ok.

 

Lova

How are the Huddles calls? I’m assuming it’s not all hundred sixty people. It’s just teams. Right.

 

Ynzo

We have that.

 

Ynzo

We’ve had that twice now, a complete Tony’s Huddles. We do that once a week at least to make sure that we see the leadership team, see what the heads and chiefs are about, but also just make sure that everybody’s ok and get a rundown from everybody in the company. Every Monday morning, we always within the company have a Monday morning meeting anyhow, that is within the bigger team. So that is Holland. But we have the UK, the US calling in as well and we are.

 

Ynzo

And every morning we have it within the teams and also within the specific teams. So for example, in the marketing team, which is the overall marketing team at 9 a.m. we have an online huddle and then at 9.30, we also have a huddle in the specific team. So that’s design, that is movement, that is products, etc..

 

Lova

So how do you think it has affected productivity or did you introduce new technologies as well to maintain productivity?

 

Ynzo

Now when we have Microsoft Teams, which is the technology that we have anyhow, but for example, we quickly set up for me personally, we set up a live stream with OBS software that we sent through to our YouTube channel of Tony’s, where people can log in and see online Tony’s talks, for example. That was a new technology for us.

 

Ynzo

But having already we’re already working with Microsoft 360 and Microsoft Teams meant that we were already set up to work the way we work now.

 

Lova

So what is Tony’s talks then? Just you talking the whole day or different people talking?

 

Ynzo

[laughing] Well, my job in a sense, is yes. To present about where we come from as Tony’s, where we’re working towards, our mission, the way we work as a team, the way we do marketing, the way we do sales. So that is why I would tend to do on stage anyhow. And those talks, we have now turned on to online talks where I started first for well-graded school students because I wanted to help universities and high schools and grade schools. After all, they were switching to online and they were struggling with finding content for themselves in the beginning as well.

 

Ynzo

So I just offered them, you know, you need content, let me know and I’ll set up an online talk in Dutch, in English.

 

Ynzo

So that quickly became a huge success where yesterday we had an online talk with 250 people from several universities and universities of applied sciences logging in from Belgium and Holland. And I tried to answer all of the questions that they might have. And I’d also do conference calls.

 

Ynzo

I do a lot of these interviews and podcasts these days because of … things don’t standstill. But I think, first of all, let’s focus that we’re all ok and that the team is still healthy and ok everywhere to…

 

Lova

How did the company start treating, Yeah, the Coronavirus when it first happened? Is there a crisis team or whether significant changes in how employees were handled?

 

Ynzo

I don’t think I understand your question.

 

Lova

So a lot of companies from the Corona crisis had even before any measurements from the government started establishing crisis teams, taking specific…

 

Ynzo

Right. Well, we just decided slightly ahead of the curve to start working from home.

 

Ynzo

I don’t know when the first press conference was in Holland, but I think the day before we already decided to close our stores, for example, start working from home and …

 

Lova

How many stores you guys have in the Netherlands?

 

Ynzo

We have two stores.

 

Ynzo

We have one store in our office that the West Host area in Amsterdam, we have one store in the center of Amsterdam, the superstore in the Beurs van Berlage in Amsterdam. And so we closed those down to make sure that we weren’t part of the problem, but more part of the solution.

 

Ynzo

And then I started working for a home as just about everybody does. And we have our people and culture team is focused on how the team is doing. But we also have the IT support that’s constantly working with the Microsoft Teams, how we can work. But again, we have these systems in place. So that wasn’t so difficult for us. I mean, we all have laptops so we can work from home anyhow.

 

Lova

So and then if we would look at like the smaller companies, we have a ton of startups that apply to our events that are entering certain markets like vegan food and healthy food, gluten-free food, that type of thing. Also, startups that replace meat, obviously that’s popular nowadays. So you’re saying a lot of negotiations are stopping at supermarkets. A lot of things are closing. What would you advise those types of starting companies that need to kind of figure things out now?

 

Lova

Like a lot of people are saying, yeah, you have to innovate, innovate, but like, how would they be able to innovate?

 

Ynzo

Yeah, and I think that’s a struggle for everybody at the moment and starting startups and starting entrepreneurs, you know, on a bigger scheme of things, there’s a lot of hardship and obviously, a lot of people falling ill from Corona. At the same time, you need to have a positive view on this, too. I mean, what can we learn from this? How can we work together? I see a lot of people coming together. There’s a lot of social activities that you see happening, whether it’s online or in neighborhoods. There’re people delivering food to other people. I think this is also a moment that we can recalibrate the whole capitalist system that we’re in. And hopefully, the Post-Corona era will mean that we can use this to change for good and an entrepreneurial perspective.

 

Ynzo

And for these startups, I would say I’d rather have an optimistic view and see how businesses can adapt to this and see what they can learn from it and see what they can do to stay afloat. And I see loads of lovely entrepreneurial things going around where people that had no delivery are all of a sudden setting up delivery when it comes to food, people with food trucks that are getting in touch with people in neighborhoods where they could perhaps set up on a square in the neighborhood and deliver to the whole area, et cetera, et cetera.

 

Ynzo

So obviously, I don’t want to downplay the huge negative sides for many entrepreneurs, but there’s a lot of opportunities as well. And this is entrepreneurship and its core, I think.

 

Lova

What do you think the future like the future is going to look like after Corona? What do you think about the changes …

 

Ynzo

I wish I knew,

 

Lova

but from your experiences…

 

Ynzo

I can only hope. I mean, I think you know what there is I think 20th-century capitalism has evolved to a situation where a lot of entrepreneurs are slightly confused, I think, or get slightly confused about what their purpose in life and within society is. And this is not about creating as much wealth for themselves as they can get together.

 

Ynzo

I think within three, four, or five decades, we have gone the wrong way. I mean, it’s all been about growth, growth, growth. And I think hopefully 21st-century capitalism is much more about empathy and love and sympathy and true meaning and purpose and much more human to humankind of business.

 

Ynzo

And hopefully, this moment will open our eyes that indeed it’s not about B2B or B2C, but it’s H2H, human to human. I think what you now see is that, yes, you need a system, you need a social system. This disease is striking everybody as hard.

 

Ynzo

And there’s no discrimination within this disease. And hopefully, we can see that people get together much more.

 

Ynzo

And this hopefully means a new system that we can work in.

 

Lova

So then just out of interest from your experience, do you think the industry, was especially this industry, which is a little bit different than, let’s say, my industry of events or video or whatever, the supermarkets are being sold out, like every day things are empty? Do you think that things will change going forward for them or are they just going to be like, no, we made a lot of money so we don’t have to change anything? So being very traditional.

 

Ynzo

I know I don’t think it’s up to me to judge the supermarket at this moment in time, I think we should wait and give everybody the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know what we should judge at this moment, supermarkets profiting from them selling out. I mean, their role is to deliver food and goods to people that need it.

 

Ynzo

And they’re working very hard to replenish their shelves and their stocks to help people. And you see also supermarkets actively trying to avoid the huge hoarding that we’ve seen in the last two weeks in playful manners or restrictive manners. I mean, I love this sign by a Danish supermarket I think that said, the first product or the first two products have the regular price and the next product is a hundred and thirty-four euros.

 

Ynzo

More playfully, making sure that people don’t start hoarding and act more socially.

 

Ynzo

But even the hoarding part, you see this I think it’s only a small part of society. I think the bigger part of society is joining hands and helping each other. And that’s a more optimistic and positive view. I think

 

Ynzo

So let us not judge the supermarket at this point. Let’s wait till after the fact.

 

Ynzo

Because I think there’s a lot of them that are playing a social role in society.

 

Lova

Right. Yeah, I didn’t mean in the sense that they are profiting from it. They are working hard. What I meant with is a lot of technological innovations happen when this crisis has happened, but usually in industries that are suffering, and in this case, that industry is going to suffer that much for good reason, because obviously, we all need our groceries, and I hope they make a lot of money so that there could be even more groceries so that it doesn’t get sold out.

 

Lova

But at the same time, I’m thinking there could be so much innovation happening within those supermarkets.

 

Ynzo

yeah.

 

Lova

And somehow, like, for instance, the reason I say that is one of the things that is happening now in the Netherlands is every single supermarket cannot deliver because everything’s sold out, every single slot is sold out. So, I’m assuming the logistical value chain of getting food or groceries from a supermarket to somebody’s house can use quite a lot of innovation, just like Amazon is innovating their groceries or, you know logistical things.

 

Lova

But see right now, everybody’s super busy. So that’s not going to happen with those innovations, as you mentioned, because, well, they’re all busy. But I can imagine from the perspective of Tony’s then, you guys have a little bit more time on your hands because one of your stores, you closed it and, the negotiations are mellowing down. Are there specific innovations you’re looking at to become more of an Amazon for chocolates or something like that?

 

Ynzo

[Laughing] we don’t have the aspiration at all to become Amazon of chocolate honestly. I wish perhaps Amazon would become Tony’s of the online ordering platforms.

 

Ynzo

But I think we are at the moment, business as usual. In a sense, we are not looking at technological innovation as much as other companies tend to do. I think we are much more looking at social and societal innovation and how you can innovate in the field of making a physical impact in value chains. That is what we look at. So I would call that social innovation, which is the angle that we choose. What you do see, for example, now we call them Tony’s Unlimited, which is a machine that we have in one of our stores that produces your bar of Tony’s. So you can make more than twenty-two thousand different combinations of chocolate, but also of packaging and you can put your name on that. And for example, I think the team behind that is now working hard on how can we make sure that those home deliveries get brought to people.

 

Ynzo

But again, we are in such an early phase of this Corona crisis at the moment, we are more looking at how we can support local initiatives with our chocolate. How can we put a bit of a smile on the faces of people that are finding hardship at the moment? And then after this, let’s see how we need to have more business innovation.

 

Lova

Well, so quick question. Do you guys have a machine that can make any chocolates ever?

 

Ynzo

Yes.

 

Lova

 So, ok.

 

Ynzo

Ever we have three types of chocolate. So you have white chocolate, you have milk chocolate, you have dark chocolate. You can then choose… But have a look at it on the website as well. You can then choose what layer of chocolate you want beneath and how you can choose three ingredients and create your bar.

 

Lova

And so a consumer can just buy this machine or not

 

Ynzo

No, the machine is a big investment, you know, by the machine you buy the bar that the machine makes. So have a look at our website in the chocolate shop. You have designed it yourself and then you have the Tony’s Unlimited on the right side and the unlimited bars, you can design your own bar of chocolate, your own ingredients, your own wrapper, and then it’s sent to your home.

 

Lova

So why have you never thought about making it available, like making a consumer version of that? I can imagine that would create a new revenue …

 

Ynzo

Because I don’t think…

 

Ynzo

What do you mean with the consumer version? of the machine?

 

Lova

Yeah of the machine, something like for like 50 …

 

Ynzo

Because of where do you source your…  People at home can’t make their own chocolate, right. They can’t buy their cocoa beans and turn that into chocolate. It’s a process to make your own chocolate. We’d rather make the box for them because we’re sure we can make the best chocolate for them.

 

Lova

But don’t you have those? I know that in big warehouses, you can buy, like bags of chocolate and then you put them into a machine that melts it. And then you have like your…

 

Ynzo

But have a look. I don’t think you understand what I mean. Have a look at our Choco shop and how Tony’s unlimited works.

 

Lova

No worries. I’ll check it out.

 

Ynzo

This is not about just making a mold and putting your chocolate in there, making your own bar. It’s really what kind of ingredients you want in there. What kind of wrapper do you want around it, print your own wrapper, etc.?

 

Lova

Make sense. So I have two more questions that I wanted to ask now I did have you on the call. So, when you got into the company, I can imagine you either saw somebody who went to Ghana or went there yourself or something that made it all real for you? Do you have a story like this you can share?

 

Ynzo

I think this is also essential. I think once you’ve been there on the farms and spoken to the farmers that that grow the cocoa beans, that is life-changing, I think because that makes that relationship with those farmers so real. So I indeed, I was in Ivory Coast, I haven’t been to our corporations in Ghana yet, but I’ve been to cooperatives in Ivory Coast. And that is good to see what is happening on the ground.

 

Ynzo

And it’s also put things in perspective. And we have people on the ground there constantly. We have an impact team at Tony’s that is constantly in these building these relationships with these cooperatives. But many and I would say almost every Tony’s has always been to our cooperatives in Ghana and Ivory Coast.

 

Lova

Can you share a story that changed that for your immediate real?

 

Ynzo

Well, I was in Ivory Coast, it’s good to see even just the distances that you travel in a country like Ivory Coast, the condition of the roads you see, that it’s not as easy as things sound, just get cocoa beans from one place to the other. And then you see the cooperatives that you see the farms and you see the situation that these people live in.

 

Ynzo

And you should expect lovely white cottages with flowers around it from the farmers that we work with. It is a lengthy process to change that system and to make sure that the poverty diminishes for everybody over there. So it is a different level of poverty that you see there. And whatever I’ve seen in the rest of the world.

 

Lova

Can give an example? What did you see? And like…

 

Ynzo

Well, I mean, I think if you take what I had seen up till then in my life anywhere, whether it’s in Asia or South America, what I had seen, where I traveled, you always still have stores selling, for example, Oreos and Pringles chips. Right. And what you see in Ivory Coast, once you leave Abidjan, there are no brick and mortar buildings that you see anymore, almost. These are huts by the road, motorcycle repair stores, roads that are torn apart until the next election moment again, dirt roads that when it has rained, it takes you a full day to travel 50 kilometers.

 

Ynzo

And these are farmers that grow cocoa beans on tiny plots of land that have very little means for themselves.

 

Ynzo

So just increasing their revenue and helping them increase their own productivity is essential to get them to where we want them to get. It’s a different level of poverty that you see over there.

 

Lova

But so what? What does Tony’s do exactly? They just give them more money or do you build roads or do you go…

 

Ynzo

So we pay… the first and most important thing is to build this long term and direct relationship with these farmers. So we buy these cocoa beans from them where you pay a higher price for the cocoa beans. On top of the fair trade premium that I mean, all our beans are fair trade certified. So you pay about at the moment about a 20 percent fair trade premium to those farmers. But on top of that, we pay an additional Tony’s premium.

 

Ynzo

That is bridging the gap between the fair trade price and the market price and the living income reference price that we set up with the Fair Trade Organization that we think every chocolate producer should be paying. We pay on average, I would say about a 50 percent premium on top of that market price that the farmer would normally get.

 

Ynzo

We also help them increase their profit, their productivity by giving them schooling, education programs, awards for the best farmers to inspire them to increase their productivity, showing them different farming techniques that they could use, helping them use inputs for their farms. But also, for example, a bit of the premium goes to empowering the female farmers there and the wives of the male farmers to start up their businesses.

 

Ynzo

Part of it goes to improving their health insurance. How do you call that the health situation?

 

Ynzo

When we tell a farmer, listen, you need to send your kids to school and they tell us, you know, but the nearest school is 30 kilometers down the road. We help them build schools locally, we help them build canteens in their schools, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s up to the cooperatives and the farmers what to do with the premium that we pay to them. So they get to decide, I mean, this is an entrepreneurial relationship.

 

Ynzo

They can decide what they want to do with that money. Part goes to the farmer in cash, part goes to the farmer in goods.

 

Ynzo

So materials that they can work with, inputs, fertilizer, machetes, wellies, whatever they need.

 

Lova

And so what have you guys done so far then? Practical examples of how many schools have you built? and do you have those numbers?

 

Ynzo

Top of my head, I don’t know that. You need to look at our annual report that’s on our website. That states all of these things. What we do mostly, for example, is installing a system that we call our child labor monitoring and remediation system that is now all the cooperatives and all the farmers they work with have those systems in place where you can see whether you run into incidents.

 

Ynzo

There’s in our annual report, you can read exactly the amount of remediation that we’ve done up to also on our website by the way.

 

Lova

Yeah.

 

Ynzo

You can see what we’ve done very specifically on each on each situation that we run into. You can see exactly the amount of euros that we paid in premiums to our farmers at the beginning of the revelation. Let me see what I can have a quick look at what I would just recommend you read up on our website when you want to dive into these exact figures.

 

Lova

I have it in front of me right now.

 

Ynzo

Go for it.

 

Lova

It’s very nice. I see here, so Tony’s has 18.8 Percent achieved market share. And you bought fifteen hundred tons of cocoa. The one that interests me here.

 

Ynzo

No, we bought a lot more tons. We’ve bought fifteen hundred tons of open-chain cocoa. That’s the platform that we’ve launched with Albert Hejin, for example, and where we invite other companies to also join. I think last year we bought five and a half thousand metric tons of beans.

 

Ynzo

 I would just recommend reading up on our website.

 

Lova

Great. And then, small question, because we actually get a lot of these companies that… What do you think of companies that they start as a startup and they sell shoes or something? A lot of these shoe companies do that as well. And then what they do is they donate for every pair you buy, you get, you know, a pair get sent to Africa or something that.

 

Lova

What do you think of those companies? Or that business model specifically because a lot of startups are jumping on that wagon and I’m never sure if it’s good or bad.

 

Ynzo

Me neither, and I don’t think it’s up to me to have an opinion about this, I think you need to always see and keep reevaluating that business model specifically because indeed there are good sides and bad sides to that business model. I think you’re referring to a company that indeed donates a pair of shoes for every pair of shoes that’s sold in Western society.

 

Ynzo

You need to make sure that you don’t take away business locally from the person that would be making shoes there, for example. I think that is what you’re referring to. And I think you need to constantly …I don’t think it’s up to me to have an opinion whether that’s good or bad. I think every business needs to constantly recalibrate that business model and make sure they don’t have negative impacts there because we might judge this company.

 

Ynzo

But at the same time, there’s also a Dutch lottery that spreads bicycles to villages. And then that bicycle guy in that village doesn’t sell any bicycle for that year. So this is we shouldn’t judge these startups. I think we need to look at the positive impact that they’re making as well at the same time.

 

Ynzo

But let’s make sure that any business model needs to be constantly, I think, reevaluated, then it needs to be able to have the guts to pivot when they realize that there’s a negative impact or undo the negative impact.

 

Lova

So you suggest that if that business model is in place, that they need to look at the metrics of everything that is happening on the ground and whether it’s good or bad and then…

 

Ynzo

Exactly. And then be able to pivot. I mean, let’s face it, 10 years ago, we thought biofuels were the solution to fossil fuels. And what you saw happening is that the first generation biofuels were made from corn and that directly beat into the food chain in South America, for example. And then you need to recalibrate and see what is the best solution. And for example, we can now make biofuels out of algae. We can make biofuels out of the grass.

 

Ynzo

So it also leads to innovations. And we should embrace those innovations, but realize that we need to and we can only embrace those innovations if we start realizing and are open that we need to be able to pivot and steer and change our business models.

 

Lova

Yeah, I agree. So again, almost five questions. So what interests me a lot is which you mentioned in the earlier conversation about serious friends. Now we have also something called ambassadors. These are the people that without them we wouldn’t have grown that much. But how do you get those ambassadors, serious friends? How do you keep them engaged and how do you make sure that they are as effective as possible towards your goals?

 

Ynzo

Well, first and foremost, this is still a work in progress for us, what we saw is that we want to …

 

Lova

 I thought you have fifty-five thousand serious friends in your mission report?

 

Ynzo

No, I think we’re at 35000 at the moment, and I think we’re at 35000 at the top of my head.

 

Lova

It says here, fifty-five thousand serious friends, that’s thirty-five thousand more than we currently have. Oh, that’s our goal.

 

Ynzo

So you’re looking at other goals for this year?

 

Ynzo

Yeah, exactly. And I think we started with 15000 this year or something or 20, and we are now at thirty-five thousand. Anyway, long story short, we’re still really working on what works best. What works best for them, what works best for us. But for example, two years ago we launched a petition in the Netherlands and called “wet Zorgplicht Kinderarbeid”.

 

Ynzo

So this has to do with due diligence within your company to make sure that there’s no child labor in your area of the value chain. And this was a law that was passed in Holland. And we needed our serious friends to sign a petition to up the pressure on the government to make sure that they realize that there are consumers that want this.

 

Ynzo

So that was what we did two years ago that inspired us to set up this serious friend program. And what we do, for example, you have this login that you have, you can then join up, but we’re still seeing what works best for them.

 

Ynzo

Now, for example, we launched a petition at Tonyschocolonely.com/petition where we want to get a million signatures in total to really up the pressure on governments of the U.S. and also the European Union states to make sure that there are laws in place all around the world.

 

Ynzo

Right, where we make sure that there’s enough pressure on organizations all around the world to make sure there’s no human rights violation in their value chain. But it’s still a work in progress. How we’re actually doing this, these serious friends of what we can give back to them. Up to now, what we do is we keep them informed on these things that we’re doing, but we also inform them on the fun stuff.

 

Ynzo

So there’s a bit of a new newsletter involved. There’s also allowing them to come to our annual party before other people, et cetera, et cetera. But it’s a constant and dynamic playing field.

 

Lova

And how do you …

 

Ynzo

First and foremost, it’s people signing up.

 

Lova

So, Yeah. How do you get them to sign up? Because there’s a lot of donations out there.

 

Ynzo

Yeah. So it’s we speak about this on our wrappers. I have a QR code in my presentation where people sign up.

 

Ynzo

It’s when we do talk all around the world where we ask people to sign up.

 

Ynzo

It’s we have a truck gone around through the U.S. where people can sign up.

 

Ynzo

If we have any events, we ask people to sign up. It’s any trade shows that we are, we ask people to sign up. So it’s everywhere we have… in our stores, both our stores, we have this wall for serious friends where they can sign up as a serious friend, etc..

 

Lova

Ok, so pretty much wherever possible QR codes and ask people?

 

Ynzo

Yeah, and I used to be adamantly against QR codes a couple of years ago. I thought they were outdated and now I think they were useful again for this forum, for this part…

 

Lova

Why did you change your mind?

 

Ynzo

I thought QR codes at a certain point were everywhere useless, and now I can put them in a presentation and because smartphones now don’t need an app anymore to directly from the QR code get to where you want them to, that you can just point your camera and you have a direct link to the QR code that helps.

 

Lova

So you pretty much have thirty-five thousand serious friends just from word of mouth technically from speeches and a wrapper?

 

Ynzo

We have 70 million euros in sales just from word of mouth.

 

Lova

So what would you recommend? Like a business that wants to grow and use word of mouth? Would you say do more speeches, apply for more awards?

 

Ynzo

I would say. I would, first of all, have a story that’s authentic and real. So it’s not about just telling the story. I mean, obviously, for us, telling the story is essential and we hope to do it nicely. But if your story isn’t right, then it’s useless to tell that story anyhow.

 

Lova

How do you know the story is right?

 

Ynzo

So if… Well, we have to go back to the very first moment we started speaking, I mean, we’re a business that’s there to change things in the world, right? So if you have a very clear purpose and you have a very authentic purpose, that means something for the society and a planet around you. I think that is the story that’s great to spread. Right. If you’re just making hand grenades and cluster bombs, I don’t think your story is very fitting in society.

 

Lova

Yeah. Get that. So pretty much something that contributes to the world that we can all agree on that is beneficial to the world.

 

Ynzo

 And I think as an entrepreneurial activist, I would say any business from now on or maybe already and definitely in the future needs to have a purpose that has to do with creating a better world.

 

Lova

Yeah, ok, so then you have your story. What do you think would be the next steps that you would recommend?

 

Ynzo

 Tell it …

 

Lova

So speeches at conferences or …

 

Ynzo

anywhere, tell it.

 

Ynzo

I mean, we started on any stage. People would give us we would tell our story and anybody would tell our story, everybody in Tony’s and I would say never in a company that wants to tell a story needs to be able to tell that story. And that is by being fully transparent, by having a story that has no hidden features behind it.

 

Ynzo

And then perhaps at a certain point, you could decide to have a guy like me, an evangelist, running around the world telling that story as a full-time job to be able to spread those values. But I would say grab any opportunity you have, whether it’s business or private, to tell that story. I think some Tony’s might not be as fun to stand by at the bar because they would just constantly tell you about how the world of chocolate looks like.

 

Lova

And, ok, what would you say about in the early stages, do you think especially young CEOs are just starting, is it worth it to tell the story at the beginning or should they focus on actually building the business? Or how do you have the balance? because I can imagine …

 

Ynzo

I would focus on building a business that has a benefit to the society around them. That would be my focus. Once you have that business that adds something to the world and society around them, telling that story will become an automatic part of your being. And whether that’s through paid media. Right. I mean, we do it without paid media, but you could still put in ads for the good of the world, right?

 

Ynzo

I mean, there’s no shame in using ads. We don’t do it because we think our story needs a longer time frame because we have a very complex story. But if you have a very simple story that adds anything to the world, feel free to use a paid media if that’s your way. For us, it’s telling the story and as an independent adviser, ages ago when I was an independent entrepreneur, I would also and afterward as a professor to students of new companies and of entrepreneurship, I always tell them, go to any Chamber of Commerce meeting, go to any entrepreneurial platform, go to any conferences or whatever you can find.

 

Ynzo

Just go there and soak up information but also spread your story to the people around you. If you have the time, go to anyone you can walk up to.

 

Lova

 Ok. And then maybe a tip that you have, especially from your position, get to speak a lot at conferences. How do these young entrepreneurs then get all these opportunities?

 

Lova

Do you just email …

 

Ynzo

No, by going everywhere and starting to tell your story to two persons, then you get an audience of five, then you get a living room audience of ten, then you get a classroom of twenty. And in the end, perhaps you might be on stage with a thousand people around you. It’s something you build up gradually. People need to see you and people need to run into you. People need to be inspired by your story.

 

Ynzo

And when your story is inspirational, people will be inspired. They will ask you to tell that story at the next stage and the next stage.

 

Lova

So how long in years did it take you to go from two people to like a lot of people?

 

Ynzo

We went from two people to 160 people now in 15…

 

Lova

 No, I mean, in stages as in you started.

 

Ynzo

Uh… Stages, that differs.

 

Ynzo

It’s not about just the amount of people that are in your audience. Right. I mean, it’s also talking to the right people in an audience and that’s something you gradually build up. And some big stages come by on day one and some take ages. But you can’t put a very specific timeline on.

 

Lova

So, your advice is not …

 

Ynzo

grabbing every opportunity you have.

 

Lova

Your advice is then not to focus specifically on big stages but on industry-specific stages.

 

Ynzo

Look at quantity and quality at the same time.

 

Ynzo

I mean, you need to it’s no use talking to a thousand people that that have no that don’t care and that you are not interested in and they are not interested in you. At the same time, you could find 10 people that might become your biggest brand ambassadors and that might be the best audience you will have in your lifetime.

 

Lova

Ok, so yeah. So pretty much quality and quantity need to be balanced and then tell you to make sure that your story actually helps people and then you tell your story everywhere. And in the meantime, just make sure that the foundation of your business is actually running and showing examples of that story.

 

Ynzo

Exactly.

 

Lova

Cool, now, I think that is actually really interesting, Do you have anything that you would like to add specifically for social entrepreneurs or activist entrepreneurs like you called them?

 

Ynzo

 With the danger that I might open up a new one hour of conversation, I honestly in the last couple well, last year or two years have started to steer away from being called or at least calling myself and also being called a social entrepreneur, because that has the risk of ending up in or being seen as part of a niche.

 

Ynzo

And I honestly think that entrepreneurship as a whole needs to be recalibrated and is or will be social in its core anyhow. So this is what I mean with new 21st-century capitalism, where entrepreneurship will be or already is much more social in its core. And it’s not something you add on to entrepreneurship.

 

Ynzo

So by realizing that, then that puts you out of that thing that we talk about earlier in this podcast was where entrepreneurship and doing good for the world would be two extremes of one spectrum. Right. People often ask how can you combine being sustainable with making money? I think the moment you let go of that being a paradox, then you realize it can be one and the same thing, we’re the living example that it can be. Right, being financially successful.

 

Ynzo

So doing good financially can go hand in hand completely with doing good for the society around you. And once you start realizing that, I think I think it’s good to let go of the division between entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, but realizing that entrepreneurship is or will be social in its core. And then I think that is the entrepreneurs of the future that will be successful. And you can see it around you with companies like Patagonia, Tony’s Chocolonely, Saiper, Dopra, et cetera, et cetera.

 

Lova

But don’t you think …

 

Ynzo

So, my tip would be to let go out of that paradox. And my second tip to starting entrepreneurs in your case would be to never think you’re too small to make a difference.

 

Lova

What do you mean with that?

 

Ynzo

Well, I think anybody can make a difference, whether it’s consumer-level or it’s an entrepreneur, if you think that you’re never big enough … in my slides, I use one slide, one saying by Anita Roddick, the founder of the Body Shop, the lady who died very too young, unfortunately.

 

Ynzo

She once said, if you think something small can make a difference, try sharing your room with a mosquito. Right. And that shows how a very small thing can make a very big difference. And I think anybody, whether it’s a consumer or an entrepreneur, can make a difference on any level, any decision you stand in front of. You can always decide will I make a more sustainable and more social decision or will I have a different driver behind it than being social and sustainable.

 

Lova

And why do you think, um, the shift is happening towards more social? Um…

 

Ynzo

Because we landed in a complete overshoot of capitalism.

 

Lova

What do you mean?

 

Ynzo

Because I think 21st.

 

Ynzo

Because I think there’s more wealth in the world, but it’s not distributed as socially as it can be. And I’m not I am not a social I’m an entrepreneur in heart and soul.

 

Ynzo

And I think anybody deserves the opportunity of thriving as an entrepreneur. But if you look at the division of wealth in the world, sometimes it makes me nauseous and very sad. Right. If you look at the wealth in certain parts of the world and the other poverty of other sides of the world where people don’t have clean drinking water, don’t have normal toilet facilities, can’t go to school. And at the same time, there are people living in ridiculous wealth.

 

Ynzo

I think that is just the wrong signal. I think people are starting to appreciate that. I think the human side of the economy has reached an overshoot in a couple of generations that we’re now seeing an underflow of new true leadership that has to do with empathy, sympathy, and hopefully, I would consider working it much more, working towards a love economy where much more have a human side to it.

 

Lova

Do you think it’s also regional specific? Because I luckily have been seeing the same thing, that it’s going more towards an economy and capitalism where you really help each other, which now the Coronavirus and everything is really starting to show. But do you think that some parts in the world just don’t like they pretend to care but don’t care or the circumstances don’t allow them to care? And so they just accumulate wealth without thinking.

 

Ynzo

Uh, yes and no, I think yes, I mean, if you really zoom out and look at the planet, you obviously see a higher level of wealth in Western Europe and North America and certain parts of Asia and a lesser amount of wealth in Africa, Asia or South America.

 

Ynzo

But at the same time, you also see the same kind of divisions if you zoom in again. Right. You also see that in levels in Brazil or in Africa or in Western Europe, there’s also poverty in Western Europe, which is unacceptable. I mean, just kids going to school in the U.K. without breakfast. The only hot meal they have once a day is in school. I think that’s ridiculous as well. So there’s a lot of stuff to fix it.

 

Ynzo

I don’t think you could really mark it down on certain regions that easily.

 

Lova

That actually brings me to a really interesting question that I always have when I’m dealing with especially. So when we started, there wasn’t a lot of social impact and entrepreneurship. So we decided to create this event where we would allow especially if an entrepreneur had an impact, a positive impact on someone, we would stimulate them and we’d give them pretty much everything they needed to become viable.

 

Lova

But what I also had I had weird conversations with people who said why do you focus on helping specific startups who don’t help, you know, here locally, but they help like people in Africa or Asia or Latin America? And my answer was always, well, the whole mission for us was so that we can facilitate and help somebody who can at least help one human life. But you have these diverse reactions.

 

Lova

Obviously we help startups that help locally, but also we want to help startups that, you know, are international or in Africa or in Latin America. So how do you answer people when you’re in that discussion, how do you answer people that say, oh, no, we have enough problems here? I guess the discussions everywhere. For instance, Elon Musk, who’s doing with SpaceX going to Mars and then everybody answering, we have enough problems here on Earth.

 

Lova

Why are we going to Mars? how…

 

Ynzo

Yeah, but at the same time, you know, we can always criticize everybody down to the ground. But I much more take a positive view there. Yes. You could criticize Elon Musk for wanted to go to Mars. At the same time, this guy is putting his balls on the block constantly as an entrepreneur to make sure that within five years time we started driving electric cars that were comfortable and had a long-range, et cetera, et cetera.

 

Ynzo

Right. So, yes, you could criticize social entrepreneurs that are doing something for people on the other side of the world.

 

Ynzo

At the same time, they are doing something for people, period. And yes, we need people to do more for people locally as well. But we need both. We shouldn’t be criticizing everybody constantly that they’re not doing what you want them to do if they are doing something right for the world as a whole. I mean, we need to take a bigger perspective. We are no longer, I mean, we are no longer separate ships on the ocean.

 

Ynzo

I mean, this whole world is intertwined and interconnected. Right. And you see that with the sustainability discussion. Uh, CO2 emissions don’t stick to your country. I mean, they go all over the world. And this is a global issue we need to face. And that has the same thing with global poverty. It’s a global issue. We need to fix, a yes at the local level as well.

 

Lova

So what have you been in those discussions, what do you tell people, do you just say we’re all interconnected?

 

Ynzo

Yes, that’s what I told you. I tell those people as well and I salute these initiatives. And, yes, we need to do it locally and we need to do it globally at the same time. It’s all intertwined.

 

Ynzo

It’s all one big system.

 

Lova

 Sure, now, I like that. I think that’s actually a really good closing. A very positive note as well on making sure, especially during this crisis, to understand that things are local but also international. And we wherever needed, need to help people. I’m extremely excited that you guys are offering your chocolates also online. You’re not promoting or anything, but I love your chocolates, obviously.

 

Lova

So I’ll be ordering some stuff online because everything’s sold out to … [Laughing]

 

Ynzo

[Laughing] Cool, go for it.

 

Lova

Cool,  anything else you have to add? If not, then we’re going to close here.

 

Ynzo

 Let’s close off, I think we covered everything this long…

 

Lova

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming by. If anybody’s interested in becoming a serious friend of Tony’s, I’ll make sure that the links are below. 

 

Ynzo

Perfect

 

Lova

and, yeah, I’m going to sign up as a serious friend for sure. And I’m super excited …

 

Ynzo

sign up petition becomes a serious friend

 

Lova

 I will, I’m super excited that you are here with us. Yeah. Thank you so much.

 

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