Peter Stevenson:
Thanks for joining us on By Subject, a Silicon Slopes brand and marketing podcast. I’m your host, Peter Stevenson, and in this episode my co-host Alysha Smith, and I had a chance to sit down with Beau Oyler, founder of Enlisted Design and Chief Design Officer of Pattern. We have Beau Oyler here from Enlisted Design and Pattern. He is the Chief Design Officer of both of those organizations. And welcome, thanks for being our inaugural Silicon Slopes marketing podcast, yet-to-be-named podcastguest.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I’m excited.
Peter Stevenson:
I’m Peter Stevenson. I’m a partner at Modern8, and I’m here with Alysha Smiththe managing partner and creative director of Modern8.
Alysha Smith:
Excited to be here. Excited to finally meet the rockstar.
Beau Oyler:
Yes, this’ll be fun.
Peter Stevenson:
Yeah. Yeah, rockstar. That’s, that’s a good point. So the point and emphasis of what we’re trying to do is talk about the marketing in Silicon Slopes community, the great people who are, who are putting that forward. Kind of what we’re trying to do is highlight the companies and people who are making great marketing here. And your name came up and, and as somebody who we’ve seen and, and been excited about what enlisted and you’re doing with patterns, so mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, you know, maybe give us a little bit of background on you, your history, where you grew up, where you went to school, kind of what that initial marketing job was that you were interested in.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Sofrom California, California native, born and raised there. Grew up on the central coast, a little town called Carmel, couple hours south of San Francisco.
Alysha Smith:
I think I’ve heard of it.
Beau Oyler:
Yes. It’s a, it’s a cute little spot. Grew up surfing and hiking and just, you know, golfing and being there on the peninsula. And then went to school and studied architecture first, and then graphic design. And then I was introduced to industrial design. And when, when my architecture teacher said, “oh, you should, you should check out this thing called industrial design.” I discovered it, flew outta San Francisco like the next weekend, went to the academy, took a tour, and I walked in and it was like a revelatory experience. Like this, this is what I’m supposed to do. Because it was the design of physical things.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Physical experiences. And soyeah. And so went to school and, and started my career there. But it kind of starts before then, like my, so my grandpawas in LA and he taught design, which all they ever referenced was design.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
In LA for 30 years at a college there. And I used to go to school with him to the shop, and he drove this cool little 914, Porsche 914. And we’d go and he, and we’d just make stuff. And like, he’d ask, “what do you wanna make?” And I’m like, “well, I want to make a door knocker,” or “I want to make a—” whatever. And we would just go to the shop and make it. And so he kind of like incepted this idea that you can make something out of nothing.
Alysha Smith:
That’s cool.
Beau Oyler:
And I had never heard the term industrial design until I was already at the academy. Went back and visited my grandparents, and I said, yeah, I’m studying industrial design. And they laughed. And I’m like, “well, you’ve heard of it.” They’re like, “what do you think your grandpa taught for 30 years?” Like, they’re all industrial designers, all those students. Yeah. And so it just all kind of came together and clicked.
Alysha Smith:
So is the term industrial design a newer term?
Beau Oyler:
It’s not, no, it’s not. It’s been around since, you know, Dieter Rams and, and the old school, you know, design, it’s, it’s reference to the design of physical objects. So that can be cars, it can be shoes, it can be apparel, it can be packaging, structural packaging. And so industrial designit has nothing to do with industrial or mechanisms or engineering.
Alysha Smith:
Right.
Beau Oyler:
It has to do with creating these like lustful objects that people want.
Alysha Smith:
And you have seen that Dieter Rams documentary?
Beau Oyler:
Oh yeah. Very much so, Objectified. I love it, so good.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. El Ten Eleven did the soundtrack, and it’s so good.
Alysha Smith:
I’ve seen it more than once.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, for sure.
Peter Stevenson:
So yeah, when was that? What was that? So you came outta school, you had industrial design. What was that first job in design, marketing?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
Creating experiences for people.
Beau Oyler:
People. So I had this epiphany in school where I’m there for industrial design. And so it’s just, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re working 20 hour days every seven days a week for three, four years. And it’s all about industrial design. And at the time I was also working at Crate & Barrel just as a, as a, you know, stock as an apron, right? Yeah. And, and so I’m like, gosh, it seems like there’s more to it than just the product. And I started thinking about packaging, I started thinking about branding. These are all terms that I hadn’t even thought of. And so in school, I started, like, my junior year started kinda shifting from just designing the product to then creating an entire in-store experiences where my design I would make and the model of it, but I’d also designed the packaging and I also designed out the POS. I’d also design out this, you know, experience. And so even within school, I kinda had this idea that maybe there’s more to it than just the product. Yeah. But industrial designers will never admit that. Like, there’s so much ego around the product itself, the physical product. And so thenI started my career at Williams-Sonoma as a staff designer designing, you know, kitchen wares.
Alysha Smith:
Is that, is that based in California too?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, in San Francisco.
Alysha Smith:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
So this is all happening in San Francisco? In like circa 2001, 2002, 2003. And then finished up, started working in 2004 at Williams-Sonoma. And then, and launched seven products while I was still in school, some of which are still in the store today at Williams-Sonoma.
Alysha Smith:
Like what?
Beau Oyler:
Like the melamine, nesting, melamine mixing bowls.
Alysha Smith:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
Barbecue tools and their entire soaps and lotions line. I did all of that, like literally hand lathed the models while I was still in school.
Alysha Smith:
Oh my gosh. I had some of that, the soaps.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. Yeah. Good.
Peter Stevenson:
When and when you were there and you were starting to think about brand and experience.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
How did Williams-Sonoma accept some of those ideas? Or did you bring some of that ideas to Williams-Sonoma at the time?
Beau Oyler:
I did, I did, yeah. So I was on the product team, but then also started working with the packaging team at the, about six months in and became really interested in the packaging as well, because I wanted kind of multiple touchpoints for the consumer, and I wanted to curate those, that experience. And so then I went from there, then I went, I knew I wanted to go agency side, like from day one, I knew I wanted to be at agencies. And so then I went to a studio, an agency called New Deal Design, and I was on the first Fitbit team. Like literally the night James Park came into the studio, I was there and got to design the first Fitbit.
Alysha Smith:
Oh my gosh.
Beau Oyler:
It was really, really exciting.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And we did, you know, the whole thing, it was product, packaging, the brand, the logo, everything. And so I’m like, “okay, this is what I want.” Like, I want to do more than just design the product. I really want to create cohesive experiences that consumers are gonna lust after.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And that’s what kind of started that. So then when I was ready, I was lead designer at New Deal, and I was ready to start doing my own thing. I actually didn’t want to conflict with the industrial design side of things. So for two years I worked about 50 hours at New Deal in about 50 hoursnights and weekends doing my own stuff. But it was all branding, packaging, motion graphics, video launch.
Alysha Smith:
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Beau Oyler:
And I was working for Clorox and Nestle and WhiteWave Foods and like big CPG brands.
Alysha Smith:
And how did you get, how did you break in, you know, as a solo freelance, if you will, to some of those big brands.
Beau Oyler:
So at the time, New Deal is like top five studio in the world at the time. And so just the fact that I was lead designer there.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
It’s actually no connections of New Deal at all. It was just within my network, people reaching out and saying, “heyyou know, I’ve got a colleague who needs this, they are thinking about launching a brand in this, like, could we talk?” And so we just started having these conversations and they’re like, “yeah, you know, our budget’s only like 50K.” And I’d be like, “I can work with that.” So it kinda just started little like that. And then and we just started cutting our teeth and then really learning how to do it on the non-industrial design side.
Alysha Smith:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
So then when I broke off of New Deal, then I was able to bring ID in and we were just being able to create these cohesive brands with our clients.
Peter Stevenson:
When you say we, did you jump with somebody else?
Beau Oyler:
I did, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A friend of mine, Jared Allersuper talented designer, industrial designer, we went all through the academy together and then at Williams-Sonoma together, and then at New Deal Together and started moonlighting together. And then we broke off and co-founded Enlisted, and then about seven years later, bought him out and now, and then he moved to the East Coast and is VP of Innovation at a big company there.
Alysha Smith:
And how did, how did your former, how did they take the new, how did they take it? You know, you starting off and starting your own thing. Was it amicable or was it?
Beau Oyler:
It was like on the surface, it was for sure. And I think, you know, part of himthe owner was proud of us and part of him was also pissed. And you know how it is, you have these people that are like, you love ’em, you love working with them. Yeah. But then also it’s like, go do it. Yeah. Like, how can I help you? That’s what I always say. And so it, it was amicable. We couldn’t put any of our work up on the site. So we did get a cease and desist right away, like a week, a week later. So we had to pull stuff off, and that makes it difficult to market yourself, but, you know, it, it just took time for our, our design work to get up there. And that was like, like 15 years ago that this happened.
Peter Stevenson:
2008
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, 2008 is best time to start a company.
Alysha Smith:
Best Time.
Peter Stevenson:
You know, it was probably a really interesting milieu in, in the, in the Valley during, you know, Oakland and San Francisco during oh-eight. There’s a lot of huge startups now that started as that group. So tell me what that world was like in Oakland, San Francisco in, in oh-eight, oh-nine as you were launching.
Beau Oyler:
It was scary, right? Cause you had the housing crisis, and you have kind of the economic meltdown that was happening, the play that we didn’t strategically make the decisions based on what was happening in the economy, but what worked was that you, we had a lot of big agencies around us that big brands were, were working with, okay. And, and they are like, you know, you can’t even call IDEO for under a million dollars.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
You can’t even call Frog for under a million dollars. You can’t even call, you know, Wieden + Kennedy, I guess they were small at that time, but it’s like the budgets were so big that they beganespecially in the big CPG brands that began thinking, “okay, you know, who, who else is out there, whether it’s freelancers or little studios that we could do good work with, but isn’t, isn’t gonna cost us the same amount.” And so it was actually really good timing for a small studio to start popping up. And because we had been moonlighting for two years, we had a pretty good roster. So then when we were full-time, it was just like, let’s go.
Peter Stevenson:
Hmm.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, so it was actually really good timing for us.
Alysha Smith:
Oh, interesting.
Peter Stevenson:
And so, you know, I’ve heard that from other agencies where they talked about that era as likepeople, you know, bigger brands looking for smaller people. We’re in the middle of sort of that right now. Are you seeing some of that same, you know, bigger brands looking for smaller agencies, including you as, you’re a kind of a bigger agency now, Enlisted and then your pattern, and, you know, tell me a little bit about what you see in the marketplace now compared to there.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, so we are, and we aren’t, so Enlisted is only 60 people between both studios. So we’re still not a big agency and certainly not as big as, you know, the Turner Duckworths or like the big, big agencies. And so we still kind of have this boutique feeling to us.
Peter Stevenson:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
We obviously we’re, we’re headfirst into an economic turndown, right, or downturn. And we’re feeling that as consumersknock on wood Enlisted is will post, you know, greater revenue and EBITDA than we’ve ever posted in the history of Enlisted this year. Work is scaling rapidly. I mean, it, it’s, but, but it’s because we’re shiftingwhat we do a bit, and we’ve had a couple good breaks over the last few years that we’ve leaned into, like our partnership with Mr. Beast, you know, he’s the number three YouTuber in the world. He’s got a hundred million followers as subscribers. And he came to us because one of our clients Stance, Stance Socks, one of their people left and went to Knight Media, which is the, you know, they represent Mr. Beast. And they said, “Hey, we think that there’s an opportunity for us to use his his channel to launch brands. What do you think?”
Alysha Smith:
Oh, interesting.
Beau Oyler:
I’m like, well, we create brands from the ground up, so let’s do this thing. Yeah. So we first launched Mr. Beast Burger, then Mr. Beast Bar, he sold 4 million chocolate bars in the first 90 days, Mr. Beast Burger scaled within a year to 1,200 locations. And they just opened his first physical location last Sunday where he had 10,000 people come to his restaurant.
Alysha Smith:
Oh my gosh.
Beau Oyler:
And he sold 5,500 burgers sold out, broke the Guinness World Record without even trying. And so part of it is like, yes, we still have our, you know, our pretty chickens and our, like, big, big CPG brands. But then we also do a lot of innovation work with smaller brands as well as now innovating our own brands. And then we’re, we’re, I’m always looking to like, what’s next? And how can we not just be part of it as if we’re hitching our wagon, but like, how can we create that thing that’s next? And that’s where our partnership with Mr. Beast has been really interesting over the last couple years of launching these brands. And it’ll just accelerate.
Alysha Smith:
Where was this first restaurant?
Beau Oyler:
So in New Jersey.
Alysha Smith:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. It’s like the American Mall or something like that.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah, I know that mall. Okay.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. Yeah. So that was it. It was insane. You gotta check out the footage.
Alysha Smith:
I will.
Beau Oyler:
And it was cool that, so we did the whole thing. It was about a year in the works, my team was up all weekend, multiple weekends, getting all the menus and everything else. The print, the packaging.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Digital, everything all ready for it, and then shipped it. They, I mean, literally shipped it like Friday night, and then they launched Sunday morning. He didn’t even say a word as a complete secret until Saturday night. He posted a 20-second clip at the end of a 30-minute video where he is like, “oh, and by the way, we’re going live Mr. Beast’s Burger tomorrow with our first location.” 10,000 people showed up.
Alysha Smith:
Wow. Oh my gosh.
Beau Oyler:
It’s insane. And then this morning they just announced a partnership with TSG Capital, a hundred million dollar investment in Knight Media. So it’s exciting.
Alysha Smith:
That is so exciting.
Beau Oyler:
Super exciting. But it’s also like, “okay, here’s this, this downturn. Like what are we doing? What’s next?” But we’ve been thinking about what’s next years ago. And so now we’re, we’re, it’s like it’s coming to fruition.
Alysha Smith:
Wow. That’s really exciting.
Beau Oyler:
It’s pretty exciting. Not to say that it can’t all go away. We all know that as entrepreneurs. It can all go away tomorrow.
Peter Stevenson:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
But right now, you know, team strong, pipeline strong and just really, really cool opportunities.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. But completely like innovating and always thinking about what’s next kind of would soften the blow of any, anything that might like come your way. Yeah, it does. In a negative way. Yeah. Yeah,
Beau Oyler:
For sure. Because you’re always thinking about what’s next. And, and lots of times, like our clients say we’re on our sixth or seventh project with Amazon right now, and their briefs are a crack at, like, the brief will come through and it’ll say like, help us envision the future of Alexa. Period. And so, not only are we on the, like, that was our first one, probably five, six years ago, and not only on the forefront of creating what’s next for Alexa.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
But then once we’ve created that pipeline, now we have pipeline.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah, exactly.
Beau Oyler:
They need to develop those products. So even though they have a hundred designers in house, they want the fresh thought and they want the innovation, and they want the superior design. So they’ll come to us for those hero projects.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
So let’s go back to 2008. You launched Enlisted. You’ve got some people who are very interested in what you’ve been doing. You know, you’ve, you’ve come from a, a really big, you know, ID firm. And so how did you think about what enlisted was going to be, you know, you know, you knew that you wanted it to be all of these experiences, but how did you think about what, how you were gonna set it up? How you were gonna market yourself as an agency, how you were gonna think about, you know, what Enlisted was going to be for the public?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. It’s a really good question. We’re still evolving that story. And that strategy, that plan. So I think to, to fully articulate that you need to understand this kind of three generations of design within the Bay Area. Generation One is IDEO and Frog. Okay. And all of us kind of came from IDEO or Frog. So I come from Frog Loin.
Peter Stevenson:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
And the difference was IDEO is like super strategy, a little bit stiff, very methodic. Right. That’s why they have 52 cards to the, the process and all that kind stuff. And then you got Frog and Hartmut, he’s just total badass. And he is just like, I don’t give a shit what anybody thinks we’re doing cool stuff. And so they were polar opposites. And so they kind of brought in different types of designers. So I come from the Frog side, where when you look at Gen one, then you look at Gen two from one team at Frog, one team that all worked together around 2000, within a two-year period of time, you had five studios break off. So you got Astro, Fuse Project. You’ve got New Deal, Whipsaw. And there’s one more that I’m not thinking of. So, you know, in their gen two, right?
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
So it’s like, oh my gosh, like this is the next generation of design. You’ve got, you’ve Yves Behar on Target commercials, and you’ve got documentaries being made and Objectified comes out and you’re introducing the world to industrial design. And, and so that was cool. And, and so, so being part of New Deal, like I was kind of part of that Frog mentality, but there were a few things that were missing for me. First of all, it was all ego driven. It was a founder that was all about themselves and all about what they wanted. And I thought there’s gotta be a better way in the sense that what about the consumer who’s advocating for the consumer?
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
What does she want? How about if we design something that she’s gonna love versus this is gonna be great for my portfolio.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
That was number one. Number two, there’s this thing called collaboration. And if we pick our clients right, then they’re really smart. Wouldn’t we wanna sit at the table with them and say, “Hey, let’s co-create something.” Let’s bring all of the knowledge that you have, and we’ll filter it through all the knowledge that we have, and we’ll create something that’s better than us. Just bestowing a design upon you.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And soand so that was the second part. That’s literally why we call, why, why I named it Enlisted. Because we enlist our clients into our team. We build their trust, and they enlist us into their business team.
Alysha Smith:
Oh, love that.
Beau Oyler:
And so that kind of started happening a little bit on the side, and that’s where the third generation, so we were the first ones to break off a third generation. We’re the largest studio of the third generation. You’ve got Enlisted, you’ve got Branch, you’ve got BoxClever, you’ve got Level, like, there’s a bunch of really good studios out there right now that are just doing incredible work. And then I, like, I am a designer, but I would say I’m more of an entrepreneur than a designer. And that’s where once Enlisted, you know, once we kind of got our feet on the ground, we started making investments. And so we had an internhis name’s Jake Miller, awesome guy. He was at Stanford at the time, and he was helping us write a business plan for a brand that we were gonna launch outta the studio called Erio, which we ultimately did launch. And it was on Shark Tank. And we grew the company, spun it off and listed and then sold it. But Jake helped us build a business plan for it. Toward the end of his internship, he came to us and said, “Hey, I’ve got an idea, and I’m working with the Stanford D School to do this, that, and the other. Do you wanna partner?” So yeah, let’s partner. So we partnered to, to found Fellow products. And there’s like the best coffee products, the best design, like every, like, think about every appliance today. Like, you don’t want it on your countertop except for Fellow.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. Can Fellow please make other appliances?
Beau Oyler:
They’re working on it. The pipeline’s deep.
Alysha Smith:
Thank you.
Beau Oyler:
Yes. so it’s all gonna be around coffee is the thing. Like Jake is just a coffee banana. Makes sense. And so it’s all gonna be around the ritual, is what he calls it. And so we partnered with Fellow, we took some equity, we charged like almost nothing debating cover our costs. And it’s turned out really well. You know, Fellow just raised 35 million dollars last year during the pandemic. They’ve got like 20 plus skews now. So we took that model and started investing in companies, especially smaller companies that maybe couldn’t afford our fees. And so, on one hand we had big CPG brands who are paying top dollar. On the other hand, we had, we had innovative products, innovative, you know, entrepreneurs that we wanted to work with. And so we were able to discount our fees and take equity in the company. And so today we have a mix of, of both. And some of those small companies have grown a lot. We had one that was acquired by private equity when we first started working. They were just acquired for 50 million. It was a family owned business. And then we came in and rebrand and redesigned. They went from four feet of shelf space to 180 feet of shelf space. Oh my gosh. And sold to Nestle for almost $600 million.
Alysha Smith:
Amazing.
Beau Oyler:
In four years.
Alysha Smith:
Wow.
Beau Oyler:
So once we understood, kind of, you know, we, we understood the power of design and branding and marketing, like once we lived it.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Alysha Smith:
Then we’re like, “oh, we need to start replicating this again and again and again” for our clients, but also for ourselves.
Peter Stevenson:
I want to go back to something you said earlier about, you know, sort of that philosophy of like finding, you know, and, and doing the work for the customer. How do you as an agency, you know, go about looking and, and diving into what the customer wants? How are you doing that instead of being ego driven, how does, how does Enlisted, how does Pattern think about that?
Beau Oyler:
So I’d say I’d introduce one other word says ego-driven, right? Which is, for me, it’s, I call it design for one. Yeah. And that is the Yves Behars of the world who are amazing designers, or at least were, but they design for themselves. Right? And then there’s the, there’s data driven design that is like, is like smart design or even IDEO, where it’s like, let’s just look at the data, or even a lot of the AI stuff that’s coming out, right? Like, use the data, collate the data, and it’ll poop out something that obviously everybody loves. And CBG companies do that all the time. Right? It’s like when we rebranded Pretty Chicken, they had just gone through a million dollar rebrand the year before, and, and they’re like, but we’re still not hitting it with millennials. How do, and we’re like, well, show us the results. Show us the quant. Show us the qual. So they walk us through their research and their packaging crushed it in research. Like validation research qual, with groups with real consumers crushed it. But no, millennials are buying it. Why?
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Okay. So that’s the third part. So instead of ego, it’s intuition. Now, the Frog method, Frog Design method is all intuition, right? It’s like, what’s rad? I love it. Ship it. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s kind of the second generation. Third generation, what we’re doing, and, and why I was so interested in Pattern is because we’re using data and intuition to inform our designs. So we’re able to harness, like, okay, just put it in perspective. So Pattern is the third largest reseller in Amazon worldwide. Amazon being the, the biggest. Okay. Third largest in the world. Think about the data that we can harvest, right. Reviews millions and millions of reviews that we can harvest. And then we’ve written proprietary like data-driventools that we can go in and understand exactly what brands are doing and why they’re doing that, and why they’re winning or failing. And so we’re able to harness that data in the design process before we ever even go to quant or qual.
Alysha Smith:
Holy moly.
Beau Oyler:
And so we know that the concepts, like the three concepts that we’re, we’re presenting and testing, we know that they’re all gonna hit. Yeah. And so we tell, we tell our clients all the time, like, we, we reveal the three concepts or whatever it is, and we let ’em know, like, “Hey, pressure’s off. They’re all gonna work.” Good news, they’re all gonna work. Hey, the consumer’s gonna love any of these. So then we go into kind of like using levers, right? Of, since all of these are gonna work, now let’s talk about how we’re positioning the brand in the market so that the brand can be where we want it to be. If we want to be a Method or a Clorox, they may have the same products, right. Very different brands. Very different positionings. So it’s more about strategic positioning at that point than it is design.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
Well, designing for that positioning.
Beau Oyler:
Correct. Yes.
Alysha Smith:
So thinking about, this is the position that we want to hit, you know, I want to hit millennials. So we need to be this color, take off the racist imagery or whatever it is, depending on, you know, what kind of brand you are. Right?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. And, and that’s, that’s a good thing to do. Like for all brands.
Peter Stevenson:
It’s, it’s, I’m just thinking about a certain, except
Beau Oyler:
For maybe—
Peter Stevenson:
Large CPG brand that just did—
Beau Oyler:
Last year. Yes, exactly.
Peter Stevenson:
Okay. So tell me a little bit. So it’s been, it’s been, you know, you’ve gone, you’ve figured out who you wanted to be, what you wanted your company to be. How did you, you know, I wanna move a little bit more into Silicon Slopes. So, you know, how did you as an organization decide to move from Oakland and the Valley to, you know, here?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. So my entire context is, is Silicon Valley.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Right. That’s my whole growing up. It was, it was my whole career, like going to school at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. You are going to school so that you can work at Apple or Ideo or whoever, right? In the Valley, right. And so all of our tours, all of our like, oh, the Academy students are coming. It was all those companies. Right. That’s where you’re going. And so that was it. And that was my entire career that, that’s all that I needed, was to create the best design agency in the valley, in, in San Francisco, in the Bay, which is great. And, and we are, but I kept picking up clients in Utah.
Alysha Smith:
Oh, okay.
Beau Oyler:
And we kept flying out here. And there was this one moment, I think we were coming back from the Control4 presentation or something like that. They’re, they’re here in Salt Lake, and I’m driving north, like all like about to go west to the freeway or to the airport, and there’s that big swooping turn. And I’m looking downtown and I’m like, I know that some tier one agency is gonna open a, a studio here. Like I know they are. And if I don’t do it first. I’m gonna kick or something. And so that was kinda the impetus of starting to think about what if.
Alysha Smith:
And so when was this?
Beau Oyler:
It was probably six years ago.
Alysha Smith:
Okay.
Peter Stevenson:
And what was it that made you want to come here? What was it about, you know, the slopes here that you said somebody’s gonna do it?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. So first of all, it’s a lot of innovation happening, right? A lot of companies coming in, like the Adobe building had been built. And it was like, that was kind of the flagship, right? Of like, oh, Adobe’s here. What, what is this? And it was starting to raise, you know, raise interest. So picking up clients was one thing. But there is a, so having spent most of my life in the Bay, there was in the Bay Area back in the nineties, this all ships rise mentality where it’s just like, we’re all a bunch of nerds. We’re doing really cool stuff, and we’re gonna change the world. And everybody kind of rooted for each other. That doesn’t exist as much anymore in the Bay Area because you have so many giants there who are just pissing all over each other. And so it’s really challenging and it’s just so big, and there’s just so much ego and so much money there. And, and, and that’s a, as a result of, you know, what we all did in the nineties and early two thousands. And so it’s not a bad thing. It just is. And so the, the spirit of it has changed. And then when I start getting into this Utah Silicon Slopes community, I start realizing, oh, like not only is there an all ships rise mentality, but it’s at a greater level than I’ve ever experienced before, anywhere. And that was like, on an emotional level, that’s why I wanted to be part of this. And, and it’s, it’s truer that I even realized back then.
Alysha Smith:
Did you see yourself actually moving here at the time?
Beau Oyler:
No.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
No. I didn’t think it’d be a cultural fit. And I only knew parts of Utah. And loved parts of Utah and did not love other parts of Utah. And so I, it just wasn’t in the cards. And that was okay. Like, yeah, we’d come to Utah to go to Moab, and my in-laws moved to Utah.
Alysha Smith:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
All of my in-law siblings had moved to Utah at that point, or were moving to it. So like, we were here quite a bit. We didn’t know Salt Lake at all. We knew other areas. And so it was not in the cards. And then and then the plan was to open, once I decided I’m gonna open a Salt Lake studio, was to open the studio here and commute out.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And I realized that wasn’t gonna work.
Peter Stevenson:
And why not?
Beau Oyler:
There’s a guy named Jason Bangerter. I’ve only met with him once. And he was super cool. This is a perfect example of all ships rise. I hit him up on LinkedIn. He has no clue who I am.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Right. And I’m like, Hey, my name’s Beau. I own Enlisted. I’m thinking about opening a Salt Lake studio, could I pick your brain sometime? He responds, let me know when you’re in town next time I’ll have you over to lunch.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
He has me over to Rentler for lunch. We sit in his office for like two hours.
Alysha Smith:
Oh, nice.
Beau Oyler:
And he was the one that told me, he was like, if you’re going to do this, you have to be part of the community. It’s not going to work.
Alysha Smith:
Oh, really?
Beau Oyler:
If you’re this Bay Area person trying to do something in Utah, you have to be here. And so I just kind of, you know, kept thinking about, I’m sure I called my wife on the way back to the airport that day, and I was like, Hey.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And she’s super, super entrepreneurial as well. And so it was never a, a hard no. It’s just like, let’s think about that. What does that look like for our family and for our lives? And so then so then it just, it began to resonate a little bit more. And each time I would come out, I would spend, like, you know, I’d go to a presentation with x-client, and then I’d spend like half the day driving around Salt Lake.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And like, what if, what if? And so then I just realized like, if I’m gonna do this, I’m all in. I have to be all in. And so I met with my senior leadership team in Oakland, and I said, “Hey, for this Salt Lake studio,” cause this was already a a when, not an if. Yeah. When, when we launched Salt Lake Studio, I think that I’m gonna move there, and then I’ll come back to Oakland every week. So the first year and a half, two years, I, we moved to Salt Lake. And then, and bought a house in Salt Lake, you know, a step from the studio. And, and then I commuted back to Oakland every single week for two years.
Alysha Smith:
And Are you still commuting?
Beau Oyler:
I leave tomorrow.
Alysha Smith:
Okay. Yeah, you’re still moving at work?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. No. So I’m not commuting though. So when the pandemic hit, we had already been set up. F for remote, because we had two locations. And so we already had Slack in place. We already had Mural in place. Like we had the tools that we needed to be able to be one team across two locations. And so when the pandemic hit, it’s like, okay, we know what to do.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah, isn’t that amazing.
Beau Oyler:
Everybody brings their stuff home. Like, we’re at home now. And so then I stopped commuting for about a year and then started kind of trickling the commuting back up after about a year, year and a half for specific projects and clients. And now it’s, it’s really just as, as needed, I go back to Oakland.
Peter Stevenson:
I’d love to hear some of your thoughts around what, you know, as you’ve moved here. What’s, what do you, what are you excited about marketing, design in the Silicon Slopes community? What could be improved upon? You know, what do you see here? You know, you talked about the general vibe of like, all everybody’s being good, but, you know, tell me what you like and what you don’t like. What could be improved upon in the community?
Beau Oyler:
Sure. Yeah. You wanna start with the—
Peter Stevenson:
You start with wherever you want.
Beau Oyler:
What do you say you want the good news, the bad news first?
Peter Stevenson:
I want news.
Beau Oyler:
All right. So Either way. That’s good. Fair enough. So, a couple of of things that we’ve noticed as, as we’ve made this shift and dedicated more time and effort and, and interest in the Utah market, there is a double-edged sword of entrepreneurialism and, and scrappiness here. So on one hand, you have people who are working 50 hours of their job every week and have a side hustle out of their garage and they’re making it happen. That’s awesome. I love that.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Right. Congratulations. I love that scrappiness. Right? But it isn’t very strategic most of the time. Usually it’s just like, you know, I’m just doing this cause I’m a worker, I’m a builder. The downside of that is that they’re not investing in creating something meaningful. It’s more of like, how can I make money? Or how can I do this thing? Or how can I get this going? Versus creating a brand that people are going to, that you can either create a category around or that consumers are gonna wanna be part of. Yeah. Or employees are gonna wanna be part of. And we’re seeing more brands now than ever, which is great. But we still, like, we’ll get invited to come to, you know, a company and, and pitch to ’em, right. Or say, Hey, we’ve heard of Enlisted. You want to come and talk about whatever. So we’ll come in, you know, the CEO, CMO, whatever. And so we’ll present in, they’re like, listen, we love this. We love the work. Like, you know, they’re like, I’m wearing my Allbirds right now. Like, you designed that. Like, yeah, yeah. So, so everybody’s all happy and excited. And then they’ll give us an RFP, we’ll put a proposal together, and they’re like, so this is a a million and a half million, half dollars. And we’re like, yeah. I mean, we did like our, our like startup pricing. And they’re like, oh, no, no. I have a neighbor whose daughter is studying graphic design at BYU, and she can do it for like, she said, like $1,500. And I’m like, oh, absolutely. Like if that’s the conversation we’re having. We’ve already billed more than that.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
If that’s, if that’s what you want, we should have established that from the beginning. Like, you should hire her if that’s what you want to do. That’s great.
Peter Stevenson:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And, and we see that. We actually just saw it with a, a company that’ll probably do about 200 million in sales this yearhere in Utah. And we had four or five meetings with the CEO. I really liked him, thought he was super smart, loved the business that he is, been loved the product that he’s making.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Alysha Smith:
But at the end of the day, it came down to we can just get an intern to come and do this. And that’s why every SKU looks different. And that’s why the brand isn’t, isn’t building the way that it could. And so that’s where we’re totally okay with companies who aren’t ready for that level of design, because there’s plenty of of graphic designers out there who can do that.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Or industrial designers who can do that. I think where we’re starting to see a switch, and, and I started to see it even within our client base or potential client base in Utah, was companies who have imported or hired in people from Apple, from Samsung, from the Bay or other, or New York or other places who come, like Control4, for example, would’ve never hired Enlisted until a certain product manager, named Margie, who’s just a total badass. She came from Apple to Control4. And when she came there, she’s like, why does every single one of our products look different? Like, who’s designing these?
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And it’s because they’d been paying 10K, 20K, whatever with these different studios or freelancers or whoever. And it was just all over the place. And so she came and brought, she brought in she brought in Ammunition, FuseProject and Enlisted and whatever to like bid against each other. We won the bid, we won the client. And we’ve been working for together for like six years now to bring cohesion across every single one of those. But it took somebody in their leadership team to say, “Hey—”
Alysha Smith:
The rally for that cause.
Beau Oyler:
“—Here’s Why this matters. Here’s why good design is good business.” So that’s, and we’re launching three new products in two weeks at the CDS Show with them. So we’re really excited about it.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. This is great.
Peter Stevenson:
I mean, we sell design here, so we hear you. But tell me from your perspective why that matters to a company. And I just hit the table, so they’re gonna be mad at me, but tell me why it matters to a company that they should care that their products all look the same. From your perspective, why does that make a better long-term ROI for a brand than hiring, you know, a $1,500 intern from BYU?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great question. And it’s not that we are appropriate for every company at every stage, right?
Peter Stevenson:
Totally.
Beau Oyler:
Right? And that’s okay. Like, we’re not hungry for work. So it’s like if, if, if you’re at a stage where it’s just like, just get something on Amazon and test it, we may not be the right fit, and that’s all right. Right. Go and learn and test, and as you grow and you have some positive revenue and positive EBIDA, then let’s talk. It’s really a company who is either starting out with a vision to create a market category leader, or they’ve grown their company sufficiently that now they can make their big play to become that market category leader.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah, yeah.
Beau Oyler:
So oftentimes, I don’t wanna say 50%, but I’d say oftentimes we’re brought in from private equity or VC. So we work with Andreessen Horowitz, we work with Lower Carbon Capital, Chris and Crystal Sacca, we work with Peterson Partners here in Utah. A lot of different VCs.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Who are targeting in much better ways than we can companies who are ready to go national or international. And that’s usually where it’s the right fit for us. So we don’t have to sell in design all that often, just in the sense that, okay, you’re ready for hyper growth, and you’re ready to show up on the shelves at Whole Foods and actually compete.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Like, that’s beyond just, “oh, I got a meeting with the buyer,” that’s now we’re gonna create something that’s gonna earn you four feet of shelf set. That consumers are gonna, are gonna advocate for on Instagram. And you’re never gonna get that from the like, ultra scrappy, “oh, my daughter put this thing together for us.” Like, it’s just not gonna, it is not gonna happen. Right. It’d be likeit’d be like a SaaS company saying, oh, we’re gonna be the biggest SaaS company, but we have no proprietary tech. Like that’s never gonna happen.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And so it’s the same thing with a product or a consumer brand where they need to invest in the brand and in the positioning and in every single touchpoint that they’re gonna reach out to their consumer with so that the consumer wants to be part of it. And that’s where you reach that level that we call craveable brands, where it’s beyond just, “I’ll buy it,” it’s, I can’t stop thinking about it, or even, “I don’t even know what that is, but I want it.”
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Beau Oyler:
And that grows businesses, right? So you have all these companies, it’s, it kills me. You have all these companies who are all concerned about ROAZ or all concerned about ad spend. They’re dumping millions into ad spend and marketing and like, nobody wants to buy their product. Because they didn’t invest in the consumer lusting after the product. That’s what they really didn’t, they didn’t invest in the emotional connection between a human and an inanimate object. So when you invest in that and it’s done right. And the challenge is that some companies like, but we did that. We hired this agency and they said they were the best. And yeah, it didn’t move the needle. And I’m like, all right, lemme see the work. And that’s where we can come in and say, that was clearly designed by intuition for their portfolio. I’m sorry that you fell for that. There’s a better way. And it has to do with data has to do with consumers, has to do with intuition. It has to do with the ride design team. Now let us show you what we’ve done for Allbirds and stands and Amazon and Mr. Beast, and you name it. If that’s what you want, there’s a reason that Mr. Beast is the top YouTuber brand. If that’s what you want, then let’s talk.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
It’s one of the things that’s been really interesting looking at your portfolio and your career at, at Enlisted is like how many different brands that look and feel different, um are coming out of your studio. One of the things that you talked about, you know, when you’re a designer of one, like some of these gen gen twos, a lot of the designs look similar. You know, you know that that’s from them. You know, when you think about Enlisted Design and now what you’re doing with Pattern and you know, some of these other brands, how are you configuring how to push out the right, the right design and the right marketing for those companies, rather than just something that you as an organization like or want.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. Thanks for recognizing that.
Peter Stevenson:
It’s very clear.
Beau Oyler:
Cool. Thank you. That’s a huge compliment. Yeah. Whereas for gen two, that would be a huge diss.
Alysha Smith:
Interesting
Peter Stevenson:
I meant it as both of those.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. Good, good. Because you recognize right. That, that that is what it is. And we do that very much on purpose. That is a strategic decision. To put the consumer and that brand first versus us.
Peter Stevenson:
But how do you do that? Like, we think about that for Modern8 and our clients, you know, the stuff that we’re pushing out is often very different from, you know, banks to, you know, CPG brands or whatever. But from you as an organization, how do you think about putting out the right thing for the company rather than just something that is right for you as an organization?
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. I would imagine it’s not all that different than your process, right? So the strategy team leads phase one, and that really is a deep dive into the consumer to consumer sentiment. What are they buying, what are they reviewing, what do they care about? And then going into the market, understanding the market, understanding the shelf set, understanding what’s been happening from a macro and a micro trend level over the last few years within that category. Once we understand that, we now have a, a clear view of the landscape of that category, of that consumer, then we go into what we call vision boards different than mood boards. A mood board is very specific to like, if you’re designing a phone, you’re gonna have a mood board around the phone. And what, what phones and what would be aspirational for a phone design, A vision board takes a step out about 10,000 feet and says, what is the world in which this consumer lives? What does she love? What does she buy , what is she interested in? And so you could have a vision board with five images. You have a vision board with 20 images. And it could be everything from type to architecture to transportation to apparel, to colors to materials to finishes to products.
Alysha Smith:
Is it kind of like a visual persona if you will?
Beau Oyler:
A, a little bit, yeah.
Alysha Smith:
Okay.
Beau Oyler:
A little bit. So now you have the data of the persona themselves and what they’re interested in. And it’s usually not so much, it’s, it’s, you have to kind of aggregate data and and can it but you have the that and then you have this kind of snapshot or vision for what’s gonna be aspirational for them.
Alysha Smith:
Aspirational. That makes sense.
Beau Oyler:
Then we can look at the market and say, okay, here’s what’s aspirational for them today. But we’re creating what’s aspirational for them tomorrow. And that’s where as futurists, we’re able to look into the future and say, here’s where we’re going. Not just because of what we think, but what we’re creating. And that’s where it enables us to, like for example, if I was a, these are all design studios I respect and, and we work with, but like Hatch design or Character in San Francisco. Amazing design agencies. Right. I love their work. But they design for them like Hatch you, anytime you see a Hatch, you know, pro packaging and like Hatch design, you know? Sure. Right? And that’s great. And that’s why, that’s why companies go to them.
Alysha Smith:
Exactly.
Beau Oyler:
Cuz they want the Hatch., the Hatch treatment. And and so we, because we design for many, we have our hands in so many different categories. We know what boat they’re buying next year because we’re freaking designing it right now, <laugh>. Right. We know what shoes they bought and what that, what shoes that packaging came in cuz we designed it last year. Like we know what kitchen appliances they would actually put on top of their counter rather than having to tuck it away every time because we designed them. And because we have our hands in so many different categories, but we’re doing it what’s right for that brand in that category, we’re able towe’re, we’re able to aggregate all of that. I guess you could call it data, but it’s more than that. We’re able to aggregate that into a vision for what’s appropriate for that brand, that consumer. Not at that time. Because it’s actually a year from now.
Alysha Smith:
Right.
Beau Oyler:
Or two years from. That’s how we do it. And it takes a lot of people to do that. That’s, that’s one of the reasons why we are 60 people. I still think of us as like 20 people.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
We act like we’re 20 people, but we are 60 because we need the people like the absolute experts to do that. So we don’t do a lot in the studio of, like, for example, I hired a, a graphic designer from Fuse Project once and I, and I was so excited to work with her cuz she was kind of the first person we hired away from Fuse. And so, you know, in her first week I sat down with her, I’m like, okay, so tell me everything, what’s it really like? Right? I had had designers leave Enlisted and go to Fuse.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
Alysha Smith:
And and one of my most respected designers that kind of taught me design at New Deal, he left and went to Fuse. And so I had people in there, but they were still there. And so they’re never gonna gimme the inside scoop. So I’m like, tell me everything. And she’s like, okay, let’s see. As the lead graphic designer at Fuse Project, I sit around about 75 industrial designers, mostly men, like 99% dudes. And I basically get shit on all day and they don’t respect me and I get these scraps of design to do packaging or a logo or whatever, and they don’t understand what I do. And I was just like, my hypothesis was correct. This sucks. So when I started hiring at enlisted industrial designers were actually some of my last hires because my partner and I were both designers, industrial designers. So we hired branding designers, identity designers, packaging designers, but absolute experts in their field. So it wasn’t like, “Hey, industrial designer, go do this packaging.” Or “Hey, graphic designer do—” like it. We weren’t, we weren’t like saying design across all. We, we wanted the absolute expert designers within their micro field to be able to come together and work together as one team to create these cohesive experiences.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
So that’s what we’ve done.
Peter Stevenson:
Amazing.
Beau Oyler:
It’s working.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah, I’d say.
Peter Stevenson:
So tell me about the pPattern joint, how did—.
Beau Oyler:
Oh yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
How did this happen?
Beau Oyler:
And this is where it gets exciting.
Peter Stevenson:
What, you know, like it’s the smile on your face clearly says how much it’s fun for you. It is. So tell me about what, how that came about and what sort of the role is on the day-to-day from the, the Enlisted team versus the Pattern team, and how that sort of merges.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, for sure. So over the last 15 years, my goal has always been to hire the best. Right? And not just like the best designers, but the best people. And that’s one thing that you’ll notice anytime you work with Enlisted or inter interact with them, it’s just, just really good people and like hustlers. And they just, they work hard, they do really good work and they have fun. And so at, throughout the years I had different offers, like different, you know, companies courting us to, to join their organization. So Google came on really hard a number of years ago, wanted me to join and lead their x-group. And like, and the people that I was inter interacting with were fine, but like, it wasn’t going to allow me to attract the right designers at Enlisted that I wanted. Both talent and personalities.
Beau Oyler:
And then there was another agency, kind of same kind of thing. It just, it was never right. And so I just said, I finally just said, “Hey, I’m never gonna sell Enlisted. We’ll always be Enlisted and we’re just gonna grow and do, do our thing exactly how we want.” So then I opened the Salt Lake studio and two, almost four years, three years ago. And then in 2019, no, 2020, January of 2020 I spoke at Silicon Slopes and on how to create a, I think it was like how to create a lustful brand.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. I remember this. Mm-Hmm. Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
That was cool. Yeah. And I invited some of my friends to come be on the panel. So Kingman from Stance, I had Jason, I think Jason Kimball was on I think Brad Williams was there with us. Like just a few different like people. The founder of Albion was there. What’s her name? She’s awesome. She was there. So it’s just kind of some friends of of mine to come. “Hey, let’s talk about brands.” So I, I spoke on how, or we did this panel on how to create a lustful brand. Then we’re all, like, chatting and whatever the room sat, 400 people. We had 650 people in the room. Clearly Utah was interested in how to create a lustful brand. Okay. It looked like a, an encampment. There were people like on the ground, and like, it was really fun. So then afterwards, I’m just talking with a couple of clients that were there and we’re, we’re chatting and, and the next person gets up on the stage to start speaking. And I’m like, oh, let’s, let’s sit down on the stand. So we sit down not to be rude, and we start listening and this guy gets up and he’s like the biggest nerd I’ve ever heard. Like, really. And he claims it, like he, he owns it. He gets up and he is just like, my name’s Dave Wright and I’m the co-founder of Pattern and I can pretty much guarantee you I’m the biggest nerd in this room. And I’m like, “okay, this guy’s rad.” Cuz he knows exactly who he is and he is leaning in. And so then he begins to reveal this whole thing that he’s creating called Pattern, where they can take brands that people want, okay. And take ’em on econ, and they can accelerate their growth at, at a, at a rate using their proprietary technology that nobody’s ever experienced before. And he’s giving numbers. Like, I’m, I was thinking, is this NDA proof? Like, is this okay? But he’s giving these numbers where I’m just like, oh my God. Like every single one of my clients needs this Pattern thing, right? And so afterwards I’m like, I gotta go talk to this guy. So I, I peel away and I go over and there’s a line of like 25 people waiting for him. And I’m just like, who is this? What is this? And so I waited a couple minutes or whatever and then, and, and I go up and introduce myself and, and he is like, oh, some of my VPs were in your thing. We need to talk. And I’m like, I don’t know what we need to talk about, but here’s what it comes down to. I know how to create brands that people love. You know how to accelerate those online. We should collaborate.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Like, let’s launch our own brands. And he’s like, that’s what we’ve been trying to do and we don’t know how to do it. Like, great, let’s talk. So a couple months later, we get on the calendar, go visit him, we’re in the boardroom at their old office, and he brings in like pretty much the whole leadership team for this. Like, little by little he keeps peeling people in. And so brings him in. We, we give the Enlisted pitch me thinking, “Hey, let’s just do something together.” Yeah. That day he calls me his office and he is like, I need Enlisted, like Enlisted needs to be part of Pattern. And I’m like, “oh, thanks man, I really appreciate it. Not for sale.” End of conversation. And he is just like, I don’t think so.
Alysha Smith:
He’s like, I’m not gonna give up.
Beau Oyler:
So every week for six weeks, he invites me back to his office and we spend an hour together. And he just it got to the point where we understood each other’s vision. We understood the type of people that were there, really good people at Pattern, really talented. He’s recruited people who are like Enlisted, like the best at what they do. But also like really nice and really just this all ships rise mentality. And so and so I can see that as I’m meeting people and kind of getting comfortable with the idea. And on the sixth week he drops a bomb on me and he goes, and he goes, Beau you know, my business model, you know where I want to go. I know your business model and I know where you’re going, but I can do more with Enlisted than you can. And I’m like, damn, what? Who says that? Wow. And so then he hands me a, a dry erase marker and he says, just write it up. What do you need for us to make this happen? Because we need to launch brands together. And so we just built out a business model together and what it would take. And that day just like, okay, let’s go. Wow. And so it took about six months to actually, you know, go through due diligence and all that. So we sold Enlisted entirely to, now we is is my wife and I at that point. Cause I bought my previous bus business partner out. So we sold enlisted to Pattern. And then I became Chief Design Officer of Pattern and Enlisted. I still run Enlisted about 80% of my time. 75, 80% of my time is with Enlisted. About 25% of my time is with Pattern both as a leadership team as well as the brands that we’re now launching with Village Brands. So we started a third entity together Essentially as partners called Village Brands. Villagebrands.Com. And and we’re launching our own brands through it.
Alysha Smith:
So. Cool.
Beau Oyler:
So it’s really exciting.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. That is so exciting.
Beau Oyler:
We’re using everything that Pattern is to be able to bring the data into the Enlisted process for our clients. As well as our own brands, and then launching them onto the Pattern platform. So it’s pretty, it’s pretty exciting. And it, and it doesn’t exist. Like, there’s no playbook for this. Right. It could be a massive failure, okay. But I don’t think it’s gonna be.
Alysha Smith:
No, no.
Beau Oyler:
I mean, there’s no playbook. Like we don’t know what we’re doing other than what we do at Enlisted.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And what they do at Pattern. And we feel like we’re the best at what we do, and they feel like they’re the best at what they do. And it’s like coming together has been way more seamless than we thought it would be.
Alysha Smith:
Oh, that’s great.
Beau Oyler:
Partly because we still run autonomously.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
So even though it’s owned by Pattern we still run Enlisted autonomously.
Peter Stevenson:
It feels like a client relationship. Almost, between those.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. It’s like, it’s like a very intimate client relationship.
Peter Stevenson:
Mm-Hmm. Yeah. We like this.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
Okay. So let’s switch to the future. So tell me what you expect to see. You’re a futurist. Tell me what you expect to see in marketing design. You know, the world over the next five to 10 years. And I’d love to hear from like, what’s gonna happen here in the Slopes versus the world.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, for sure. So I think the slopes are somewhat of a microcosm of the world. I think that we have a bit a, a pretty big challenge of diversity of thought here, but that’s changing within the world. Like, there’s so much that’s shifting, right? Like, you feel it, it’s so shifty right now. Everything is, and so for me to say this is what’s gonna happen, like Elon did a couple months ago in his, his TED interview, that was a rad interview by the way, like at the Factory. Like is, you know, it’s good, I’m not an Elon Musk. Right. Like, he, he is the person who say, here are the five things that are gonna happen.
Peter Stevenson:
Right.
Beau Oyler:
And here’s why I’m making these happen. And that’s cool. I love it. I’m not that person. But what I can see is a couple of kind of macro trends happening. Companies who would never have invested in design or even considered it important are now woke to the idea that it is important. There are brands that are forced to, or maybe even leading the charge to look at the consumer and consider what they need and to consider what they want and to invest in that need versus just investing in marketing as a Roas or as a, as a, you know, dollars return. So actually investing in the people and the cause that they’re behind, that’s happening. And I think that that benefits us as designers because we’re able to bring a lot of empathy into the work that we do and into consideration for the consumer. And we’re seeing that across SaaS. We’re seeing that across healthcare. We’re seeing that across you know, certainly tech and lifestyle. And so while certain brands are really cool, like, you know, Stance, like when Stance called, I’m like, that’s one of those days where you’re just like, yeah, we’re in my Stance socks right now, let’s talk. It’s really exciting, like, I love it. I love the brand. You know, and so the work that we do is really meaningful to help them grow that category, grow the brand. But there’s other brands that are really, really interesting to us that we’re working with because of the innovation that they’re bringing to, to a category. So like healthcare, for exampleHims and Hers, if you’re familiar with Hims. Like pretty basic model, right? It’s like Viagra, they like market it towards these 65 year old dudes and they’re frollicking with their girlfriend in Europe in a commercial. And you’re like, “yeah, I’ve seen that before.” What if we just took a piece of that 20 milligrams and we made it available to 20 year olds and we market it to them? Boom. Now you have a billion dollar Hims opportunity. Opportunity. Right. Awesome. I love it. So taking categories like that, that haven’t what we call been loved and loving the category is what the future is. So a couple other, Hims is a good example of that. Another example is Quip. So Simon’s a friend of mine, he’s the founder of Quip Toothbrushes.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. We love those.
Beau Oyler:
Quip is great, right?
Peter Stevenson:
Yeah. I used it this morning.
Beau Oyler:
Perfect. It’s the first toothbrush that you would actually want. In your bathroom or in your mouth for that matter, right? But you don’t think about it. You go down the aisle like Simon did. And he is just like, why are all the des— the toothbrushes designed in like ’93? Like how has there been no love here? There’s been innovation.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Which is mostly bar marketing bs. But there hasn’t been love. And so I think the future for a lot of us in the creative space is, and, and also just in the entrepreneurial space, is how can we love a category that hasn’t been loved? And how can we love the consumer who is shopping that category? And if we could think about it in that way, then that emotion drives the fundraise and the idea and the entrepreneur to do something. And then it also drives the results. And, and you now have products and brands and packaging and what, you know, digital experiences that consumers are gonna love that brings happiness. Yeah, it does. So a quick story about that. And why this? So, I, I haven’t told this for a while. When I was like five, we lived in Karma Valley in this little duplex, and I, I didn’t grow up with money. Super, super normal people. Andit was summer, and I remember sitting on the steps outside of our little duplex and, and just crying. Cuz my mom, there’s four boys in my family. And so during the summer, like my mom had to just lock us out of the house to like, go, go play. I need some time.
Alysha Smith:
He needs to go.
Beau Oyler:
And so, and rightly so and so we were out playing whatever, and I was bored, but I more just felt like kinda useless, I would say more than bored. And so I’m sitting on the little, the little, you know, steps there and I’m crying and my mom comes out and puts her arm around me and she’s like, all right, Beau, what’s going on? I’m like, mom, I just, I don’t wanna just go play. Like, I wanna do something that’s gonna change the world. Oh my. And she’s like, she just squeezes me. I’m sure. She’s just like, oh. And she’s just like, you will, you will. And so as I thought about that, like, there’s different ways to change the world, right? And there’s different, like, you know, micro macro ways in which we can change the world. And we do a lot of work in sustainability at Enlisted and with materials and processes that are helping to change, you know, processes that’ll help the earth. But nonetheless, at the end of the day, we’re creating, creating stuff that’s gonna go in landfills. That’s a really tough reality, as designers, it really is. So even if it’s fully compostable, like the Allbirds packaging, it’s fully—90 days that packaging doesn’t exist anymore. Wow. That’s pretty awesome, okay. And there’s other work that we’re doing that’s along those lines right now. So that’s great. But I feel like that’s gonna become table stakes and needs to become table stakes. But what even more importantly needs to happen is that this love needs to be inserted into what we do, why we do it, and then ultimately what is offered to the consumer, to the end user. So a SaaS company may say, well, I’m B2B, I really don’t need to like, come on. But I would challenge to say, if anyone is going to use your product, could it be a highlight in their day? Yes. Right. Like, we’re working with a company called BlendTec right now. They’re a Utah based company, and traditionally a hundred percent engineered, like no design or very little design. I shouldn’t say that. Very little design, very engineered consumers pick these things up and put ’em under their counter every single time. Because they’re not worthy of the countertop. Yeah. Well, wouldn’t it be great if your, you know, 60 seconds of interaction with a BlendTec blender could actually be a highlight of your day Yeah. That you could be proud of it on your, on your kitchen countertop. That’s really exciting to me. And so I think as companies from consumer brands, consumer products, it could be a granola bar, a protein bar, it could be a blender, it could be an electric boat that we’re designing. Like, I wanna make sure that Arc Boats, like when you get on our Arc Boat, our electric boat,
Peter Stevenson:
I was just looking at those the other day,
Beau Oyler:
Dude. Oh my gosh.
Peter Stevenson:
I’m excited about ’em.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. It’s so cool. You should be very excited about that.
Peter Stevenson:
I’m very excited.
Beau Oyler:
When you get on Arc and the motor doesn’t crap out like your gas motor did, and oil doesn’t spill out when you refill it. And it goes for eight hours at a hundred percent torque and can pull you out of the water like nothing you’ve ever experienced before that brings joy. And so I’d say like, yes, we’re in the business of design, and yes, we’re in the business of, of, you know, growing your brand, growing your company. But more than anything, we’re in the business of creating emotional connection between a consumer and these inanimate objects that if we do our job right, we’re creating joy. That’s pretty exciting.
Peter Stevenson:
All right. Couple more questions and then, and then we’ll let you go do all the important work you need to do. But I, what I’d love to hear from your perspective is, is what would you like marketers to know about the stuff that you care about and think about as a designer, what should a young marketer know that you can help them to understand how to go about their business, you know, either designer or marketer to, you know, to learn to do better work.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. I mean, I guess I’ll just kind of keep on this wave a a little bit. You know, Simon Sinek is the one who coined it , it was there far before him, but just understanding the why and why are they doing, doing what they’re doing, especially in their marketing career. You know, they’re gonna choose different companies to join, you know, why that company, why that consumer, why that experience? And so if we can start with the why, then we have an understanding of how we can begin to create that connection, that emotional connection. Yeah. So yes, data’s important. Yes. ROAS is important. Yes. Like all of the metrics and all of the tools are important. I would say to the young marketer, learn the tools. You have to have to have mastery, like absolute mastery over those tools, but only to the point where they enable you to create something special. And so thinking at that more emotive level is really important. So that their goal is to create something special, to create an experience that’s gonna bring that joy. You know? I mean, that’s kind of it. And it’s the same with designers. Like the first five years of a designer’s career, it’s really just for them to master the tools. And, and they should continue, right? Like we’re, we’re working with tools even in a beta form right now, like Adobe Beta form that like their next level tools. And so we’re always growing. We’re always trying to figure out like, what’s that next tool and, but only so that we can master it so that we can express something that’s gonna bring joy to a consumer.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
All right. So here’s the most important question. What bar, restaurant, coffee shop should somebody in town frequent?
Beau Oyler:
Okay.
Alysha Smith:
And I guess thinking about it holistically.
Beau Oyler:
Okay.
Alysha Smith:
You know, design, experience.
Beau Oyler:
Oh my gosh. Yeah, that changes my answer, drastically.
Peter Stevenson:
I want both then.
Beau Oyler:
Okay. All right. I’ll tell you the first one. The first one that comes to mind. Sowhen we first moved here, so my wife and I are both from, from the Bay area. Yeah. Both from California, our whole lives, born and raised. And we came here and we’re like, all right, show us the taco joints. Like we eat tacos. There’s this whole thing here with likeI get, we didn’t know, they’re called hot plate Mexican restaurants, and I hate ’em. Okay.
Alysha Smith:
But what is the hot, what does that mean?
Beau Oyler:
It’s like a Red Iguana type thing where it’s like, you get this burrito that’s smothered in enchilada sauce, and then like rice and beans.
Peter Stevenson:
And the plate is hot.
Beau Oyler:
And the plates hot. Literally the plate, you can’t see the plate. Right. And I’m like, what is all this stuff? Where’s my taco? And I, it just doesn’t make sense to me. It can be delicious. Right? Don’t get me wrong. Red Iguana is amazing, but it’s just not what we, we like tacos. And so, like, where’s taco joints? We go to like Tacqueria 27, we’re like, oh, these are really fancy, nice white person tacos mm-hmm. And then we go to like, some other taqueria, and we found a place. So my wife’s sister was like, well, I’ve heard about this place called Chunga’s. We gotta check out Chunga’s!
Peter Stevenson:
Amazing. Not open on Mondays.
Beau Oyler:
It is so good. So Gloria is, she runs, she runs Chunga’s and she’s just awesome. And we’ve had her cater, we’ve had her cater, cater work events, family events. Like, we go there all the time. We walk in and she’s just like, eh. Yeah. So Chunga’s is the best.
Peter Stevenson:
Quesadilla.
Beau Oyler:
Oh, it’s so good.
Alysha Smith:
Nice. I love the corn quesadilla.
Peter Stevenson:
It’s the best thing to get there.
Beau Oyler:
It is, it is. And if you get the nina one, it’s only like two bucks.
Peter Stevenson:
Oh, I didn’t know that was available.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. I didn’t know there was a small one, okay.
Peter Stevenson:
I also need the big one, so it’s fine.
Beau Oyler:
Well, that’s in addition to your al pastor tacos.
Peter Stevenson:
I still, I still need the big one.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. So it’s, that’s the best. Okay. And it’s like super grungy. It’s like hole in the wall, wall. You may get sick and that’s okay. So Chunga’s, and then from an overall like, like experience, there was a place that just closed called Ginger Street. That was really good. That was a fun vibe.
Peter Stevenson:
My neighbor across the street owned that one. Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Oh, really?
Peter Stevenson:
Yeah. Something news coming in there. It’s gonna be cool.
Beau Oyler:
Oh good. Good, good. Yeah, we just wentmy wife and I just went for dinner the other night and walked up and we’re all stoked about it. And it was closed.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. Oh, dang.
Beau Oyler:
Oh. So that’s really good. There’s a spot for sushi. We go, we’ve tried a bunch of different sushi places but our favorite is Tsunami. It’s really—like the night and ninth Tsunami is really good. Mm-Hmm.
Peter Stevenson:
I haven’t been to that one yet.
Beau Oyler:
It’s good. They’re all good. They’re all the same.
Beau Oyler:
I’m a veg, so it’s like they have like a whole line of veggie.
Peter Stevenson:
Oh cool.
Alysha Smith:
Okay, noted.
Beau Oyler:
You know rolls that are really good. And, and at Changa I get the the nopales and they have flour too. That’s really good. So you can still go veg.
Peter Stevenson:
Do they still have the, I haven’t been there in a year or two, but they still have the broccoli flour.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it’s, it’s not broccoli flour though. It’s—
Peter Stevenson:
Oh, zucchini flour.
Beau Oyler:
Zucchini flour. That’s what it, that’s the flour ones. Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
Love ’em. That’s so good. It’s so good. It’s maybe the best thing on the menu.
Beau Oyler:
It’s so good. It’s so good. We don’t realize. And then we always have our like, melt cheese on it too for us, and it gets all crispy. It’s so good. I love it. So that’s really good. And then we spend a lot of time in Moab. So we just bought some property down there. We’re gonna build a container house. Like old shipping containers that are made into a modern house. So we’re, shipping is a company called Honomobo, really goofy name. They’re out of British Columbia. So we’re working with them to design out the house. And there’s a restaurant down there called Antica Forma. And it’s just this like, it’s, it’s, it’s a divey Italian place and like right on Moab’s main, Moab’s main strip, and they make their own burrata. And I love burrata. Love it. Like, I’m obsessed with.
Alysha Smith:
Okay. I only had burrata for the first time, like when we did that taste the cheese—
Peter Stevenson:
Oh, yeah.
Beau Oyler:
You were doing a cheese spread.
Alysha Smith:
Caputo’s. Yeah. Caputo’s. I’d never had burrata.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. It’s so good. So they make their own burrata, and inside, I’m gonna say this wrong, so anybody who speaks Italian’s gonna be like, this guy doesn’t know what he’s saying, but inside there’s this stuff called like, he’s like, stracciatella or something like that. And it’s like the creamy, stringy cheese inside the ball. And when I was in Florence a number of years ago, went to this deli and they had this huge glass container full of like yogurt basically it looked like, and I’m like, what is that? And they’re like, “oh it go inside of the burrata” and I’m like, wait a second. Like, that’s an entire jar. Of the stuff inside of burrata and they serve it to you with a ladle into a cup, and they give you like a little frozen yogurt spoon. And I had two cups, like immediately sitting there. It was so good. So amazing. Yeah. Antica Forma, amazing little Italian joint in my life.
Peter Stevenson:
Okay.
Alysha Smith:
Great.
Peter Stevenson:
Those are the recommendations.
Beau Oyler:
Those are my spots.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. I love it, thank you.
Beau Oyler:
They’re all kind of a hole in the wall. We’re, we love eating out, but we’re not like expensive foodies. Like even in the Bay Area, we still have an Alice Water, or not Alice, Alice Water’s restaurant. What’s it called? I don’t know where a restaurant. I know where’s—it’s in Berkeley. Yeah. So Alice Waters has a restaurant has since like the seventies in Berkeley, and I’ve been a number of times. It’s amazing. We still have a gift card because it’s just so, like fancy for us that we don’t go.
Peter Stevenson:
We have a, we have a client that’s a Michelin three-star restaurant out there.
Beau Oyler:
Oh my gosh.
Peter Stevenson:
And it’s amazing. It’s the best food. It was the last meal we ate before the pandemic.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah.
Peter Stevenson:
But, you know, it’s still, I wouldn’t want to eat it every day.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah, for sure. For sure. You know, and the experience is fun.
Peter Stevenson:
Yeah. It’s amazing.
Beau Oyler:
I’m like, so like, I just like gimme some tacos.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah.
Beau Oyler:
And let me either hang out with my family or get back to work.
Alysha Smith:
Yeah. Love.
Peter Stevenson:
Yep. All right. Well, hey, thank you so much for spending the time. I hit the table again, so they’re gonna be mad at me, but we are excited about what you’re doing and thanks for all you do here in the, in the city.
Beau Oyler:
Yeah. So excited to be part of it. Really am. Thanks for having me.
Alysha Smith:
Good, thank you.
Peter Stevenson:
By Subject is a production of Modern8, A8ency, and Silicon Slopes. Executive producers are Alysha Smith and Peter Stevenson. Editor and producer is Dave Mecham, video production by Connor Mitchell, development production by Eric Dahl, production management by Shelby Sandlin. Original music composed by Josh Johnson website, designed by Modern8. Please make sure to follow and share the show with your friends and your enemies. Thanks for joining us.
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By Subject is a production of modern8, a8ency, and Silicon Slopes, and is invested in highlighting, promoting, and celebrating the unique and talented marketing and brand leaders in the Silicon Slopes community.
