Uniting Teams through Impact with Melissa Lopez

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neil Blum, San Diego's tech ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle.

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And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom and I am joined by Melissa Lopez, CEO of Onyx Offsites and Trainings. Hey Melissa, thanks for being on the pod.

I appreciate it. Thanks for allowing me the opportunity.

Absolutely. We're excited to get to know what you're working on. Sounds like you are building and helping so many of our companies just change. Change up the everyday of being stuck at home during this COVID pandemic. Do you want to give us a quick little overview of what you're doing with Onyx?

Absolutely. So you know Onyx is an experiential education company. We provide culture building services for corporations and businesses of all sizes. So you obviously we've had a tremendous amount of client base here in San Diego, but we are Providing opportunities nationwide and actually globally. Our core offerings include custom retreats and off sites for your teams, training and development, team building programs for both in person and remote work modalities. And we can do that in a hybrid sense. And that's really where some of the virtual programs that we have been concentrating on this past year are fostering collaboration and connection for these teams that have been kind of forced into this unique circumstance through the pandemic. Other things that we do, we do a tremendous amount of community give back for companies that are looking to deliver positive impact and contributions to various nonprofit organizations within their communities. And you know, ultimately our mission is to work together to resolve conflicts, to connect on deeper levels and add value to the work performed within organizations.

Awesome. Excited to dive deeper into that, how it started and because you've built a bunch of companies and it came from experiences you had got to imagine and you've got a deep history in San Diego of building, working at a lot of companies and building a bunch of companies of your own. So let's dive in. How did you find your path to San Diego originally?

Well, actually it's funny, I came to San Diego back in the, I don't want to age myself too much but in the mid-90s came out to attend college at the University of San Diego and I'd come from Phoenix. I really thought it was just going to be okay. I'm going to do my four years and then I'm going to go back to Phoenix and I'll find a gig. But I never thought I'd end up staying here and building my life. But I feel incredibly grateful because I immediately jump started my career out of college in the advertising and marketing into a full time agency position. And so it's been full force since then. It's been a fun, sometimes bumpy road but you know, eventually, you know, got married here, have kids here and established my life. And I feel really deeply rooted within the San Diego community and I've had an opportunity to get a tremendous amount of exposure and learning just from things like this and networking and just getting to know people and learning from, from them and hopefully giving a little bit back to them as well.

Yeah, there's a few pieces to pick out of that. Like, like we've talked about. San Diego is a big little town. Right. And so it's not very hard to get connected to though we do love like our individual coffee meetings. Right. So you could actually spend years meeting brand new people if you wanted to. But everyone there's this fabric where everyone's connected. And then there's also very much like a give first mentality here. Right. Kind of what you picked up on that people actually enjoy giving before getting in that regard here, which is kind of cool that I think we're going to talk a little bit about. Also the San Diego Phoenix connection is strong. Right. The influx of Phoenicians in the summer to Coronado, the like they flock like the swallows. Right.

It's funny, you see it going both ways now too. You see some of the San Diegans going a little bit more into Phoenix and Phoenix come over here and I'm not going back. Like I love San Diego. I actually ironically driving there this weekend and it's going to be 118 degrees, which I'm not looking forward to. Which is a great reminder for all of us people here in San Diego to cherish what we have.

Absolutely. Yeah. So the marketing agency scene has been pretty strong in San Diego for quite a while. And you've, you've kind of seen that grow up a little bit from the 90s to now. And some of the agencies obviously are still around. Right. So they've grown up a lot too. We mentioned Grayson with Power Digital, but many of the other ones like Mind Groove and others. Do you want to walk us through a little bit, kind of like the marketing agency scene as you saw it as you grew up your career?

Oh, gosh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was a wild and crazy time. I feel it was like filled with a tremendous amount of like daily learning. When I started it was in the late 90s and, and it was accelerating faster with the speed of life because of technology. And you know, in the late 90s, the Internet wasn't really even acknowledged as a venue for promoting and marketing services and products. And then you look at where we're at today, you can't live without it, you know. So I went from traveling to visit clients across the nation and meeting with like their news media teams, packaging like marketing initiatives to jumping on planes and having to educate clients about the new wave back then, which was called like interactive advertising in the start of a digital technical revolution, you know, and so it was really amazing to be part of the digital revolution as an industry. And now this industry just covets technology as the primary modality of effective marketing and sales. But it wasn't like that then. So watching it evolve through the years was amazing. I mean, I started at an agency which is no longer around, but it was a great stepping stone for me. It was Castle Advertising was there for about 11 years and then met through that my who ended up later becoming a business partner of mine, Andreas Roll, who at the time owned Gary Interactive and I had partnered with to bring in digital marketing for my clients at Casel. And then I went to go work with him for a couple years. He sold the business and then I transitioned and went to Mind Group. And you mentioned Mind Group. Chad Robley, awesome guy and worked with him for a couple years and helped him build his digital marketing division for his agency. And then Andreas and I came back together with a couple other previous colleagues that we had all worked together and said, let's build something different in this agency space. And at that time, so, gosh, I'm trying to think this is like 2012, 2013. We started talking about programs. Programmatic, such a dated term now. But back then it was the big boom and in order to survive in this industry, you always had to act to the big boom. And so we said let's just solely focus on doing digital media better than all of our competitors. And that's where we built Katana. And we had Katana from 2013. We sold it in 2019 to private equity that actually had acquired a couple other local agencies here and brought them all together and a couple others from other states as well. So that's really where it was exhilarating, exhausting having to be put in the position so many years to learn all this new wave of digital platforms, immersing yourself in IT from both a consumer perspective and a marketing perspective. You always had to learn the newest, most innovative and effective executions that would deliver the monetary results to your clients. So exiting that was sad, but actually very well needed at that stage in my life. Fun, fun experience.

But also, Katana was your first that you kind of co founded and ran, correct?

Yeah, I was a co founder in it. Yeah. And like I said, my business partners, we had all formerly worked together. Andres had owned another agency. And it was exhilarating. It was. It was overwhelming a little bit to run other people's agencies or divisions or departments, but I'd never run my own company. And it was a little overwhelming at the beginning thinking like, am I going to be able to do this? I thought I knew and then I jumped in and I realized I have a lot to learn. I have a lot to learn. And I still say I have a lot to learn. But I've been fortunate enough through the past several years, actually now seven, eight years, whatever it's been, to just get completely immersed with other owners and leaders and People I greatly admire, respect to be where I'm at today.

Yeah, I was going to ask about kind of the culture, the community of what you found of other owners helping you get started, too. I know you've gotten involved in eo. Do you feel that San Diego is a community that really helps people start companies and kind of get off the ground in that regard?

Absolutely. You know, you mentioned EO Entrepreneurs Organization. I went into EO back in 2014, so I'd been a year at that point into, you know, running my own agency. And I remember I had vivid recollection of just suffering from imposter syndrome. You know, here I was at a place after working in. In this industry for 15 years, basically running those other people's businesses to now being in this position. And as I mentioned, my. My business partner at the time had been in eo. He encouraged me to lean into those insecurities and embrace the opportunity to continue to be a lifelong learner and to find ways to grow and evolve by learning from others that had similar shared experiences. And so, quite honestly, I mean, like, that experience was transformational for me. I feel so incredibly honored. And, you know, I was humbled. Back in, I think it was 2016, our San Diego chapter had recognized me as the CEO of the Year within our organization. And I was like, what? This is crazy. You know, I couldn't believe it. I still felt like I had so much to learn and. But that recognition really, like, kicked me into high gear, and it allowed me embrace the opportunity to give back within EO and even other people I knew, aspiring business owners, just to be able to help them and engage and enjoy the process and enjoy the failures that you experience along the way, because you're always going to have those failures. And, you know, I've been serving on the board for a few years now, and I take every chance that I can to help foster and support these other business owners and leaders because they have the same challenges that I'm having, you know, and it's rewarding for me. I'm excited to embark on this next year as we're exiting the pandemic to kind of watch our business community get back on their feet and encourage and support each other within those efforts in any way we can.

Absolutely. The community thing is not the thing. The community itself is so, so vibrant and real. And I've only experienced it actually, eo, during the pandemic. I'm really excited, too, to actually meet my forum members for the first time in person.

Oh, you're gonna love It. Yeah, you're gonna love it. I tell you, my forum has become my family. They really have. They've gotten me through some really tough experiences and it's allowed me to. You're gonna hear this word a lot, but I do feel that you have to learn to become vulnerable with yourself and to be able to acknowledge and admit that you don't have all the answers yet. Your team is always going to look to you and assume that you do. And finding that middle ground and being able to allow yourself an opportunity to work and share your fears and those insecurities that, that I mentioned with other people, that in a non judgmental environment and you know, some people, it's. It's not only relatable, like I said, it's transformational. I feel so lucky to have all of these people that I can call at any time and I can ask a pretty dumb question because some of my questions are dumb. They help me and they get me through it. So I feel that it's also my responsibility and pleasure to be able to provide that same. And it doesn't have to be an EO member. Like I said, I know many people that are just struggling right now and I love rolling up my sleeves and saying, how can I help? Let's figure out a solution. And collaboration is the best way. Which is kind of goes back to what we're doing in August for Onyx, you know.

Yeah. So take us through a little bit of the selling. Your first company, I think you started an actual software company, which is the first time it wasn't service based. Must have learned a lot about building a product versus building services to kind of lead you to today.

Well, yeah, I'll tell you that the business partners were much more tech savvy than I was and I got to give them kudos for it, you know. But yeah, when we started Katana, we had a desire to ultimately develop software because we felt, and I still feel like this to a certain point. Everything was being automated in the industry for digital marketing. And so we recognized that there was going to become a time where agencies would evolve themselves out of the space and either larger corporations were bringing stuff in house and they were building their own departments and divisions, or they were only looking for small, little outsourced support to kind of help them through peak times. So the development of the technology was a very beginning, long term, aspirational goal for us at Katana and we were able to do it. I mean, there was probably about three or four attempts along the way to see like okay, could this be. Do we have an mvp? Are we in a place where this would be something that we could market to either clients, Consumer Direct or to other agencies? And then we finally were able to find a solution through our data queue execution that was really just more socially engaged, tying into the CRMs and tying into the opportunity to identify who your existing customer is on a real time basis and really connect with them and deliver them real time marketing that they can relate to and listen to and respond to. So we were able to do that. So we had kept. After Katana was acquired in 2019, two of the business partners had maintained active presence in continuing to build DataQ. And. And then we had sold that at the end of 2020 to a very good friend that you had previously mentioned whose agency is bursting at the seams. Grayson for Power Digital. So that was a great feeling, knowing like, okay, you know, Grayson, you are kicking butt, let's just say, and I'll keep my language nice here, but like, you know, here's somebody who had, had used the platform and said, this is a value and I can continue to build this and spin it into what I'm doing in the agency. So that was rewarding for, for us to be able to see like, okay, we number one accomplished what we had set out for and we were able to deliver it into an environment where the new owners continue to build it, foster it, expand it and with their obviously multiple, multiple thousands of clients that they have impact, you know, very excited to see what they're going to do with it.

Yeah. So you sell another company and obviously you don't know the pandemic is about to happen. But you start Onyx one, take us through the mentality of one, like selling and jumping right into the next thing. You could have definitely, I'm sure, taken time off and you jumped into a different path here. So take us through what was going through early 2020 when you started Onyx.

Yeah, actually Onix was just initially had started. I had started working with Positive Adventures and Ryan Shorthill, who is the founder of Positive Adventures and he has a business partner, Jared Cherry. They brought me on. Ryan and I knew each other from eo. So again it's really just that network of just getting to know people. And Ryan knew that I was ready for a break and so he thought he would hit me during that break and say, you know, he started positive adventurous 15, 16 years ago. He was ready for someone to really come in and help them scale and grow and expand. And he acknowledged and recognized that they had two different audiences. They had a youth based audience, they had a corporate based audience. And the brand was getting a little bit diluted within the youth. Come on and join us on this path. And so after telling him no probably about a dozen times, because I really wanted to spend a little bit more time figuring stuff out, I looked at what their mission was and I recognized the value of what they're delivering back into the communities. And I said, okay, I want to be a part of this.

Got it. Okay.

And so that's what brought me there. So that was. Actually, I started in February of 2020. The pandemic hit in March of 2020. So about three weeks later.

Yeah. What did that do to this piece to the industry?

Oh, you know, it, it was pretty profound, I gotta be honest. Like, I, I was really overwhelmed to be in a position where I was just learning the ins and outs of the business. And then I had, I was forced into a position where I was looking and saying, okay, we've gotta make some cuts. We've got to identify a way to survive. I mean, like, truly, it's like that wartime CEO had to come out of me and I was ready to embrace for the battle of what was in front of me. And I said, okay, let's do it. So after, you know, like, unfortunately, having to downsize and then being able to recognize everything we did was group gatherings. It was team building, it was removing yourself away from the technology and going and, and sitting in front of the people that you work with and saying, let's connect. Let's find a way to ensure that we're, we're heading down the same journey and let's, let's find good ways that we can better communicate. That was gone. And so it was pretty cool. Not cool, but exciting. Because I said, okay, I've got some experience in this space. Like, I had remote employees. I knew that the challenges of what that encountered. And I said, we need to look at our programming and our curriculum and we need to convert it into the virtual aspect because we will not survive if we are not able to do this. And so that's what we did. We rolled up our sleeves. The team truly stepped out of their comfort zone. You have these individuals who were used to getting out in front of people, in front of nature, and just really delivering this high energy. And how do you take that and put it into a digital virtual experience and environment? But we did it. We did it and we brought on new, different types of experiential programming that was more game focused. There was more, you know, like being able to send out packages and you know, like we're going to do wine tasting and you're going to have a sommelier and you're going to be able to, to sit and learn with your team so you can or like beer tasting. Those were some of like the fun ones that we did. But we really also focused on emotional intelligence. We looked at change, transformation. We talked about, you know, how is this impacting organizations. You take a company who is accustomed to working together and you put them in front of a computer and you say embrace the technology because this is how you're going to work moving forward. So we gave them an opportunity to kind of pull themselves back and say, oh wow, we actually can use this, this delivery and this execution in a positive manner and we can connect, we can maintain and we can continue to reinforce our culture at the same time and we're all going down the same path. So it's been one, like I said, scary, but now I'm so proud to say like virtual is not going to go anywhere. You know, this was a new service line which then spun Positive Adventures into Onyx. And that wasn't the only component, quite honestly. We knew that we wanted to build a new brand because we wanted to elevate the experiences and the delivery of what we can do. And the Positive Adventures just wasn't going to allow us to do that. That business maintains really well for that youth based audience. So now Onyx is going to deliver that more of a once in a lifetime experience. Should you want to do that for your executive teams or for your managers or for your entire company. And so everything from a virtual game show to a custom, you know, off site retreat for your organization to just escape and do a tremendous amount of bonding and building with each other is what we're focused on.

Got it. So it kind of forced a whole new productization, it sounds like, right, you got to whole new set of offerings, which is great now to have a larger menu service now too. And take us through maybe some of the parameters like what's the right size company, what's the smallest company that's been involved in something like this? And what are some other parameters that are good for companies to look through?

We work with companies that have a team size of four and they're looking for, hey, we are all working remotely and we're trying to find ways that we can continue to connect and maintain a sense of normalcy. And we're trying to grow this company to be more than four employees. To we just ran a conference for a insurance company that we offered 30, I think it was 34 different virtual programs for. And we, they brought us on. We've worked with them in person programming in the years past but they had to bring their conference online and they had over 5,000 people passing through our programs over a three day course period. So they did everything from like I said, bingo shows to people were able to kind of do spa day in. And so we sent different packages out. Their attendees were able to sign up for what they were interested in and some did some whiskey tasting, some played some games, some really just had some better emotional, intelligent conversations and activities but very diversified and the feedback from it was outstanding. And they said you brought normalcy back. We didn't think that it was possible and it's great to get the client feedback of these companies or these individuals within the companies that never really embraced it before and they didn't understand how you can take that type of experience and be able to still get outcome of positivity and you know, reinvigoration with your team and with your, your teammates through sitting at a desk at your house. So now we're able to slowly start getting things back in person, which is great. We're seeing more of those come through. But I love the, the virtual space like it's so rewarding and to get that feedback. Post clients and the clients keep coming back. They continue to, you know, we want to do this monthly or we want to do something quarterly. And it's allowing us to continue to expand our programming and curriculum because our clients are telling us what their challenges are and we're able to build and expand the offering of programs and services based upon that feedback.

So I was going to ask about impact, but it sounds like you're measuring it everywhere in terms of that way. Yeah, maybe easier to do in person when you kind of see some breakthroughs happen between either two people or a team or something. But looks like you've been forced to learn how to measure impact virtually too, which is pretty great.

It's great. And like I said from a global perspective, we ran a program yesterday, we had people in Singapore, there were some in Ireland. You have global teams now that recognize there's ways for us to be able to connect. One of my staff members said the guy in Singapore had said the sun just came up, you know, and we were running the program. It was probably three, four o'clock in the afternoon. So it's pretty amazing to see like we're touching people across the globe. And they're coming back and they're providing us with something that we know is so incredibly needed after this year to ensure that we feel that we know the people and we trust the people and we respect the people that we work with and we work for. And it gets us all on the same page and we're heading down the same journey. And that truly is transformational when you can bring that into an organization.

Totally agree. I'm curious going forward now that we're coming back to in person, we think we know there's going to be hybrid, like what are you going to be positioning your own team for? And maybe even like what's on the horizon think for your company itself over the next year.

Well, right now we are so excited to be going into the place where we can get back in front of people so virtual. Like I said, it's not going to go away. We continue to promote that. I actually am predicting a peak in it like I saw last, you know, November and December for holiday stuff that companies are still probably going to want to find ways that they can, you know, through technology be able to connect their teams. But the in person stuff's been great. Like we really spent a tremendous amount of time and energy customizing programs to bring teams back together. And you know, we're actually running this, this big promotion in the next couple of weeks. We're giving away a, it's called a back to work day. So kind of like a back to school day where teams can sign up to, to win this type of experience. And we do everything from, you know, an amazing race to you can do like team Olympics. You can do more of an outdoor water type experience. If they're here in San Diego, you can do the kayaking and there's all, there's, there's team programs and we have a facilitator who does activities throughout the course of the day. And it's really just saying let's get everybody back together. And you can like some companies determine, say I want to spend an hour of this time to focus on reestablishing the mission and the vision of the organization and, and the contributing factors of these individuals. And then I want them to have fun and I want them to, you know, get to hug again and be able to, you know, experience like being with one another. They may go back to a remote place and work or they may be coming back into an office shared space environment. We're seeing it across the board and we are. That's where some of the hybrid stuff that's coming into play is going to be really tremendously impactful, I think for, for different organizations, because for most companies they're going to allow the remote working employee to continue to stay in that manner, which opens up a whole new ball game for us to say, like, okay, we hear the struggles, we hear what people are frustrated about by staring at a screen and talking to it. So how can we still deliver something through that same screen and get them to say, wow, that was great. Like, I feel really good. I'm walking away and I feel fulfilled.

Yeah. And it's an incredible experience from the employer to do it to the employees. Especially with the way Covid started. It was so sudden. It was like, hey, everyone, just stay home, we'll figure it out over the next few months. Right? It was kind of just like the band aid was ripped off. Now you have this chance to say we want to welcome you back with programming, right? With like in the right way, which I think is a really exciting way. It's smart for you to do the kind of back to office experience. So that kind of. It's like, it's like a fresh new start, right? It's like, man, the last 18 months were crappy. But here we are, we've learned, we've persevered and let's, let's find a way to harness that and push that forward. So that's pretty cool to eat it.

It's really fun to. Fun to do too because I think we've all felt it, even myself, you know, and bringing my team back together and saying we were working remotely too and said now's our time. We need to practice what we preach. We're going to make certain that we're doing the same type of engagement, which I will say the team's very good at, you know, and they, they love doing it. Maybe sometimes we do it a little too much because, you know, like, we're new company, we're building, you know, onyx off sites and trainings. We've got this whole new vision of, you use your slogan of saying, like we are here to create culture, connectivity and change and we need to do that within ourselves as well. So before we can effectively be able to promote it out. So we've done great at that and we continue to do it. So as I sit here in my home office.

Of course, well, like you said, it's going to be hybrid for a bit. There are some things that we liked about home, you know, and things we will definitely look forward to in person, including recording these in person. These podcasts back in person. We hope soon too. So love to have you back maybe in a year's time and say, catch us up. What have we learned in the last year from back in person or hybrid learning? That'd be kind of cool. You've been in San Diego a bit. You obviously started here while a college student, which is kind of the best time to learn about tacos, late night tacos and burritos. Do you have a favorite place now or multiple places that you like to go for tacos?

If you ask me what my favorite place is, and I bet you've gotten this many times. But my in laws live up in Mission Hills. Lucha Libre is our place to go. We love it. Even like through the pandemic and we couldn't go and spend time with them. We pick up Lucha libre, we bring it in. It is like by far. I'm more of a burrito girl. I like my tacos, but I love my burritos. And so like they're, I think it's like a California burrito with the french fries and the chicken and you've got like all of their secret little sauce. Fantastic. So I would say by far it would have to be Lucia libre. Definitely worth the line to wait. My kids don't think so, but I'm like, I don't really care. You can sit in the car. I'm going to get it because it is delicious. And then, you know, if I had to say something locally, I live in Bay park, where we frequent the most would be Roberto's because like, that is, my kids are, they're obsessed with their, their quesadillas. And again, I go back to their. I go for their personal carnivot or their carne asada. Tacos are just fantastic. So shout out to Roberto's on Claremont Drive. We love them totally.

They have like, we've talked about it so many times how they've like nailed real estate wise. They're like everywhere that you, you want them, you know. Yeah, they're just always within reach.

We are walking distance to them. So, yeah, it's great.

Dangerous for sure.

It's definitely dangerous.

Well, you know, we actually don't hear Lucha libre as much as good as it is. So I'm going to check our taco database and make sure it's in there, which we have built over three years of interviews on this. But Melissa, thanks so much for coming on the podcast, sharing your story and really for what you're doing for the community, not just for helping entrepreneurs through eo but through helping companies kind of get back to work now. So, really excited for ONIX and what you guys are building.

I appreciate the opportunity to kind of share the pathway and like I said, very honored and privileged to work with our community here in San Diego.

Awesome. Well, thank you.

You bet.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech Podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Ness Coworking in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eelbloom as well as fresh brewed Tech and Tacos and Tech Pod on Twitter too.

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