Episode 339: How Design Thinking Drives Promo Sales with Tom Havens

Design in the promo business has changed. No longer are simple logo slaps and distributors as sourcing houses only enough to win in today's climate. You need some serious design skills to match an ever-increasing audience taste. Tom Havens, one of the industry's most experienced design pros, discusses the critical importance of design thinking in promo and particularly how it amps the sales experience. On today's show, I talk with Tom about how business development starts with design, in-house versus freelance options, and how design thinking drives sales. Welcome to the Skucast, the podcast for innovators and maverick thinkers in the brand emerge space. My name is Bobby LeHew. I'm glad you're here. Before I chat with Tom, if you've not heard, we have only a handful of seats left for our signature bootcamp experience, Skucamp, held in Scottsdale, Arizona, September 7th through 10th. Come learn how to craft an unforgettable customer experience, Navigate economic volatility, understand how the biggest suppliers are impacted by tariffs, and we just added a 2-hour AI workshop to the schedule. So come learn how the industry's most progressive pros are driving change in their business with AI. Register today and secure your seat at skucamp.com. Our guest today, Tom Haven, started his career as a commission-only salesperson in the Bay Area, and within 7 years, he reached the top 5 out of 100 salespeople and opened a new office in Seattle. After 12+ years in sales, Tom started his own distributorship and founded Catalyst Marketing, implementing a go-to-market strategy that focused on creativity and design. The company reached $25 million in revenue working with high-profile clients like Nike, Starbucks, Nintendo, Southwest Airlines, and more. Catalyst was acquired by Halo in 2017. Then Tom's role was leading the creative department, growing the team from 14 to 30, training salespeople how to utilize the the creative team, and helping win numerous RFPs and large projects with Fortune 1000 companies. Now, Tom has an incredible reputation in the industry as the consummate design pro, which you'll see why. I found out about Tom when Common Skew customer and friend Shelley Stewart suggested Tom and I connect here for a chat on the SkewCast. In 2024, Tom launched his new venture, Havens Consulting, with the goal of helping distributors and suppliers grow their sales. Today's episode is brought to you courtesy of us at CommonSkew. Over 800 distributors powering $1.8 billion in network volume rely on CommonSkew's connected workflow. Process more orders, connect your team, and dramatically grow your sales. To learn how, visit commonskew.com. Now here's my chat with Tom Havens. Tom Havens, thank you for joining us on the SkewCast today.

Yeah, glad to be here. I'm glad I'm worthy enough to be here.

You, you've got a storied history, my friend. You're the earliest professional professional in the business I've ever heard use the term agency in relation to being distributor. And I won't call out the year, but this was a long time ago when you consider yourself an agent. You called yourself then a design agency in a promo world. What did you mean?

Yeah, that's a great question. I, I do want to give credit to my old boss, Russ Woodley from Jack Nadel Incorporated, who has since passed, who back in 1987, actually 1985, had the vision of using design. Literally. And so that was his whole approach. And he hired, which has been my mentor and one of my best friends, Toby Cowan, who became our creative director. And we started working together. And so what I mean about being a design agency is it starts more with what's the feeling, what's the vibe, what are we trying to accomplish before the product?

Yeah.

And I think that in our world, in the promotional merchandise world, and I've been at for 35 years, a lot of it is let's start with the product. I want to do a t-shirt. It's okay. Then what are we going to do with the t-shirt as opposed to, hey, let's, what are we trying to accomplish? What's the objective? Who is the audience? Blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff. So it's a little bit more of the right brain thinking versus the left brain thinking, I guess is probably a better way.

Yeah, for sure. And as the industry's matured, you've probably seen this, but it's startling to realize that you had a design focus that far back because the industry for decades now, decades, has been a sourcing business. Like, that is our predominant job was, hey, I need this shirt, I go find this shirt, we put a logo on it, and we're done.

And so, yeah, but now it's transactional, very transactional.

But that's— those days are gone. Like, yes, we still do transactional business, so I don't want anyone to misunderstand. But what's leading— and that's what we're going to talk about now— is that what's leading the differentiation in the business is style, taste, and design. And you said it this way, you said business development starts with design? What did you mean by business development begins with design?

Again, because I think that there's no new products out there, right? Like, as soon as a new product comes out, it goes on social media, and then in 3 days it's not new anymore. So it has to start with design. So to, to, to me, again, it's a little bit more about the right-brain thinking of, okay, first let's start with the objective and what is the client doing and what kind of concepts can we come up with to help accomplish that particular goal. So if somebody comes to me and says, hey, I want a t-shirt, can you design me a t-shirt? That's not an objective. Yeah. Objective is I have an audience that I want to engage and I wanna make sure that the engagement includes X, Y, Z. Like, how do we go about doing that? So it's a design process thinking, if you will. Like, I, you know, I talk a little bit about so how you define that, right?

Yeah.

So defining design really, it's not mockups and it's not just simple graphic design, at least That's what I'm referring to.

You're talking about design strategy at this point.

It's a strategy. It's a concepting process. It's basically big picture problem solving, right? It's concepting, it's solving objectives, and it's doing a massive amount of research to understand your client's brand, their culture, their vision, their values, their target audience, who they are, why should they care, where are they from? And you take all of that into consideration and it's visual communications is what really comes down to.

Oh yeah.

So, so we can design it. So going back to it, we go, oh yeah, now that we all understand everything that's going on, sure, a t-shirt might be a great option, but let's do something with that t-shirt.

Yeah.

So I really think that when I talk about design and design strategy, it's a lot more than just doing mockups and it's a lot more than just hiring a designer. It's the thought process and it's taking the time to do the research. And frankly, the way our business has been so transactional in the past, salespeople don't have time to do that.

Right.

And a lot of companies don't have time to do that. They just don't. And I think it's, I think it's doing a little bit of a disservice to the customers that we're, that we work with, that we don't do, that more people don't do a better job of doing a deep dive into what's going on.

Totally. Totally. I was talking with a distributor yesterday, 400 employees. They have an international footprint. They're in multiple countries. And he just hired a CEO from one of the largest ad agency firms in the world. And it shows you the shift that's happening with some of the most progressive brands in the business. They're like, We're waking up to a new world here. So that's what we're going to unpack a little more. What are some of the most common design mistakes you see distributors making? Things like, are they things like you mentioned, not making design a strategic focus, not putting the resources in, like hiring people? Like, what are some of those mistakes?

I would say there's one major mistake. And that is that first off, a lot of them are not open to it. Like they don't know, like they don't know what they don't know. And that's not really it. I don't want to criticize people for that. It's just they don't know what they don't know. There's a lot of people that don't dress very well.

Yeah.

And they just don't know. And there's a lot of like really savvy people that like dress to the nines. So I think just one, that there's a lack of understanding. But I would say like the number one mistake that distributors make is that they hire a designer who is not an art director. They're like a 2 or 3-year designer. So let me give you an example. For instance, like if you were to hire a VP of sales, would you hire somebody that has 3 years sales experience?

No.

If you needed a CFO, would you hire an accounts payable person?

No.

So if you need a designer and you want to work, build your creative design, everyone's hiring like these 2-year designers.

Yeah.

So I think, and then they go, they check that box and go, oh yeah, we have a designer. And then the designer, it just gets mired and buried into doing mockups. And that's all they do. And that's all they have time for. So I think that there needs to be a real commitment of hiring a senior level designer, art director, and have that designer build that department. They can do the work, but then they can also do the research and then they can work with freelancers and bring them in depending on the project. You need somebody just like a CFO to come in and be like, okay, like I'm going to have to either hire or bring in accounts payable person and bring in some invoicing, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I think that's probably the biggest mistake is not really hiring up enough. They hire too far low. That makes sense.

Oh, so it makes such great sense. You also said that the hiring for that art director, that art position is as important as your VP sales because they will trigger sales. They will create sales.

I have to tell you that I've worked with a lot of designers and through the years, and if you would talk to any of my salespeople, they would tell you that they don't know how they survive without creative. They win because of creative. Now it's, and it's a team. It's definitely a team. And I think maybe another mistake too is I think sometimes when designers come on board and I've talked to a few of them, they feel like they're a vendor.

Yeah.

And they're not part of the team.

Right.

So there's, I think there's that mistake. And again, that's not a criticism because as a salesperson, they work with vendors who do design and so they treat them like a designer, right? Yeah. If there's a way to make that designer or that design team be part of the sales team and be part of the process, part of the prospecting process, part of the developing process of ideas and the salesperson, we have obviously very smart salespeople in this business, right? They understand their clients and nuances are really smart. They're good at sourcing and that kind of stuff. And then if you put a team of designers on there that sprinkles a little bit of thinking over the top of it, boy, it's a great way to go.

If I were then hiring an art director, I want to make sure they're embedded in the sales process with my team. And does that mean, are these folks going on client account meetings? Are they sure? What part of the strategy process are they a part of? What does that look like? Or maybe if you have a campaign example.

Yeah, that's a great question. I'd say if you take a couple steps back, I think what's really— I had the advantage of starting with that as opposed to a company who's got a marketing person, they got great salespeople and they might have sales support as an AE. They might be on straight commission. They might have one or two support people and they got a finance person and HR and that kind of stuff. And all of a sudden they're bringing in a creative. It's okay, how do you bring that person in? So we were lucky. It was like we, everybody started together. So it was much easier. But in terms of what that really looks like, I think that if I was a distributor and I really wanted to, and I'm working with a few people now about how do we go about building that department? A lot of these guys are like, I don't even know how to hire one. What do I look for? And then how do you know they're good? And then how do you meld them into all the salespeople?

Yes, exactly.

So I think that number one is really talking with the salespeople and which we did when my company merged in with Halo. We were working with people who never worked with our department before.

Yeah. Right.

And so there's a little bit of an education, I think, that needs to happen with the salespeople of, okay, this is the role we want the designer to be. We want them to be on your team. They're not a vendor. We want them to be with you when they're asked, when you're asking questions. Because they're gonna ask different questions than you are.

Yeah.

And we teach them a lot of creative. We put a creative brief together. It's like, this is the information that we need as a designer in order to do our job. Now, do we get all that information? No. But if we get at least 80%, 70%, then we can guess on the other part. And I think that people are so used to getting mockups, it's, oh, I'll get it the next day. You're not. It's, this is a 5-day process. It takes a little bit longer, right? So So I think when you, we kind of ask that question, it's training, I think, the salespeople to really understand the purpose of what they're going to do and how they're going to help grow the business and how they're going to help you differentiate yourself from everybody else. So I think that that's number one. I think like from a process standpoint, depending on how big you are, we have, you have to put processes in there because what I've learned when we merged in with another company, all of a sudden we had 26 people all giving projects, you know, design team, and it was like completely overwhelming. So what's the process? And because everyone's excited, right? Which is wonderful. So we had it pretty dialed in where I think it was called Wrike was our system. Basically, if you're an AE and you have a project, you put it in, we had a traffic manager read through the brief, see what was required, and he would just parse it off to whomever had the ability or that kind of technology or whatever, that kind of style to get that done. And then they match together. And so it, it's, and so I'd say again, there's some education needs to happen.

Yeah.

And I think there's some processes that need to happen.

Really good point. Yeah.

And I think that there's budgeting that needs to happen because let's say you hire a senior art director, you know, really talented person. The salespeople are super excited to work with them and maybe you might have a marketing person that's doing stuff. So everyone's working well together, but that senior designer, most likely if you have more than 6 salespeople, they're not going to be able to do all the work. There's just no way. Yeah. So you need a budget for freelancers. And most designers, right, what we had is we had our design team and we had what we called our bench. And we had a bench of like probably 6 to 10 designers that all had different capabilities and different talents that like if we got overwhelmed, we just grabbed them and pulled them in.

I see. So we were about to get into this topic of hiring in-house versus freelancers. And your art director is still that pivotal role that is serving you inside on the team who will as a strategic advisor who then works with these cadre of freelancers, which we'll get to in a minute. But before we get to that, I want to ask you one more thing about the why. A trend that I'm seeing, and I help put together our newsletter called The Backpack, which we release the first and third Friday of each month. Through a year, I'll pour through 1,500 to 2,000 articles. It's no exaggeration how many articles we go through to find the best things that are happening in merch. One of the interesting trends that I've seen is that brands, companies now are reaching out to influencers.

Yeah.

To create merch. So instead of going to a traditional distributor, what they're doing is they're seeing this influencer, which another word for that is tastemaker. So this influencer has created a community. They have folks that love them and follow them because of that sales, that influencer's taste.

Yeah.

And somebody like Nike, I just saw this happen with Nike, reached out to them to create a jacket. And this is someone then who goes through the mechanics of work just like a distributor. In fact, there was a behind the scenes video that talked about what he went through to go source it. Overseas and distribute it and get it back in the hands of the customer. Astonishing to me that there are these competitive pockets now showing up, and that's because of our lack of emphasis on being tastemakers, I would think. What do you think of when I say that?

I just think that it's a shame too. Like, we as an industry, and I, now that my non-compete's over and I can come out of the closet and start talking, Russ Woodley back in 1985 was trying to get the industry to be more design-oriented. And I just think that we are doing our clients a disservice and we are just absolutely losing out on opportunities to do a better job of creating cool ideas, concepts that people are— can be engaged in. And we actually had very large brands we work with and we did all of their influencer boxes. We designed them. I can't say who because they wouldn't want that. But now, and what ends up happening is like the department in those companies, they're so busy doing everything else with their brand and commercials and ads and everything else. At that point, like influencers weren't super important. And so we were designing all the product and they would give us product that we'd go in and we were designing all the boxes and we were creating the experience, if you will. And I have videos of these influencers undoing the box that we created for the client. It was so cool. Now it's, now they're not working with us anymore because they got, they realized that's really important.

Them. But yeah, let's go back to this then. I— now I'm catching up with you and I see the point that the art director there is as a strategic advisor for you and your clients and your customer, for the salespeople, for everyone else. And then you talked about having this sort of outsourcing model that relied on freelancers. And today with companies like DCX where you can partner with folks overseas, how would you respond to a distributor who says they can't, they can't outsource or they can't do that? I— for me, you answered the question because I always felt as a distributor I need to either or. I either need to outsource it all or I needed to hire a bunch of designers with that skill set to come in and do that for my business. But you've answered the question more of a strategic role than you outsource. Can you unpack that a little more?

Yeah. And I would say that we never had a really good experience of overseas outsourcing. They just didn't. It was just harder because they didn't really know the brand the way like an employee would know the brand. If we were just doing simple mockups, then yeah, we went over to Philippines a lot. That's from a money perspective. That worked out really well. Let's say you have a, let's say you have a customer that's a Nike customer, or it's a Chick-fil-A type of a customer, or it's like, you're going to want to have a designer, an art director. It's the way we structured an art director again, to oversee kind of the whole department. But then you're going to want to have a designer that like knows Nike like the back of their hand.

Yeah.

And knows everything about it. And so there's a lot of collaboration that's going on there. So I, I don't, I guess I wouldn't endorse like doing a lot of outsourcing before you have somebody that's part of the sales team that knows the brand and knows everything. Yeah, it just, there's a disconnect there. And again, if you're looking for straight mockups, go over to the Philippines, that's totally fine. But if you're looking for concepting, and I'd love to show you just a couple of things what I mean by that. But if you're really looking for concepting and something creative and clever, that can't be bid out because it's your idea. Yeah, you're not going to get that from outsourcing overseas, in my opinion.

I like the idea that you just shared there where we have this strategic in-house person, the disconnect you talked about where there's the disconnect. If you're working— I know some distributors who are working with a design partner, so they're working with a partner who does design and they're not outsourcing, but they're more like freelance.

Yeah.

Is that possible?

Oh yeah, I think so. I like, I don't want to discourage that necessarily, but if I'm, let's say there's in our business, a lot of AEs. And when I said that we used to use that as account executive, a lot of salespeople, even though they're part of a company, they're running their own business. They're straight commissioned. They got their own gig. A lot of those folks have a freelance designer that they work with, but they're working with them on an ongoing basis. They, that freelance designer knows their client working with Walmart or whatever. They've been doing Walmart stuff with them and they study their brand and everything else. Yeah, I think, I I think absolutely that, that sort of methodology can work, especially if it's just one-on-one. If I'm a salesperson and I'm working with 2 or 3 different clients and I have this cool freelancer and they have the time to do all the research and I can pay them to do all that, I think that's great. Now, but they're paying for that. What we did is we did all the creative for free. That was, there was not a cost there. Now, if we, And when I ran our company, I just figured that's the cost of doing business and that's why we'd win. When we got acquired by Halo and, or we got bigger, we gave everybody an allowance of how many hours they could have based on their sales and their clients.

Okay.

So then all of a sudden people are like a little bit more choosy about how they're going to use the team and not just for a bunch of mockups.

So at one time you used design as a way to differentiate your business and win the business. And then with that, when you started to scale, at one point you had 8 sales teams with 15 designers you were managing, and it's a massive team. And today, if you had to build a distributorship now, and you're speaking to a lot of progressive distributors who are really progressive in sourcing, they're very conscientious and staying at sustainability, they have great brands, what would you do today? Would you charge? This is the old charge versus free, or what kind of model would you embrace? Is it like a hybrid of both?

I think that, okay, so this is my opinion. So I was a straight commission salesperson for probably the first 15, 20 years of my life. And then I started my own company and I did not want people on straight commission because straight commission salespeople are selfish. And that's not a criticism. It's in a good way. They hunt, they eat what they hunt. Smart, motivated people, right? So, so to me, like the better way to do things is building teams. There's one salesperson who's in charge, but there's a team of people who can help do a lot of the miscellaneous stuff, including the design, so that the salesperson can go out and get sales. So when we transferred a little bit from straight commission to a team and it was salary plus bonus, like our salespeople, you know, our salespeople were doing $3, $4 million in business.

Yeah. You're talking to a lot of folks, by the way, who have embraced the model of salary and embrace this sort of thing you're talking about and what that— and Don't let me put words in your mouth, but what it feels like is then the house gets to play with more profit numbers, so to speak.

Yeah, well, they have more money to support your business, right?

Correct.

Yeah. So to answer your question, I think that I like the idea of trying to recoup some dollars of our creative department.

Yeah.

And not have it be all free. And so I think a really good model, and our salespeople liked it, was we allocated, again, we allocated X number of hours. I think we did it like every quarter. And if you didn't use it, you lose it. And you did it every quarter because people's sales cycle goes up and down. So, and then they have a little bit more of a skin in the game. So if they just need a simple mockup, then they can just go to a vendor and get it. Don't come to our group to do that. Just get the vendor to do it. But if they need some really good concepting or they got a brand new prospect they're trying to go after, hey, let's sit down and put a team together and figure out how we're going to do that. So I guess what I would, I would really If I was to start over, you just look at all like the heads of the departments. You have your HR and you got operations and you got CFO and then you got a creative director. Like putting that all together and try to do some recouping back. I think we recoup probably 40% of the cost of our creative. That's pretty good. I thought that was pretty good.

It's really good. Yeah, that surprises me that it's that high. So Tom, I want to go to some brass tacks here real quick on what it looks like to move beyond the world of mockups and to move to conceptual thinking about design and how it impacts sales. What's the difference? Do you have some examples you can show us?

That's a great question because sometimes people are like, I have a designer, didn't I check that box? And the poor designer is just buried and all they're doing is just like simple mockups and layout. There's no concept going on. So I, I have actually have two examples I want to show you and these are older. And so I'm assuming like any sort of non-compete or whatever by showing this is going to be okay. And it's concepts that we created and I'll do this one first. So there's two and I might not be, and I've full disclosure, I might not remember all the things that happened and how this was, but just looking at it, you kind of get the sense of it. So we were working with Microsoft and they, I think we were working with the agency that was working with Microsoft that was doing this like software asset management system. And it was within a division of Microsoft where they had to put some new software in. I can't remember exactly what it was. And so we had the person that we were working with was like, hey, we want to create like a, like a notebook. And kind of insert pages in there about all the benefits and some of the things that we are doing. And can we get that? And it was for like, I don't know, like 10,000 people. And we're like, oh, okay. So again, the right-brained, left-brained thinking. So when I was involved in this project, so I started asking questions. I'm like, what does this thing do exactly? And who is the department? And why are you guys doing this anyway? And why, if I'm a person that's going to get this, like, why should I care? Kind of get all these things right. And so over a week or so of concept and getting information, Instead of getting a notebook, what we created was an action figure named SAM. And SAM stands for Software Asset Management System. I don't know if you can see it, but it's like a, it's a Superman that's inside this box. And on the outside it says, experience SAM's awesome superpowers. And then on the side here, it says, thrill at SAM's power to optimize your customers' investments, optimize Azure bill. And then inside here, when you open it up, it has like the 4 main things that they could do that the software does for you.

Yeah.

So this is, I always show this because it's like the guy wanted to do a notebook, right? Let's do something that's more fun. It's a little bit more lighthearted. It's got all the benefits and no one's going to throw this away.

Yeah. It's a phenomenal story because this little interaction that you just described happens, the first part of it anyways, happens every day in this industry. And then what happens when we're not thinking about bigger things is we think like sourcing agents only.

Yes.

We put on our sourcing agent hat and we go, I can get you journals and I can do that. Instead, what you did was we could do that. Sure. And then you have these other hats that you wear all the time. You have this design thinking hat. You have the sales rep. You have all of these other things. Phenomenal.

There's years ago, like Target, and I still think that, I think they still do it today, but Target like was partnering with some of the most famous artists and design people in the world to create products for them. And I remember my wife brought home, like, a toilet, like, cleaner thing that was designed by a famous artist. And it looked like a— it was like a statue in our bathroom. And so it's like taking the mundane and making it beautiful, right? So another part of that, we were working with Brooks Shoes, and they were either doing a marathon or sponsoring a marathon. But afterwards, there was a party afterwards, and there was a brewery that was going to be there. So they were sponsoring it. So they called us, and again, it was It was a pretty large order and they asked if we could do some pint glasses, right? So again, a sourcing person would be like, okay, pint glasses, I can do different shapes and what kind and how many are we going to get and what is it going to cost and when are they going to need it? How many colors of imprint are we going to put on there? That's like the traditional way people think, right? But again, we're like, how are you handing these things out exactly? And why, why do you want to do this? And what are some of the things that we knew Brooks really, really well? And we're like, are these people, it's the first time they know of Brooks and And are they all wearing Brooks shoes? Just all these questions, right? So what we created for them, and it's just so simple. So we created a little miniature shoebox that the pint glass goes in. That's great. Wow. And then on the outside of the shoebox is perforated coasters. So you can punch it out and you get 4 coasters with your glass, right? And then the glass itself, which I just think is so clever. So Brooks tagline is run happy. That's their tagline, right? So on the print here, we put run happy to live logger versus longer, right? With logger bear.

Love it.

So it says run happy to live logger, and then you can't, I don't know if you can see it, but on the bottom here, we put a line that says finish. So that when you're finished, it's coming over the run line, right? Yeah. So anyway, so These are just really small examples of how creating more clever, more unique, and like that Sam project and this project, like the client, if they're, if the client's loyal, they're not gonna, they're not gonna outbid you on that.

Right.

Brooks didn't go, oh, okay. Yeah. Look, we took your concept and we're gonna bid it out to everybody.

Yeah.

We don't, any salesperson would say, we're not gonna work with that person again. But it was totally the concept. That's where, that's where I get into how important the creative concepting is. Yeah. But to get to a differentiation.

Yeah. You know what's funny is I would talk with distributors and often the first thing that would happen is I'd get pushback that sounded like this. Yeah, but we don't have the time or the energy to do that for every client or we can't do that for every client. And that's not necessarily what we're talking about.

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have to be— yeah. Are you going to do it for Tom's Nail Shop down the street? No. But are you going to do it for Microsoft, Starbucks, and Nike?

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. Tom, let's talk about— thanks for those examples, by the way. Brilliant examples. I love that.

I mean, in your mind, does that make a difference?

Absolutely.

Make you understand? Okay.

Absolutely.

I always wonder if people go, I don't know what the hell he's talking about.

Yeah. Conceptual, like design thinking, conceptual thinking, and that's so different than we're going to do a mockup. And again, it's the differentiation between a sourcing house and someone who's actually a marketing professional who's going to make an impact. Yeah, that's what we're talking about. So let's talk a little bit about resources to make us smarter. I believe as we head into the future, more— we have more sophisticated design demands from clients, which means things like trends, product design, customer design, style, taste, curation. All those things are becoming urgently paramount as a skill set. Like, they're not even optional anymore for people who want to win in the future. So are there designers or agencies, or how do you keep your design skills sharp? Are there people you follow? Who influences you from a brand perspective?

Yeah, that's a great question. I used to— I'm, by the way, people, their jaw drops. Like, I'm not a designer, right? And, and so they're like, what? You live in the world of design? I said, no, I, like, I never— I, I've taught it. I understand the strategy. I know good design and I know bad design. I can art direct. So I'm not— full disclosure, like, if somebody called and said, hey, can you design this? I said, no, but I can find somebody who can design it for you.

Yeah. And you know what, I can interject something here because we've probably all seen the clips on social media, but Rick Rubin has famously come out with his book on creativity, who would say he can't play an instrument. He literally has no idea how to play an instrument, and he is one of the most successful music producers ever in history.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you read his book, by the way?

Yes.

Yes.

Brilliant. I recommend it to everybody. It's phenomenal. But the fact that he hasn't— he's not like in— he's not a soundboard expert. He's not a musician himself.

Yeah.

That he's a tastemaker.

Yeah. Yeah.

But go ahead. Oh, you were gonna unpack like that.

Anyway, so what's your question again?

How do you follow though, for instance? Like, how do you— like, we all follow other brands. You follow— how do you keep your own style sensibility sharp?

Yeah, yeah. I would say that I probably don't do as much as I used to back in the day. If you know a company called IDEO, have you heard of that?

Yeah, sure.

They were a big influence on me about just their whole design thinking and what they do. And I was watching, yeah, how they, how they put design thinking like to hospitals and crazy things like that. Yeah, yeah. I'm a car buff. Have you seen the new Porsche Tokan, like, electric car, like, that is art on wheels to me. Like, it's just absolutely fantastic.

By the way, if I can interject again, I think what that goes— the point goes to show is that wherever you find a passion of your own, you can find design taste, and you can— you're watching for those things.

That's the kind of thing that appeals to you. Yeah. And I'm fortunate because my wife's an artist, and so I'm like, I don't really follow, but I look and shop and we go to galleries. And I love paintings. I love interpreting stuff. And I'm a clothes buff. Like, I love shoes. I was a big Nike fan. I'm really disappointed in Nike these days. I think they've lost their way. And in my opinion, they're just—

Yeah, yeah. Great point. Wherever you find these passions, like I was talking with sales director in this industry, and he's a modern art buff. He loves modern art. He's visiting— he keeps— that's how he keeps that sensibility alive.

Yeah. That sense.

Tom Tom, thank you, my friend, for joining us today. This has been phenomenal conversation around design. We don't talk about this topic enough. So to have somebody with your expertise and your depth of experience is phenomenal for us. So thanks for joining us.

Thanks. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. So I'm sure we'll talk soon.