Issue 10 - Disrupt by foundingAUSTIN Magazine

ISSUE 10 | DISRUPT

Louis Black

CREATING THE AUSTIN LEGEND THROUGH SXSW AND THE AUSTIN CHRONICLE

Entrepreneurship. Inspiration. Lifestyle.

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ISSUE 10 | DISRUPT

Mission At foundingAUSTIN, we know what success looks like—it looks like the many Austin entrepreneurs who are bringing innovation, solutions, and progress to their industries. Every quarter, we bring readers inspiring stories from these business leaders who have learned lessons the hard way and now want to share them with you. These encouraging profiles are combined with capsule introductions to our podcasts and current information for masters and founders who are "in the know" to create a well-rounded resource for all of your entrepreneurial needs.

Deborah Hamilton-Lynne LETTER FROM THE EDITOR When I was growing up, the word “disrupt” had a negative connotation. How many times was someone (usually me) called down for disrupting the class? If you were disruptive it meant you were a little wild and undisciplined, and I have to admit I liked that idea. Somewhere along the way, the meaning of disrupt changed: Disrupter became a buzzword, and being a disrupter became cool (as I always secretly knew it would). Disrupters such as Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos became famous. Lists of the most successful disrupters were published annually. In this issue, we set out to explore the notion of being and becoming a disrupter with some of Austin’s most successful members of that entrepreneurial breed. Beginning with Louis Black, without whom there would have never been a SXSW or Austin Chronicle, and moving to Jason Ballard, who is about to revolutionize the way we create affordable housing, these innovators saw an opportunity to change the world in ways that others didn’t and were willing, indeed even anxious, to take the risk that would prove them right. As I read their stories, I was inspired by their passion to “think different” and apply that skill to solving a problem, often with a personal connection. Following a double mastectomy, Cherie Mathews was sent home in her husband’s dress shirt and handed safety pins to hold her drains, so she created a shirt that has helped thousands of women and men have dignity as they “heal in comfort.” The shirt is made even more revolutionary by the addition of ELI Technology. Disrupters thrive on challenges, like to be first, and aren’t afraid of failure. In a city where creativity is celebrated, musicians and performers often have a difficult time making a living doing what they love. Shannon Sedwick of Esther’s Follies and Gordy Quist of Band of Heathens thought outside the box and found ways to thrive. In a recent study, when people were asked if they liked change, only 28 percent responded positively. That means disrupters need to persuade the other 72 percent to support their ideas and endeavors. Alejandro Ruelas and Manny Flores of LatinWorks, Cotter Cunningham of RetailMeNot, and Alexis Jones of ProtectHer and I AM THAT GIRL have done just that. The disrupters in this issue have been so successful that the companies, products, and events they created now seem part of the status quo — as if we knew they would come into being all along. But disrupters know that is an illusion. So be thoughtful when you enter the extreme race to disrupt. Be purposeful when you decide which applecart to upset. Be positive when you set out to change the world. Become a disrupter — in the best sense of the word — and we could be telling your story soon. 4

DAN DILLARD Publisher Scruffy-Looking Nerf Herder DEBORAH HAMILTON-LYNNE Editor-in-Chief Oracle of All Things ATX WESTON CARLS Managing Editor He Edits, He Shoots, He Scores LYNN WISE Copy & Social Media Editor Chief Corrections Officer, Y'all LAUREN DILLARD Little Editor Gotham’s Masked Vigilante CONTRIBUTORS Weston Carls Dan Dillard John T. Davis Mason Endres Greg Giannukos Deborah Hamilton-Lynne Leslie Hodge Korey Howell Julia Keim Tim League Rodney Martinez Paige Newton Dylan O’Connor Annie Ray Heather Wagner Reed Shelley Seale Shannon Sedwick Patty Smith Chad Swiatecki Lynn Wise CANINE CONTRIBUTORS Dexter Maggie Sadie Grey Teddy

ISSUE 10 | DISRUPT

ON THE

COVER:

LOUIS BLACK Creating the Austin legend through SXSW and the Austin Chronicle | 30 – 37

PROFILES ESTHER'S FOLLIES

RETAILMENOT

Shannon Sedwick | 8 – 14

Cotter Cunningham | 42 – 48

LATINWORKS

BAND OF HEATHENS

Alejandro Ruelas | 16 – 20

Gordy Quist | 60 – 67

HEAL IN COMFORT

3D HOUSES

Cherie Mathews | 22 – 27

Jason Ballard | 68 – 73

PODCASTS

PERSPECTIVES

UP & COMERS

DEFINE

Hugh Forrest | 28 – 29

Disrupt | 6 – 7

VIEW FROM VENUS

COACH'S CORNER

Alexis Jones | 54 – 58

Dan Dillard | 74

IN THE KNOW FA LIST | 52 – 53

LAST WORD Tim League | 76 – 77

Special Section FOUNDING_UP PODCASTS | 38 – 41

verb / disâ&#x20AC;˘rupt / dis'rÇ?pt d e f i nition: To break apart To throw into disorder To interrupt the normal course or unity of To cause to separate into pieces, usually suddenly or forcibly To undo the proper order of 6

Disrupt is a jarring word. It implies force and change, disorder, chaos, and well — disruption. Synonyms for disrupt include destroy, confuse, derange, confuse, implode, and fracture. It comes from the Latin word disruptus, which literally means to break apart. But somewhere along the way “to disrupt the status quo” became the modus operandi of successful entrepreneurs and to be labeled a “disrupter” became a badge of honor. Though we tend to think of relatively recent disrupters — Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg — there have always been disrupters in our midst. Henry Ford, Thomas Alva Edison, Ted Turner, and Berry Gordy come to mind, as does Galileo, who was convicted of heresy by the Vatican for holding to the belief that the Earth revolves around the sun. At foundingAUSTIN, we believe that disruption is simply a force of nature — a force that cannot be stopped and one that has and can change the course of history. We salute the disrupters and the bold entrepreneurs who have set out to solve a problem in a different way and the founders who have sacrificed everything while they pursued a course they believed in. We cheer those who are innovators, who think outside the box, and who strive to make life a little better for all of us with their genius, creativity, and perseverance. In this issue, we look at some of Austin’s most interesting disrupters. Much like the city they love, their ideas and methods were in many aspects considered “weird,” but true to the disrupter creed they weren’t swayed and stayed true to themselves until they succeeded in creating some of Austin’s most successful and iconic companies. Austin is a city that supports disrupters and dreamers. As Walt Disney famously said of the empire he created, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” So go forth. Disrupt. Think different. Shift the paradigm. Upset the status quo. We at foundingAUSTIN will be here cheering you on, hoping that you become the next founder to change the world. — The fA Team 7

Written by Shelley Seale Photography provided by Esther's Follies

Funny Lady HOW SHANNON SEDWICK BUILT A COMEDY CONGLOMERATE BY KEEPING AUSTIN WEIRD

Shannon Sedwick was perhaps destined to be in show business. Her parents were both involved in theater and were living in Los Angeles pursuing their dreams when Sedwick was born. “My dad wanted to become a singing cowboy movie star and didn't quite make it,” Sedwick says. “As I was growing up, I tagged along to watch shows they were in and even performed with my mother in ‘The Chalk Garden.’ I also took every acting class at Casa Mañana [theater and school in Fort Worth] and learned the words to every stage musical from the ‘50s and ‘60s.”

THE EARLY DAYS When it came time for college, the choice was easy for budding performer Sedwick — she enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin with the goal of becoming a professional actor. There she became involved with the Curtain Club, an extracurricular drama society, and also met her husband, Michael Shelton. Sedwick launched her first enterprise in 1970, in partnership with Shelton. “We started a film series called ‘The Museum of Light,’ showing experimental short films on campus and inviting filmmakers to come speak about their work. It was our first business venture, and we enjoyed it!” That experience sparked an entrepreneurial fire in Sedwick that has never been extinguished. College wasn’t holding interest for either her or Shelton, so when a realtor friend showed them an old outdoor space in the warehouse district, the couple decided, somewhat spontaneously, to become restaurateurs. They joined with another theater friend, Emil Vogely, who was also a chef, and opened a New Orleans-style restaurant and live music club. Austin’s iconic, beloved — and sadly, now gone — Liberty Lunch was born. If you ask any long-time Austinite about the “old days,” or what they remember and miss the most around town, chances are you’ll hear the name Liberty Lunch over and over. It opened in 1975, hitting its stride in the ‘80s and ‘90s as a storied music venue and true dive bar. The live music acts performed in the backyard, and Sedwick and Shelton added entertainment with performance art pieces in between bands. It was one of those places that epitomized the funky Austin vibe and inspired our slogan of “Keep Austin Weird.”

If you ask any longtime Austinite about the “old days,” or what they remember and miss the most around town, chances are you’ll hear the name Liberty Lunch over and over. 10

“Liberty Lunch was reviewed by Texas Monthly, and we had lines around the block,” Sedwick recalls. “People were eating their gumbo with bowls balanced on their laps on the street in front of the restaurant.”

BUILDING AN EMPIRE The business was only the first in a long string of restaurants, clubs, and performance venues that Sedwick and Shelton launched in the decades since. The entrepreneurs’ second venture was Phillies’ Diner, where Sedwick recalls delivering sandwiches to customers by bicycle. Then came the Buffalo Grille, a jazz club and restaurant on West Sixth Street. “I cooked by day, and sang in a trio by night, and

fell in love with Sam Shepard when he came to our Sunday Brunch jazz jam with his bongos,” Sedwick reminisces. Next was the Tavern, a centuryold building at the corner of 12th and Lamar that had recently been shuttered by the state comptroller. Shelton completely renovated the historic building and, along with a partner, he and Sedwick brought the restaurant-bar back to life. Unfortunately, a few years later they had a falling-out with the partner, who bought out their interest in the establishment. (The Tavern came back full-circle, however, when Sedwick and Shelton bought it again in 2018.) Their next business venture is the one that Sedwick calls “the best place by far” — Esther’s Follies. It’s the one that has kept audiences who visit and live in Austin laughing for more than 40 years. The live comedy revue — part Saturday Night Live with a Texas twist, part modern-day vaudeville, and part Harry Houdini — is like nothing else on the national comedy scene. From political skewering to parody sketches to confounding magic acts, Esther’s Follies got its start in an old, narrow bar on Sixth Street that Sedwick and Shelton leased in 1977. On April Fools’ Day of that year, the couple threw a party in the space that turned into an improvisational free-for-all for comics, dancers, musicians, mimes and singers. The evening ended with a dance around a lawn sprinkler, in a campy tribute to legendary aquatic-choreographer Esther Williams. “We opened Esther’s on a song, got a beer and wine license, and built a stage in the windows,” Sedwick says. “It became an underground hit, even with a grimy entrance through the alley. It was free at first, with us passing the hat, but with a cast of 30-plus people, no one was making any money. Michael and I took the reins of the show, as well as the space, and trimmed the cast down and started a small ticket fee that grew as the shows got better.”

GROWTH AND EVOLUTION The husband-and-wife partnership had a simple business plan: Just stay open. They played to each of their personal strengths in the business. Shelton was the one behind the scenes, handling the bookkeeping, building the stage and sets, and making sure the bar and front of house were running smoothly. Sedwick was the performer and the face of Esther’s Follies to the customers. “I was the first person people talked to, and the last person to shake their hands as they left, with a personal touch,” she says. “The first few years were exhilarating, even if we were living in the dressing room for most of it and keeping our costs to a

“I cooked by day, and sang in a trio by night, and fell in love with Sam Shepard when he came to our Sunday Brunch jazz jam with his bongos.” 11

minimum. We concentrated on just making sure our show was good and listened to our audiences as to what worked.” By the end of the first year, they knew they had something special happening — and a venture they could keep going. “We knew we had arrived as a real business, and the format was perfect: political satire, musical numbers, colorful character monologues, and vaudeville acts, like juggling and magic. We made sure it was a fast-paced show, with very short bits, in the style of a vaudeville show list.” There were still many challenges to overcome. The first theater was destroyed in a fire caused by a cigarette. But fortunately, Sedwick and Shelton had just rented the Ritz Theater across the street, with the intention of starting a punk rock club. With the Esther’s Follies space gone, they simply packed up the costumes and moved into the Ritz — without even missing a show. The financials of making enough money with low ticket prices and a large cast has always been a challenge, but the creative aspect of the business poses its own worries. “Finding writers is the biggest challenge of all — as you burn out after a while and need constant refreshing of your ideas and lots of collaboration with your peers,” Sedwick says. Though the Ritz served its purpose as an emergency space for the show, it wasn’t ideal. Finally, the partners found their current theater at 525 E. Sixth St., where they have been ever since. They also strengthened their business model by expanding into catering and private events, as well as opening spin-off locations such as the Velveeta Room (a stand-up comedy club) and Patsy’s Cafe (a rustic bar and grill with nightly live music). “The convention center grew up behind us, and we utilized our excellent location to cater to our neighbors,” Sedwick says. “Even though our shows have always been on weekends, we now were doing two shows Friday and Saturday nights and one show Thursday, as well as catered buyout shows Sunday through

Wednesday nights when a group would rent out the theater and show. We started a party service called the ‘Follies To Go’ that took our smaller units out to hotels and convention center rooms in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. In short, we became a comedy conglomerate.”

CREATIVE CHALLENGES As the decades progressed and Esther’s Follies moved into the internet age, a new set of obstacles cropped up. “Creative challenges lie in just keeping the funny alive in a world that is now totally connected by social media and late-night comedy, where everyone can see a rehash of the day's news instantaneously and we have to compete with our own funny take on the subjects at hand,” Sedwick says. “In the past, we expected to write a joke, and the audience would slowly get the humor as they learned over a period of a few days, or the weekend. Now, people know instantly via Twitter and Instagram.”

“We are lucky to be in Austin, which is a very open city, where Republicans and Democrats can exist together, hippies and cowboys, conservatives and liberals, all able to laugh at each other's foibles and not be upset by the laughter.”

She also finds that political satire, a strong aspect of the show, has changed recently. Throughout the administrations of Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, Sedwick says audiences on both sides of politics were ready to laugh at themselves. “Not so much these days, as Trump's base is notoriously not happy with being made fun of,” she says. “These days, we expect to have at least four to six people walk out of a show when we make fun of their president. We have always tried to be equal opportunity bashers on both sides of the aisle, but it's been easier to make fun of Republicans lately, at least of Trump, as he continues to give us material almost daily, so we have to write and rewrite.”

40 YEARS AND COUNTING Sedwick says audience connection is what has kept Esther’s Follies and the ancillary businesses going for as long as they have. “We are lucky to be in Austin, which is a very open city, where Republicans and Democrats can exist together, hippies 13

“Humor is great therapy, and making people happy is the greatest reward of all.”

Shannon Sedwick's

ADVICE FOR BUDDING

ENTREPRENEURS and cowboys, conservatives and liberals, all able to laugh at each other's foibles and not be upset by the laughter,” Sedwick says. “The political satire keeps the show fresh every week, and our classic comedy bits revolve in every month or so, so people can come back every three to six months, and see new material for them. It's always the personal relationship with the audience that keeps it fresh for us and makes it memorable for the people who come back again and again.” Audience enjoyment is also what keeps Sedwick going: “Hearing that laugh come from every person in your audience, rolling over you as you put it out for the first time, and it works! The person who walks past me at the end of the night and tells me that I made them happy, after they just lost their husband or got their cancer diagnosed — humor is great therapy, and making people happy is the greatest reward of all.” She adds that doing what she does is also a great way to stay youthful and active. “I continue to do Esther's Follies because it is the best way to make a living and stay young, happy, and engaged in my community that I could ever imagine. When people say a heartfelt thank you for continuing to do Esther's, they recognize that need in all of us to laugh at ourselves and make light of the heaviness of the world. I am an optimist at heart, and I feel that our message at Esther's is to keep that sense of wonder in life broadcast to everyone who comes through our doors. Have fun! That is what life is all about.”

esthersfollies.com EsthersFollies @EsthersFollies

1 Believe in your ideas, and talk them over with people that have been successful in their fields — get feedback and help.

2 Money isn't the most important thing to success; take everything in increments, and grow steadily.

3 Don't fear failure. Let failure motivate you to learn and triumph over mistakes.

4 Help other people, mentor them, and give back to the community. I have grown from a small businessperson to a member of boards that help the community. I try to speak to groups about Esther's and to women in business, to give them the encouragement that they can do this too.

Written by Chad Swaitecki Photography Weston Carls

Alejandro Ruelas and Manny Flores of LatinWorks

TURNING AN IDEA WRITTEN ON A BAR NAPKIN INTO A MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR CORPORATION

LatinWorks’ Alejandro Ruelas (CMO and managing partner) and Manny Flores (CEO and managing partner) are ready to talk about almost anything.

They’ll talk about the friendship and the strong company they’ve built together in the 20 years since they founded the LatinWorks advertising agency and how, at the time, it was a first-of-its-kind creative shop targeting the emerging market of Hispanic consumers. They’ll talk about their successes: landing business from Southwestern Bell/SBC, Anheuser-Busch, and Miller Lite early in their founding; creating a highly acclaimed Super Bowl commercial for Bud Light in 2007 that became the talk of the advertising industry; and how their agency has gradually grown beyond its initial culturally specific roots to the extent that it’s now able to handle all advertising needs for big clients such as the Texas Lottery. 16

But the one thing they won’t share — not yet, anyway — is the new name they’ll unveil for the agency at some point this spring, when the LatinWorks moniker will become a thing of the past. It’s a huge change for the 75-person agency, which reported $18.5 million in revenue in 2017, according to Austin Business Journal data. Leaving behind a specific niche and community in the changing advertising world looks to land awfully heavy on the first side of the risk/reward gamble. A new, broaderappeal name means potential clients are less likely to look past the agency as a “not for me” afterthought, with new

Alejandro Ruelas Manny Flores 17

The bar in question was in France, where the eventual business partners were spending a few weeks in 1998 working on a promotional campaign based on soccer’s World Cup. Ruelas was the director of multicultural marketing for Anheuser-Busch, where Flores was firmly entrenched in marketing development and was very much not looking to leave his stable corporate job to pursue a new venture.

business opportunities opening up as a result. But gone is the specificity that comes with serving an easily identified market, one that is only growing in its purchasing power and becoming more sought after by global brands every day. It’s natural to wonder, “What are they thinking?” We asked them that, and they were ready to talk about it.

THE BEGINNING There were some early flickers and sparks, but LatinWorks truly came to life the same way many good ideas do, on a napkin in a bar.

But an idea Ruelas approached him with stuck: Why should they remain on multicultural advertising and marketing projects that were ancillary to the giant company’s business when plenty of client companies wanted the tap into the economic might of the growing Hispanic population in the United States? “One day, well before the napkin sketch, Alex walked into my office, closed the door, and he said, ‘Have you have you ever thought about like doing this on our own.?’ I immediately shut down the conversation,” Flores says. “I had a firm position, I was very close to the Busch family, and I worked for August Busch — before for directly. I said, ‘How can that idea come into your mind?’ This is the greatest American marketing company in the world.” What was driving Ruelas was an instinct that would later be verified by the 2000 U.S. Census: The broadly defined Hispanic population in the United States was the largest minority population in the country, with a rate

of growth that was going to add to its prominence in the business world. Ruelas says another motivator for branching out on his own was dissatisfaction that his creative ideas and strategies weren’t being employed more broadly (i.e., not just to sell beer). “A lot of the agencies we were working with, and working on multicultural marketing — there became a pattern where I was the one coming up with the ideas and having to execute them,” he says. “It became clear to me there was something wrong with this picture because I wasn't a creative guy in the advertising sense. I tended to be more about strategy, account management, and, in those days, I was more of a big picture thinker and the ideas themselves were not my forte. But now I'm the one giving them the ideas and that felt wrong.” Following the French bar napkin session, the two founders exited the confines of Anheuser-Busch in the fall of 1998 and set up shop in Austin along with Chief Creative Officer Sergio Alcocer, who left the company in 2017 to launch his own agency targeting cultural activism. Work for Beech-Nut baby food of Ralston Purina got the company off to a quick start with close to $1 million in revenue, before major contracts for AT&T and other Fortune 500 companies at times pushed the agency’s employee headcount well over 150. Armloads of awards from Ad Age, Adweek, and other industry leaders validated their creativity and strategic approach, as did the buzz over the Bud Light Super Bowl ad, which featured comedian Carlos Mencia teaching a classroom full of non-English speakers how to ask for the beer. When the Omnicom Group media company bought a minority stake in LatinWorks in 2006, it put the agency in the same position as global giants in the field, including Austin-based GSD&M. The company was firmly established, and it seemed there was nowhere to go but up.

Asked if a name change needs to be accompanied by a prominent new client, Stewart says what’s most important is communicating the values the company stands for and how it can make a difference in growing business for everyone it works with.

FROM THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

DUFF STEWART OF GSD&M ON THE CHALLENGES OF RENAMING AND REBRANDING

he Austin advertising community will be watching to see how LatinWorks evolves and performs after Alejandro Ruelas and Manny Flores announce the agency’s new identity. LatinWorks has been a key piece of the local creative scene for two decades, and moving away from a name with such a distinct identity is a move that comes with some risk. Someone who knows about the motivation and challenges of rebranding an advertising firm is Duff Stewart, the current CEO of local ad giant GSD&M. In 2007, that agency changed its name to Idea City, a well-intentioned change that was dropped after only a couple of years because the company’s founding values and identity were the same and still viewed favorably by clients. Stewart said the new name just brought confusion. “At the time, it seemed clients were looking in many new places to get ideas,” Stewart says. “With GSD&M, we could change our name, but at the end of the day we're about ideas that make a difference. That remains true because the company is founded on core photo by Mason Endres

principles that you hold dear and are willing to be penalized for. In our case, we changed the name, and the market didn't want to go with us.” Stewart said the track record that LatinWorks has established over its 20 years demonstrates that Ruelas, Flores, and their employees have the creative talent to execute in a broad selection of markets, citing their partnering with GSD&M on work for Marshall’s and Radio Shack and a bid the companies made for the 2010 census campaign as examples of the versatility they’ve shown. He said that skillset makes changing away from something so culturally specific a smart decision to appeal to a broader range of clients and opportunities. “LatinWorks as a name is pretty specific to the marketplace they were playing in. I'm guessing as they evolve, they don't want to be pigeonholed by being LatinWorks when they're doing more things that are not specific to that,” he says. “As long as you're delivering what you say you're delivering and meet your client's expectations, I think a name can be supportive but it won't determine whether you get the clients or not.” Asked if a name change needs to be accompanied by a prominent new client, Stewart says what’s most important is communicating the values the company stands for and how it can make a difference in growing business for everyone it works with. “Clients want agency partners that know their business, know their customer and their brand better than they do, and they're delivering ideas that can drive their business,” he says. “The name on the door is less important. It's more about 'Where are they taking us?' and the brand leadership and thought leadership that is driving the business. At the end of the day, clients knock on our door because they like our reputation and they've seen the work we've done for other clients and they'd like to see if we can help them in similar ways.”

When you're running fast, running real fast, and run faster, but you're still standing still, that's an indication that you have to change.

But there were questions — and changes — ahead.

30 years. All of that implies that you need to change and move.”

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

The debate over the name and the agency’s future — with Ruelas and Flores still involved but also in the third act of their careers — continued through the years, until finally last year the decision was made.

Alcocer, who remains in Austin leading his Rest Of The World agency and who is still in close communication with his former business partners, says the partners had the first conversation about changing the LatinWorks name in 2007 because of concerns the agency’s offerings to clients had outgrown the cultural identity that was starting to pigeonhole it and limit its potential customer base. The industry was also in the early stages of the digital and social media upheaval that would fragment audiences, reduce the effectiveness of mass media, and make it so that simply communicating to Spanish-language audiences was no longer a one-size-fits-all solution for capturing the Hispanic market. “Globally, the advertising industry has been looking for 10 years for a new agency model,” Alcocer says. “Ad agencies all over the world need to rethink how they work, what value do they add to clients, how do they restructure after the now 12-year-old social media revolution? After all of that, agencies needed to restructure because people do not communicate with advertising in the same way. You cannot be a generalist anymore. “At the same time, the use of Hispanic media and focus on language is not what it used to be in how to reach that demographic. Your target is no longer the safe bet that it has been for the last 20

LatinWorks will be no more. What comes next will be guided by the belief that businesses in 2019 and beyond need to speak to customers through what Ruelas calls “shared mindsets,” or the common behaviors and beliefs that span across different ethnicities, ages and other demographic barriers. He said the company has already been operating that way for years, meaning the new name will simply drive home the business practices that are already firmly in place. “In the past, we used to target Hispanics on the basis of ethnicity, but we started believing — and did research to prove the point — that the best way to market to the new consumer mainstream is by focusing on mindsets, because those are fairly shared,” he says. “Today, you can argue that whether you happen to be Anglo, mainstream American, AfricanAmerican, Asian-American, Hispanic, whatever, there is a lot more in common today with all of those groups than 10, 15, 20 years ago. The implications of that change are fairly profound. “Our name when we started out was anchored in the Hispanic universe. As things have changed over time, our name clearly started to paint us into

a corner that was not necessarily the reality of what we were doing.”

THE NEXT PHASE Flores, in his customary straightforward way, admits that the company had slipped in recent years. “About a year-and-a-half ago when we really started talking about this, you see we got a little complacent,” he says. “Naturally, companies get resistant to change, but we knew that we had to change. When you're running fast, running real fast, and run faster, but you're still standing still, that's an indication that you have to change. And we were unable to win a lot of the important pitches for new business that we were pitching.” Flores drops a lot of laudable fuzzy “i” words — integrity, innovation, insights, inclusion — to describe how the renamed LatinWorks will work to set itself apart from its competitors in an industry that is in seemingly nonstop motion and turmoil. He wants the new LatinWorks results to speak for themselves when it comes to getting and keeping business, pointedly offering, “If we're not solving your business issues and bringing you creative solutions, then we shouldn't be your partner.” “As you look at this new organization with these solid values, I believe — I believe — the change will speak for itself. It is a transformation, and transformations are not easy. Only a few who consider it really embrace change, and, while it's going to be difficult, I think it's going to be very worthwhile.”

latinworks.com latinworks @latinworker

Written by Shelley Seale Photography by Weston Carls

Cherie Mathews of Heal In Comfort DISRUPTING POSTOPERATIVE CARE FOR BREAST CANCER PATIENTS WITH COMPASSION AND TECHNOLOGY In 2001, Cherie Mathews was in a fight for her life. She had just undergone a mastectomy to remove her breast cancer tumors and was not only in postoperative pain but was also navigating a world of uncertainty and recovery. There were drain tubes coming out of her body, and she had no idea what she was supposed to do with them or what clothing she could possibly wear.

The worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first Smart Recovery Shirt Powered by ELI Technology. Open the iPhone camera app on your phone and position it over the code shown here. Android users use a QR scanner. 23

The nurse advised Mathews to wear one of her husband’s old button-down shirts. “But where do I put the tubes?” Mathews asked. The nurse simply handed her some safety pins. “That was not impressive,” Mathews recalls. “It was shocking, in fact. If I had a sprained elbow, I would receive a sling without even asking. Yet here I am, dealing with this whole battle, the scary part of cancer — if you’re even going to make it — and I feel even more miserable by not being provided for. The whole thing was awful.”

TURNING BAD INTO GOOD As demoralizing as the whole experience was, that moment was a catalyst for Mathews. “I found it incredibly unfair that a sprained elbow would get a sling, so the patient can recover; and here my body had just been butchered and I was handed a pair of safety pins,” Mathews recalls. “In the hospital, when I woke up and was told to wear my husband’s used dress shirt ... it didn’t occur to me how truly atrocious that would be until you look down, and you no longer have your breasts.” The experience of being wheeled out of the hospital like that, after being handed the medical drains to hold in her hands and given safety pins as a solution, was simply unacceptable to Mathews. Her mission was to create a standardized, common-for-all clothing solution to cover a patient’s new body and manage the medical drains — and for the patient to look like a person, not a science experiment. Mathews thought there had to be a better option than what she’d been given, but over the next few years, she couldn’t find one. So she set out to create one.

BOOTSTRAPPING A COMPANY Heal in Comfort was born in 2010 as a result of Mathews’ unflagging drive to help other women — and men — battling breast cancer or recovering from surgery. She started with modest means and a simple goal: $1,000 seed money to help 100 patients heal from mastectomies and other invasive surgery, in comfort and with a practical clothing solution. Mathews admits, however, that she really didn’t know anything about starting a business. She had come from a teaching background and was an engineer at IBM, but being an entrepreneur wasn’t in her wheelhouse. “I didn’t even know what it looked like to start a business,” she says. One of her early inspirations was hearing the story of TOMS Shoes and its founder, Blake Mycoskie. While traveling in Argentina in 2006, Mycoskie witnessed the hardships faced by children growing up without shoes. His solution to the problem was simple yet revolutionary: to create a for-profit business that was sustainable and not reliant on donations.

"I found it incredibly unfair that a sprained elbow would get a sling, so the patient can recover, and here my body had just been butchered and I was handed a pair of safety pins," Mathews recalls. "In the hospital, when I woke up and was told to wear my husband's used dress shirt ... it didn't occur to me how truly atrocious that would be until you look down, and you no longer have your breasts."

motivational stories and podcasts, she spent more time taking a hard look at failure case studies. “I went the opposite, because that’s who I am; I reverse engineer everything,” Mathews says. “I can probably find a million stories on how great people are and how successful their companies are, but what I wanted to do was find out why businesses fail. What are they doing? What’s common among their failures that I can learn from to help avoid the pitfalls? This excellent information came to me, through other people’s error.” This approach doesn’t eliminate mistakes, of course. People are always going to make mistakes, Mathews says. But by looking at those that others made, she knew she could at least learn from them to avoid the most common ones. “You don’t have to make needless errors, if you’re wise enough to learn from ‘been there, done that.’ It provides a roadmap in the journey of building a business, to point out the red flags and quicksand — so I would dodge and pivot around those.”

SOLVE A PROBLEM OR SERVE A NEED

Mycoskie's vision soon turned into the simple business idea that provided the powerful foundation for TOMS. “He [Mycoskie] described, for the first time in my life, what bootstrapping a business meant,” Mathews says. “Blake was very, very honest with his description of how he started. That’s how I learned about what bootstrap was.”

LEARNING THROUGH FAILURES As she got started, Mathews capitalized on her experience as a reverse engineer at IBM. Instead of focusing just on

Mathews also learned a lot from mentor, businesswoman and financial whiz Sharon Lechter. As the co-author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the founder/CEO of Pay Your Family First, Lechter advised Mathews that every company needed to do one of two things: either solve a problem or serve a need. “If you don’t, you may just be wanting something, but the population doesn’t want it,” Mathews explains. With the success of her first 100 Heal in Comfort trial shirts and the positive feedback she was getting from so many grateful cancer patients, she knew that she was really doing both with her postoperative shirts.

NEW TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE Mathews is constantly bringing new innovation to her Heal in Comfort shirts, and she has recently turned her energy toward nanotechnology. The world’s first Smart Recovery Shirt Powered by ELI Technology is now launching. The technology behind the shirt has been patented and will immediately bring close to a half billion dollars’ worth of information and technology straight to the patient through the Heal in Comfort shirt. The smartwear was developed with the same technology that powers location accuracy for mobile phone calls to 911 and personal assistants for the visually impaired. It acts as a portal, giving the wearer instant access to 10 different software resources, including to one that provides insight into clinical trials, to Belong (the world’s largest community for cancer Above: Mathews has been awarded 2 USPTO patents for Heal in Comfort Shirts patients), and to one that provides Below: Shirts for post-operative needs for men and women some escape by enabling the patient to virtually travel somewhere else in the world. “I am so motivated to get technology to the cancer patients in their most dreary, scared, and frozen part of the journey, after surgery and radiation and such,” Mathews says. “Your brain can’t process thinking about where to find clinical trials; where to connect communities, how to not feel so alone. Now, within two seconds because of this new technology, I am bringing that to the patients.” This new technology-powered shirt adds a host of new benefits at the same price tag; Mathews is now going to include the technology in the Heal in Comfort standard shirt at no additional cost, as an added value.

“That gave me peace of mind,” Mathews says. “Those were great words as a piece of counsel to start a business.” Heal in Comfort has now helped more than 21,000 people in their breast cancer and postoperative journeys, with Mathews bootstrapping it the whole way. She never went into debt to launch the company, which she still owns 100 percent of.

With this new evolution of the recover shirt, Mathews is poised to take Heal in Comfort to the next level. “I’m selfsustaining, but I’m looking for the next step in growth.” The shirts have also sold exceptionally well on Amazon, allowing the Heal in Comfort to reach patients around the world.

THE INVENTOR IN YOU Mathews firmly believes that everyone is an inventor. “Everyone has gone through life thinking, ‘Well this could be done better,’ or, ‘If there was only a solution for this.’ We’re problem solving all day long. There are plenty of people out there who might already be in successful careers, but they’ve always had this really cool idea. Maybe they’ve never talked to anyone about it, or gotten it out of their head and onto paper to do something with it.”

Part of the excitement that Mathews derives from her entrepreneurial journey is in inspiring and empowering other people that they, too, can bring their invention to market and start their own companies. She would like to provide for other people what Mycoskie’s story did for her. “That’s a big thing for me,” she says. “My experience can help to teach, share and motivate anyone else who might look at me and say, ‘Well, she did that — maybe I can pursue that dream or invention that I have.’ When they listen to a story of someone who did this with a thousand dollars, as a social experiment, they think they can give it a go. If we ignite this, get other people to start thinking of themselves with the mind of an inventor, it can create a ripple effect where people can think that if I can do that, then they can do it too.”

SOUL PAY Soul Pay is a term that Mathews coined to talk about the nonmonetary rewards that she believes every entrepreneur needs to have to achieve success, while also feeling fulfilled and on purpose. “I believe you absolutely must build in a soul pay,” she says. “When the money’s not flowing in, you have to be equally content and happy with your mission; and you’re being

blessed on a daily basis because of your ability to give back and help people.” The way Mathews builds in her soul pay is through partnering with the nonprofit Gifting Care, providing comfort kits to Austin patients. The kits include a Heal in Comfort shirt, a soft headband, custom bandana, and lip balm. “I take care of my own tribe in Austin,” Mathews says. “I still make time every single day to help cancer patients. For anybody thinking about a business who’s only motivated by money, you might have a very disappointing end. There were times when nothing was coming in and everything was going out, but I was still happy and content and peaceful about my vision. Are you proud of who you are at the end of the day? The human spirit craves soul pay.” Listen to the View From Venus podcast with Cherie Mathews at foundingaustin.com/podcasts

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ABOUT THE UP AND COMERS PODCAST

Heather Wagner Reed, Host

FoundingAUSTIN magazine together with Juice Consulting founder and CEO Heather Wagner Reed are thrilled to present the new Up and Comers podcast, created to cover Austin’s startup boom. Wagner Reed’s passion for and connections to the startup and accelerator scene naturally complement the mission of foundingAUSTIN founder and publisher Dan Dillard, who is working to provide his audience insight into Austin’s flourishing businesses and into the organizations that support them. Up and Comers features guests in conversation with Wagner Reed on the latest in Austin innovation. “I am so excited to lead Austinites on a journey through the local startup world,” host Heather Wagner Reed says. “We are truly lucky to live in one of the most vibrant, pioneering, socially conscious, and entrepreneurial cities in the U.S. — it’s a great moment to shine a light on all the innovation that is happening here.”

FROM UP AND COMERS This month on Up and Comers, we interviewed the man who sits at the epicenter of SXSW, Chief Programming Officer Hugh Forrest. SXSW is one of the world’s most influential conferences for interactive media, music, and film, and Hugh has witnessed the most pivotal moments for startups at the festival, some of which he shares with us below.

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Tell us about your role with SXSW and your history in its growth?

I got involved with SXSW way back in 1989. The event was very different (and much much smaller) then. Although, the mindset we had 30 years ago is still true today — leverage the creative vibe that makes Austin unique and enjoy all the magic that this focus on creativity helps generate. Before coming to SXSW, I was a struggling freelance writer. I still want to be a freelance writer when I grow up (although, I would love to eliminate the struggling part of that job description!).

SXSW, specifically interactive, seems to have been an epicenter for birthing and launching disruptive companies for years now. Can you tell us about some of the bigger names to come out of SXSW? What about some Austin startups? Twitter officially launched at SXSW 2007 — and that really changed the dynamic of the event. Given how much buzz they got that year, we saw a huge spike in startups wanting to be involved after that (as well as a huge spike in VCs wanting to come to SXSW to discover the next Twitter).

To this end, a lot of people know about that association with SXSW (and their involvement is a big part of Nick Bilton’s recent book titled Hatching Twitter). A little less well-known is the involvement of other mega-successful startups. For instance, SXSW was an early testing ground for Airbnb. And, according to Fast Company, Uber was birthed at a late-night brainstorming session at SXSW. Also, the concept of Magic Leap came together when the founder was on his way to showcase in March in Austin. In terms of locals, one of the coolest stories is how much attention ICON got at SXSW 2018. Their technology to quickly and cheaply construct houses using 3D printing technology got as much national and international buzz as anything at last year’s event.

How has SXSW become a place where companies like this can really launch in a major way? What is it about the SXSW experience that helps them? SXSW brings together so many first-adopters and digital trendsetters and media professionals from around the United States and across the world. The event provides a great opportunity to make a ton of impactful connections in a very short time. So, the ROI for badgeholders who are very strategic in their approach to the event can be extremely high.

Hugh Forrest Photo by Dylan O'Connor

In your experience what types of companies seem to find the most success at SXSW? SXSW celebrates creativity in all its forms. So, I think the companies and startups that have the most success at the event are the ones that best embody this focus on creativity. As for the ones that have really broken through via the event … they tend to be companies and startups that help people digest the event. What is the common thread between Twitter (2007) and Foursquare (2009) and Meerkat (2015)? They are apps that helped people better navigate and better understand the experience of March in Austin. While not easy, that is the ultimate formula for success at SXSW — create an app that attendees can use onsite to help them maximize their experience onsite.

Tell us more about the SXSW Pitch program: What is it? Who are some of your local Austin finalists this year? SXSW Pitch is the new name for SXSW Accelerator. This competition brings together some of the top startups from around the world. Like a lot of things with SXSW, entry to the event is very competitive (we receive about 600 entries, and only 50 of those entries are selected as finalists). Onsite, these 50 finalists get a chance to pitch their startup to a panel of industry experts and a live audience. It is a really exciting competition to watch, and we have been very fortunate to have some great success stories come out of the event. In fact, from 2009 through 2018, alums of the SXSW Pitch program have raised $5.43 billion in funding. So (as with all things March Magic), this event is a great way to get a glimpse of startups / companies / products / services / ideas that will be very hot in the next few years. Some of the Austin finalists for SXSW Pitch this year are Tankee, LinkVR Robot, Eggschain, Molecula and Osano, with a number Austin startups also listed as alternates including myHouseby, Kilroy Blockchain, Ibble and Rocket Dollar.

How do you recommend a startup get the most out of SXSW … whether it be the pitch event or something else? My recommendation to startups is the same as my recommendation to any other SXSW attendee: Preparation is key. Take some time before the event to figure out what your goals are for SXSW. Spend an hour or two studying the schedule to figure out what sessions and what events you want to attend that will help you achieve these goals. Start setting up meetings now with people who will be in town that align with the goals you have set for the event. By contrast, if you don’t prepare a specific strategy for success, it is very possible that you can be overwhelmed by the sheer size and scale of the event.

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What are some of the hot topics you are addressing at this year's festival? Artificial intelligence will be big again in 2019. “Again” because it has been a very big topic the last few years. We also expect that all things transportation and delivery will be big this spring, with “all things” meaning that this ranges from scooters to commercial space travel. A (relatively) new topic for 2019 is the many entrepreneurial opportunities that are unfolding with the emerging cannabis market. Also, see the trends page on the SXSW website: sxsw.com/conference/2019sxsw-programming-trends/

Are there any key lessons you have learned over the years of working with SXSW? Knowing what you know now, what would you do differently? Over the years, the biggest thing that I have learned is that you can never do enough planning and communication and detailfocused prep work. Or, said another way, as SXSW continues to improve in these aspects of our work, I think the event continues to get stronger and stronger. Also, always have two or three backup plans for when the original idea falls through! Listen to the Up and Comers podcast with Hugh Forrest at foundingaustin.com/podcasts

Louis Black, co-founder of The Austin Chronicle and SXSW CREATING THE AUSTIN LEGEND THROUGH TWO ICONIC BRANDS

Written by John T. Davis Photography by Leslie Hodge

This story, like so many stories, begins with a journey. In this case, it was a journey up a pothole-filled dirt road with cars parked along each side. After a quarter-mile or so, the road gave onto a parking lot and a low-slung building pulsing with music and neon lights. Soap Creek Saloon, located at what was then the western edge of Austin, was a classic Southern honky-tonk roadhouse, the sort of place where Hank Williams or Howlin’ Wolf would have felt right at home. Louis Black, newly arrived in Austin and not knowing what to expect, had come to Soap Creek that night to see Doug Sahm, the ferociously talented “King of the Texas Groove,” who could crank out western swing, Cajun waltzes, greasy rhythm and blues, organ-pumping Tex-Mex rock ‘n’ roll, and country two-steps with effortless mastery. “I got a rum and Coke, and Doug’s playing, and I felt at home,” Black recalls. “And I never felt at home. I said, ‘This is where you’re supposed to be.’” And on that night in 1974, Black, a New York/New Jersey native who had been bouncing around the country “because I wanted to see America” drank Austin’s electric Kool Aid. Two years later, he was back for good. Today, a generic office building serves as a tombstone for Soap Creek, as is the case for many venerable Austin landmarks of that era. But Black is still here, and in his 43year tenure, the 68-year-old has been a pivotal founder, mover, and motivator behind two institutions that helped to transform the city in profound and unpredictable ways: The Austin Chronicle and South By Southwest. He serves as one of Austin’s most enthusiastic and enduring (and occasionally exasperated) cheerleaders. In 1981, Black, along with Nick Barbaro and Joe Dishner, started The Austin Chronicle, the proudly contentious alternative weekly which has given a forum to some of the best writers in Texas and irritated all of the powersthat-be at one time or another. Six years later, along with Roland Swenson, the late Louis Jay Meyers, and Barbaro, Black helped launch SXSW. It was like hatching an Easter chick that grew up to be Godzilla. In Louis with Collins Swords, co-author Cinema Texas Notes. 1987, 700 attendees and 177 bands and musicians showed up for the first conference. In 2017, according to the SXSW website, 2,085 artists played musical showcases, and that doesn’t begin to include the throngs who attended the film,

interactive, gaming and comedy components that have grown up around the original music conference. According to the City of Austin, the 2018 edition of SXSW pumped a whopping $350.6 million into the local economy. Nothing else, with the possible exception of the Austin City Limits television program, has ever branded the city so indelibly to an audience so far-flung as SXSW has. “Louis came up with the name ‘South By Southwest,’” SXSW co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Roland Swenson says. “One critical thing Louis did was utilize his relationships with other alternative weekly papers to bring them in as co-sponsors … So from the start, we were much more than another local event. Louis has always had a wealth of relationships.” In addition, Black was an original board member and past president of the Austin Film Society, which was founded in 1985 by director Richard Linklater and helped lay the groundwork for the city’s vibrant film scene. (Black made his directorial debut in 2016 with a documentary about Linklater entitled Dream Is Destiny, which aired as part of PBS’s American Masters series.) Music, film, journalism: Black’s fingerprints are all over decades of Austin’s cultural life. His influence is undeniable. And each of those entities affected the city profoundly. Music first put Austin on the map in the mid-1970s via the “progressive country” movement that led to an influx of singer-songwriters from all over the state. The Austin Film Society created a welcome environment for filmmakers who would establish national reputations, including Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Mike Judge, and Jeff Nichols. South by Southwest Interactive exuded a vibe of high-tech coolness 34

that proved an irresistible allure to young techies and other members of the creative class who have so notably transformed the city. Black would tell you that this unique artistic and technological cross-pollination could have happened nowhere else. “Austin, Texas, was the multiplier,” he says. “It [SXSW] was what went on here every day of the year. Any day in Austin you can go see amazing music, you can go see a movie by a local filmmaker or go listen to people get excited about ideas. We just kind of amped it up.” And yet, to hear him tell it, none of his career trifecta was planned. “My whole life since I’ve gotten to Austin, I’ve been really, really lucky,” he says one unseasonably dreary, drizzly January afternoon, as he relaxes in the office of his comfortable house, situated an easy chip shot from the Hancock Golf Course and within walking distance of his old office at the Chronicle. “People don’t like that word; they say, ‘You’re a hard worker.’ But I’ve been lucky. I had a skill set and I have tenacity, but I have been blessed in this town by who I’ve gotten to work with. It’s the most amazing community.” Black can display a curmudgeon-like demeanor when the occasion or the company calls for it, but in talking to him, he waxes rhapsodically about Austin, the people in it, and how (yes) lucky he was to be the guy who happened to be carrying the bucket on the day it rained gold. “I think Austin’s a miracle,” he says. “I really do. It’s collaborative, it’s cooperative. It’s a culture — going back to

“Any day in Austin you can go see amazing music, you can go see a movie by a local filmmaker or go listen to people get excited about ideas. We just kind of amped it up.”

earlier in the ‘70s, in the ‘60s, and the ‘50s — if you were a beatnik or gay, you came to Austin if you wanted to stay in Texas. I think it really starts there.” Black likes to refer to himself as “an inspired bureaucrat.” People came up and threw him the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland line: “Let’s put on a show!” And Black would jump in with both feet.

Black was born in New York City, but his folks moved across the river to New Jersey when he was two. By his own recounting, he wasn’t voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” A reading disorder held him back.

“Every time, I’d say, ‘Sure.’ And then I’m in 100%. Once I get started, I’m real logistically oriented, which came as a real shock to me.”

“Both of my sisters were stars [in school]. But that was before ADD was diagnosed, which meant I was an underachiever and lazy, and I failed at everything. I didn’t like sports, I was tone deaf, I had no artistic ability. I was expected to fail. But I fell in love with comic books and music and movies. And then I had this extraordinary life because I was passionate. And I grew up in this town, where being passionate counts for a lot.”

Black has never been a fan of business plans. It’s quite possible he’s never put one down on paper. What he accomplished, especially at the Chronicle, was less a business model than an exercise of sheer will, according to Swenson.

Michael Corcoran — whose smart, provocative, irreverent music column Don’t You Start Me Talking ran in the Chronicle for years — phrases it slightly differently: “His blowups are legendary,” Corcoran says of Black.

“My dad had an expression about stubborn people,” Swenson says. “‘He’d go up against Hell with a teacup of water,’ The force of will it took to launch the Chronicle was legendary. Louis was always ready to go to war with anyone or anything standing in the way of the vision.”

“I’ve been the subject of a couple of them, but I never took it personally. I just saw that anger as part of his process. He can also be the most charming person alive. We were a family and Louis was the dad you loved and feared.”

“I was scared to death through almost the whole run,” Black says of his time in Austin. “This had succeeded and that had succeeded, but would the next thing succeed? “The metaphor for everything we’ve done is running off the cliff like Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons. We actually succeeded on running on air for a lot of the time, but most of the times we fell. But we got up, and we didn’t die. So, then you took another chance.”

“I never actually punched Louis,” Swenson says. “But there were times when it was an option. Louis and Nick are like the older brothers I never had.” Corcoran had an unusual dual perspective (shared by yours truly) of having both worked for Black at the Chronicle and covering South By Southwest, Louis’s baby, for the Austin American-Statesman. “The Chronicle is Nick’s baby, and SXSW is Roland’s,” Corcoran notes. “But Louis was really important in getting those to the next level.”

In doing so, Black helped take the city to the next level, where we reside today for good and ill. The Chronicle and SXSW both helped to create an image of a vibrant, urban capital filled with young, equally vibrant, creative people. “I remember a couple of times during the boom period of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when the Chronicle was railing against growth. And, on a regular basis, the high-tech firms would come in asking for 50 or 100 papers because they were using us to recruit and show how much was going on in Austin.” With that growth and booming economy, of course, came traffic, gentrification, income inequality, jumped-up property taxes and all the other woes that beset residents on a daily basis. “Would Austin have grown anyway (without the paper and SXSW)?” Black asks. “I really don’t know. Do I feel guilty? Not at all. For one thing I still love Austin. I hate the traffic. I get lost all the time. Pretty much everybody feels the same — the moment they moved here, they should have locked the door and let nobody else in.” Black left the Chronicle last August after 36 years in the editor’s chair. “It had very little to do with the Chronicle and a whole lot to do with other stuff I was doing,” he told the Statesman. Besides the Linklater documentary, the “other stuff,” includes serving as executive producer on Ethan Hawke’s acclaimed new film, Blaze, a biopic about the late singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. He’s formed a record label with musician Charlie Sexton (who also stars in the film) and Hawke to showcase the original material of actor-musician Ben Dickey, who stars in the title role. He’s also finishing up a dissertation on his longtime friend, the late director Jonathan Demme. (“It was devastating,” he said of Demme’s death last year.) There’s also a couple of other pending projects he doesn’t care to discuss at the moment. He continues to produce the annual Austin Music Awards, which will be held during the midst of SXSW. Black is still a senior director of South By, but the awards show is the main

way he keeps hand in. “Nick and I get along great,” he said. “But once I left, I had to leave. You can’t be a little bit involved. I love South By, I really do. It’s gotten bigger, and it’s not as much fun for an old-timer, but I think the energy is still there at the heart of it.” The unpredictable evolution of the entities that have shaped his life don’t bother Black unduly. “With both the Chronicle and South By, it’s like, you can’t control your kids. I love my son, he’s doing great, but you don’t really shape them.” According to Swenson, Black should have graduated from UT and journeyed off to a career in film in Los Angeles. Then the Chronicle happened, and then SXSW, and then the bottom fell out when Black suffered congestive heart failure in 2011. “He died on the table of the hospital and was revived,” Swenson says. He went through a long and difficult recovery, but he found the grit to return to his dream of being a filmmaker. So, he’s a good example of never giving up on your dreams.” Still and all, he wouldn’t change a thing. As he walked a visitor to the door, he remarked once more on the extraordinary good fortune his Austin tenure has brought him. “There’s a million schmucky Jews in New York who love music, and I got to wind up here,” he says. “right where I belong.” Author John T. Davis was a writer at The Austin Chronicle in the late-1980s and was a member of the staff of the second annual SXSW festival. To hear Masters and Founders Podcast with Louis Black go to foundingaustin.com/podcasts. louisblackproductions.com LouisBlackProd @louisblackprod @louisblackproductions

LOUIS BLACK

ON TAKING A DISRUPTIVE PATH TO ENTREPRENEURSHIP Given his eclectic career, Louis Black’s views on conventional business models might best be described as… unconventional.

“I’m a lefty,” he says candidly. “I believe in the social safety net, I believe we’re all in this together. And so, I get viciously attacked for being a communist or socialist, when I’m one of the most successful entrepreneurial capitalists I know. I love capitalism, it’s done very well by me.

“But every time I did something because I thought it was the right thing to do, or because I thought this would be cool in this town, or someone came to me and said, ‘Let’s do this,’ then that worked. I followed my passion.”

“I used to be invited to talk to business schools. Once I’d get in there and give my lecture, and I’d say, ‘Do what you believe in, love. If you never make any money, you can wake up every day and do something you can live with.’ It sounds so stupid, but that’s really the truth.”

“But I’m also a Zen archery guy. As I said, every time I’ve tried to make money, it’s been a disaster. I have no skills in that direction whatsoever. But doing what I’ve wanted to do and believed in, a couple of times it’s come through. I’m definitely an entrepreneur.”

“I never did a business plan (at The Austin Chronicle or SXSW), and now it gets awkward sometimes, because I work on a certain level on some things, and people will ask, ‘Well, do you have a business plan?’ And I’ll say, ‘I gave up trying to write fiction a long time ago.’”

Black admits to having an inverse relationship with potentially profitable enterprises. “Every time I’ve ever done something I thought would make money, it was a disaster. Just ugly,” he says. “When Nick and I did a Fashion Issue (at The Chronicle) … Well, for one thing, our doing a Fashion Issue is THE stupidest idea. And it didn’t do well, and Nick got real pissed off and said, ‘If we don’t do another one, the first one meant we had no sense at all.’ So, we did a second Fashion Issue. Even after five decades in music, film and journalism, Black still describes himself as an entrepreneur.

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If you like foundingAUSTIN, just wait to see what we have in store for 2019. Founding_Up — the company that brings you foundingAUSTIN every quarter — has been busily working away on a slew of new projects that will give entrepreneurial Austinites even more access to the city’s most business-savvy people and their most groundbreaking ideas. In just 10 issues, foundingAUSTIN has profiled some of Austin’s most iconic and inspiring founders and masters of their crafts (remember the stellar interviews in our last issue with John Paul DeJoria and Noonday’s Jessica Honegger?). The response we’ve gotten from our readers and from local businesses has been overwhelming: You want more! And we’re ready to give it to you. In 2019, Founding_Up will build on the magazine’s work with a lineup of new podcasts and an exciting schedule of events to bring Austin founders together. Follow foundingAUSTIN on social media for event announcements, and keep reading for more on our killer list of podcasts launching this month.

Maybe you’ve already heard the Masters and Founders podcast (available on iTunes), in which foundingAUSTIN publisher Dan Dillard interviews some of Austin’s finest, from Jimmie Vaughan to Brooklyn Decker. Well, we’re getting ready to launch 10 (!) more podcasts this month during South by Southwest — come by and see us at the Long Center as we record. Each podcast is intended to go deeper into different aspects of Austin’s thriving business scene: From covering Austin’s hottest incubators to female entrepreneurs to those focused on health and wellness, our podcasts feature leading Austinites and innovators in their fields. Take a sneak peek into what we have in store, and follow their progress on foundingaustin.com/podcasts. Thank you for being part of the Founding_Up community!

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happy, healthy, and thriving in today's crazy world. Together let's learn how to put it all together and build lives that blow the world away with badassery.

Masters and Founders Host: Dan Dillard Masters and Founders is your weekly resource for all things business, startups, and mastering a craft or skill. The show's guests are the doers that inspire others to do. They think outside the box, march to the beat of their own drum, and in the process create the best versions of themselves. Masters and founders follow a passion, something in their gut: For them, there is no other choice but to shake up the status quo.

Balanced Badassery Host: Alli Waddell Who doesn't want a life of blissful balance and boundless badassery? Well, get the hell ready because every week Alli is bringing you the top minds in wellness to share their tips, tricks, and practices for building a badass life. Not only will you learn from the best, Alli follows up every interview with an implementation show to help you turn information into transformation (yes, it’s badass homework). From nutrition, to sex and relationships, to movement and more, we explore the key pillars of what makes humans 40

networks for the food community, which is helping the scene diversify in exciting ways. We also cover the reasons so many food entrepreneurs are attracted to The Lone Star State, from laws to economics and diversity. Packing Taste With Axel Brave has the scoop on new brands, new restaurants, and new festivals in Texas all dedicated to sharing their food with the community. If you love food, tune in to the podcast.

The Great Society Host: Constance Dykhuizen

Feeding Your Potential Hosts: Libby Hill and Adrien Paczosa Feeding Your Potential moves the nutrition conversation away from cosmetics and weight loss and toward living life in search of your highest potential. Hosts Adrien Paczosa and Libby Hill use science-based information to educate listeners, myth bust, and break down popular fads and misconceptions related to health, fitness, and nutrition. This positive, upbeat duo interviews experts — from nutrition specialists to CEOs — to marry the science and social reality of performance-based nutrition.

The Great Society podcast explores the lives of nonprofit founders and leaders who have dedicated their lives to causes and issues bigger than themselves. LBJ's Great Society was a call for people to engage in eliminating poverty and racial injustice. What does this look like today, and who are the people making the change? Host Constance Dykhuizen — herself executive director of JP’s Peace, Love and Happiness foundation — sits down to find out.

Leveraging Life Hosts: Becky Henderson and Courtney Santana

Packing Taste With Axel Brave Host: Axel Brave Packing Taste With Axel Brave covers Texas’ exploding food scene. We discuss everything from food manufacturing and science to the growth of support

Leveraging Life promotes the stories of people who have both overcome adversity and have been of incredible service to others — not despite the adversity but because of it. Though many people overcome great odds and difficulty, few intentionally channel their own success to serve others. These are the stories of those who have leveraged their own

S P E C I A L

experiences to bring greater value to humanity and to the world.

S E C T I O N

themselves and for anyone wanting to connect with their digital audience more. “Blogger world” can be very competitive, but this is a positive space in which to share stories and breakdown that competitive mindset.

cities in the U.S. — it’s a great moment to shine a light on all the innovation that is happening here.” In this first season, the series looks closely at the support system that Austin’s accelerators and incubators are providing burgeoning entrepreneurs, as well as platforms that are launching these companies into the stratosphere and beyond.

rinaLAB Founders of Fashion Host: Jennifer Millspaugh Founders of Fashion introduces you to the individuals, brands, and topics happening in the global fashion industry now. Get an inside look at how entrepreneurs are leveraging their unique resources and capabilities to design companies for a new era of fashion. This is the only show that weaves together the threads of fashion’s cultural impact, the business development side of it, and the socially conscious principles of emerging fashion businesses. It all comes together here.

Host: Dan Dillard Welcome to the rinaLAB! Enter and discover the science behind the Research and Innovation Network Austria (RINA), a vibrant network of Austrian scientists and innovators in North America. At the rinaLAB we love to take scary, complex science issues and distill them into some really neat stories. Join us at the Office of Science and Technology Austria to build a research and innovation bridge between Austria and North America. You won't believe what these Austrian scientists are up to! Expect the unexpected.

View From Venus Host: Deborah Hamilton-Lynne View From Venus is a platform for female founders to share their entrepreneurial stories and to tell how their paths were shaped by the fact they were female. The show puts a strong emphasis on the importance of mentors in female-founded endeavors and aims to provide mentorship and advice for women hoping to embark on a business journey of their own.

Up and Comers The Positive Influence Host: Chelsea Bancroft The Positive Influence’s mission is to bring internet influencers together to talk about the crazy reality of being an “influencer.” We talk about how each guest got to where they are, the challenges and successes they’ve faced, and what they strive for in the future. The podcast is a helpful resource for influencers

Host: Heather Wagner Reed Up and Comers is a show about Austin’s startup boom that features guests in conversation with host Wagner Reed on the latest in Austin innovation. “I am so excited to lead Austinites on a journey through the local startup world,” Wagner Reed says. “We are truly lucky to live in one of the most vibrant, pioneering, socially conscious, and entrepreneurial 41

Written by Deborah Hamilton-Lynne Photography by Weston Carls

Cotter Cunningham of RetailMeNot DISRUPTING THE WAY THE WORLD SEES BARGAINS

Chances are good you may be one of the 22 million mobile unique visitors or one of the 7 million active email subscribers who happily grab the deals and discounts RetailMeNot provides daily. With more than 5,000 partners and 70,000 brands, this Austin corporation generated $4.9 billion in global sales in 2018.

You are one of the lucky ones if you happen to work there: RetailMeNot has a 91 percent rating on Glassdoor and is consistently named one of the best places to work in Austin. A recent visit to their Congress Avenue headquarters made it abundantly clear that the rating is well-deserved. Walking around the space while shooting founder and Chairman of the Board Cotter Cunningham, the atmosphere was jovial as Cunningham greeted each employee he passed with a smile and often with a comment that made them laugh. Everything in the space reflects the corporate culture that emanates from the founder who is a believer in hiring people who fit the company personality profile and then in keeping them happy and connected. The story of how RetailMeNot became a leader in the industry by disrupting the way the world viewed retail is the story of an unlikely entrepreneur who came to the game rather late in life — in contrast to the stereotypical, youthful hitech disrupter. Cunningham founded the company in 2009, made more than 15 acquisitions, and raised more than $300 million in venture capital before taking the company public in 2013. He led the firm through it's $630 million acquisition by Harland Clarke in 2017, and in January 2019 Cunningham moved into a chairman role at the company while taking on a new role at MacAndrews & Forbes — owner of Harland Clarke Holdings and RetailMeNot — working on emerging technology ventures and initiatives.

Cotter Cunningham never intended to be an entrepreneur. His career path had led him to several high-level corporate jobs, and at 45-years-old he was serving in the number two slot at Bankrate as COO when he became disenchanted with what he was doing and how things were going. His wife replied to his complaints, “If you think you can do better, you should do it.” That was the impetus Cunningham needed to make the leap, and even though his first company “failed miserably” he never looked back. Though Cunningham acknowledges that in the fast-paced world of entrepreneurship some people such as Mark Zuckerberg have been successful starting in their 20s, he encourages most aspiring entrepreneurs to “go get a job and see how business works, get a feel for the ebb and flow of work.” Becoming an entrepreneur later in life provided Cunningham with a wealth of experience but also with a load of responsibility. “When you're 45, and you have a mortgage and a family, and you're trying to save for college and all the things that are associated with that, I would argue the chance you're taking is much greater. Now, it worked out for me, but I'd be lying if I said there weren't moments that I went, ‘Oh God, what have I done?’” Cunningham's approach to entrepreneurship and to life is to go all in. He values persistence and determination, and those attributes were essential to his success. In his initial venture,

Divorce360.com, which he started without ever having been divorced, he invested a million dollars of his own money. The first year the company spent $400,000 and made $19, but Cunningham raised a million dollars from Austin Ventures, “I got lucky. Tom Ball and the team liked what we were doing and said ‘let's keep going,’ and I was able to parlay that relationship into RetailMeNot.” Bolstered by Austin Ventures’ faith in him, Cunningham moved his family to Austin, took up residence in the “dungeon beneath the beautiful public floor,” and began fishing for ideas. Nine months after the move, he got a hit with the idea of online couponing, and Whale Shark Media was born. In the beginning, the competition was mainly mom-and-pop coupon businesses, but technology has changed everything. He acquired three coupon companies before eventually buying RetailMeNot and merging the companies. A self-described tech geek, Cunningham realized the benefits of embracing mobile devices early on and saw huge opportunity for in-store couponing. Through the process of geofencing, RetailMeNot could notify consumers of coupons they could use while shopping through pop-up notifications sent in real time — something Cunningham calls a “party trick.” “To me, it's something you would go to a party and talk about: ‘Oh my God, I had this crazy thing happen to me. I went to the mall and my phone made this cash register noise, and I saw all these coupons, and I was able to save $50.’ That's a cool moment and something that we felt like people would share, and sure enough they did.” Beyond leaps in technology, one of the factors Cunningham believes is most important to the success of building RetailMeNot is his attention to and approach to corporate culture. In 2011, Cunningham’s was one of the first tech companies to make its home in downtown, moving to its present location on Congress Ave. The location was determined by listening to the employees and geared to making life easier for them — they could walk to lunch without wasting time getting into a car. They could walk out the door and look toward the Capitol in one direction and the lake and the trail in another — sweet inspiration. Cunningham also created an atmosphere with plenty of amenities and activities. People looked forward to coming to work and being a part of a team of like-minded associates. His mindset toward building a cohesive corporate culture was a reflection of his worldview that everyone should be treated the way he would want to be treated.

ON WHAT CUNNINGHAM LOOKS FOR IN AN

ENTREPRENEUR/ EMPLOYEE Our mantra is no a**holes. We work hard not to hire disagreeable people. We want people who are kind, motivated, and aggressive. The qualities we look for in our employees are the qualities you look for in entrepreneurs. People who are willing to take a risk, people that have strong opinions that are backed up by facts, and people who are kind. They have to be driven to succeed. And it doesn’t matter if it’s ping-pong or telling a joke or saving the whale sharks, you want to find people that care and push themselves, because ultimately they are going to push themselves harder than you ever will. It has to come from within.

“Websites are about people. What no one seems to understand is, websites don't run themselves: People build them, people manage them, people run them. Our website will run for a few hours on its own, but it needs people to add coupons to it, to make sure the coupons they add are good and appropriate and valid. There's a care and maintenance and a building on the website that's so important, and so the people are everything. I always make the joke: We’re like an ad agency, our assets have feet and leave the building every night. And so culture's 45

always been something we focused on. And it's always been important to me, because ultimately the difference in us succeeding and failing is the people we have employed here.” Although Cunningham has obviously been tremendously successful with RetailMeNot, the “unlikely entrepreneur” remains skeptical of what he refers to as the “cult of the entrepreneur.” Looking back at the process of going public and eventually being acquired, he says it was a financing activity and not to add a “notch to his resume.”

BOOKS FOR

ENTREPRENEURS For inspiration, read Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

For some fantastic tips and tricks on culture, check out The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle

To see how not to do it, try Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

“In my mind, entrepreneurs are not amazing, special creatures that are anointed to be the saviors of business, it's just B.S. Entrepreneurs are just people that took a chance and got lucky and here they are. And so — I think too often — I'll meet with budding entrepreneurs who will say, ‘I have a six-point plan, and I want to get funded by this fancy VC, and then I want to get funded by this fancy VC, and then in my C-round I want to get funded by this VC, and then we're going to go public.’ And it's like a checklist. And I think that’s 100 percent the wrong way to think about it. Rounds of venture funding, going public are just financing activities. And so, yeah, we went public, great. Yeah, I led us through 300-man dollars of private financing. Great. But it was for a purpose, not so you could brag about that number. And if you get confused about that, to me, you've failed.” Looking back on his path to entrepreneurship, Cunningham also knows that success can hinge on doing the thing no one else wants to do, going to the place no one else wants to go, and making a pivotal move that influences everything. 46

The library room at RetailMeNot headquarters.

“Throughout your career, you will have a million opportunities to take a new job, to take on a new role, to try something new. And inevitably, I always tell people to take the horrible job, take the job no one else wants. Because you can almost always — it's going to be bigger and have less pressure on it than the hot job. You're going to learn more. If it's really a horrible job, then the expectations are low, so anything you do is going to be great. Everyone's attracted to the job that's exciting and sexy and fun and that everyone wants to do and all that. Don't do that; do the horrible one. Do the one that seems bad, because it'll wind up helping you more. I'll give you an example: I was in Kansas City, working at an ad agency, running their online group. And I got a call from Palm Beach, Florida. One of my old bosses had this job at Bankrate that he wanted me to take. They were really having trouble recruiting there because no one wanted to move to

See Cotter Cunningham at SXSW, details: schedule.sxsw.com/2019/events/PP82182

CUNNINGHAM ON

ROLE MODELS I have had many mentors but only one role model: My father is a small-business person and was a “citizen legislator” in the Arkansas House of Representatives for over 30 years. I watched in awe as he worked tirelessly and for minimal personal gain to help his community and state. I truly believe if he had channeled all of that energy into his business, he would have made gobs of money — but the world is a better place because he didn’t. I am so proud of him and will never be as charming, kind, or dedicated to others as he is. Ernest Cunningham (left), Cotter, and his brother Baker Cunningham (right)

Palm Beach, Florida. It's where you might retire to, but it's not where you go to work. I mean, I think I was the hundredth person he called — I wasn't the first. And I leapt at it. It would end up being really a pivot point in my career. The fact that I was COO of a publicly traded company, an internet company in Florida which had grown well and done amazing things really enabled me to raise the money from Austin Ventures, which put me here. So, I owe a lot of my success here to just the fact that I was willing to move to this weird city in Florida when other people wouldn't. And I don't forget that.” As CEO and personally, Cunningham strives to give back to the community. He and his wife, Edie Rogat, have become very active in supporting organizations and causes near and dear to their hearts including KIPP, Literacy Austin, Boys and Girls Clubs, the Andy Roddick Foundation, and Ballet Austin's initiative to bring children to see the Nutcracker. In October 2018, the pair received the prestigious Torch of Liberty Award, which is given by the Anti-Defamation League to outstanding community leaders who exhibit humanitarian concerns for the principles that the League was founded on — securing justice and fair treatment for all. “My wife, Edie, and I are both drawn to charities that resonate with us in some personal way. So for example, both of us are fairly obsessed with reading. My wife is dyslexic and so struggled with reading in her childhood. And I was kind of the opposite: I was a voracious reader from day one. And so we 47

10 TRENDS TO EXPECT OR WATCH IN 2019/2020 1

I anticipate consumers will demand better privacy from corporate interests, and there will be legislation proposed to protect consumers and their data.

3 I have a car that supposedly can drive itself — it has a long way to go (especially versus the hype). Based on that experience, I feel safe in saying that true self-driving cars won’t happen anytime soon.

4 Augmented reality has come a long way (think Pokemon Go), and I think we will start to see other practical applications of the technology. You can already see how a new couch fits into your living room, but the technology will be used in new and creative ways like enhancing the sightseeing and tourism industries with historical views, facts, and figures.

Voice shopping via smart speakers will become a thing. RetailMeNot found that nearly all retailers (96 percent) are investing in this nascent technology to allow consumers to shop for their brand on smart speakers.

8 Investment capital for entrepreneurs in Austin will dramatically scale in availability.

7 Cryptocurrency seems dead, for now. I suspect it will be back in a big way. The benefits are too great.

Businesses that provide convenience and ease of access (delivery, ride-sharing, etc.) will accelerate as consumers seek out ways to make their lives simpler.

In his new role as executive chairman, Cunningham will support and act as a sounding board for incoming CEO Marissa Tarleton, as well as assume a new role working with parent company MacAndrews & Forbes, seeking investments for them. He is looking forward to stepping back and looking at the marketplace and seeing what is new without the day-to-day responsibilities of a CEO. As he hands over the position of CEO to Tarleton, former RetailMeNot director of marketing, Cunningham says there is really nothing he would change.

5 Consumers want brands to take a stand on values and cultural issues that matter most to them — and brands are taking note. According to RetailMeNot research, 87 percent of brands say taking a stand on social issues is worth the risk.

have funded a lot of literacy programs and youth education programs and things that help kids learn to read. I mean, the research is so clear, a dollar spent teaching a kid to read has a thousand-fold impact in the community. And not to make it about dollars and cents, I mean, because as you know, it's also just fantastic for the kid to be able to read. But if you can't get there, you can also look at it just economically and know that the impact of reading is everything. And so we've funded a lot of things that do help children.”

Along those same lines, consumers will expect more transparency from companies. One area where pricing transparency doesn't yet exist is in the realm of healthcare expenses. For example, websites and mobile apps like RetailMeNot Rx Saver (rxsaver.com) will be front and center for consumers, physicians, and pharmacists to understand where to get the best price.

Technical schools/colleges will become more prestigious and will be considered equally viable choices for high school grads (versus college degrees).

“I don't know if I'd change a thing. I mean, you can argue you might not go public because that was just a brutal thing. But the advantages of going public is that employees, including me, get to sell their stock. Those are great days, right? My joke has always been, the day you come to work and some employee grabs you and goes, ‘Hey, I just want you to know I sold stock today, and I funded my kid's 529 Plan.’ That's one of the best days of your life. And if it's not, then you're just a cold person, you know? How could you not be touched by that?”

retailmenot.com RetailMeNot @RetailMeNot

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Cook, author, television host, and entrepreneur, Pryles has been referred to as “the goddess of all things that have previously moo-ed.” She is a respected authority on low ’n’ slow smoked meats, particularly Texas barbecue. Pryles is the creator of Hardcore Carnivore, a line of steak rubs, and author of a cookbook bearing the same name. In 2017, the company teamed up with Pitts & Spitts to release a JP Signature Edition Smoker—custom made in Texas and individually numbered. Join her ardent fans to receive her original recipes, tips, articles, and beautiful photographs of all things red meat.

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craftHER MARKET Twice a year, #bossbabesATX showcases the talent of Austin’s women and nonbinary creators with the pop-up craftHER Market. In its two years, craftHER has featured more than 600 makers and has attracted more than 15,000 buyers. In addition to being a great place to shop for unique, handmade treasures, craftHER is family friendly and includes entrepreneurial panels and opportunities to support local nonprofits. craftmarket.com 52

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HAVE FUN WHILE DOING

4/25 – 4/26/19 MACK, JACK AND McCONAUGHEY Join Austin’s favorite trio — Mack Brown, Jack Ingram, and Matthew McConaughey — to raise funds to support CureDuchenne, Dell Children’s Medical Center, HeartGift Foundation, Just Keep Livin Foundation, and The Rise School of Austin. The two-day event includes a golf tournament, two concerts, and a fashion show — this year featuring designs from Monique Lhuillier and hosted by Sally Brown, Amy Ingram, and Camila Alves McConaughey.

mackjackandmcconaughey.com

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Located inside the InterContinental Stephen F. Austin hotel on Congress Ave, The Whisper Room is a 10seat, reservations-only cocktail lounge hidden behind a red velvet curtain. With a nod to Prohibition, the ‘20s-themed bar serves classic cocktails, including Old Fashioneds, Sazeracs, and, our personal favorite, Manhattans. Make your next big deal during SXSW, and celebrate with cigars and craft cocktails. Reservations can be made by calling the hotel at 512-721-4230.

ROCKET DOLLAR A disrupter to the investment world, Rocket Dollar came on the scene at SXSW last year with the mission of providing an alternative way to invest your retirement funds through self-directed investment. Founded by Henry Yoshida (co-founder of Honest Dollar), Thomas Young, and Richard Dude (founder of QuantAdvisor), Rocket Dollar aims to make retirement investing “safe, simple and fast” for people who want to look beyond traditional retirement investments. rocketdollar.com 53

Written by Deborah Hamilton-Lynne Photography by Paige Newton

Alexis Jones PUTTING THE HEARTBEAT BACK INTO HUMANITY, ONE PROJECT AT A TIME.

Upon meeting Alexis Jones, the first thing that captures you is her smile, then comes the energy and the passion that fuels her entrepreneurial journey. A graduate of Westlake High School, she was at one time best known for her moxie on the reality show Survivor. Today she is best known as an activist, motivational speaker, writer, and producer, having founded I AM THAT GIRL and ProtectHer, two innovative and impactful initiatives driven by social impact and her desire to empower women and encourage all people to act on their basic humanity to “be a good human.” Whether she is creating sexual harassment and assault prevention programs for the NFL and NCAA Division 1 athletes and corporations, or lobbying for social reform, or producing award-winning documentaries, or speaking, or creating and curating conferences and events, Jones is focused on one outcome: “inspiring human kind to be better by putting the heartbeat back into the world, one project at a time.” Jones most recently won The Jefferson Award, the highest national honor for public service. She has been featured as Oprah’s #SuperSoul100, AOL’s MAKERS, was an Ambassador for L’Oréal’s STEM initiative, DELL’s #Inspire100 List, Fast Company’s “Female Trailblazers," ESPN’s “Pop Culture’s Top Ten,” Girl Scout’s Woman of Distinction and was highlighted as one of the five most influential women in Texas as a Profiles in Power winner. We caught up with Jones after she had just completed a gift to herself — a caretaking around-the-world tour that included some bucket list adventures and stops. Taking a break from her hectic and demanding schedule left her recharged and ready to once again change the world for the better in 2019. DEBORAH HAMILTON-LYNNE | So for those of us that know you one question that I have never asked is was Survivor truly as bad as it seems on the show? ALEXIS JONES | It's 100 times worse than anything they show on TV. I broke my hand on our first challenge and cut my foot with a machete on day 19. I was the only contestant that got stung by one of the world's most poisonous scorpions three different times and I blew out my knee on day 31 — they edited it all out. It was brutal. DHL | So after surviving that you felt like you could do anything, even an entrepreneurial journey. You say that

through, “innovation, authenticity and kindness” you set out to empower women, and while you were still an undergraduate at USC you founded I AM THAT GIRL. Tell me about the impetus behind that group. AJ | First of all, growing up in Westlake was really challenging for me because it was a very wealthy environment. I had all the normal teenager insecurities which were exacerbated by the fact that my family wasn't wealthy. Then I got a scholarship to USC — one of the most expensive private schools in the country, and it was Westlake on steroids, because it was the same environment. I was displaced again and living in California where I didn’t know anyone. I remember sitting down with six girls in my sorority, and I said, "We have a lot of conversations about things that don't matter. It's such a first world luxury. What if we had conversations about things that did matter — fears, doubts, insecurities, and the things we wake up struggling with, and our hopes, dreams, and aspirations.” And they said, “Yes, absolutely.” The first meeting, those six girls showed up. And six meetings later, we had 347. We kept outgrowing venue after venue. DHL | It was something that was born of the kind of unacknowledged need. It was something that was always below the surface that needed someone to bring it up to give it air, and you did that. 55

AJ | We're not born threatened by each other as women. It is a learned behavior — a cultural script that is handed to us from such a young age, and then we adopt it as truth, not realizing that we are all perfectly, wonderfully flawed. The glue that holds humanity together is that we all have these fears and doubts and insecurities. We had nowhere to talk about it, to ask the hard questions, to take our frustrations. The group was a safe place where we could put our guards down and be honest. My one rule was that I wanted everyone to feel seen and heard and to feel like they belonged, and in this space to have permission to be fully honest and fully seen, and to dream as huge as imagined. DHL | So the movement was to inspire girls “to be loved and express exactly who they are.” With that mission the organization has grown to include over 1.2 members in 24 countries with a large support team. How did that happen?

AJ | I always refer to ProtectHer as “this is what happens when you say yes to the universe.” This is what happens when God opens up a door — All you have to do is say “yes.” All you have to do is walk through. I had been doing girl empowerment for over a decade, and that was really my niche. It was where I was super comfortable. It was where I'd worked really hard and felt really good about the work that I was doing. Trent Dilfer and Yogi Rot, two incredible men that I love and respect, called me and said, "Is there any way that you'd come and give the top quarterbacks in the country a conversation about respecting women? I'm giving you direct access to changing the game in a completely different way by speaking to the influencers in the game." How do you say no to that? I was scared because I just didn't feel like I was ready. I told my husband Brad, who was a college and professional athlete that I didn’t think I could do it, but he said, "Just get up there and talk and speak from the heart, and say why this matters." And then he gave me a game-changing pointer when he asked, "Do you know what young men are going to be in the room?" And I said yes. And he said, "Well, if I were you, I would pull pictures of their sisters and moms and girlfriends, and I'd put it in your presentation. DHL | So he was speaking from experience about the things that would move him. AJ | Yes, being a professional athlete for nine years, he said, "We've heard this talk from every which way, but you're going to immediately reframe it. You're not talking about girls in theory. You're not talking about the hot sorority girls that they're trying to hook up with. You are talking about the women and the girls that they love and that they respect the most. And if you can tie it back to that you will make them see that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.

AJ | When you have the courage to put something out into the world and say this needs to exist, it becomes its own beautiful entity. We have an amazing team, and the team is always evolving. People coming and going and adding their little bits of flair and their magic, and, again, it's also a testament of what happens when extraordinary people come together with one vision. The growth was very organic. It is this intangible force that maybe you give a spark and then just this bonfire erupts.

DHL | And it worked.

I was but one girl who realized more than anything that I needed something that didn't exist. And sometimes we think that is selfish to focus on our needs, but whenever I give any talks I'm always telling people, "Stop changing the world. Just change your own. Just fix your own. Just heal yours. Just do what brings you the most joy." And then you have a shot at doing something extraordinary. And, I Am That Girl is certainly that.

DHL | So you went from that talk to knowing this was another unmet need, something else that needed to be addressed. Another entrepreneurial initiative was born and you put together ProtectHer and began to speak to entire teams for the D-I. How did that come about?

DHL | So in 2014, you had an “appointment with destiny.” You were asked to speak with the top 12 high school quarterbacks in the United States about respecting women, and had an aha moment, which led to ProtectHer. So talk to me a little bit about that. 56

AJ | What shocked me was that after showing their sisters’ photos, quickly their body language went from relaxed and giving me the eye to getting their full attention. Half the guys started tearing up especially when I started giving them sexual assault stats. I was not prepared for such an emotional and visceral reaction to this conversation, but I knew it made an impact.

AJ | Well, again, this is kind of that divine intervention and timing. When the Ray Rice video went viral, suddenly sexual assault and domestic abuse was the number one trending issue on social media. And the video of my talk aired on ESPNU the next week. This was years before #MeToo and Time’s Up, and I was that girl on TV having tough-love conversations with young men about why it matters that they respect, protect, uplift and encourage the girls and women

in their life. It was kind of a paradigm shift. As a feminist, I had an epiphany: “Wow, we're missing the boat to not include men into this conversation, because we actually need them. And it takes a lot of humility to say we're not going anywhere, we're not pushing humanity forward, unless we can get everyone on board with this.”

“Shaming and blaming is just not effective. I know that women are angry — it's justifiable. It's righteous anger. It's understandable. We have to honor that, to create space for that, and we have to figure out how to help heal that, not just for individual women, I mean it as collective femininity.”

But this isn't a locker room problem. It's not a university problem. It's a cultural, systemic problem, so it's showing up everywhere. What started as, "Oh, ProtectHer is just for male athletes in a locker room," all of a sudden became a much bigger conversation that was about teaching all people to treat all humans with dignity and respect. And so then my work was really cut out for me. DHL | But I think that was because of the paradigm shift that you had, when you realized that if you're going to teach men to respect women they have to respect themselves first, because their disrespect of women, to me, comes from their disrespect of themselves.

I think men had been awaiting the invitation. They've been awaiting the, "Hey, you can come sit at our table. And not only can you, but we want you to. And we need you because this is a complex issue, and it is going to take all of us if we're going to see any kind of change in treatment of women, which of course, the intersectionality of we can't talk about women without talking about Black Lives Matters, without talking about the treatment of the LGBTQ community, and immigration. DHL | Which leads to your initiative called Be A Human.

AJ | Be A Good Human is kind of to me the next evolution. It's not about gender. It's not about sex. It's not about religion or ethnicity or nationality or age or the way you look. The idea of being a good human is how do we come back to the basics? What does it mean to be a good human? How do we inject more compassion and kindness where we see criticism and shame? And I think being able to have really thoughtful conversations about intentionally creating those kinds of ecosystems, from schools to organizations to company culture, I think that's the stuff that really excites me.

AJ | Of course. DHL | If they respected themselves, they would never do that. That's the first thing. And the second thing is when you shifted from shame and blame to including them in the conversation, because I think that you said that shame has never been an agent for change. AJ | Shaming and blaming is just not effective. I know that women are angry — it's justifiable. It's righteous anger. It's understandable. We have to honor that, to create space for that, and we have to figure out how to help heal that, not just for individual women, I mean it as collective femininity. We have to figure out how to love women back to life, and simultaneously, if our end goal is we want to see violence against women going down and we want sexual assault numbers going down and we want to eradicate it, then the solution comes back to practicality. As a social scientist I'm able to separate the emotional side and understand our end goal from a purely data-based standpoint. We've never seen any kind of behavioral changes that have been effective using shame, blaming or anger. If we as women could have the humility to recognize that what we've been doing isn't working, I knew that we needed a different technique and decided to start from there.

DHL | With all of the negativity in the world, how do you maintain your optimism? AJ | Depending on the day there are moments where my humanity outweighs the divinity that exists inside of me and everyone else. And I think for any activist, for anyone who cares about anything, I think it is waking up, and it is one day at a time, right? I'm going to wake today, and I'm going to see what kind of micro-dent I can make. And then that self-care is a very real piece of it. And I think that's something I only recently kind of stepped into with my crazy around the world trip, was I just needed a break. I just hadn't traveled and I hadn't done anything for me. And I think I forgot along the way of carrying the torch and wanting to make the world better, and certainly starting with my own, that somewhere along the way I lost my joy, just for everything, for the little things. Joy for me is an internal thing. Nothing from the exterior can give it to me, and to me it's really tied to purpose. And in figuring how you waking up every day, and it's the distinction between who you are and what you do, and who you are of ... I can be the activist that I am. I can be the founder, the CEO, or how all the different labels, the author, but am I doing it with kindness and authenticity?

DHL | So sounds like another important epiphany was learning how to slow down and take care of yourself. Travel is so validating and motivating – it truly will change your life. AJ | I've also just made space for in my life of hunting joy. I think that's a really important aspect of my life, whereas before I think I was all fight. I was battling all the time. And then I realized that the battle is important, but I also want to make time for joy. DHL | How did you come to that realization and take the leap to step away? AJ | I had been on the road, at that point, over 220 days a year on the road for 13 years. And last year, I was on the road 251 days. I was burned out and exhausted. One day I erased everything in my office off all my whiteboards, and I just started — like a maniac — just started writing out all the things that just bring me joy. I told my husband, "For the next 100 days this is the only thing I'm doing. This is my full-time job." I took a sabbatical, and all I did was literally cross off bucket lists that included Cuba, Antarctica, Japan, Bali, India, Cape Town, Rwanda, Ireland, and London. It feels counterintuitive for Americans to take a break, but the version you find on the other side is amazing. I didn't even know I could have so much juice. DHL | So it was also important to have the support of Brad, your husband, and of others to make this journey. And you don't have to bat a thousand. It takes some of the pressure to always succeed off. AJ | Support and people who care about you and genuinely wish you well — that's everything. Especially as an entrepreneur, because it is the definition of faith. Transcendent of religion, this is you believing in something that doesn't yet exist. You're asking people to have faith in you, in this idea, in this vision. There are no guarantees ever. It heightens every insecurity you've ever thought you had comes out. So having a community who loves you and supports you regardless of your success or failure means I can be okay with who I am, Alexis Whitney Jones, regardless of the praise or the criticism.

DHL | Last word. Would you mind sharing some life lessons for fellow travelers and entrepreneurs reading this? AJ | I've recognized the power of slowing down and that in stillness is where I find my genius exists, and my greatest wisdom exists in stillness. Before, if I had a big decision to make, my instinct was, "I'm going to go do three shots of espresso, and I'm going to get my entire team together, and we're going to whiteboard," with all of that frenetic energy. A really interesting distinction is to have the confidence that I know how to make the right choice for myself, for my life, for my company, for my team.My choices aren’t always perfect or even right, but I own those too. Having the courage to say, "If these people are trusting me to guide the ship and to be their captain, then I can certainly take all their opinions. But inevitably I have to make a choice that's based off of my gut."" DHL | Right. The buck stops here. AJ | And then the other piece is this new revelation that if you don't have joy in your life, then what's the point? I cannot over-express that stepping back and finding joy is not a selfish thing to pursue. That's oxygen for our soul. I would say that the fight, the hustle, the grind — it's all important and necessary, but let us not forget the power of joy, and how much farther that takes us in life. DHL | Well-said and amen. Listen to the View From Venus Podcast with Alexis Jones on foundingaustin.com/podcasts

alexisjones.com iamthatgirl.org protecther.com

View From Venus is a column and podcast series focused on female entrepreneurs and founders. Please share your stories with me by emailing me — deborah@ foundingaustin.com. I look forward to hearing from you. View From Venus podcasts include interviews with Kristen Heaney, founder of Yard Bar, Gina Chavez and Jodi Granado, founders of Niñas Arriba, Jessica Honegger, founder of Noonday, and Constance Dykhuizen, entrepreneur and executive director of JP’s Peace, Love & Happiness Foundation. To hear View From Venus Podcasts go to foundingustin.com/ podcasts.

@missalexisjones

foundingaustin.com/ podcasts

Photo by Mark Abernathy

Written by Chad Swaitecki

Photo by Greg Giannukos

Gordy Quist of Band of Heathens MAKING A LIVING IN THE LIVE MUSIC CAPITAL OF THE WORLD When Gordy Quist packed up his music-making dreams in 2004 and landed in Austin, his only worry was making enough money to eat and to keep playing music. A steady series of gigs and collaborations led to the formation of his stalwart roots-rock group Band Of Heathens, and a thriving scene at the long-gone Momoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bar and music venue quickly showed Quist and his bandmates they had an opportunity they should capitalize on. 61

“The idea back then was to do a residency, play every week and see if it builds — try to build a life because that’s your goal. The band was this kind of a little microcosm of Austin, which is very collaborative. There was no leader. It was — no one was trying to make money,” he says. “As the band started eclipsing the other things we were working on, we were like ‘Well hey, maybe we should work on this and take it a little more seriously.” That’s when Quist and his cohorts broke out the spreadsheets — a short run as an investment banker and a degree from Dartmouth give Quist a keen business sense — and took to the side of life in the Live Music Capital that rarely gets talked about: treating the band as a business. The band made a commitment to save half of all gig money for recording a debut album and to focus on touring around Texas and beyond, which was made possible in part by taking on a booking manager. Then came a crowd-funding innovation before crowd funding became cool with Kickstarter a few years later: Fans would pre-fund the Ray Wylie Hubbard-produced album, and then 80 percent of all album sales would go to paying them back until they recouped their full investment plus 20 percent. “We borrowed a bunch of money, and we said ‘All right, we're gonna pay you back 80 percent of all the money we make from this record until you're paid back in full plus 20 percent profit.’ I told them, ‘I don't know how long it's going to take, and you may not ever get it back.’ In like two-and-ahalf years we had paid everybody back plus profit. And then we had enough money in the bank to make the next record, and since then we've never had to borrow money again … we had a business plan for every record.” More than a decade later, Band Of Heathens is something of a moderate-profile model for Austin musicians trying to survive in a city that gets more expensive by the day and in a music industry in which album sales are no longer a reliable pillar of income. Quist, co-founding band member Ed Jurdi, and newer members, Trevor Nealon, Richard Millsap, and Jesse Wilson all earn their living from the band and from side gigs, with no other traditional nine-to-five day jobs in the mix. That commitment means all involved have to be creative, not just with songwriting but also when it comes to bringing in revenue and growing the band’s audience in the age of social media and streaming, which makes music free and readily accessible. For Quist, a shift in his life as a working Austin musician recently came when he decided to purchase the North Austin recording studio formerly owned by beloved Austin producer and musician George Reiff, a long-time Photo by Campbell Stetter 62

IN HIS OWN WORDS

GORDY QUIST

ON THE BUSINESS OF SONGWRITING Songwriting's weird. It's mysterious, and there's not an answer. There's not a how-to book on how to do it right. It's just hard and it's mysterious and it happens in all different ways. But I feel like there are some eternal truths that will help you not get stuck. Things you can just try again, go back to, and just not feel like you're banging your head against a wall. Show up for work. It's funny, the idea of waiting for inspiration versus showing up for work. Inspiration is going to come whether you're working or not, so you might as well be working so you’ll be ready for it and you'll be a better songwriter because you've been working your skills as a problem solver. Good songwriting is just like problem solving. I mean there's a flash of inspiration, and there's no explanation as to how or why that can happen. But then it’s like, “Well, alright ... how do I take that and form it into a song?” That's just understanding music, and then you're problem solving — figuring out what rhymes with this or [thinking] but I don't want to be cliché, asking yourself what are some other ways I can say that. It's just like problem solving. The more I listen to music that inspires me, the more I write. I'm not necessarily ripping it off. It inspires you. And then the more I read books by authors that use words in a way that inspire me, the more I write. The other part is the more I play my instrument at home … just like noodling on it, ideas just come. If I commit to writing 500 words every morning about anything, stuff comes from that. We had this idea of like inputs and outputs in there and adopting habits then doing the habits daily. You have a musical input of listening to new music or music that inspires you. You have a musical output of practicing. Sitting down and daily playing your instrument or messing around on a piano. Then you have the words input, and that can be reading books or watching movies. We have this diagram: First input music and then words and then output words so you're writing something down daily. If you're cultivating those habits, ideas will come up. And then you'll be ready to capture what comes from that practice. Again, a lot of it is just showing up to do the work. Sometimes you're going to feel like it's not working or it's pointless and there's a lot of loneliness and you give up a lot. I remember when I was younger I would be like, “OK, tonight I can go out, spend money, have some fun, or I can sit at home and try to write some songs and be by myself.” That's just the tradeoff.

friend and colleague of the band who passed away in 2017 after a battle with lung cancer. An initial inquiry from Reiff’s brother about purchasing some of the studio equipment eventually grew into a complete purchase, with Quist and a friend partnering to buy the converted single-family home and taking over the studio as a means to pursue Quist’s growing interests in producing music for other musicians. Between a handful of albums in the works from acts including Mayeaux and Broussard, The Texas KGB, and The New Wildcatters — and occasional stops from touring acts, including young country star Margo Price — Quist spends more and more of his time working with other musicians and behind a recording console. That is, whenever Band Of Heathens isn’t tending to a still-healthy touring and recording schedule. “The last few years, that's kind of picked up when someone asked me to produce a record for them and then someone else asked, and it has snowballed into this is kind of what I have

been doing when I'm home. If not producing, I’m playing on other people's records or in someone else's, [I’m] in the studio and helping out.” The innovative thinking by Quist, his bandmates, and close friends hasn’t stopped, either. An annual multi-day retreat for songwriters on Lake Travis — operated and marketed as SongFarmer — that Quist started with longtime friend Owen Temple has turned into a yearly highlight and a chance for the two to stretch out creatively. And it’s also birthed a book and a SongFarmer app created by Temple that helps songwriters get past their writers block and just start creating. “The retreat evolved through our conversations about cracking that code and tracking things as you start from a blank page when you’re writing, mapping a creative process with the belief that you collect these seeds for songs, get an idea and hold onto the things that make sense,” says Temple, a one-time regular on the Austin live music scene who now earns his living writing computer code. “The appeal for the retreat was for people who are discovering a process and want a reliable way to do what they care about. It’s not really magic — just building up reliable habits that can help you avoid writer’s block and get started creating.” Looking ahead, Quist and his band are brainstorming ways to take advantage of the studio — in business terms, utilizing

Photo by Campbell Stetter 64

An annual multi-day retreat for songwriters on Lake Travis — operated and marketed as SongFarmer — that Quist started with longtime friend Owen Temple has turned into a yearly highlight and a chance for the two to stretch out creatively. And it’s also birthed a book and a SongFarmer app created by Temple that helps songwriters get past their writers block and just start creating.

an asset — to get more music into the ears of their fans more consistently. They’re still exploring the business and revenue options available to make that happen, but the crowd-funding platform Patreon is one contender that would let monthly contributors receive periodic new songs, recordings of live performances, and other offerings almost instantly instead of waiting for a new album every two or three years.

I'm trying to figure out a model that would work within my little circle.”

Quist said he’s also brainstorming ideas for how to innovate the traditional recording studio model.

“I came to Austin in search of this dream and had no idea really how it was going to turn out. Here I am like really grateful that I've got a really great band where we're not huge … we're a middle-class band with working musicians. We all hustle and work, and now I have a studio — which is another crazy dream that I didn't think would happen — and I get to make records all the time, which is unbelievable.”

“What if the studio itself had a Patreon account?” he wonders aloud as a sort of thought experiment. His goal, he says, is to find a way to help more Austin musicians produce more music affordably, in a nod to the increasingly high cost of surviving as an artist. “I'm kind of interested in a new model, with different models for recording with local artists here in town, or even touring artists coming through town like Margo did. I just love the idea of being able to get artists that may not necessarily be able to go drop a bunch of cash on a whim. “I would love to be able to like call up some of my buddies and be like, ‘I've got a drummer and a bass player and keyboard player here, we’re running sessions, so let’s get a new song together.’ Different variations of that have existed before, but

We’ll have to wait and see how Quist’s experiment in recording studio economics plays out, but looking back on what he’s accomplished as a 38-year-old working musician with a wife and kids, he’s grateful for how far he’s come.

bandofheathens.com thebandofheathens @bandofheathens

Sweet Inspiration BAND OF HEATHENS ON HOW AN ALBUM CAME TO BE

TOUR DATES:

MARCH 27: AUSTIN, MOHAWK MARCH 30: NEW BRAUNFELS, GRUENE HALL

The Band of Heathens Present: A Message From The People Revisited — A Tribute To Ray Charles

The Band of Heathens recently went into their hometown studio in Austin, TX, to record their own version of the classic Ray Charles album A Message From The People. In a time when the downtrodden need a voice again, the Heathens have delivered the message while paying homage to one of the most important voices in American song history. From the band on why they chose to record their own version of this entire album: Ray’s voice became the voice of an elder — a true master was speaking to us from the past. There is sorrow, protest, and anger but also resolve, hope, and deliverance. On the final track of the record, Ray saved us the most powerful message and the perfect coda. The definitive version of America the Beautiful is absolutely glorious. It is quite simply the apotheosis of soul. Ray may as well have been singing that to us from a mountaintop because that’s what it felt like in that moment. “America! God done shed his grace on thee! He crowned thy good, he told me he would, with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!” In December 2017, we were working as a backing band on a variety of projects for other artists. The sessions were taking place at the Finishing School, a studio built by close friend, producer, and musical collaborator George Reiff, who tragically succumbed to cancer in May 2017 after a 10-month fight. The studio had been dark since George’s passing. With the blessing of the Reiff family, the lights were turned back on and we went to work for a few weeks. The final four days of session time were blocked off for us to work on something of our own. A few weeks prior to the sessions, it was collectively decided that we would use that time to take a shot at recording some of (whatever we could get to) A Message From the People. Working alongside our close friend (and George’s

right-hand-man in the studio) Steve Christensen, there was a palpable vibration in the air. It was somber but also very peaceful. Our expectations were set low as we knew that doing any Ray Charles record justice was going to be a real challenge — let alone one with such lush arrangements. To our amazement, after four days we had finished the record. It was a beautiful process that simply flowed in a workmanlike manner. In between takes, we frequently reminisced about George and were even visited at the studio by some of George’s close friends and family. Feeling confident that what we had accomplished was going to be worthy of a release, we unanimously agreed that it would be dedicated to the memory of George and that proceeds would go to a charitable organization that focused on social justice. Going forward, our hope is that our performance of these songs has sufficient merit to carry the listener without distraction to the musical feeling that we strived to accomplish in these recordings — a spirit of brotherhood, hope and understanding, liberty, and justice for all.

bandofheathens.com TheBandOfHeathens @BandOfHeathens 67

Written by Lynn Wise Photography Contributed

Going Green using 3D Technology — Austin’s ICON Builds the Home of the Future THE COMPANY’S CO-FOUNDER JASON BALLARD ON THE THRILL OF CHALLENGING HOUSING PARADIGMS

Is it possible to build houses more sustainably, faster, and cheaper all at the same time, without sacrificing design and aesthetics? Austin business ICON believes 3D printing makes it possible. And if the company accomplishes its goals, the housing market may never be the same.

“To make a difference, it had to make a difference for everyone.”

ICON co-founder and CEO Jason Ballard explains, “This isn't just a thing for tiny houses or houses for poor people. But almost like the 2x4 — you could build a shack out of a 2x4 or you could build a multi-million-dollar mansion out of a 2x4 — we believe that this is not just a disruptive technology, but this is like a completely new paradigm of building that has applications up and down the market that we are only just beginning to realize.” That’s an impressive claim, but it’s not an outrageous one. ICON has already built, in East Austin, the first permitted, 3D-printed home in the United States, and it did it faster and cheaper than building a house the standard way. The 70

overarching goal is to bridge the gap in green building between sustainability and affordability, and then to make the technology both resilient and accessible to all. So how does something like 3D printing houses — which sounds as if it’s been ripped from the pages of an outlandish sci-fi novel — become a reality? It often takes a major disruption to push a person to disrupt. For Ballard, the catalyst was Hurricane Harvey. When many of his family members’ homes were destroyed for the third time in his lifetime by natural disaster, Ballard decided

enough was enough and he got serious about finding a better way to build. After the hurricane, Ballard recalls turning to his longtime business partner Evan Loomis and being like, “Dude, this is so crazy. That's it. Like there has got to be a better way.”

“At least one miracle must be required, for a startup to be interesting.”

The real foundation for ICON, however, was laid long before the disaster, during Ballard’s childhood in East Texas near the Big Thicket area, where he spent his days roaming what could be described as an almost-fantastical natural environment. “One of the things about where I grew up, and most people do not know this — and it’s a shame more people don't know this is — it's the most biodiverse region in all of North America. And so I grew up around giant cypress trees and giant alligator gar that were, you know, hundreds of pounds and seven feet long and look like dinosaurs … roseate spoonbills, almost like pink flamingos, and there's like four species of carnivorous plants — really remarkable to grow up in,” Ballard says. But as picturesque as it was, the region was in many ways a paradox. “However, the other thing that happened in my neck of the woods,” Ballard continues, “there’s the largest concentration of petrochemical refineries in America there as well. Everywhere you go, there are signs that are like, you cannot eat the fish that you catch here, and you can smell it in the air. And the light pollution coming from the refineries is really bad at night. And you know, people got sick, and it kind of created a cognitive dissonance.” By the time Ballard was preparing to go to Texas A&M, issues of sustainability and the environment were of prime importance to him, so a degree in conservation biology made total sense. But then, after graduating and moving to Boulder, Colorado, to be closer to the woman who would become his wife, he had a revelation: Everything — all of the environmental issues he was concerned about — came back to the house. “If you sort of chase the rabbit down the hall, everything points back to the home, and that was at the time such a shock for me,” Ballard explains. “Homes and buildings by sector are the number one user of energy, they are the number two user of water behind agriculture, they're the number one producer of landfill waste … they’re the number one source of toxin exposure for most Americans because of indoor air quality, you know, on and on and on.” Ballard realized if he wanted to make a difference, sustainable building was the way to do it. He took jobs with anyone who would hire him, working with a green builder, a developer, an eco-handyman. But he was left frustrated: Even though the demand for green building

was high, good alternatives for standard building materials weren’t readily available. That led him to his first business with Loomis, TreeHouse. “Imagine Whole Foods took over Home Depot,” Ballard jokes. “That was sort of the idea.” Ballard’s work at TreeHouse gave him a front-row seat to the cutting edges of green building technology. But as rewarding as the work was, he began feeling more and more unsettled by the disconnect between sustainability and affordability — an issue difficult to ignore in Austin, which struggles to provide affordable housing.

BUILDING AMERICA’S FIRST PRINTED HOME ICON developed its own 3D printer, accompanying software, and concrete blend, which are used to print the walls of the home.

The structure is designed using ICON software.

Building permits are secured. This step was a bit of a challenge initially, because it’s a first!

Foundation is poured in standard fashion.

3D printer is used on site to pour ICON’s own concrete blend into a 350 square foot home. This step replaces multiple step of the standard building process, including framing.

Workers add a roof and finishes such as window frames, as well as electricity and plumbing. (The company is working on automated solutions for this step.)

The total price of the printed portion of the house comes out to $10,000, and the process takes ~48 hours. ICON believes it can get future homes built in half the time for $4,000, starting this year.

Ballard knew that “for sustainability to be a thing, it had to be a thing for everybody. To make a difference, it had to make a difference for everyone.” He was convinced there had to be a way to build both green and affordable. Then Hurricane Harvey hit. The storm was catastrophic. More than 100,000 homes were damaged or destroyed, and tens of thousands of people found themselves in need of shelter. Many of them ended up housed in FEMA trailers — which Ballard characterizes as massively expensive and inefficient. The economic cost to the government, taxpayers, and those affected is monumental, and the task of rebuilding has been slow and arduous.

As Ballard stood by his family during the rebuilding process, he couldn’t shake the thought that maybe the hurricane would have been less devastating if houses were built more resiliently, and he marveled at having to rebuild using the same inefficient and unsustainable building materials and methods that resulted in so much damage and heartache. “If I offered you $1 million to invent a less resilient material than sheetrock, you would not claim the prize … It's the worst building material in terms of resiliency that humanity can conceive of,” Ballard explains. Again, that nagging feeling that there just had to be an alternative better than the status quo. Together with Loomis, Ballard resolved to find it. The two began searching through the options, even exploring for a short while what’s known as “architectural fungi,” essentially guiding fungus to grow into particular shapes. But nothing seemed more sci-fi than the possibility of using a 3D printer — a fairly new technology that has most successfully been used to manufacture smallish products — to print an entire house. Yet, the more the pair looked into it, the more viable 3D printing seemed. The technology had been used to print a few structures internationally, and far from being intimidated by how out there the idea was, Ballard was energized by the challenge. “As entrepreneurs it felt great. Like the harder something is to do, the more interesting it becomes, typically for entrepreneurs. At least one miracle must be required, for a startup to be interesting,” Ballard says. When Loomis and Ballard teamed up with Alex Le Roux, an engineer who was working on a similar project in Houston, what was once a crazy idea rapidly formed into a crazy reality.

The challenge with all new, crazy ideas, though, is selling them to investors and to the public. There comes a sort of chicken and egg scenario: The public wants you to prove you can do what you claim before doling out cash, but proving your claims is impossible without funding. Luckily, ICON found a customer willing to bet on it — New Story, a non-profit based in San Francisco working globally to “transform slums into sustainable communities.” The deal was, New Story would partner with ICON, which would build a prototype in Austin, in exchange for first dibs on a printer once they were market ready. That prototype was built in East Austin in March, 2018, and New Story plans to print its first community of homes — designed in collaboration with local residents — in Latin America this year. Though the New Story deal gave ICON a boost, Ballard and his co-founders still found themselves footing most of the bill for the home in East Austin. “The week leading up to printing the house, we needed to purchase more of the concrete from the manufacturer, and I had to go to my wife and say, ‘Honey, I’m going to get a new credit card.’ Because I’d maxed out my other credit cards. … At the time, the technology had not matured enough, we felt, to start asking for other people's money.” As for fears that 3D home printers will displace vulnerable workers in the construction industry, Ballard isn’t worried. He explains that there is a desperate shortage of labor in the sector — a claim research backs up — and that by the time the technology is prevalent enough to really affect workers on a mass scale, a generation of builders will be retiring and the new generation will have had time to develop the skills needed to print houses instead of build them. Change can be scary, but Ballard is practically giddy he’s so excited by the possibilities. Going into 2019, ICON is using the lessons it learned from building its prototype home to refine its printers, which will number at least three by the time this article prints. It is working on partnerships with a wide variety of companies, the most exciting of which might be NASA. (I mean, how else would you build colonies of homes in space other than 3D printing?!) Ballard’s just taking it all in. “I feel like a little kid who gets to work at NASA and gets to deploy technology that’s barely this side of science fiction to solve these like massive humanitarian challenges. It helps that we have an amazing, amazing group of teammates. I just, I don't know what I'm trying to say other than how happy all this makes me.” Ballard has reason to be happy: If in fact 3D printing leads to better housing that is more affordable and environmentally friendly, the future might not be so scary after all. iconbuild.com @icon3dtech 73

The Evolution of Disruption COACH’S CORNER DAN DILLARD

If you had asked me 20 years ago if the word disrupt had a negative connotation or a positive one, I would have said negative. Fast forward to now … and, well, almost every entrepreneur wants to disrupt something. I absolutely love it. See, over the years I’ve learned something about myself: I love to fix things. You remember that old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? Well, for many situations we need to rethink that mentality and go fix that item that isn’t broken but that could have a better design or function. As humans we evolve daily, we are ever expanding in our thoughts, ideas, and progress of who we are as people and as a society. What wasn’t acceptable 20 years ago is no big deal now. Do you remember the tools we used 20 years ago? Typewriters and fax machines were still popular. It would be another nine years before the iPhone was released. If you think of a business as having a life of its own, it also must grow, and once it gets to maturity, it must continue to reinvent itself to keep up with its evolving customers. Just think of all the businesses that have proved this for us. Why do companies such as Amazon and Apple continue to grow, while others such as Blockbuster fail? Is it that some reinvent to customer needs and others fail to see the evolution of customers’ needs and wants? The common key to success fascinates me: If you want to succeed, think about the audience, clients, and customers you are serving and remember you are providing them value and have to continue providing them value, or someone else will. As business leaders we must always be thinking 5 to 10 years ahead — where will we be then? — and pivot along the way. I think of Jeff Bezos and the data that he analyzed from this new thing called the internet. He studied spreadsheets, saw a way to create a business, and in 24 years has created an empire that puts him at the top of wealth creation. According to eMarketer, Amazon captured nearly 50 percent of the eCommerce marketplace last year, and the company is widely regarded as one of the top earners in cloud-computing. Disrupt — that Bezos did, changing the way we as a society purchase items. 74

As a fellow entrepreneur, or as an aspiring entrepreneur, remember that necessity is the mother of all invention. But, I’d add to that: If necessity is the mother, then the father, uncle, aunt, (insert family member here) is reinvention. In other words, almost every successful invention builds upon previous ideas and technology. Disruption takes what we know and changes how we think about and use it, forging a completely new path as it does so. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be successful. The next time you are brainstorming about your next idea or product, simply look at what is causing frustration in your life or the life of others. Is it traffic? Is it long hold times? Is it a particular state agency? Is it shopping? What is causing you pain? How can you fix it? Will the fix change the world? Will it be relevant 5 or 10 years from now? And can you turn it into a profitable business? These are the questions you should be asking yourself. And remember — and this is incredibly important, so important that I have to remind myself of it on a weekly basis — no one is giving you permission to do this. In fact, quite the opposite. You will certainly have people who think you are crazy for following your path. How many people have cast doubt on the prospect of a manned Mars mission or have questioned whether underground tunnels could really work to alleviate traffic? Yet, Elon Musk continues with his work, striving to disrupt and create a better future for society. You, too, have to trust in your heart and in your gut that what you’re doing will change the world, and don’t let anyone talk you out of it. So, now it’s your turn. How can you make your neighbors’ lives easier? Answer that question, and go disrupt! I can’t wait to see what you come up with. NESTFinancial.net

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The Last Word Written by Alamo Drafthouse’s Tim League Photography by Annie Ray

Tim League and his wife Karrie founded Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in 1997 with the intention of having “good food, good beer and good films all in the same place.” Moving beyond the multiplex experience, League and his entire crew were passionate about film and provided a different experience for film buffs, which has been adopted and copied by multiplex theater chains. Passion for film, innovative programming, and commitment to classic as well as indie films is what keeps the cinephiles coming. What began with a single screen on Colorado Street in Austin has grown to include dozens of theaters nationwide that host a mix of indie premieres and films as well as mainstream Hollywood films and many special events.

to share our passion for movies, get to know our fellow movie-loving customers, and make the theater available to filmmakers, festivals, and organizations who also loved movies. NO TALKING OR TEXTING. Plus a new addition — turn off your damned smart watches. It’s just as selfish to inadvertently light up your row with a bright Apple Watch as it is to check Instagram on your phone. Just turn it off and lose yourself in the show. But I digress … This technically wasn’t an “out of the gate” concept for us. About a month into operation, however, I was devastated by a way-too-rowdy audience at a screening of Blue Velvet. We didn’t conceive of this problem until that night but wanted to course correct immediately. The next morning I bought a copy of Final Cut Pro, and our zero-tolerance policy was on screen the following weekend.

I’ll start off by saying that selfidentifying as a “disrupter” feels pretty off-putting. I don’t. I do self-identify as a business owner and entrepreneur, and I happen to dearly love the business my wife Karrie and I built and still operate today. We opened the first Alamo Drafthouse Cinema back in 1997. Our initial driving force was to build a movie theater we’d want to frequent. Both of us loved movies, but we were far from in love with our cinema options at the time. We began by considering a “night out at the movies” and all the ways the experience could be improved, drastically improved. Although we didn’t formalize our mission and values at the time, we did come out of the gates at Alamo with a few driving concepts, above and beyond serving drinks and food, that

would differentiate our theater from the others: NO ADVERTISEMENTS BEFORE MOVIES. Paid “content” sucks in every iteration I’ve seen in a cinema, so we opted to never do it. Instead, we invest resources to create a video preshow that’s fun, funny, and informative. Not all movies are awesome, but if the preshow before the movie is, hopefully the entire experience at Alamo Drafthouse is still worth the time and money spent. SHARING OUR LOVE OF FILM. When we visited standard commercial theaters, we’d find the experience was always sterile — no personality, no love of movies radiating from the staff or from the facility. We love movies. That was honestly our only qualification to start the theater in the first place. We wanted

The addition of our “no talking” policy speaks to what I suppose is our version of disruption. We started the theater with a drive to analyze and improve. Karrie and I had initial (brief) careers in science and engineering, and the analytical nature of those professions is forever stamped into who we are. This constant pursuit of change and improvement didn’t stop when the doors opened, and it’s one of our core values today. We’re passionate about providing an awesome cinema experience and aggressively pursue positive change and improvement in all facets of our company. When we make mistakes, we consider them opportunities to improve. Hiring people who share that passion is key. Our team is constantly on alert, receptors open, to find innovative ideas anywhere and anytime that we can incorporate into the business, often from our guests and fellow movie-obsessed co-workers.

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