Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange, at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now here's your host, Josh king, Head of Communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Are you listening to this episode while you're at work? If you are, it means you're most likely in front of a computer and sitting for now. Here at Intercontinental Exchange, we have an open floor plan where employees sit and work together, but it is not uniform. You can't help but notice that some people seemingly more every day stand out. The reason an increasing number of VariDesks are being deployed throughout the building, and it's not just happening at the corner of Wall and Broad Street, but it's happening across the globe. Joining us today is Jason McCann, CEO, and Co-Founder of VariDesk, to explain why we all should be standing up to work. Our conversation with Jason right after this.
Speaker 1:
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Josh King:
Our guest today, Jason McCann is the CEO and Co-Founder of VariDesk, the fast growing provider of writing desks and other active workplace solutions. He was named the EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017, and under his guidance VariDesks can now be found in the offices of 97% of Fortune 500 companies. Wow, Jason, that is a big number.
Jason McCann:
That's a huge number, and it just shows that you we've built an amazing fan base out there, and the word of mouth is spread. So we are absolutely blessed every day to be doing business with these amazing companies all over the world.
Josh King:
Well, welcome to another amazing company, the New York Stock Exchange part of Intercontinental Exchange, our library. On the trading floor below us, the traders have known probably the secret that you've brought to those 97% of the other companies, standing while working for centuries out of necessity, moving around, the open out cry of the floor, but why should we all be getting up to work?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. You think about it, our bodies are designed to move and the energy that's created as somebody is up and active and moving, whether they're creatively thinking, negotiating, talking, communicating, collaborating, it's imperative that we move. Our bodies are not designed to be sedentary, but over the last 50 to a 100 years, we're suddenly sitting in traffics, sitting in an office, sitting in an old cube farm, but the traders on the floor know and leading people and researchers know that, but just by being up, moving throughout the day, it's very important. Then you sit down to recharge your body, which is just how we used to operate for hundreds of thousands of years, our bodies would move, be active throughout the day, and then sit down for a few minutes to recharge. And that's really how we're designed to active and motivate and move.
Josh King:
Well, I don't want Inside the ICE House to be a recharging exercise, so our producer, Ian Wolf might object to this because he was just adjusting our microphones. But why don't we stand up.
Jason McCann:
Let's stand, oh.
Josh King:
This will be the first ever standing episode of Inside the ICE House, as I adjust my mic and create all sorts of audio feedback problems for Ian. So that feels better.
Jason McCann:
What you notice immediately is you stand up that you just start to feel better. The endorphins are released in your body, lower back pain is adjusted. So it's just all these little things, and you start to blood flow and creative thinking just becomes more engaged.
Josh King:
I'm totally feeling it, not recharging at all. I want to listen to a clip we had in this library sitting down a few weeks ago, David Rubenstein, CEO of Carlyle Group. He hosts a show on Bloomberg called The David Rubenstein Show, one of his guests was Tim Cook, and I think he's also a fan of The Approach. Let's listen to that.
David Rubenstein:
And you're convinced, standing up working as better than sitting down.
Tim Cook:
We have given all of our employees a 100% standing desks. If you can stand for a while and then sit and so on and so forth, this is much better for our lifestyle Yeah. We can stand up for a little while.
David Rubenstein:
We're standing up. Okay.
Josh King:
So they're doing it too, Jason. One infinite loop, thousands of standing Apple employees.
Jason McCann:
Yes. When he said sitting is the new cancer, the Mayo clinic had said sitting is the new smoking. We learned a lot of different things, but it's just the way our bodies were designed to move back in the beginning. And so all the research has been coming out from all over the world that people are seeing that you're just better when you're up. Also, you want to sit down throughout the day, so the ability to adjust the height is your body needs change throughout the day is an ebb and flow is a very, very important thing. You don't want to stand all day, but you don't want to sit all day. So the idea being active and moving is very key.
Josh King:
I've seen your equipment certainly on many desks here, I've also seen a lot of new equipment shipped where it's designed very much into the veneer of the full office furniture setup that a little button will raise it up.
Jason McCann:
Well, that's a crazy thing. We started as a product that goes on top of your existing desk, and now we have over two million people worldwide using that desk on top of a desk pro plus solution, which has been incredible. But based upon the needs of clients, they said, "As we're redoing our entire space, could you help us reimagine our entire workspace?" So we have absolutely launched an entire line of product with full electric desks. So those people start to think about an entire workspace that can lift up, walls that move, standing conference tables, seating that moves and adjust with your body when you do want to sit down. All those things are products that we're now moving into and expanding and launching all over the world.
Josh King:
I want to get into a little bit more of that later, but innovative companies are always looking for the next idea to give them an edge. But VariDesk has also made some headway into government offices, not known as a realm for pushing the envelope or investing in hip work cultures. We saw a clip of President Trump coming back from Helsinki, the other day, sitting as the president often will in the cabinet room, arms slouched, taking a question, but you seem to be making some way in Washington and other capitals where government employees need to get off their behinds.
Jason McCann:
Well, I think everybody embraces the idea of being active. And so the government has absolutely done a tremendous amount of business with us. We're in every branch of the military, every office of the government, every senator, lots of senators have them. So every branch of the government's had our product, which has been incredible, and the word of mouth has just spread. And when the military embraces it, because a lot of the soldiers come back with back pain. They've been carrying heavy packs, walking with combat boots, and so as our amazing veterans come back and are now moving into corporate America, they might be moving into a desk job or something different, they're suffering from back pain. And that became the leading indicator that we're onto something great here, just by moving and creating the activity throughout the day has been huge for our veterans. So we feel very blessed to help them.
Josh King:
You mentioned in an interview with Inc. Magazine, your theory of the ripple effect and how it has helped your company grow. It's really simple as one of those veterans coming back and trying your product and mentioning to the other person next to them like, "This is really good." The ripple effect.
Jason McCann:
Yeah. The whole ripple effect. You think about it. One person we jokingly said this lone soldier would stand up inside of an office or in an area. And then two or three colleagues would notice that he or she had a pep in their steps, some energy was transformed. That word of mouth started to spread. And then as the word of mouth started to spread, two or three colleagues would jump on board, start this standing revolution. But really it's an evolution that's overall happening in offices today. But that little pebble that dropped into the water with that single person created a huge ripple effect and really a tsunami all over the world for the active workspace.
Josh King:
To the same extent that some people have perks and others don't. If some person has a technology or an expensive product in their office, that's provided for their employer, you don't want to be left out.
Jason McCann:
Well, you think about it. Everybody started years ago, bringing their cell phones and bring your own device to work, and with VariDesk it became bring your own desk to work. And so people started standing up at their office, and so absolutely it became an aspirational thing because they started to know that their colleague was feeling better doing something different that was improving their productivity and work life balance. So it all started to work and the word of mouth spread, really well over half our sales are simply driven by word of mouth, which we know is the key to success. People started writing reviews and started talking about the product and the number one word they said was love. I love my VariDesk, and that's when we knew we were on something big.
Josh King:
So let's drill into feedback for a little bit. Building a brand in 2018 relies heavily on what you were just saying, word of mouth, through reviews that get written in online forms. I was reading an article that you wrote for Entrepreneur, and one thing that struck out was how you integrate feedback into your overall customer data analytics. How do you quantify seemingly subjective information like this, those little bits of feedback love?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. So we took the initial reviews and obviously we started with our first two products, and we had clients say, "I love your VariDesk, but I need an anti fatigue mat. Do you guys make anti fatigue mats?" And at the time we didn't. So we took that information and started researching anti fatigue mats. And my industrial designer got in there, and as we looked at the market, he said, "I can create a better anti fatigue mat." And so we did, and we could literally have an anti-fatigue mat company with the amount of mats that we sold all over the world. But that told me are we going to be, create our own destiny and control our own product ideas and sell them through our channel of distribution to our fan base. And by having that relationship with our fan base, we're able to take their ideas and their learnings and make better products.
Jason McCann:
We've been touring great headquarters all over and seeing how people use our product, and we noticed a lot of them more sticking them in the corner of a cube. And at the time we didn't have a corner fitting product. So our product team started talking with them and say, "Hey, let's create a cube corner series that fits and tucks right into the corner." And then we was on to something it's like, how can we take qualitative and quantitative data and monetize it, turn it into products and solutions and have this career long relationship with our fan base?
Josh King:
Where do you do your R&D, where your skunk works?
Jason McCann:
Everything is right there in the Dallas Fort Worth area in Coppell, so we're just 10 minutes from the DFW Airport. And that's our ideation lab and really it's a living breathing showroom. So we have a 75,000 square foot headquarters, clients are touring every day from all over the world. And we're getting feedback on products that we're working on, we're living and breathing and eating our own dog food. We're creating our own products, and if we like it, we start to share it with our clients. When we launched our monitor arms, because people were jerry rigging ideas and products onto our solutions, we created our line. We sent it out to a 100 of our best customers and said, "Try it, give us feedback." For free. Let me just know what you think about it. It helped us iterate and get the product right, and now we're one of the largest monitor arm sellers in the world.
Josh King:
Was Dallas always going to be the place that you were going to call home? It is such a perfect hub for working the North American marketplace.
Jason McCann:
Absolutely. It's where we were born and started, and I had no idea that we could run a global enterprise from the Dallas market. But as we caught calls from Australia, from Canada, from South Korea and Malaysia, all of a sudden I realized we can operate and run a global enterprise right here from Dallas, which has been an incredible business. I had no idea that we'd be able to do that.
Josh King:
In May, you announced the hiring of Jeff Lamb as your Chief Operating Officer. He previously worked at Southwest Airlines, another great Texas company and NYSE listed ticker symbol L-U-V, LUV. Company known for its customer service, Jason and its culture. What are you hoping that Jeff will bring to VariDesk?
Jason McCann:
Absolutely. I learned early on that it's all about people and the honor of bringing on somebody like Jeff Lamb as our COO has really helped me personally grow and elevate, but we know that culture and people are whatever CEO in America is looking for. So we can become the ideation incubation lab for proving out that we can create an amazing culture by designing the workspace of the future. We can learn from what Jeff did at Southwest Airlines, which I believe is one of the most amazing companies in the world. And he's already brought best practices in, elevated our game and is allowing us to now talk to clients about transforming their culture through positive workspace.
Josh King:
I think one of the first times that VariDesk came into my consciousness was maybe on one of those Southwest flights perusing the thing because my iPad battery had gone dead, SkyMall, and there's your advertising for VariDesk. Why did you think that SkyMall and it's somewhat derided sometimes by people like the last bastion of reading, if everything it else fails, but why was that a place for you to establish your brand?
Jason McCann:
Very early on, it was really the first place we advertised outside of Google. And we were sitting on a flight and we were waiting for something, and we're same just like you trapped in an airplane, we said, "God, wouldn't it be great if we could stand up right now." And so we said, "Wouldn't it be funny if we did an ad in SkyMall?" And so we just did one and became the number one selling item in SkyMall's history prior to their transformation, but it was an amazing opportunity. What we realized lot of business travelers, a lot of executives, a lot of people that are traveling want to be active and healthy. And that was just a great spot for us to advertise early on.
Josh King:
Based in Dallas, the home of DFW. You must talk with Jeff about the deep vein thrombosis issue on flying as well. Is there any answer to us being packed in like sardines?
Jason McCann:
Well, I think everybody's got to continue to move and be active. Obviously I travel well over a 100,000 miles a year and I just know personally that we've all got to be moving and constantly doing those things. So stretching exercises, all those things that the airlines promote are very imperative to that.
Josh King:
So we've been focused on the core product in our conversation so far, but you have your sites set much higher than just a standing desk at every workstation. How is VariDesk reimagining the modern office space?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. We started off addressing one person's back pain, and as we started to talk to corporate clients, they started to reach out to say, "Could you provide an entire workspace for us?" As they walked in our headquarters, "We want to do something like this." And it elevated our thinking into what we could create from a product standpoint. The office of the future is about flexibility, businesses ebb and flow and change, you're hiring and tweaking your model, putting task teams. So we started to elevate and reimagine what it could be from an active and flexible workspace. So all of our products are designed to move and change and transform, so you can build literally an office in less than five minutes. And as your business needs change, you can change with it and move it. We've designed a wall system called QuickFlex Walls, that are literally movable walls. So you can create partitions and create your own offices as opposed to taking new sheet rock and building out new walls. So just a real transformation of how the workspace of the future can be.
Josh King:
Speaking of the workplace of the future and those that will occupy it. In a recent episode of Inside the ICE House, we had David Ossip, he's the CEO of Ceridian. He talked about how the modern workplace is evolving to make work fit their employees lives as a way to attract and retain talent. VariDesk conducted and released a study on how millennials view traditional workspace. What did you find?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. So we went out there and talked to thousands of millennials and did research and they want a flexible work, because they know health matters and they want an active workspace. And millennials are likely to leave the role because they have a choice, unemployment is very, very low today. And so if you don't create an environment where millennials want to be collaborative, open, but also privacy areas where they need to work on focused initiatives, but allowing flexibility and change. The last thing you want to do is walk into a company that feels like it did 20 years ago. But the idea of walking into a headquarters, it's constantly moving, changing the walls can move creates an amazing amount of energy. Over 80% of my staff is millennials.
Jason McCann:
So it's educated me to providing learning opportunities for millennials, because we're all about learning and growing. We know that the careers today are going to be totally different in the future. So by creating a learning environment and a culture and a university, we have VariDesk E for our own staff. But companies that embrace learning and bring their millennials on the roadmap and the journey with them are going to continue to dominate and grow in the future.
Josh King:
Did they ask for a descending vaping dome too?
Jason McCann:
It's all coming, but we even in our space do scent machines and we have a gym on site and towel service, and that it's open 24 hours a day. And it sells about healthy snacks and those things because people care about those things. So you're right.
Josh King:
You seem to be also interested, not only in the millennials who are coming into the office right now, but also in the pre workforce. Earlier this week, The Spokesman-Review reported that your company pledged to supply Gonzaga University's new boarding school with equipment designed to create an active learning environment. How did VariDesk become involved in this product?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. So you think about from a learning standpoint, we recognize that we've got in the U.S. alone, 50 million school kids that are sitting down at desks all day, like my three teenagers, and could we help there? So we bought a company called Stand To Learn, which Dr. Bannon out of Texas A&M had founded over five years ago part-time and it sold over a 100,000 desks out there helping kids. And I said, "We would love to take your product and help you drive it out there." So we're going to be giving away thousands of desks, we're going to be working with clients to learn. We believe 2020 for us is the year of education, so we're going to be giving back and helping and learning a lot. So we're going to learn a lot here over the next 18 months.
Josh King:
20,000 desks, how do you decide where they go for free?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. So we're just talking to clients and students and teachers and all that, so my team's out there talking to all of them to see how we can help give back. So we're starting right now with Puerto Rico and we're building four schools down there and helping them.
Josh King:
After the break, Jason and I will talk about the origins of VariDesk and how he went from a box on a desk to a dynamic active workplace solutions company. That's more with Jason, right after this.
Speaker 1:
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Josh King:
Welcome back to Inside the ICE House. Before the break, Jason McCann, CEO and Co-Founder of VariDesk was helping us create better offices and classrooms to encourage active and healthier habits. Jason, I sit in my office, but I'm about to rethink that whole approach. The TV is above my head, I practically can recite to you the VariDesk origin story because I see it all the time. It started with this cardboard box, but that just wasn't the need. You also had access to an industrial designer who took the idea from paper to product. What got you working on this? How did it begin from this cardboard box?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. Literally there's a colleague that I walk into his office and he's standing at a cardboard box and he said, "I went to talk to my doctor about this back pain, static nerve pain that I'm having. And I told her I feel better when I stand up." And she said, "Well, you should stand up more." So we started ordering standing desks for him and realized that they were expensive, difficult to make, hard to assemble. Said, "There's got to be a better way." So we grabbed our industrial designer, David, and he started dreaming up the product of what it could be. Could it slide out of a box, sit on top of your existing desks, go up and down whenever you wanted it to? And once we started to get our prototype in and show it, we showed it to amazing clients around Dallas and they started to like it too. And we learned a lot from those early conversations and tweaked the product and ultimately we realized that lots of people want the solution. And we started a company and started selling them all over.
Josh King:
Standing desks weren't invented by you, actually they've got a long history. You have any relics of the past where there's big wooden things that would be used in the Telegraph office in the pioneer days?
Jason McCann:
We don't have any of those in our office, but we've seen so many great, amazing photos, whether it's school desks or famous writers, Ernest Hemingway, others that have all used standing desks for years, and they said it was a very common thing. And then suddenly we shifted a little over 50, 60, 70 years ago, it started to shift and everybody started sitting down as a culture. And so these are little learnings that we said, "That's how it should be." We didn't create it, it's like I would argue, Apple didn't create the MP3 player, but they really elevated it. So we did the same thing, we took an idea that was out there and just that whole revolution, the idea of standing, but let's create a great product that people really want to use. And once it's easy to use, people are more likely to do it. And then suddenly the word of mouth spread.
Josh King:
So I want to drill in a little bit to how actually you showed up with the site idea. You were a serial entrepreneur before joining Gemmy Industries. How did starting a company as an incubator in another company compare to a traditional startup? Give me a little bit of your background.
Jason McCann:
Yeah. The beauty of it, my first businesses were in high school, owning a beach chair and umbrella company. And out of college, I owned a restaurant, a nightclub thinking I wanted to be in the hospitality industry. And then you open up a toy company in the pod craze back in the day and went boom and bust during the .com business. So from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I've had amazing opportunities to build businesses. Worked with an amazing company called Gemmy, and Gemmy makes those awesome inflatables that you see out there for Halloween and Christmas and LED lighting for Lowe's, Home Depot, Walmart, amazing retailers all over the world. And we incubated the product inside of there, and it was interesting because we were able to leverage the internal infrastructure, but we realized the business' polar opposite to Gemmy. So we decided to let VariDesk become a standalone entity and see what this little tiny thing could become and grow. And by doing that, it allowed VariDesk to come out of the gate really, really hot. So incubated as an idea, but ultimately became a standalone company.
Josh King:
Who were your mentors and inspirers within these companies that helped you imagine this and then allowed you to flourish and ultimately spring out from them?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. So you think about what we did was we created this initial product and what we realized is, we initially knew right out of the gate, it was a profitable business. We were going to focus on it as a true business, as a standalone entity, we could build the company of our dreams. So by looking at who are the best companies out there, Zappos for customer service, Apple for innovation, but also Samsung and Huawei, the way they think about product. The way Jack Bogle thinks about everyday value pricing and Sam, the way he built Walmart. We said we could take all these best business principles and the magic of a culture like Southwest Airlines, and the way Elon has built a direct to the end user business model in an older industry, we said, "What if we could build VariDesk around all the greatest business principles out there and take it?" And that's what we've created.
Josh King:
But back to those Pogs, because I'm fascinated by this. Your career path so far from linear, explain how these Pogs, those collectable milk caps and slammers that were popular in the 1990s acquired from your time managing that reggae bar that you were talking about, led to your first business success. How do you make money on that?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. So you think about wanting to be in the hotel restaurant category, of wanting to own a restaurant, a nightclub at 22, 23 years old, absolutely bucket list item, but I have definitely checked it off my list and it was an amazing-
Josh King:
Where was it?
Jason McCann:
In Houston, Texas.
Josh King:
What was it called?
Jason McCann:
Called the Yaga's. The first one's down in Galveston that I'm good friends with the original founders-
Josh King:
Still open and thriving?
Jason McCann:
Still open in Galveston. The one in Houston it's no longer open, but that was many, many years ago back in the Rockets heyday of when they actually won.
Josh King:
Hakeem.
Jason McCann:
Yeah. Hakeem and the crew. But then I was working on my MBA at University of Houston and a gentleman needed to make some and in the Pog business, so I helped him. And suddenly I'm in the Pog business air freighting Pogs on Continental Airlines. And you learn a lot about fads versus trends, and so that was one of those things that just happened to be a fad. But then I also just learned that you've got to continue to have a profitable business, and so we've taken all these little lessons that you learn over your career, the ups and downs of it, and you turn it into the next learning and the next business opportunity.
Josh King:
You mentioned booms and busts in the .com era. What was the low point and how did you recover?
Jason McCann:
Well, you think about it. So we jumped into the .com industry and we were selling Halloween and Christmas product online in the late 90s and early 2000s had a built a multi-million dollar business, but unprofitable. And unfortunately that was the model we built and like a lot of .com businesses, I just didn't build a profitable business, amazing revenue, great culture, wasn't profitable. And as soon as there was no more financing, it ended. And I promised myself at the bottom there in the darkest day, as I locked the doors and I had to lay off my entire staff, I would never build an unprofitable business model again. Control my own destiny and do something amazing out there, and I will never forget that.
Josh King:
So given that is your North Star, make sure it's profitable, make sure you're not in one of those existential moments when you got to shut the lights out. How quickly did the VariDesk workforce grow and how are you able to make sure that the culture stays consistent? That what drove you from that very first moment inside the incubator to say, this can be profitable to how many employees do you have now?
Jason McCann:
We have over 260 employees and I've got four, I'll have yet 300 by the end of the year. So it's an incredible growth, but these are-
Josh King:
How do you stay within the rails to make sure it doesn't go off track?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. I look at it like these are the most amazing pains to have. When you have growing pains versus shrinking pains, these are the most fun riddles from a business person's, from a CEO's headache to solve as growing pains. But you're absolutely right, as we got to 20, 30, 40 employees, I could meet everybody, interview everybody, I could really focus on the core DNA of the business. As we scale to a 100, 150, 200 suddenly I had to elevate leaders and bring in training from my millennials, who had never let a team before start educational programs, how to hire A players and recruit A players. And now to have amazing executives like Jeff Lamb, join us to really continue to help me grow and scale this business, because it's all about people at the end of the day. And if you get the people right, the culture right, the business model right, and you take care of your customers and your staff, everything else will work itself out.
Josh King:
So you go from hands on everything to advancing and elevating leaders. How do you manage this balance between a CEO and Founder's desire to not have a thing pass without their gaze on it, without their imprint, to being able to delegate and letting people flourish and allowing them to operate and build their own areas within the company?
Jason McCann:
I think if I was 25 years old, I would've crashed this thing. I would've not understood the value of empowering my staff to learn, to grow, to elevate with me, not because of me, but with me and help me figure it out together as a team. And that's a transformation that I've personally gone. I'm now 48 years old, so it's a different way for me to personally think about business. I recognize that I've got X amount of years left on this planet, I can elevate and create a tremendous amount of opportunities for the people that work with me and their families and the companies that were impacting their lives. And I don't take that for granted any time.
Josh King:
You've got a lot of growth ahead, many missions, I'm sure you now would say that, you got to spend a lot of time with current clients, with prospective clients trying to break down those barriers, the head of real estate or the head of industrial design for big companies and giving you the open palm and saying, "Jason, no, thanks. We like our desks." How do you get over a traditional company's reluctance to try this out?
Jason McCann:
The biggest thing is if they try it. And so my whole thing has been, let's just try it. So initially we started we'll ship you a VariDesk, if you like it, great, if you don't send it back and less than 2% of our desks have ever come back. So you think about over two million desks have been shipped out worldwide and less than 2% of the people have said, "It's not for me." So that's an amazing thing. So as we've gone into full office spaces, now we've created hundreds of spaces for clients all over the world. And as we're creating these work spaces and they're starting to work in them and seeing what a full active office from VariDesk can be like, the ripple effect is starting again. The tidal wave will happen.
Jason McCann:
I know it's an investment, a grind, I have to earn every single order, every single shipment and my team operates like that. And so we wake up at zero every day thinking about how do I take care of the fan? How I listen? How do we stay low ego and humble and figure this thing out? Because I know we're making a positive impact on millions of people's lives out there. And so workspace is a huge piece of that.
Josh King:
So free sampling, one good piece of advice for entrepreneurs. What's the other things that Jason McCann would say to a person just starting out those keys to success for or starting a business?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. Somebody told me if you get a small group of people that absolutely love your product, a larger group can perhaps like the product a lot as the ripple effect happens. So we focus very much. So I'm in on as many conversations and my team is listening and learning. So as we launch these new products from full electric desk and walls, we're in on these meetings, watching how they're transforming their space. And we're saying, if it doesn't work, let us transform the space and tweak it with you because nobody gets it right always the very first time. So they're on the journey with us, our fan base is almost pulling us through. So I would say, all entrepreneurs really need to hone in on that relationship and listening to the customer. And while you're small, you have an opportunity to reach out direct, call them, see them, invite them to see your space and what you're working on and bring them along the journey with you.
Josh King:
So if you can't get to Dallas and you're not on a plane, reading your ads on SkyMall, how else do people find out about what VariDesk is up to, have virtual sampling of your product, be able to get their arms around everything you're doing?
Jason McCann:
Yeah. So you've got now spaces here, like in New York City, we have Blueprint + Co with Daymond John. So our products are literally starting to show up everywhere. And so all of these Fortune 500s we're starting to do spaces inside of spaces and we're going into coworking spaces and putting up our products in there. So Common Desk in Dallas and Capital Factory in Austin, and they're starting to show our product and demonstrate it so they can see it. And larger corporations are starting to do ideation and incubation labs within their spaces, leveraging our product. So they're beginning to experience it. So they come online, can order one or they'll just call us and we send out samples so they can try it.
Jason McCann:
We now have space planners, which I didn't envision we would have space planners, creating the designs for people in the future. And now we're offering service because some people do want us to come set up the furniture. And so I'm set up now to suddenly install furniture all over the U.S. which is a thing I never thought we'd be in as a service side of business, but ultimately it's the right thing to be in.
Josh King:
How many hours of sleep do you get every night?
Jason McCann:
Well, I personally love to get six to eight hours of sleep at night. But we wake up and we run 24 hours a day here. So whatever the opportunities happen, we go.
Josh King:
Is there a way to sleep standing up?
Jason McCann:
I have not proven that, but I have slept in a plenty of airplanes and taken some power nap. So sitting up, I could, but maybe not standing up.
Josh King:
Well, I hope this conversation Inside the ICE House has at least given you 35 to 40 more minutes of standing during the day and you can recharge it another time.
Jason McCann:
That's awesome. Hey, thank you so much. This has been an incredible opportunity. We're excited to help.
Josh King:
Thanks so much, Jason. That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Jason McCann, CEO, and Co-Founder of VariDesk. If you like, what you heard, please rate us on iTunes, so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question, you'd like one of our experts to tackle in a future show, email us at [email protected] or Tweet at us @NYSE. Like Jason McCann, we look at all the feedback and adjust our product accordingly. Our show is produced by Pete Asch and Ian Wolf, with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh King, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. I'm going to sit down now, thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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