Adam Sutton: balancing wheels, work and life on an exhilarating entrepreneurial journey from fire breather to tire franchise leader.

In this episode we are celebrating the career to date of Adam Sutton.

Adam is the President of RNR Tire Express.

In 2004, he founded Red Letter Studios (RLS), an award winning creative agency in Tampa, FL which focused on Video Production, Design, Digital media and Printing.

In January of 2012, RLS partnered with Thuzi (now LEAP), where Adam became the Chief Experience Officer (CXO).

He became a founding member of Thuzi’s groundbreaking live event & marketing technology division leading and producing hundreds of iconic projects and events for global brands such as Microsoft, Disney, Oprah, AT&T, Coca-Cola, Outback, Ford, Honda, Under Armour, Feld Entertainment, UFC and top agencies alike.

He has had a life-long passion for film, and has directed and / or produced over 50 TV commercials, winning dozens of national advertising awards.

He's also created countless brand films, short films & corporate marketing and non-profit videos.

As a passion project, he co-directed  and produced an international documentary titled "The Magic History Of Cinema", which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2017, Adam accepted the Executive Vice President position at RNR Tire Express, the franchisor of nearly 200+ retail locations in 29 states. In 2021, he was promoted to President of RNR.

In our conversation we talk about his early entrepreneurial ventures as a magician and fire breather. Adam explains how he was drawn towards graphic design and film making and shares how following his interests eventually led him to the bleeding edge of marketing technology and live events.

As exhilarating as that environment was, he recognised that his life was out of balance and he needed to recalibrate his priorities.

When his father Larry Sutton who was my guest for episode 164 asked him to join the family business he admits to having some initial reservations even though it was an opportunity he'd always dreamed of.

I enjoyed hearing about Adam's somewhat unconventional early years and how seeing perfectionism as procrastination enables him to keep iterating and moving forward. I am pleased to share his story in this episode and I look forward to hearing what resonates with you.

If you're listening for the first time, hello, I'm Andy Follows. I'm a trusted advisor to senior leaders in the automotive industry. I work alongside them and their teams to enable Fulfilling Performance. If you'd like to know more about Fulfilling Performance, check out: Release the handbrake! - The Fulfilling Performance Hub on Substack.

Connect with Adam
LinkedIn: Adam B. Sutton
Website: RNR Tire Express

Thank you to our sponsors:
ASKE Consulting
Email: hello@askeconsulting.co.uk

Aquilae
Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk

Episode Directory on Instagram @careerviewmirror  

If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app. 
Episode recorded on 7 May, 2024.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, childhood and school
• 14:49 Beginnings of entrepreneurialism during school, working as a magician and fire eater!
• 20:12 Working with the church in graphic design and video production, and setting up Red Letter Studios
• 25:29 Growing Red Letter Studios and the perfectionist's curse
• 30:44 Making his way up the commercials ladder
• 34:59 Servant leadership style
• 43:33 The creation and growth of Thuzi
• 56:00 The high flying impact on homelife
• 59:41 Full circle story of Ringling and leaving Thuzi
• 1:14:05 Approached by his father about taking over his business
• 1:20:26 What's the Why?
• 1:25:35 A dive into RnR Tire Express
• 1:29:52 Lessons for Hamburg
• 1:36:11 Takeaways

Transcript

Adam Sutton: 0:00

We treat our customers like kings and queens and if their kids are there we treat them like princes and princesses. And we do it because it's the right thing to do because they deserve it. But benefits of doing it is they're going to tell their friends, and they're going to bring more people.

Aquilae: 0:15

Welcome to CAREER-VIEW MIRROR, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers to share insights to help you with your own journey. Here's your host, Andy Follows

Andy Follows: 0:29

Hello, listeners, Andy here. Thank you for tuning in. We appreciate that you do. We're also very grateful for our guests who generously joined me to create these episodes so that we can celebrate their careers, listen to their stories, and learn from their experiences. In this episode, we're celebrating the career to date of Adam Sutton. Adam is the president of RNR Tire Express. In 2004 he founded Red Letter Studios, an award winning creative agency in Tampa, Florida, which focused on video production design, digital media and printing. In January of 2012 RLS partnered with Thuzi now Leap where Adam became the chief experience officer. He became a founding member of Thuzi's groundbreaking live event and marketing technology division leading and producing hundreds of iconic projects and events for global brands such as Microsoft, Disney, Oprah, AT and T Coca Cola, Outback Ford, Honda, Under Armour, Feld Entertainment UFC and top agencies alike. He's had a lifelong passion for film and has directed and or produced over 50 TV commercials winning dozens of national advertising awards. He's also created countless brand films, short films and corporate marketing and nonprofit videos. As a passion project, he co directed and produced an international documentary titled The Magic history of cinema, which premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. In 2017 Adam accepted the executive vice president position at r&r tire express the franchisor of nearly 200 Plus retail locations in 29 states. In 2021, he was promoted to President of RNR. In our conversation, we talk about his early entrepreneurial ventures as a magician and fire breather. Adam explains how he was drawn towards graphic design and filmmaking and shares how following his interests eventually led him to the bleeding edge of marketing technology and live events. As exhilarating as that environment was he recognised that his life was out of balance and he needed to recalibrate his priorities. When his father Larry Sutton, who was my guest for episode 164 asked him to join the family business he admits to having some initial reservations even though it was an opportunity he always dreamed of. I enjoyed hearing about Adam's somewhat unconventional early years and how seeing perfectionism as procrastination enables him to keep iterating and moving forward. I'm pleased to share his story in this episode, and I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. If you're listening for the first time. Hello, I'm Andy Follows I'm a trusted adviser to senior leaders in the automotive industry. I work alongside them and their teams to enable Fulfilling Performance. If you'd like to know more about Fulfilling Performance, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. In it you'll find easily digestible ideas on how to increase levels of performance and fulfilment for yourself and those you lead and care about. Go to Andyfollows.substack.com, or use the link in the show notes to this episode. Hello, Adam, and welcome. And where are you coming to us from today?

Adam Sutton: 4:00

Hello, Andy. And thank you for having me, very honoured to be on. I am coming from Tampa, Florida USA.

Andy Follows: 4:07

Awesome. I had to say an American word like awesome for that. Thank you for joining me. You're very welcome. And thank you. You're actually coming to me from a podcast studio, which is really cool.

Adam Sutton: 4:21

I am. I wish I had a room this cool. But no, just rented rented for the hour here.

Andy Follows: 4:24

Yeah. Well, it sounds sounds wonderful. As with all my guests, I want to start right at the beginning of your journey. Where were you born? Right

Adam Sutton: 4:33

Right here Tampa Bay. I grew up here love it travelled the world and it always brought me back here. So

Andy Follows: 4:39

okay,

Adam Sutton: 4:40

raising my family similar to the way I was raised just a little north of Tampa a little a little bit of country left and a little bit of cow pasture is not full full city yet but you know, right there by the big city as well.

Andy Follows: 4:53

Excellent. And I look forward to hearing about this journey you've been on. When you were born in Tampa what was it like? What was family life like that you found yourself born into?

Adam Sutton: 5:05

Yeah. So going way back 1983 I'm 41 years old. So born in the the early 80s. And I am a twin. I have a twin sister. So she was born six minutes before me, I kicked her out of the womb. And I have two older siblings, an older brother, and then a sister. That was the proverbial middle child, since the twins got their attention and my older brother got their attention, but she's doing okay, she's recovered. But born to an amazing Dad and Mom, pretty classic American story. You know, my father had a rags to riches story. In fact, you got to have him on your podcast a couple of weeks ago I believe Larry Sutton.

Andy Follows: 5:50

I did we had Larry. It was an absolute pleasure and a lot of love. Oh, my goodness, it was a lot of fun. Yeah, very cool to have him and I think you're the first father son. Combo. We've we've had we've we've had from we've had people from the same business, you know, many people from different businesses. But we haven't had a father and son from the same business.

Adam Sutton: 6:13

I'm even more honoured if that's awesome.

Andy Follows: 6:16

Yeah, it's a lot of firsts today. And how about I'm curious now, relationship with your twin sister, is that special?

Adam Sutton: 6:23

Yes it's very special. Yeah, there's something about twins for anybody that's that's a twin out there has them. You know, there's some sort of special connection that apparently we had our own language. You know, before we could walk out apparently would crawl out of my, I would throw my toys out of my crib onto the ground and crawl out of my crib, throw my toys into her crib, and then crawl into hers. And we just play for a long time. So it's easy babysitting, I guess in the early days, but now we're still very close to this day. It's a unique thing.

Andy Follows: 6:51

Yeah, yeah. It's something that that

Adam Sutton: 6:54

We're not identical. So a lot of people ask us, are you identical? That's impossible. Just to anybody out there is wondering, I wonder. We are what's called fraternal so just laying that laying that out there for you wondering?

Andy Follows: 7:08

Yeah. My laugh listeners is Adams got a pretty impressive beard. So

Adam Sutton: 7:14

I think that's the first time I've heard that, thank you. I'm gonna tell my wife, you said that

Andy Follows: 7:21

For his sister to be identical would be not no, no. I'm not going anywhere further with that, but she wouldn't probably want that necessarily. Okay, so what how would your teachers have described you Adam?

Adam Sutton: 7:37

Wow. Yeah, I hope they're not listening to this. Right. And how did that play out then in terms of your academic You know, it's interesting. I had some really, really great performance? Did you get what you needed to get? teachers. I had one terrible teacher third grade, but I was a So, you know, I'll be honest, I even struggled in high school, pretty energetic child was actually tested for ADD ADHD. I had a real entrepreneurial spirit had kind of started a little business I'll tell you about the minute a little bit don't think I had it that didn't come back with the positive embarrassing, but it was money. It was good. And so I had had I tests. And probably if I test it today, I would, you know, but grew up under my father who owned a business and he did really well again true rags to riches worked his way out of out of the ghetto into a business owner and had you know, numerous definitely had a lot of energy people person, you know, so I locations of a business called Champion Rent to Own it's in the rent to own space like a Aaron's or Renta centre. So helping people that can't afford, you know, nice items with with payment options, right? So I got to grow up under him and I tell was thinking I would enjoy hanging out telling stories with people, I went to LSU which just stands for Larry Sutton university, because I got to go to that my whole life but in high school, really struggled. You know, I did well, I loved hanging out with friends more than I did learning. So no I had history. I excelled in the classes I enjoyed, basically, and then, you know, didn't do as well. In the ones I did not, like math actually still have to use a calculator, sadly, but my theory and part of my success has always been hiring smarter a really great time in school, probably more so just for the people than me so that's that's just was the plan from the get go, I guess. But anyway, decided not to go to college because I was making money and I just was looking a lot of my older friends who went to college and they were wasting their parents fun, you know, enjoyed recess more than the classroom. money or someone's money and didn't know what they wanted to do. And so I for me, personally wasn't going to be a doctor, although I have the handwriting to be a great doctor. Yeah, I just said you know what, that's probably doesn't make sense for me. And I'm already making money. So I'm probably going to, you know, go work somewhere where I can go make more money than I would spend at school or I might start a business because again, entrepreneurial family, entrepreneurial spirit. So

Andy Follows: 10:06

yeah. So you'd seen you'd had the opportunity to watch what your father was doing. See him grow a business. I don't imagine there was pressure from him to get a certain

Adam Sutton: 10:18

No, you know, he didn't go to college, right. So that that was huge. And I've got my daughter just turned 18, we're, I want to make this clear. I'm not against College. I'm pro college, if you're going there with a purpose, right. And I know some of my friends went there, and they found their purpose. But to me, that's too much of a gamble. So it wasn't a huge pressure, the other three siblings did go to college. One of them is using the degree that the he invited me to do with them art. So statistically, I think that's about right. So my house is it's basically, you know, for my three kids, my daughter, you know, she's literally graduating in a couple of weeks, which is blowing my mind just turned 18, which is crazy. But we've told her, Hey, if you want to go to college, great, we're gonna help support you. But you need to know what you kind of want to do. You got to have some sort of a path. So anyway, excitingly, she's actually chosen to do hair school. So she's going to do a two year accelerated focused school. Right? So it'll be hair and cosmetology, which I'm a huge fan of, you know, I think I think the world is lacking apprenticeships and that model of focus learning these days of learning that craft at an early age from the elders that have come before you, right, so we're proud of her. And we're excited for her.

Andy Follows: 11:27

Excellent congratulations to her. And I think we can't just assume that because people went on to higher education in the past, and, you know, there was perhaps a better chance of getting specific jobs, then the world is changing. And it's not necessarily a given.

Adam Sutton: 11:44

I agree

Andy Follows: 11:44

that that's the only thing for you. So

Adam Sutton: 11:47

I probably just alienated half of our audience, by the way, they're like this schmuck. I'm really not against college, I'm really not.

Andy Follows: 11:54

No, I think we got to challenge things. There's so much. I'm interested in the trajectories that people are put on. That's why I start these conversations with Where Where were you born? What did you see, because we all on some kind of trajectory when we when we start our lives, implied or otherwise? And I'm really curious whether people drift away from that trajectory, or pick their own or follow it, how it plays out. And I think that, yeah, as things are changing, the trajectories of the past don't necessarily work for everyone. So we need to question things. And we need to pick we know we need to be intentional about you know, Yeah, if you've got to bit of curiosity and as

Adam Sutton: 12:30

I agree, I think two things on that one, it's not beyond me that I was blessed to be born into a family where someone had worked, you know, his entire life to earn a great living. And then I could learn from him, right learn from his managers and his team members, as I grew up, kind of grew up in that business, as they put me to work scrubbing and cleaning everything in the warehouse which was good lessons in an early, so very, very blessed. Not everybody has that which college can provide things there that maybe, you know, if I was born differently, different environment would have had the luxury of learning. But two I think you just hit the nail on the head, today's environment, you know, I tell my, my kids all the time, particularly my 13 year old son, and he's like, Well, I want to do this, you know, a couple years, he's been enjoying making short videos, right? So a couple weeks ago, he just got finally, okay, I'm going to give you one of my old laptops, I'm gonna set you up with iMovie. And he was struggling to learn, I said, Son, why are you struggling to learn it, you have the ultimate gift of YouTube University, right, within 30 minutes, you could, you know, learn everything you need to know to get started at least. And then within a few hours, you could become a master that used to take, you know, our generation and before, you had to read it in a book. And then that means you had to find the book, or you say, a bit of drive and better habits then it's order the book, or go to the library to get a book. So you know, they really today, the younger generations have access to more knowledge, and are privileged, I think, to be able to grow and learn faster than we ever were than any previous generation was right. And you've heard the statement, this is the first time in history. And it might be millennials, I can't remember which one but it's the first time where the younger generations are teaching the older generation something, available. Okay, so we know though that you did a lot you right if you think about the history of mankind has always passed down knowledge. And now it's still happening, but you're passing up knowledge as well. It's pretty fascinating, right? So no excuses to not be successful. No, if you've got the knowledge, you gotta have the drive and the habits. did have the privilege of witnessing your father building a business and exposure and you got involved in that it sounds like but we know or I know you did a lot of other things as well. So how did you when you're coming to leave school? What was the first thing that happened? Job wise. So backing up before that, I said,

Andy Follows: 14:52

Oh, yeah, there was job there was a bit embarrassing. How could I miss that? So

Adam Sutton: 14:57

So always enjoyed I enjoyed sports, I did a lot of sports hockey was my favourite played all sports, but also enjoyed theatre enjoyed going to the theatre. And my mom would take me, you know, going to see. So I always enjoyed kind of the drama side of things. So got into that doing plays, things like that. But then for whatever reason, I can't pinpoint the origins, but got into magic as a kid and started performing magic and actually got so into it, that became kind of my first real paying gig, I was a kid magician, and just to paint a picture, and again, we should just really delete this from the internet. But to give you everybody a visual out there, I had doves that would, you know, appear out of nowhere. And so just imagine a 10 year old, 11 year old a 12 year old doing parties, for 10 year olds, nine year olds, eight year olds, it'd be having to be driven there, right, with all my magic props, you know, that I built with my grandfather and, you know, again, pulled out of actual books, figuring out how to do that, you know, a little bit older, you know, had VHS tapes for the elder people in the audience know what that is. So, learn how to do magic really, really enjoyed that. And that became kind of my first money making job, if you will, again had that kind of entrepreneurial spirit, went out there did it and, and it helped prepare me, you know, to to eventually get into selling and all those things where you work out the kinks for you're in front of people. And, you know, you got to just figure it out, you know?

Andy Follows: 16:21

That's fascinating. Yeah, really interesting. So it's theatre, it is performance. It's was it just you one person?

Adam Sutton: 16:29

Yeah, occasionally, I would get a friend of mine, I would be in full tails, you know, a suit. But I never forget when I was teenager, and this is, you know, on the weekends, these are teenagers, like we're getting into trouble, like we're doing some stupid things, I actually got kicked out at two middle schools. So I always had a great heart, but did some stupid things. So one of my buddies would, I'd be in full tails. And I would have him in the black T shirt with the suit print on it, you remember those in the 80s, where it looked like you're wearing a suit. So that was you know, real fancy, that he was wearing a pair of jeans and we'd roll up and go to a party. And eventually I got into fire eating and fire spinning. So if you've seen you know, a fire staff fire on each end of a long pole or fire poy, which is basically two chains and balls of fire and the end of them, you're swinging them around. So I got into that, and always loved the circus grew up loving the circus. And so actually started transitioning more into doing that because I could get paid the same and only have to do one, one or two acts or bits, you know, not have props and all those things. And then I started making those and selling them because most performers back in the day before all these e commerce shops existed, you had to go to a physical shop with fire performing. There was no physical shop for such an odd thing. You know, probably a couple 1000 people on the planet would do it that you had to make your own. So then I had people asking me Well, can I can you make mine? Can you say my next business was manufacturing custom circus fire equipment. And so this was between 14 and 16 17 18. And, you know, made more than gas money it was it did pretty well. My claim to fame at 16 years old, I used to actually sneak in to Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus which I grew up loving. They build their show here in Tampa the last few months of the year. And then they go on tour for a year or two after that there's two touring units. So I would sneak into their show, they would walk by the security guard had a Ringling shirt and a hat they thought I was a performer I'd pretend I was on the phone, and eventually made friends with with some of the performers in my claim to fame was Ringling Brothers was using little ol Adams Sutton's fire performing equipment in their international shows at 16 years old. So that was a huge spike the football moment for me and there's a full circle. Later, my career coming back to the Ringling Brothers. We'll get to it later. But anyway, a lot of fun.

Unknown: 18:51

You've

Andy Follows: 18:51

You've already in the you know you're not even 16 years old yet Adam. And we're seeing a way of being and

Adam Sutton: 19:01

making it happen.

Andy Follows: 19:02

Yeah, making it happen. Making money being entrepreneurial. So really, there's no end to what you could have done after that. It's very wide open. From magician to fire equipment manufacturing. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, so what was the path into sort of adult

Adam Sutton: 19:23

into adulthood? Yes, so that was my teenage years. And I used to teach those things at a summer camp every summer up in New York, and that also made new clients because they needed to buy stuff, so that that helped as well. But eventually, so parents got divorced 11 or 12. And that that kind of rocked my world, to be honest with you, as you know, I was very close with my dad, and he's an amazing dad. But you know, for multiple reasons. They they got divorced and separated. And so, for me, I took that very hard, I think harder than my other siblings, which transpired into some of the things I mentioned, having trouble at school and getting into You know, some drugs and drinking things at an early age that was was now you know, looked at as an excuse back then it was, you know, the reason or the escapism, but so got into some of that. And then, thankfully, at a young age for me, found God got involved in church and actually changed my life around and haven't done drugs since. So got all that out of my system early, which I'm happy about. So in the church, I got really involved in the youth ministry, and we had a massive youth ministry that we helped grow. You know, it was sort of in like a dozen kids when I started going, but I got involved in the ministry helping out and we actually had, you know, an average, you'd be like, 400 500 kids come in every week. And then when we threw on events, it'd be like, over 1000. So in that I actually learned a lot of skills, started doing graphic design skills, and video production, right, just because it was a need. And so then it was all terrible, but you know, it was learning how to do it right. And so started crafting those skills actually got into video. Before that. I was a little punk skateboarder kid and my, my rebel years so I started filming my buddies skating so brought those skills into the church. And so multiple years involved in volunteering and doing things there started honing those skills. And so then got a graphic design job, had a job actually at the church just because I wanted to be there doing design and video production, different things. And in the youth ministry, and then my third job towards the end of high school. In 2000. I graduated 2001 My father founded he had sold and retired his business if you want to hear all about that. He's an amazing man with amazing story. You gotta go hear that much better than I can tell. I think it was an episode and April's name is Larry Sutton go find that with Andy. That was just a great episode. But after he retired, he was bored. He started a company at the time, called Rent and Roll, custom wheels and tires. He used to joke, he says he always wanted to be a rock and roll star. So he got the r&r, but didn't get the Rock and Roll part. So I actually started that was my third job, I would go there in the late afternoons and I'd work into one or 2am because, you know, I liked making money and, and you know, you got that kind of hustle idea. It's just what you do. So I started doing the marketing there and all the graphic design again, all terrible, don't look it up. But I was learning with the skills and exercising those muscles. And so worked there a few years until 2004, which I got married in oh four to my high school sweetheart, will be married 20 years this year, the love of my life. And we actually started a creative agency called Red Letter studios in 2004. So I took all those skills kind of learning up not the magic, not necessarily the manufacturing of custom fire eating and performing equipment, you know, but the selling of that and the making your own and you know, discovery of that whole starting your business process.

Andy Follows: 22:47

What I like is this really good example of Morgan W. McCall Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. He said, If you want to learn something, put yourself in a situation where you have to learn where you need to learn. Yeah, absolutely. And then try and get some help. So you, you were in a situation where you needed to learn graphic design, you needed to learn all of those different skills that were acquired to do what you wanted to do at the church. And I guessing there was also then an enjoyment, you must have felt some interest in that video editing graphic design. It was you weren't hating it. So you stayed with it, and you kept learning and learning and then high school sweetheart, you start a business to do just that.

Adam Sutton: 23:39

Yeah, yeah, she was a photographer and started learning graphic design as well I joke and say she had a job so I started it we started together but she still had a job and I joke and tell people which is true. I don't think we got paid until she came on eight or nine months later because I was too much of a people pleaser. You know, when you start first start a business you're doing this all your friends. And so a I wasn't charging enough my father told me very young if one of my first businesses he told me I say I'm not making much money, he said Adam, you got to make money on your friends because your enemies don't do business with you, you know, and that was just a great nugget from from childhood. And so I knew that up here but when you start and I'm trying to people please and I'm growing and you know I'm putting way too much time into the logo or into the printing or TV commercial or whatever, and not getting charged enough but then the backside of that is I would send an invoice but I would never follow up on it or I would wait to send the invoice and so she came on kind of studio director and had skills that I was not good at yet at the time had to be good at it later. But so we finally started getting paid. She was sending out the invoice creating the invoices, sending out the invoices and making sure that that people actually paid us and so that was that was good but we had a great time it was very difficult as anybody that's ever worked with their spouse. Doesn't matter how amazing they are, you know, but they see your faults at work or your deficiencies and then you know, they're also reminding you forgot to take out the trash. So it's, it's very tough to do. But it was beautiful too I mean, we learned a lot we were newlyweds with a new business, it was a lot of challenges, you know, but to her credit, she stayed with me. Thank God. And, you know, we had a successful business. We had a lot of fun made a lot of national TV commercials.

Andy Follows: 25:21

How did you go? Yeah, okay, so how did you go from you set this business up to ending up doing national TV commercials?

Adam Sutton: 25:29

Well, the it starts with who you know, right? The relationships, you got to always say it's heart and hustle. So you got to have the, the heart and the business and you know, the passion has got to shine through and what you do and what you create, but the hustle's gotta be there too. And so, you know, it started with thankfully, people that believed in me that were older than me that had businesses that I would go to, and hey, can I do this for you? Can I do that for you? And again, the very early things were very crappy, but they got better, right as you learn and you get better equipment and better talent around you

Andy Follows: 26:00

Did you because this sounds like you've got a real growth mindset because you're not perfectionist you recognise we've got to do stuff, we iterate, we learn we get better. Has that come with hindsight? Did you know at the

Adam Sutton: 26:13

100% And here's why I you know, I went to this time? conference one time, and I don't remember any I don't remember the conferences name. And I didn't even go to this one session. I had a friend that went to the session, I said, What was about and she said these words, it changed my life. True story. I said, What was it about? She said, Oh, my gosh, that guy was fantastic. He talked about this talked about that. Don't remember what she said until these words. And then he said, perfectionism equals procrastination. And that hit me like between the eyes, because I was I am a perfectionist. I'm a recovering perfectionist, I'll say, but I would have a problem, particularly when I'm the designer, the sales guy, the you know, at the time, the invoicing guy, you know, the guy that has to go to the printer and get the letter setting right and all this stuff. And I had this view of No, it has to be perfect. And so I would spend way too much time on these things. Which is funny cuz I look back at now and like, what was my it was my perception of perfect at the time, right? So it's like by who said design is subjective. So it's what is you know, perfection is a funny word. So that was a crippling crippling vice for me, because my perfectionism would equal procrastination because it would turn into this thing where even taking out the trash is the same thing. Oh, you know what? Not the perfect time to take out the trash. I've got my business clothes on. Let me go inside. Let me get in my shorts. Let me get, you know, whatever. gloves if it's a disgusting trash is overflowing. I'll do it later. It's not the perfect time. Well, not not not later, you know, 9pm or 9am. The next day with the garbage trucks going by honey, you didn't take out that? That is perfectionist like curse, right? So absolutely a learned realisation later, which which I learned doing Red Letters studios, because I had to, but I learned it through a lot of failure. And I got a lot better at it perfected that later, which we can get into when I partnered that agency with a much larger marketing Technology Agency just because of the volume that we had. There was no time for perfection. So yeah, it

Andy Follows: 28:12

So what were you strongest? What were your I wish I could say I was born at that. But you know, another skill too is I was not naturally organised, right. And most creatives, kind of the visionary for taking those tests, creative, visionary kind of mindset. I do have a lot of logical side. I mean, I was when I was filming, it was always the curse between directing and producing the director was, oh, we get the golden hour, let's get one more shot and the producers in your brain going no, if we get that shot, we're going to be too behind. And so I did have some of that, but I didn't have some of the because probably perfectionism and and whatever the basic habits of good time management and things of that nature. So I sucked at that in the first years of Red Letter, through scaling, the business had to get better. strongest at Adum? because I'm thinking you were? Yeah, for some reason when you're describing that. So you know, yeah, because you had used to film your buddies at the skate park. So you're interested, you're interested in filming? Did you have an eye for for that?

Adam Sutton: 29:11

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It's creativity is one of my favourite things. You know, Cirque du Soleil is one of my favourite companies in the planet, you know, just out of creativity. And, you know, so always, again, maybe the mother instilled in me, or maybe it's temperament you're born with, I'm not sure but lean towards that. I still it's a blessing and a curse. You know, you've got that creative eye. There's kind of the creative director that lives inside your head, when you look at something and why was it designed that way? Or, Wow, how did they come up with that? You know, and so there's a real wandering part of that, that's beautiful, but there's a real crippling part when you're the guy that has to not only concept it, create it, produce it, sell it and and deliver it, right?

Andy Follows: 29:55

Well, this is the challenge, isn't it when you're a small business or even an individual that how can you possibly be expected to have the whole spectrum of skills and strengths that

Adam Sutton: 30:07

yeah, no, you can't, most people can't.

Andy Follows: 30:09

So you've got the creative side, and you acknowledge that you weren't great on some of the organisation. And also with hindsight, you recognise you used to procrastinate because you, you wanted things to be better

Adam Sutton: 30:21

Not the perfect time. It's not the perfect,

Andy Follows: 30:23

yeah, not the perfect time

Adam Sutton: 30:25

Perfectionism equals procrastination.

Andy Follows: 30:28

So really enjoy hearing that. And then it must have been, even though you're describing the earlier work as though it wasn't great. Don't go back and look at it. There's some humility, that must be good enough for you to get the work that you got, and to do some of these national ads.

Adam Sutton: 30:44

You know, here's the thing. It was the early 2000s. Right. So you're coming out of the 90s. And so, design, I mean, it's been around for a long time, right? If you look at like a madman, 60s on it really started becoming more of a craft, and you had more guidelines and rules and things like that. But yeah, so the 2000s were, it was a forgivable time, because you couldn't necessarily go to Fiver and get a $15 logo, right, that didn't exist, the Internet was being birthed. You couldn't go get a TV commercial. And so one of the things too to my father's credit, and I owe him, you know, more than anyone could ever repay, and so many levels and I'll probably talk about later, but the greatest gift I got from him sidebar is watching him lead when I say went to LSU is the biggest takeaway that masterclass I got from him was how to treat people, right. And so I carried that with me my whole life. And that was probably part of my success of you know, winning people over but also he allowed me and gave me opportunities to do things with the business so when I started my my circus fire equipment business, I didn't have any money. So hey, can I get a two and $50 loan, I gotta go buy these metal poles which had to find the metal fabricator, then I had to buy some tools and, and he always tells a story. Within three weeks later, I've got an envelope back on my desk, Larry's desk, and it there was, you know, $300 in it. So I always paid back the loan with with interest, right, but I always paid it back. And but so I had that that benefit, you know, that leg up to be able to have someone to help me in that way to guide me in that way. But also, like for video commercials, we were doing a lot of commercials. We're doing a lot of video for nonprofits for the church. And the first commercials I believe we made was actually for Rent n Roll. I had now left my position there, but we're still doing I took two years when I first started my business and call this pride, call it strategic growth, I'm not sure. But for two years, I did zero business with my father. Because I wanted to grow my company on my own I didn't want to over Go to daddy, you know and it was probably pride. But I'm glad I did it. Right. And so the two years is up, and we're doing more work. And we've kind of got a decent client list now doing some some, you know, regular work. And I'm watching these commercials that are being done free by the cable companies. Right? When you buy cable that they would come in, throw the camera up on sticks, and, you know, no offence to any of them, but they're not TV commercial people. They're just production people that are checking a box to get you that free commercial. And they were terrible, right. And so so we're doing better stuff for the church, you know, me and my favourite DP of all time his name's AJ Hurley, freelance video guy in New York, anybody needs a video guy, New Office Productions, he was kind of my right hand. We're doing all this stuff on the other side for some of these other brands. And so I said, Let's go make some some Rent n Roll commercials. Because whatever we do is gonna be better than what they're doing. I think we charge like $1,000 like talk about underselling your value. But there was going from three to 1000. So we came up with these ideas, these clever commercials and started making some Rent n Roll commercials. And, again, terrible, when you look back at it, but good at the time, and the most important part, they were better than what he was getting. So that kind of sparked us in TV commercials. And now I had something to show other other companies hey, we do national TV commercials, which they were right. And that climb the ladder up to bigger, better companies all the way up to national brands, doing actual national TV commercials later on. Right. had to start somewhere.

Andy Follows: 34:05

Yeah, no, that's great. And I think it's fascinating how, you know, as kids often we don't want to take advantage of something that's in the family. It is a pride. Definitely. Yeah. It's also though, based on some kind of, you know, assumption that life is fair. And if I, if I take advantage of that, that's unfair. Well, life isn't fair at all. And there's other ways people have advantage or disadvantage. So you know, if that's available, just do it. Just take.

Adam Sutton: 34:34

That's good advice. I like that. If that's available, just do it. Yeah, that's true.

Andy Follows: 34:38

And the other thing I just want to go back to is, how valuable to have watched your father, what you learned from your father was how he dealt with people. I mean, the$250 loan is great, but learning how to deal with people priceless. So tell us a little bit about what you learned and what behaviours you've taken on. So

Adam Sutton: 34:59

the number One thing, and again, he's got this beautiful American rags to riches story, right? So he grew up dirt poor and very just humble lifestyle had an amazing mother single mother that inspired him. And he had that entrepreneurial spirit, right more than me. I mean, he what he did at a young age was It was amazing. But watching him, by the time I could recognise this, right, I mean, when I was young, I just watched him love people. That's how I that was my young filter perception, right. But as I got a little bit older, younger, teenage years, maybe a little younger than that, the what spoke louder, you know, the actions speak louder than words comment to me was he was this successful, you know, independent 27 retail locations, not not at this moment, but he had a lot in a decent dozen or so. So he was the man, he was the guy that wrote the checks. But he didn't act like it. You know, if you came in that store, didn't know who he was. You just think he's one of the team members. And it's that true servant leadership as what I learned if I had to bucket it into a title is he was teaching me and everyone around him how to be a true servant leader, because he treated the janitor the same as his vice president. And that spoke wonders, you know, and to be able to see that firsthand. I'll tell you, it's a beautiful thing. But it also is a terrible thing. Because now I'm expecting that wherever I go, right? And when you don't see it, you're like, Oh, this is terrible. You know the difference? Because you know, good, it could be right Oh, good, the fruit can taste. So it was the greatest gift I think he gave to me, was just showing me how to love people to honour people, treat them with the respect they deserve and extended to that. The customer. If you love your people, they're gonna love your customer. And he loves our customers and our customers, but in their own world are some of the hardest working most under appreciated, taken advantage of because they're in the low economic status, right? They don't have credit worthy, whatever they're used to being taken. And so when they come into our stores, and these are the champion ringtone stores of the time, but we've carried this on to to r&r it's called today RnR tire Express, we I tell the people because I learned this my father, we treat our customers like kings and queens and if their kids are there we treat them like princes and princesses. And we do it because it's the right thing to do because they deserve it. But benefits of doing it is they're going to tell their friends and they're gonna bring more people right so it's a win win and greatest gift anybody's ever given to me to watch that to not say it, but to do it.

Andy Follows: 37:33

Yep. He modelled that behaviour and you've brought you've taken that on. Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by ASKE Consulting who are experts in executive search, resourcing solutions and talent management across all sectors of the automotive industry in the UK and Europe. I've known them for almost 20 years and I can think of no more fitting sponsor for CAREER-VIEW MIRROR. They're the business we go to at Aquilae When we're looking for talent for our clients and for projects that we're working on. ASKE was founded by Andrew McMillan, whose own automotive career includes board level positions with car brands and leasing companies. All ASKE consultants have extensive client side experience, which means they bring valuable insight and perspective for both their employer and candidate customers. My earliest experience of working with Andrew was back in 2004, when he helped me hire regional managers for my leasing Sales Team at Alphabet. More recently, when Aquilae was helping a US client to establish a car subscription business, ASKE Consulting was alongside us helping us to develop our people strategy and to identify and bring onboard suitable talent. Clients we've referred to ASKE have had an equally positive experience. Andrew and the team at ASKE are genuinely interested in the long term outcomes for you and the people they place with you. They even offer the reassurance of a two year performance guarantee, which means they have skin in the game when working with you. If you're keen to secure the most talented and high potential people to accelerate your business and gain competitive advantage, do get in touch with them and let them know I sent you. You can email Andrew and the team at Hello@askeconsulting.co.uk or check out their website for more details and more client feedback at www.askeconsulting.co.uk. ASKE is spelt A S K E. You'll find these contact details in the show notes for this episode. Okay, let's get back to our episode. You talked about Red letter Studios that you set up with your yeah, was she your wife then?

Adam Sutton: 39:42

yeah, we got married August two Oh, no. I guess that we started when we were engaged. Yeah. So I started it. We got married and then eventually I brought her on. We did that together for 10 years and you know learned a lot of lessons there but grew over time and really enjoyed it. Yeah.

Andy Follows: 39:59

Is there anything else? From that, because then you did you merge with another agency or you acquired another?

Adam Sutton: 40:03

Yeah, January 2012, I partnered my company with a marketing technology agency called Thuzi and a much bigger company. And for six years, it was just insanity. We can jump into it. But yeah, that was kind of

Andy Follows: 40:20

Well before we do before we jump in, is there anything from the Red Letter studios days that we need to also mention?

Adam Sutton: 40:29

Red Letter Studios for me, it was, you know, coming of age story for me, I was, again, newly married. So you're learning all kinds of lessons. But really, I had to learn how to balance the Creator side of my brain of, hey, let's take longer, let's make the biggest beautiful thing in the world for my perception subjective at the time. And let's get this done on time so we can get to the other jobs that are stacked up behind it, so that we can build this business. And one of the big lessons I had is I'm a very forgiving person. I've never not forgiven anybody, right. And so I assumed at the time that everybody had that mentality. And so my perfectionism equals procrastination would delay some of these projects past some of the deadlines that I had set, which also there's a lesson there setting realistic deadlines, but then you got to meet them and follow them. So I would be in hindsight, probably pissing people off by getting projects out late. But in my mind, it's like, I wouldn't care if they did that to me, you know, so I learned a lot about personalities in that timeframe. And not everybody is like me, thank God. And you have to adapt to those personalities, particularly when you're selling right at the time, I knew there are two types of people, people, people and analytical people. And so if I was going into sell, or even if I was doing a client visit, if it's just people person, I'd be telling stories, right? If it's analytical people, I would tighten that up and talk about the value of what they're going to get the results and the numbers and all those things. So that was probably a huge lesson for me that, you know, started perfecting in my next part of my career, and there's probably 1000 more, but those those are some of the high level takeaways.

Andy Follows: 42:03

Yeah, we all have to learn,

Adam Sutton: 42:04

do what you say you're going to do. Be realistic. Don't be Don't piss people off, because they're not always just forgiving. Yeah, you might put sour taste in their mouth

Andy Follows: 42:11

Yeah, they have a different perspective, they might value having it now rather than having it a little bit better and late.

Adam Sutton: 42:18

Yes, that's good.

Andy Follows: 42:19

You know all my guests. You listen to the story, I listen to the stories and you hear all of the lessons that they had to learn through doing stuff. Yeah. Lots of Yeah, it's and if we can learn from other people. It's highly efficient if I can learn from your experiences, but it's hard isn't. It's much easier to learn from my own experiences.

Adam Sutton: 42:43

Yeah, no, I look, I was big on that I still am. If you can learn from the failures of others and avoid it great. For most of the big on, you kind of touched on this earlier. You got to try it. You got to just get it and do it. And if you're afraid of failure, I've never afraid of failure. I know. I know many people that are in that cripples them from getting done like perfection really equals presentation was my my curse. They have that but you I'm a fan of failure. Just fail fast. You know, go do it fail fast. Because if you're not failing, you're not trying. You're not progressing. Right?

Andy Follows: 43:12

And yeah, someone said to me, don't fail on really critical stuff.

Adam Sutton: 43:18

It's better if you fail on the less important stuff. Yeah, I don't know if you're, that would be a lot of wisdom to have that for now. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good good tip, if you can do it

Andy Follows: 43:27

So. Is it time to talk about how you then got into the technology side?

Adam Sutton: 43:32

Let's get into it. Yeah, this is one of my favourite moments of my career, Thuzi, yeah, like enthusiasm. The name came from there, like we need a name like Google, something unique. That doesn't mean anything. You know, so T H U Z I, Art Brady, our VP of ops came up with that, and we loved it. It's a huge part of my life. It's a huge part of my Hamburg, which you'll hear about later, but really helped. I carried in a bunch of the skills that I learned up to that date, but really learned a whole new set of skills sharpened those skills that I had and learned a whole new which, which has prepared me for what I'm doing now.

Andy Follows: 44:08

How did it come about, then? How did this relationship come about?

Adam Sutton: 44:12

Yeah, so Red Letter was branding design, you know, video production, new digital media, which is websites and things on the web. And one of my clients was Thuzi they had a different name at the time, and they were coming up with some

Andy Follows: 44:28

Why? really cool technology things. And I had a buddy that went to work there. And he said, Hey, I know you do design stuff. Can

Adam Sutton: 44:40

Ah, you know, it's good question. I don't know, if you do some business cards? So from business cards I got in the office, I kind of saw what they're doing. I met my future boss, Scott Blackburn, amazing innovator and visionary of that company. And from talking with them kind of learning what some of their projects they say you do video as well. And so then I started doing some projects for them for Outback Steakhouse and few other major clients. And so I consulted for them for about two years. I was doing their design, doing some design doing printing some of that stuff. But that was just kind of my window in, right, that was the door. And then it evolved into other things. And we really enjoyed each other. They were growing, it was a startup technology startup. And maybe we had a dozen people at the time. And Scott, and Mark, my brother kept saying, hey, why don't you come on board? You know, why don't you Why don't you join us and I'm like, I love what I'm doing. Working for yourself is you know, when you do that, it's hard to go work for somebody else again. But I'm looking at my business, and I'm going, okay, design, brand, even video, all of these things I mentioned, you know, you can go to Fiver and get $15 logos, all of that was starting to come out. I'm saying, Okay, it's almost a race to the bottom, you're getting a lot of designers now. YouTube University, right, it's out there. So the skills that I had learned from others, or by teaching myself, or from InDesign DVDs, I upgraded to DVDs at this point, are now all accessible on the internet. And so that value is getting less, the prices is less per hour. But what they're doing over here, they're creating this technology and doing things with social media. And the social media bubble is just beginning in 2012. I didn't see an end to it. Like I don't see that bubble, and I still don't, right, the bubble still has not busted, and so is really weighing the options of going I could have, I could have the whole pie, right I have a great answer for that. I saw that just the negative of right over here, I could have a smaller piece of a much bigger it. You know, I saw a lot of people losing motivation, pie, and took a gamble and went ahead and kind of jumped in confidence it, you know, social media can have an ugly side for January 2012. First week, we had a brand new office and kind of insecure people. And so I had friends that just, you know, now they're hanging out, but I'm not hanging out. I just I was like, came on as the creative director, project manager was you know, I don't, I don't think I would struggle with that. But I'm like, I just don't see the value yet. And I was a little kind of running some of the teams there. And it was insane. short sighted on that, you know, there is a lot of negative social media, there always will be. But there was a lot of upside, you know, and so my team basically was saying, Look, when It was wild. Some of the top brands in the world, were we started doing things for Twitter, you can't tell us what creating social media applications. So if you rewind to do on Facebook and Twitter, if you don't have one like that we're gonna you know, they're making fun of me, like, listen the clock back, this is before Facebook brand pages. In fact, old guy, and I'm in my 20s, late 20s. You know, you can't tell us that if you got so I had to go get one got a social media page we built the very first two Facebook brand pages, one for and social media accounts and started to learn it. And what I Microsoft and other for Outback Steakhouse, because Facebook was loved about it was connecting with people, I have a lot of friends in the UK near where you're at and in Australia. So one of our clients. So it was working from you know, and I had it actually reconnected me with a lot of friends and people that I used to work at that summer camp with. And so from that point, I loved it, and just family and cousins, you know, had top level clients at my thing, but now it was what I you're not writing letters really anymore anymore. So now I get to see what are their kids look like? What are they doing? would do in a month we were doing in a week as far as So it's a beautiful side of it. For branding and businesses. We activity, right. And then eventually, that became what we were in the beginning at the cusp of really maximising the were doing in a week became what we're doing in a day, because we exposure and amplification of those brandable moments. So the kept scaling and had, you know, a dozen designers and we went time and Facebook used to be able to talk to like 100% of your audience, you know, so if you had 1000 fans, and you put from 20 coders, you know, developers amazing talented out a post 100% of those 1000 fans are going to see it if they're logging in within the timeline that they would see it. folks up to 40 it was just insane. I was learning Now it's less than 3%. I mean, it might be one and a half. I technology that I'd never done before I was kind of anti social don't even know. But it's you know, because it's a pay to play model. Right. So you got to pay to see that. And so it was fun. media right at the time, my team It was a lot of fun.

Andy Follows: 49:11

It sounds like you took the right decision. Was that still in Florida? Was that was that based in Tampa as well? Or was it

Adam Sutton: 49:18

Funnily enough, it was based in Tampa, Florida, which most agencies are not. Tampa is actually becoming a really good tech industry now, but it was it was down the street. So it was it was perfect. You know, it was exciting, came into that office environment leading a team. And I had led a lot of teams before but this was a new challenge for me, right? I got to get to right and wrong, learn things early on of what to do and how to empower your team correctly and, you know, work through all the emotional dynamics on top of the logistical dynamics and so a lot of growth happened there. What was really exciting is in the first year, we really were focusing on what I just kind of talked about the digital social media experiences. And so we had a lot of our clients coming to us and saying, Hey, we love what you're doing over here growing our likes was a big part of it increasing our engagement was the other part of it. Over here, we do all these events, is there anything you could do to tie the two together? And we had, you know, 20 developers at the time we we used to say we could build spaceships, because we just didn't say no, a lot, right? We could do it. So we Gatorade. And in a few other onsite clients Under Armour actually was one of the other big ones. Were kind of asking us, Hey, we love what you're doing here. What can you do over here on site. And so we started inventing technology that had not been done before. And we started tying existing technologies together in what ultimately became a SaaS platform, a software as a service, event marketing technology platform, that funny enough, and just so blessed to be able to say this, because this is really credit to the amazing team, we had became the industry standard for event marketing technology. So a large percentage of events, if you go today, if you're going to interact with our software, if you go to the Superbowl, you download the mobile app, the actually if you go to any major sporting league event, you're gonna engage in, in the technology that we built. And so it took a long road to get there is only on the backs of amazing talent and leadership and clients that, you know, took a gamble on us and was creating budgets, because that experiential marketing budget did not exist in the mid 2000s. Right. And so that was a challenge from a sales perspective is how do we creatively get people to pull budgets from the event budget and their technology budget, the IT budget in the marketing, but it Okay, now we've got these buckets. And now you know, it's, it's a part of history. There's experiential marketing, it's a vertical, right? So it was really exciting. It was 1000 horror stories in between of just being on site and things going wrong. And you know, you gotta remember back in those days, internet on at events didn't exist. So we had to bring internet, we had to figure out how to bring internet our own, distribute that across, you know, but it was, it was we learned a lot, we grew it into something that was not only fun to use, but gave a lot of amazing data for the brands to take back and learn from. And the favourite part is we were producing these creative photos or videos, and it came back full circle, we were using some of the fun things for me, that we were putting out that's branded. And that's the best exposure a brand can have. Right? It's, Hey, that's my friend, Tommy. And he's doing this fun thing at the Baltimore Ravens game, and there's an Under Armour logo, slam at the end, right. And so you're getting these organic moments as a brand, you know, 300x amplification on social media. It was it was a great time to be alive. I gotta tell you, as a few, probably monumental moments in the history of marketing, that just had to be fun to be at. And this was what it really was,

Andy Follows: 52:54

yeah, I'm on the edge of my seat, imagining what it was like to be there creating these events, these initiatives, and then experiencing the impact of them and realising that you, you are on I can just imagine you're looking at each other. Again, this is really flying. We're onto something here. This is working. And there's

Adam Sutton: 53:13

There was lots of high fives lots of hugs and crying as well and everything in between

Andy Follows: 53:21

Okay, now, did you have an ownership position in Thuzi? Or were you an employee?

Adam Sutton: 53:27

Yeah. So so we, Scott took care of us. We came on as the executive team, there was five of us. And so we had stock options.

Andy Follows: 53:36

Yeah, I'm just thinking because you know, the story of you know, where your entrepreneurialism started, and not wanting to do that college stuff, just gonna get straight into work already making money selling stuff when I'm 12 13 14. Yeah, and then you're still in that groove of having interest in the business that you're working for. So when it does really well, you're riding that wave, as well.

Adam Sutton: 54:04

No, I loved it. I gotta tell you, it was like the best workwise I'll get into why I say that in a second. But workwise it was the best version of myself. I mean, I've firing on every cylinder. If you think about the creative side, right? We're getting we're putting out 20 to 40 proposals per week to agencies. So now our clients are not only the top brands, but they're the top agencies in the world. It was living a dream, you know, we're flying up to New York and LA and, you know, the madman kind of lifestyle, not all the negative stuff about madman, but the you know, it's really addicting. And it was sexy, you know, and you're and you feel important, you know, and all these things. And workwise it was the most amazing experience I've ever had learned more in those six years than I've learned, you know, learned any decade prior and because it was just the iron press the fire right when you're in it, it's just the things are gonna boil up to the top and you just have to you're gonna you're gonna sink or swim, right? And get into our credits always have to give credit to our amazing teams, from our designers, to our producers, to our developers, when you're inventing technology, that's when you're creating technology that's just tough. And its own, you got testing, and how's it work in the real world versus the idea on the whiteboard. But when you're inventing technology, in our case, you're inventing something that's never been done before. And then you're launching it in that same week, because the timelines and things are so fast that the event world and it just was happening so fast, it was a fever dream. And you just you learn a lot of those moments you learn who you are, and who you want to be what's important to you. And fortunately, On the work side, learned more there than then, you know, that was my college. That was my amazing Hamburg, which will make sense in a moment. workwise best, most exciting thing we've ever done, but home life is probably the worst it's ever been.

Andy Follows: 55:56

I was wondering, I was wondering what the

Adam Sutton: 55:59

Yeah so you know, I tell people, I feel like, I'm at these events, and you're the VIP, you're over all these teams, and you're leading all these projects, right? And, and you're feeling like, again, pride king of the world, and everybody's looking to you, and you're solving problems. And yeah, I'm the best. And you know, all these things. Not saying ever said that, because I always tried to keep humility, but you feel that right? And you're just it's energising, right. But then you come home, and you've realised what you've missed, and as a young father with a young family, and I tell people, an amazing wife, that only, not only loved, but I liked, and I enjoyed to be with. And most importantly, I wanted to keep, you know, and a son of divorce, you know, I swore that I would never allow that to happen, that I would never leave my wife or create a scenario where that would happen, but also want to be there for my kids. And that was that was the dichotomy that I was living in. And the reason that last little bit longer was, we were a few times, I can say publicly, but a few times, we were going to market to merge with other companies or acquire other companies or be bought by other companies, which eventually we did sell. And there was like that light at the end of the tunnel, it was like so close, okay, I'll struggle a little bit more. Because when we get that we'll get the extra resources and, you know, we'll get the extra money to be able to do some of these bigger things, and then we'll get the better work life balance, and it just wasn't happening and not to anybody's fault, there's nobody did anything wrong, but it just wasn't happening. And so at one point, had to decide, you know, what's most important to me, I can go have the best career that fills every fibre of my body, the creative, and the logistical, and the human interaction and the sales and the innovative and you check all these boxes. But if I go home, and my kids don't know, daddy, or my wife is living like a single mother, and stressed and having to do all this on her own, which is not what she signed up for, and we don't have the best relationship is all that worth it? And my answer was no, absolutely not. And to her credit, she put up with a lot. I mean, even when I was home, I wasn't home, I was either asleep on the couch at birthday parties as my in laws tell me. Or I was on the phone, you know, because in the event world, your Fridays are your Mondays. And so and we will be launching five to a dozen or more events every Friday, where I'm deploying out my producers and all these things. But on Monday or Tuesday, Wednesday, it's post event. For those events, you're doing all the analytics, and you're bringing it together, putting out the fires and perceptions. And but you're also in pre prep event for the next week. And so it was this constant, exhilarating world that every single person should try because it's great. But if you want to have a happy and healthy marriage, I do not recommend the event industry. And it's part of that to what the issue is just for clarity, we became kind of an event production industry agency, because our technology was so new, nobody knew how to use it. So we would be talking to these, you know, agencies of records and and they'd be like, Well Can Can you just do it? Can you just provide the tents and the tables? And can you just train the people and the whatever? And we never said no. So we said yes. And it was honestly easier to control it because we could control our own destiny. And now you're not having this, you know, well, no, it's their fault. It was their fault. The it was the internet while we control our internet, we can control our destiny. So we became more than just a technology company. That was really what our core was. But we evolved into this even internet company, this production agency because it was just easier to grow and scale and honestly land. Yeah, deal. Right from a sales perspective.

Andy Follows: 59:35

Because you could do everything you could

Adam Sutton: 59:36

because we could do everything. Yeah, we prefer not to

Andy Follows: 59:39

all their objections. Yeah, you could.

Adam Sutton: 59:41

Yeah, we worked with the biggest event agencies in the world. We preferred that because they could do it better. And we could just come in and focus on our stuff. But anyway, amazing six years, you know, I'll tell you just high level because it's a fun anecdote. People make me tell it. We landed Under Armour. They were already a client. So we did the Super Bowl in 2013. Did some really crazy things connecting their shoes on these pedestals to a Facebook like that would translate. So you would are basically we worked with a lot of RFID technology like wristband bracelets, or QR codes or mobile apps, right. So you would register through our system, and then we have a unique ID and that ID would carry you through that event. So in Under Armour's case, you went to the NFL fan experience, and you could go do all these cool things, and post a photo of you jumping up and doing the combine things with the Under Armour branded logo, and the custom Under Armour branded language, but that's on your Facebook page 300x People are gonna see it, you could go up and tap the RFID. And you would automatically like this new pair of Under Armour shoes, and that translated into an online like, which translated into commerce, and what we built into under armour.com. And so there were some really unique things, what put us on the map. In 2014, we landed the Oprah tour. So we were already doing some big things before that. But there's something about Miss Winfrey's name, which is what you're supposed to call her when you're on tour with her that it just literally put us on the map. So from 2014 on, it was just a whirlwind. And I'm gonna give you one of my favourite moments if it's okay, because I told you full circle moment we'd be coming back for years. I had wanted this one in particular brand and I'll tell you who it isn't second. In my my cohorts. My executive team knew that and we kept getting all these other clients and biggest names in the world, right Nike and Coke and all these things. But we weren't getting this one brand that I wanted. And I had a little personal moment I had been asking God Hey, I'm struggling with staying here. What do I need to leave like give me some give me a sign give me a sign. And I'm at the moment ready to you know, develop the team out to live on without me and I'm about to leave about to put in notice only because my home life is not what it deserves to be right. And we get an email from a company called Feld Entertainment. One of my favourite companies in the world, one of my favourite clients and many friends on there to this day, which most people don't know, but they own a few companies. One is Monster Jam. They would have 10 touring units of Monster Jam the big monster trucks, Supercross motorcycles, Disney on Ice, and my favourite brand in the world. Ringling Brothers. So we get this email one morning, and it's from Feld Entertainment says hey, we've heard about you from different agencies. And we've got this event coming up at Grand Central Station for Ringling Brothers because they did Madison Square Garden, big market for them. We'd love to talk to you about it. And the executive team. We all get the info out through the email and my buddy that certainly the office next door, he begs other doors like Hey, I had told him the story goes, I think you've got your side. So we met with Feld Entertainment. They put us a group of 17 VPS. It went well opened up the screen. My one of my dearest closest friends. He's a he's a vice president at Feld Entertainment. He loves to tell the story. I'd met him this day. He loves to tell the story. I'd been at Feld for years. And it was the first time I saw on the org chart. Adam Sutton fire breather. He goes, You know, it is like I was hooked from that that moment.

Andy Follows: 1:03:00

That was hang on we need to slow this down just a little bit. Adam, so the fire breather was on your Thuzi bio was it?

Adam Sutton: 1:03:09

Yeah, credit to Scott Blackburn my co my boss. He goes right through the day off he goes, Hey, what if we put next to your name, fire breather? You know, instead of I was the CXO, the chief experience officer. And I was like, oh, yeah, what do you think that'd be funny. Look, yeah, let's try it. Biggest win that you know, we've had on a presentation opening slide. And at the end of that

Andy Follows: 1:03:30

Because Ringling are the Barnum and Bailey Circus. That's one of their brands. Right?

Adam Sutton: 1:03:35

That's right, that's one of their brands Yeah. 146 year old brand. So the meeting goes well, I'm pitching them, you know, and I tell them, hey, I used to sneak into your your Ringling Brothers shows right? And I tell him, I didn't tell them about the salt of the fire breathing part. But instead of longtime fan, the end of the meeting Sam Gomez, amazing guy VP there, he leans over, he says, Do you think you can come back tomorrow and I was supposed to be flying out for a Red Bull event the next day. And I texted one of my producers, I said, Hey, I need you to, you know, cancel your plans for the weekend, I need you to go to Red Bull event. So I stayed over, we had SVPs and everyone up the you know, the owners of the company. And ultimately, they became one of our big clients. And they were just Sarasota. So about an hour away from me. And it gave me the in for me the sign from above to say you got to stay on a little bit longer. And so I stayed on to foresee that project another year. And that also allowed me to detach or detach myself because that account became so big and I had to shave off a lot of the things that I was doing, which I knew I needed to do, but I had to leave them in a position of success. I don't know if I would have done it as well, if I hadn't had that pulling at me and so it allowed me to, you know continue to bring up some of the amazing producers and other people to take on the roles that I was doing. And full circle. 15 16 year old kid used to sneak in Ringling Brothers my client now 28 year old 30 year old Ringling was my client and we invented Technology for them. That my favourite moment that whole story is standing on stage with Sam. And one of our creators that joined us on stage, we created this mobile app experience for them with interactive technology, we sewed into the entertainers, costumes, and we won one of the top industry award categories, we won best technology for what we created. And in Sam's opening line, he said, it's pretty special to be standing up here to win a Best Technology Award for a brand that's 146 years old. And so for me, that was like, you know, the backup of success and close to my heart. And, you know, told the team gave three months in advance that I was leaving prepared the team as my exit and still stayed on as a consultant, I kept Microsoft as a client, after I left for a few a number of years, just to help in the transition, and have great relationships, a lot of that core team is still there, doing amazing things. And it was a lot of fun. It was a it was a whirlwind, a lot of lessons, but an amazing company, which is now known as Leap Event Technology. So if you anybody out there needs great event technology, we sold to a company called Patriot, which became Leap, and so just so honoured to be able to learn lessons from them. From the developers, we talked about the different mindset of different people, developers have the opposite brain, I do. And I learned so much from those team members in the beginning of what not to do, and then eventually on how to do that prepared me for the role that that I have today.

Andy Follows: 1:06:30

What a wonderful story. I love full circle moments. I love making those connections. I love the idea of you sneaking into the circus and selling your fire equipment. And then having that brand as a client. And yeah, the

Adam Sutton: 1:06:45

huge moment for me. Huge moment.

Andy Follows: 1:06:46

Yeah, the winning a Technology Award. Brilliant. Also, how it helped you to detach yourself because often, you know, to say no to something, we need to be saying yes to something else. And so you were able to say yes to Ringling. And that helped you detach from some of the or other responsibilities that you would eventually have to let go when you moved. So were you still in the business when it sold? Or had you?

Adam Sutton: 1:07:15

Yeah, we were working on that on that transaction? Yeah, so it was it was good timing. I left just before the final, you know, kind of transaction happened. You know, and I learned a lot through that process as well. You know, I tell people a lot I learned a lot from Scott about contracts about when we were, you know, he would he would bring a few of us up to these, you know, on the executive team, to these meetings about selling the business. And so I learned a whole lot, because I had zero knowledge about what does that look like? And how do you do evaluations of the business? And how do you? So all through the process at every level, I picked up this information. And you know, I learned that at an early age of just be a sponge I read a lot, right? I listened to originally a bunch of tapes, leadership tapes that eventually became now podcasts, right? Listen to a lot of podcasts, and yours is going to be in my rotation as well. That was just you know, as a takeaway, for me, I was taught early on to be a sponge and learn. Learn that from my father, learn that from my mentors at the church and still carry that with me today. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living to your fullest extent. So yeah, it was great to pick up that knowledge, which one day we'll need right now.

Andy Follows: 1:08:27

yeah. And I think it's also a really helpful reminder that, you know, you're not born knowing this stuff. And people I work with, you know, work with businesses, business owners, who are getting approached to buy businesses or to, you know, be invested in and for them, they're doing these things for the first time. And you just assume that because someone is in a certain position that surely they know everything about these things, but they don't they have to learn them. There's a first time for everyone

Adam Sutton: 1:08:59

No I had to fake it till I made it. I'll tell you real quick. A few other things I learned there. One I mentioned, I alluded to it earlier, but on the time management side I had had, and I gotten better at Red Letter Studios. So about midway through a couple of years in, I intentionally started getting time management books, you know, habits, those types of things, and I got a lot better, but I perfected it at Thuzi because we had so much to do the volume that you know, I didn't have that volume at Red Letter. So there's little bit of leisure that I could extend. I didn't have that luxury, right. We had these deadlines that, you know, you'd be missing, you know, deadlines for the Superbowl. Right, you're gonna piss off a lot of people. So I had to perfect that which was good. And so that was kind of irons in the fire. But also Scott used to say he would bring me in on negotiations and teaching you how to do the contracts. I did not have that experience. I had done invoicing and things like that, but not major contracts. And so I learned everything I knew from him on that but he used to tell me because Adam, I could I get frustrated Like, Why are you picking on me? You know, I used to I used to who's Adam? I'm hardening you? Right? I'm a hardening you. And he's always say that and at the time it pissed me off to be honest. Like, I don't want you to harden me, right? You know you're too hard. But in hindsight, now I'm in franchising, right in order to express we'll get to that transition. Really my main role is the franchisor. Right. And that contract language and that hardening that I had to do remember, when I first started my company, I said I was a too much of a people pleaser, and right if I if I hadn't had those moments, and I learned a lot from my clients as well, and having to deal with things that come with good and bad clients, right. So if I hadn't had those experiences, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing today at the level that I'm being able to do it right

Andy Follows: 1:10:46

No. And it's fantastic. When we're in a role where we get to use a lot of what we've learned before, it's always much more fulfilling that and you're bringing an awful lot to the business. So what did you do after Thuzi?

Adam Sutton: 1:10:59

Yeah so this is funny. So so the Ringling Brothers email comes in. And now we've launched it right, July 2016, we've launched it and this was big, because it was gonna be their final touring option, then they were going to close it down for a few years and re do it because they used to travel by train, it was very expensive. They just relaunched a couple months ago and as much cheaper way to do it for them. Right. So it was really big tour really exciting. So a lot of work eight, nine months, I'm down at Sarasota office, running my other clients from there, right and working across all the departments. So I know this deadline is coming, right? I'm like, Okay, after this launches, what am I going to do? And so I picked one final event, which happened to be in Tampa, the college football playoffs, which is actually bigger than the Super Bowl. So we had we had mega event 100 devices across the town and, you know, dozens of clients and working with the biggest names. So I was like, okay, that's gonna be my final event. Right? So that'd be my advice. takeaway there is you got to put a line in the sand for too long. I said, I gotta leave. It's not right for my family. But for my family sake, for my own health sake, you know, stress and everything else, I had to put a date in the sand. So Ringling was coming to a close. I've wrapping up the next couple months, I buy property in Tampa. So I feel like okay, I'm we're supposed to be here. And now I know, I'm leaving. I don't know what I was supposed to do. I am getting for the first time not first time ever, but for the first time as many at a time more job offers unsolicited job offers than I ever have in my entire life. And they're coming in from, you know, my clients and all these different things. And all of them sound amazing for me. But none of them would have been good for my family. And you know, I'm a spiritual man. I'm like, Okay, God, is this you giving me a sign? Right? Or is this attached? Like, what am I supposed to do with it? I just bought property in Tampa, Florida this year, I can't move my wife to Seattle, you know, for Microsoft, you know, I have all this resource and people that I work with and enjoy. She has no one. So, okay, I'm not supposed to do that but I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I'm getting frustrated. And I'm praying about it spiritual guy and praying about God, I don't care. I'll go to Africa. Just tell me what you want me to do. You know, first month, I'm like, a saint, you know, oh, just tell me what you want to do. Lord, I'll go, I'll go send me. The second month. I'm like, hey, just tell me you know, I'll do whatever you want. Just, you know, just let me know. Third month, December, as I'm prepping. Every day, I worked every day in December to work on the college football playoffs. And I'd also given the majority of my team off that month, because they had worked so hard. And I'm like, I'm gonna give them all this time off, and I'm going to bear this burden. I'm tired. I'm getting kind of angry and frustrated. Like, Okay, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do. Just let me know soon. Like, I need to know, you know. So the event comes around. And it's over. I still don't know. They did this nice, beautiful fireworks just for me right over Raymond James Stadium. I say it's for me, the game started, which was the end of our event, right? And all these fireworks started. I had like field passes. I could have got it. I went home. I fell asleep. Right? I just took it. That was the end of kind of my career at that moment. And I did not know what I was going to do. So long story short, a week or two goes by and I'm retired right now retired. My father calls me says, Hey, are you in town? Yeah, I just retired. And he knew I kind of told him, you know about what was going on? And he said, Can we go to lunch, which wasn't abnormal? You know, I stayed close to his business all throughout a consultant, a lot of things for his business. And him and I have great relationship. We'd go to lunch, you know? And so I go to lunch, and he kind of tells me about what's going on with them. He says, Look, you know, we are transitioning from Rent n Roll custom wheels and tires, which was really a wheel store that sold tires, to R&R Tire Express, which was a different model, different mindset, a tire company that sells wheels, very different mindset. And he says we're about to hit our 100 store actually in Sarasota. And we're growing, we're scaling and you know, I just want to know, I know you have all these offers, and I can't pay you what they can pay you but I'd like you to think about coming to work. work for the family business. And I said, Well, what would that look like? And he said, Well, I want you to have my job I want you to take over. And that was just amazing. I mean, one of the most honoured moments to this day, in my entire life to be on the receiving end of that offer. And he said, What do you think? And I said, Let me think about it. And I needed to think about it. And I'll tell you back to pride we talked about earlier, you know, on one hand, I did I have this, I think there's some good pride, you can have that determination, and you know those things. But then I think there's bad pride. And I think there was some bad pride that I'd had where it was like, Oh, I, you know, I helped build up this company. And, you know, I've reached this mecca of success. But I'd also been 15 years in a related industry where I had this knowledge that in relationships, you know, and I had, I had five business models that I was looking at that I was going to do five different things. One of those was Red Letter Studios, ramp it back up, and sell the experiential marketing so I could leverage, you know, what I'd help build, but I didn't feel called to do any of them. And so I had felt like I had grown past coming back and working for daddy. And there was a pride kind of there that was like, I can't go work for my Dad, look what I've accomplished. I've got the sky, the world has opened up to me. So there was some some soul searching of going on one hand, this is literally a childhood dream come true. Right. I literally, I found it recently. But I remember taking one of my dad's business cards that said President on a champion TV appliances, and I whited it out and I put my name on it, right. So a literal childhood dream come true, go work for your dad and continue to learn from him and become the president one day, that's what he was offering me. And on the other hand, I'm like, but that's not sexy, it's tires. And it's, you know, all these things are cooler, and they're in but there are some logical knowledge thinking with that to have, I have this expertise in this relationship base, with the biggest agencies in the world, I can go develop something faster, that is speed to market because of the sweat equity that was put in, you know, in that time. So basically, I realise this is what I'm supposed to do. And it comes from a dear friend of mine, who actually now is our SVP with me, works with me and a partner in our business, where he basically I'm telling you what I just told you, and he looks at me, he's like, why wouldn't you just go work for your dad, he says, What I'm hearing from you, is you love people, you love empowering people and mentoring people and rising up leaders and, and creating infrastructure to scale a company he goes, everything you're saying is right there at your dad's place, you know, at r&r, and I had been blindly looking at it like, you know, the tire company, I was looking at the product, but not the position and the process and the people. And it just unlocked it for me, where, you know, I called my father back and said, Hey, I think I want to join you on this journey. And early 2017 came on as the vice president of r&r tire Express, which again, for the audience, we're really a franchisors, the majority of our business. So this year, we're going to hit 30 states, which is insane, open up in our 30 state, and we're going to open up our 200th store. So for a company, the company that I started, you know, Rent n Roll back in 2000, that third job that I had were you know, they started franchising, right, you know, right, as I was leaving, has become this amazing company that when I joined, we were just under 100 stores in this year, we're gonna double our size. So we're gonna have done what we did six years, what took us 18 years. And so it's really amazing. And again, that's not on me. I wish I could take credit for that. But it's, it's really just what I learned from my father, surround yourself with smarter people and a lot of good things will happen.

Andy Follows: 1:18:40

I can understand that dilemma that you face because you had all that very specific experience that you'd built up and network very specialist at the cutting edge of that.

Adam Sutton: 1:18:52

We said the bleeding edge. Yeah,

Andy Follows: 1:18:54

the bleeding edge, I love that. Yeah, the bleeding edge of that industry. And you've got your own pride, saying, if I go and work for my father. I haven't done it all by myself.

Adam Sutton: 1:19:08

Did I earn it? Is that giving up is that yeah.

Andy Follows: 1:19:11

Oh, all that nonsense

Adam Sutton: 1:19:13

Yeah it is it is nonsense. 100%

Andy Follows: 1:19:17

It's nonsense. But it's I don't mean that disrespectfully at all. You're right. It exists though. Yeah, it's in our minds. It's in other people's perceptions as well. And I think it's really, you know, for people who don't know your story, who they've seen you show up in the last few years as the son of Larry

Adam Sutton: 1:19:35

Yes there is a fear of that. Yeah. Oh, daddy's boy. Yeah, for sure. Insecurity there.

Andy Follows: 1:19:41

Yeah., He's been saved by by dad. That's right. That's right. And then for them to hear this story and they actually no he's doing okay in his own right before then, and then what I'm also, I'm really grateful that you've shone a light on is that sometimes We have to look beyond the product. And we have to see what's at the core of what is it really about. And it's actually it's about people. It's about teams. It's about leadership. It's about scaling. It's about overcoming challenges. It's about helping the disadvantaged people in society who don't get the respect 100%. There's loads of other factors there. It's not I'm going from Yeah, it's not

Adam Sutton: 1:20:25

Yeah. What's the why? Right. And actually, I left sexy. out a very important part of what my at that rewind to my father's lunch, he said, I can't pay you what, what Microsoft can pay whatever. He also said as a young child, if you can't take advantage of your family, who can you take advantage of. So there's another Larryism if anyone wants to carry that out. I heard that very young, which is true. But he goes, I can't pay you that. He said, But I have what they don't have. And I said, What's that, and he said, I have a job in Tampa, that's closer to a nine to five, where you can keep and spend the time with your family that you want, and that they deserve. It's because I've been very honest with him and my struggles, right? That was being so fulfilled as the right hand kind of, of our CEO and founder in a way that was enthralling and fulfilling, you know, but every time I came home, it was just, you know, I remember catching moments via thankfully, FaceTime had been invented somewhere around there. So I got to see a little bit of it, but you're missing those moments that you can't get back, you know, and I wanted to not only be at the baseball game, but I wanted to be taking him to practice and having those conversations on the way in from practice, and probably should have done it sooner. But I'm thankful that I did it. Because when I look back, those moments that I've had, that I would not have had when I lived on the road, you know, or at the office, or on the phone, you know, my kids were in their early years, I hate to say this, but their early memories, probably seeing me on the phone, you know. And so going back to the why there was two parts of it, there's okay, I can not solve one problem, because I don't want to call that a problem. But I can fix and generate and create the home life that my wife deserves, my kid deserves. And if nobody's ever seen the sign, if anybody's feeling a conviction, right here, I'm gonna lay at home right here for you. If you haven't heard this quote, on your deathbed, no one will remember that you worked late, except your kids. So that was a big part of it, the big motivation of it. But the other side of it, you were just touching on the why? My father, they weren't in the tire business. My father has never been in a specific business. He's been in the people business, when his first business that happened to be TVs, and appliances and furniture. But this is the same thing. And that's really, I think, any should be any business or certainly transactional businesses out there. But we try to go beyond the transaction and look at the relationship. And so from the customer and the transaction side, it's there's no industry better than than rent to own lease purchase industry, but it's about the people. And then from a management style. That was the other most exciting thing that my buddy kind of my eyes too is like you love people, you love empowering people and bringing people up and elevating them and teaching them new skills and leading them so that servant leadership was my style. My goal anyway. And that's really what was the opportunity. And so when we came, there was a dozen people or so I think we're about 40. Now about I think 36 people, you know, much bigger office, the old office, we were all crammed into this on top of each other. It's beautiful about that. But one of the things I learned from Thuzi is okay, at some point, you have to no longer be a startup. And I think there was still even though as an 18 year old company, there was still some startup mentality, right? So you asked me earlier, what what did I learn? What did I bring into this business? One of the things was, how do we take this team who's done an amazing foundation, but we're asking too much of them. They're wearing too many hats. How do we take that from being reactive, in order to scale, right? Build a team to scale and make it proactive. And that was what me and RSVP who joined me shortly after I joined Matt Warren and that was our kind of our goal and what we've been focusing on ever since to to bring in that scalability of bringing still a healthy business that's value driven, that's the biggest thing we say.

Andy Follows: 1:23:59

It sounds like you're very pleased, you're very happy with the move that you made out of and I wouldn't expect you to say anything. Otherwise, really because you're you're in the role you are,

Adam Sutton: 1:24:08

I can tell you with 100% certainty, it was the best move I ever made. I you know, the first six months was mentally rough, because I was so used to just BUM BUM BUM BUM BUM non stop the world was 20 You know, to a more nine to five. That was a huge mental transition took me about six months, six months to unwind from that. But the whole time I knew I made the right decision. But I can tell you today, and now I have the honour of coming talk about full circle. I became the president a few years ago right that little business card on my father's I'm now the president of my father's company and and on that hand living childhood dream but on this other hand, I couldn't have done what I'm doing today without everything in the past. And I wouldn't want to be doing anything else. We're in the people business. And we're changing lives. That's that's our that's our vision statement changing lives and that's our goal. So from our customers to our team members everywhere in between?

Andy Follows: 1:25:02

So we talked we touched on it through this conversation we've touched a little bit on you know, its wheels and tires it used to be wheels then tires then it switched to being tires and wheels.

Adam Sutton: 1:25:12

Yeah, 70% Plus tires and wheels. Yeah, which

Andy Follows: 1:25:15

a pivotal moment that Larry was was explaining to was us about when he joined me

Adam Sutton: 1:25:21

And the branding pivot as well right Rent Roll from RnR Tire Express that was huge, from attracting new retail minded customers into the vertical. Right. So that was also another thing we brushed over it. But I think that was touched on in Larry's podcasts.

Andy Follows: 1:25:35

It was so tell us a little bit for people who haven't listened to that podcast and who are discovering you and they're discovering the business for the first time. Now, just say a little bit about what what it is you do and the direction you're going.

Adam Sutton: 1:25:48

Yeah, so the company the brand is RnR like rent and roll, RnR Tire Express, and we are the franchisor. So we've got about almost 40, franchise groups, almost all of which are multi unit. And that's our main kind of what what takes most of our energy, but we also have 25, RnR tire Express corporate stores, and so that selfishly, hopefully there's no franchisees listening, but that's a favourite part of our business. Because again, I love the people side of it, and I love watching them. And we've had people that we've been able to just, in their words change generational wealth, right, we've had shop technicians work their way up to sales into management, even into owner operator, right, and you're talking generational changes, and we're just real big on that we'd like taking chances on people. And the core of RnR tire Express, as far as what we offer to our customers is tires, wheels and alignments with flexible payment options. So we're serving that underserved community that are buying used tires over and over again, or can't afford nice tires. But we're also you know, somebody just wants to get a PlayStation for Christmas, they want to keep money in their pocket, right, they can come in and do our four months or six months, same as cash, spendable part of the country they're in. Or really, they could pay it off up to 18 months. Nobody ever goes that long. But it's really paid off up to up to however long you want. It's flexible, and no penalty returns, right? Of course, on the wheels side, that's more of a want than a need. And we have customers fall in love with their car again, right? They're getting wheels that might be worth more than the car they're on. But they have this new sense of pride. And you know, and so we'd love to see that. And of course, we do a lot of big trucks and off roading as well. So it's a really fun industry, something I didn't know before I really came in and got in the grip of it is it's really fun. The tire wheel industry and the auto industry as you know, from the outside, it's like Oh, is that like a dirty on the shop grind? You know, but it's awesome. You know, and the people that you interact with from the team members will use the word team members not employee, by the way very intentional there. And the customers it's a it's a really exciting and win win. Yeah, business for us. And again, we don't look at it as a transaction. We look at it as a relationship. On the franchising side. It's one of the best franchising opportunities in the market, if I do say so. Myself, but I also think the numbers speak to that. You okay, if I plug the website, Andy?

Andy Follows: 1:28:15

Yeah, absolutely, please,

Adam Sutton: 1:28:17

anybody wants to go to the the consumer side, you want to see if there's r&r near you and across 30 states 200 stores is RnRtires.com. And if you're interested in franchising, and put your money in a great place and fun industry and getting a good return, you can go to RnRfranchise.com. And it's been good to us, we were honoured to be surrounded by amazing franchisees, we had some amazing early partners that came on and helped us learn how to franchise talking about learning what you know what not to do. We learned that the early days, I think Larry talked on that. Yeah, the previous podcast, check it out. But just amazing talent and people that have come on board, we wouldn't have it any other way. I'll give you our three core things on the why we talked about our services, but we want to have a value driven company. And we are we're driven by three core values, which is culture, customers, and community. And so that's our why that's why we do everything we do. We've been very blessed along the way and we're excited to see what the future holds

Andy Follows: 1:29:17

Yeah, I wish you all the very best the growth trajectory looks fantastic. And what Larry was telling us last time about, you know, what's in the pipeline is very exciting. And I love the emphasis you have on values and culture and community and the people it's all all very good. So thank you very much for for joining me. What about Hamburg? Did we do Hamburg?

Adam Sutton: 1:29:43

Oh, Hamburg? Yes. Okay, we have time for

Andy Follows: 1:29:45

we just do Hamburg. Yeah, I need to know this one.

Adam Sutton: 1:29:48

Okay, right. So so you'll you'll appreciate this. Anytime I kind of share my story is particularly if there's any young leaders out there you know, I mentioned I was I was hungry for content. I hope you as well, that's how you learn not just on your own experiences, but from others. And so when we're gonna go all the way back to when I was a kid magician went to a convention, the conference and Lance Burton, if you've ever been to Las Vegas in the 90s, the biggest name, he had the biggest entertainers contract ever in the history of Las Vegas and just my personal favourite magician, amazing kid from Kentucky that has that good old boy, just amazing talent as a performer. And he did really well. So he was speaking and He did this luncheon for the youth, which I'm a huge fan of too about getting mentioned this. But giving back and mentoring, I think has got to be any part or path of of a leaders journey, you have to give back and pass it on to the next generation. And credit to Lance, who's now become a friend of mine, which is awesome. He gave out this book called Advice, his little book, you know, he made at Kinkos, or whatever that he had made to pass on knowledge that he had learned his from his career. And in the opening of his book, he tells the story of Hamburg. So here it is. And the point I'm gonna say this is I read this at an early age. And it really impacted me throughout my entire career to this day, read it at 15 years old. He talks about a little band from Liverpool called The Beatles, right. So where my wife's family's from and Liverpool, amazing band with an amazing story. But he talks about when you read on the history of The Beatles, before anybody really knew who they were, they were playing in these crappy pubs. And he's had all these kids and their manager secured a year long engagement in Hamburg, Germany. And they were so excited, oh my gosh, we're gonna get paid to do what we love. And they went there. And they played in this really crappy, really nasty bar. They had things thrown at them. And they, you know, if you read some of them talk about this. They weren't that good, right? So if you read interviews at the time, they will tell you how terrible Hamburg was. I hated Hamburg. Hamburg was terrible. I know for all these reasons why, right, but if you read interviews later, they will tell you it was in Hamburg, where they found their sound. It was in Hamburg, where they became better musicians, I think is where they found their drummer. It's where they got their haircuts. It's where they got their whatever called the uniforms, outfits, matching, you know, kids look at that today. Go what, but back then that was cool. All right, that was news fresh. And they will tell you, it was in Hamburg, where they became the Beatles. And Lance talked about the story in his own life, how he transpired to, you know, he got this job as a kid magician, and that prepared him for the next thing, the next thing, and the takeaways I got from that a young age. And I think what Lance was was getting at was make every moment of where you are at the time, right? We all want to be this next thing, especially now, I didn't grow up with social media, or even the internet. So I didn't have when unfortunately, a lot of the kids today are young leaders have which is comparing yourself on the next one. I mean, I had Michael Jordan, you know, I had these other people. But we didn't have the pressure in the oh, look, everybody's already doing it. And I need to, I need to be at z but I'm at a and how do I just want to go from A to Z. I guess the point I'm making is, what I did when I was working at the church as a teenage kid, is I took the experiences I learned from a kid magician. And I took that to speaking on stage and doing things and I took, you know, learning how to do video from skateboarding, right as a punk kid getting kicked out of downtown Tampa to take that into the church. And then I got better at the church. And then I took those lessons into Red Letter studios. And every thing that I was in at the time, I always thought, Okay, this isn't the final destination. So I need to learn as much as I can in the moment, because this is my Hamburg. And I couldn't have done Thuzi if I hadn't learned what I did at relative studios, and worked with people and all those different skill sets that you know, the time management professionals, procrastination, you know, I used to joke my team has said at the very beginning week one I said, Done is better than perfect. Right? That was I wrote that on the whiteboard, because I said we don't have time. And I would have never even had that knowledge if I hadn't failed and learned at red letter. And I certainly would not be able to do what I'm doing today as the president of a national franchise system with 200 stores if I hadn't gone through what I went through at Thuzi, and learning from my leader and the people around me and, and those skills that just you don't know until you know, and so that's my kind of words of wisdom pass on advice of my dear friend, Master magician Lance Burton, learn whatever you can when you're in your Hamburg, don't get discouraged, you know, you're not going to jump from A to Z. But also enjoy it. Try to enjoy the moment that you're in because if you don't, you're going to miss it. And you're going to wish that you had to look at it differently. And so I look at that now right I have we have no intention of selling our business of doing anything with it. But I'm in a Hamburg now right and on paper I'm at the peak of my the pinnacle of my success, but I mentally I go What can I keep learning that I don't know and what iron sharpens iron, who can I surround myself with and get better at to prepare me for the next thing if there is a next thing, maybe it's just a bigger version of this thing. But enjoy your Hamburg and learn everything you can.

Andy Follows: 1:35:14

Brilliant. Fantastic. I'm glad I'm glad we didn't I mean, that whole Hanmburg concept. I'm glad we didn't miss that. Because that is and everything you said around that is all there is

Adam Sutton: 1:35:24

It's impactful for me.

Andy Follows: 1:35:25

It's all there is is that learning process? trying stuff. I don't know. There are some shortcuts I guess if you're fortunate networks, strokes of luck, you know, sliding door moments, whatever it is, but wonderful,

Adam Sutton: 1:35:41

but you got to do it. You got to put yourself out there and just keep doing it. If you're gonna fail, fail fast.

Andy Follows: 1:35:45

Thank you, Adam. It's been an absolute pleasure getting to know you during this conversation. Thank you very much for sharing everything with me with such enthusiasm and openness.

Adam Sutton: 1:35:57

Andy it's been my honour. Thank you for your time today. And again, you've got some amazing podcasts. I got to go back and listen to all of them now. So thank you for having me. honoured to be here.

Andy Follows: 1:36:11

You've been listening to CAREER-VIEW MIRROR with me, Andy Follows. Depending on your unique life experience where you find yourself right now and your personal goals, you'll have your own takeaways from Adams story. Some elements that stood out for me were that he learned a lot as a child from how well his father treated people. He found ways to make money from an early age as a magician as a fire breather and then selling fire breathing equipment to others including the circus. He learned the skills that he needed to learn to do the things he wanted to do. He admits the quality wasn't great, but he kept getting better. He was helped by the realisation or lesson that perfectionism is procrastination. He made a good decision to join Thuzi which was at the cutting or bleeding edge of its industry and allowed him to work with some world famous brands and people. Whilst he had an incredible time, he recognised that it wasn't good for his home life, he had to overcome some pride to do what had been a childhood dream and take over running his father's business. And finally, the story about the Beatles time in Hamburg, and that concept that any of us may find ourselves in our own Hamburg phase. If you'd like to connect with Adam, you'll find his contact details in the show notes to this episode. If you enjoy listening to my guest stories, please could you do me a favour and share an episode with someone you lead parent or mentor or perhaps a friend of yours who you think would also enjoy listening? Thank you to Adam for joining me for our conversation. Thank you to our sponsors for this episode, ASKE Consulting and Aquilae and thank you to the Career-view Mirror team without whom we wouldn't be able to share our guests life and career stories. And above all, thank you to you for listening