Ted Wright, CEO of Fizz - Podcast with Julie Roehm

January 9, 2024 Julie Roehm

What do chocolate milk, Chipotle, and Viagra all have in common? Find out in my latest podcast with the brilliant Ted Wright, founder of Fizz and word of mouth marketing master and pioneer!

Transcript:

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Julie Roehm: Okay, Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the conversational. My name is Julie Rame, and I am here with my special guest.

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Julie Roehm: Ted Wright. He's not just my guest, but he's a long time friend, a fellow Chicago grad from Booth. We weren't there exactly at the same time, but close and it's a pretty tight knit community, so I'm excited to have him, plus. Ted's one of our the guests, that II can tell you, as with many of my guests, that I have spent a lot of time with over the years, and who I admire greatly, and I know you're all going to love his story

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Julie Roehm: so just a little bit about Ted. So, first of all, Ted in 2,015, Phil Cutler described him as the pioneer of modern word of mouth marketing, and as the CEO of Phys. Which is his company. He has led one of the largest word of mouth marketing firms in the world since 2,001. Truly some amazing stories, and I know he'll share a few later.

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Julie Roehm: operating in 13 time zones around the world. Physics clients include Coca, Cola, Lvmh. Jetblue audi, intel, quudel fifa, and many others besides their large company work. Phys also has a specialty incubation practice where they grow. Cpg and agriculture brands with less than 5 million dollars in us revenue up to over 100 million dollars before graduating them to become leaders in word of mouth

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marketing.

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Julie Roehm: He has also taught at the Wharton School since 2,010, and I just watched him give one of his classes just a couple of months ago, awesome and fascinating, and in 2,014 he wrote the best-selling word of mouth marketing book entitled Fizz for Fun. He says he, he serves poorly and takes pictures of street art. He's a cum laude graduate of the University of Chicago's Business School, which is what it was called when he and I went. But now it's Booth, and has been, together with his very patient.

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Julie Roehm: wonderful wife since 1,987. I didn't realize that you had been married. Have you been even been married since 87, have you, Ted?

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Ted Wright: No, Julie, we haven't been married, but we met I was drunk at a fraternity party, and she walked down the stairs, and I was like, Oh, my! And for all the listeners out there we've all been there right I was that perfect amount I was had just enough in me to be brave to talk to the hot chick, and and not quite so much that I was that I was gonna blow it

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Ted Wright: so. Oh, yeah. And now she's I met her, and that's the last time I ever dated anybody else. Oh, you're kidding. I didn't know that. But and when did you get married? What year would say? It took us a minute. So we got married in 96.

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Ted Wright: We we met when we were 19, which is in cause. Now our son is 21. And so we looked at each other when he turned 19 and said, You know, it's like, Yeah, it's not gonna happen again. Please please let it not right. You know we lucked out and we were. We've grown together, and so that's awesome. But you know it's not. It's a it's a more of a risky thing

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Ted Wright: and yeah, so great. We got married right before we started grad school. So she is an architect and way more famous and more talented than I am in her job. And then and then I went to Chicago for business school while she was busy learning to be an architect, and that is saying something because

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Julie Roehm: for everybody listening, Ted. Truly one of the brightest people I know definitely one of the most entertaining and certainly literally a top 3 storyteller. I don't even know who I put above him. I just figure. I better leave room in case I run into somebody, but you know he gets he gets top billing for sure, so as we love to do I love to to dive in with kind of the early childhood, so people can kinda get a glimpse of

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Julie Roehm: what made Ted Ted kind of where? What happened early on, and what sparked and moved you this way, I think you know, owning, running, starting, a word of mouth marketing agency in and of itself, which is, you know, kind of more. Your adult career pursuit

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Julie Roehm: is fascinating but unique, not something you probably learned in your childhood. Yet they're always these things that happen to us, that sort of drive us to be who we are. And you have a really fascinating family. So I'd love for you to just give a little bit about where you were born. I know your Southern roots give a little bit of that, and and your family, and you know how you grew up, and and just a little bit of that for people.

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Ted Wright: So I'm glad to. So thanks for asking, because my mom and dad are definitely super cool. So you know, born in 67, mom and Dad met when they were in 65 when they were seniors in college, and they got married, and mom was in the military as a as a nurse.

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Ted Wright: and Dad was civil engineer, and they moved out to California, and then they pretty quickly moved back to Georgia and Atlanta. And we've been there since then. My mother is a very well regarded medical geneticist.

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Ted Wright: She was very early, very early. So if anyone's listening, who's a geneticist or really knows genetics. I remember as a kid when people talked about that they thought the DNA strand was too long, and eventually chromosomes would just become shorter, and they would slough off because all that stuff was just a repeat.

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Ted Wright: So. And now, of course, the science is, you run the sequence, and then the same cell runs a sequence again again and again to double triple and quadruple check that it's right, and then goes on to produce stuff.

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Ted Wright: So she was very early. So Mom is a scientist, and Dad is an engineer and then Dad was also grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. My grandfather was this

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Ted Wright: crazed entrepreneur, who is very successful. So growing up in our house. We really basically talked about how things work and why they work that way. And that was just kind of table conversation as well as how was your day, and what's going with the school? And what's happening with fifth grade, swim team and send of all the rest of the stuff.

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Ted Wright: so yeah, mom and dad mom and dad are awesome. Mom retired sadly and weirdly, and also probably important to the story. So my dad died when I was in high school. Got brain cancer, and a year and a month later he was gone. And so that

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Ted Wright: very much affected both my sister and myself, and for me. It affected me

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Ted Wright: because so I just decided that I would always be happy because my dad was always happy, and when I went to his funeral all his friends were sad, and they're partially sad because they were, you know, 42, 41, and they just saw this Guy died like, Oh, shit! What happens if that happens to me?

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Ted Wright: But I think the other reason that it occurred to me literally in real time is that they were still trapped in the same job that they had when they were 22, 3, and 4. And now, 20 years later, maybe that was the job they loved. But maybe it wasn't.

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Ted Wright: And so you saw a lot of people going. Oh, I got another 25 years of this, and before I can even think about retiring. And so I was like, Yeah, you know what? That isn't going to be me.

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Ted Wright: I'm always gonna be happy. So I made a deal with myself. I'm 18, but when all that happens, so I made a deal with myself, and I said one I would always be happy.

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Ted Wright: and 2. I could do anything I wanted until I was 30, and by the time I was 30 I need to have a plan and execute on the plan.

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Ted Wright: So where I went to undergrad what I majored in, who I dated that I did a startup in college. It was all completely selfish going to graduate school was completely selfish on my part.

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Ted Wright: and I had already built 2 companies and sold both of them. And I basically paid for Booth and for my wife's graduate school out of money that I made office selling a company

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Ted Wright: now for everyone who's listening. That's back in the nineties, when you didn't sell companies for like oh, I exited for 42 million dollars, I mean there it was a. It was a different size. Company was also a different time. But you know, I walked out with, you know, 3 or 4 years worth of work and 800,000 $900,000 after taxes, and that basically covered us all the graduate school and 5 years of living in Chicago, plus the down payment on a very small, tiny little crappy apartment in Atlanta.

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Julie Roehm: Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, I'm gonna go back to childhood a little bit because I so I think the obviously a massive holy ship moment for you with your your dad dying, but growing up. You I mean, you've got your sister, but you've got these very analytical people right, who are who are

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Julie Roehm: helping to form form who you are and and kind of your path down life. Did you ever, you know, growing up? I don't know. Through the formative years of you know any of the grade school? Were you always were you always really driven by like science and math and analyzing and question, did you veer more towards arts. II cause I can see in you. I'm a little bit just so that people your word of mouth marketing, and we'll get to that that you do. It sounds

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Julie Roehm: on on the face of it, for people don't understand it. It can sound fluffy when they, if they read your book which I highly recommend, do, or where they hear you speak about the it is highly scientific. I mean, it's it's a lot of math. It's very data oriented and so

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Julie Roehm: clearly that has influenced. But I'm just wondering in those formative years, what did you rebel against it? Or you're like enough math and science. I get at the dinner table. I just want to go. Art, or how did how did that work for you? So it'd be cool if I could be an artist. I'm more of an artistic supporter. So I was a Montessori kid.

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Ted Wright: And so you know, the people in the know me like, Oh, yeah, yeah, and then, and my sister kind of liked Montessori. But she was more of a regular like education, kind of person. And my dad grew up in a family where children children were treated differently.

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Ted Wright: And so he was like, that's not gonna be. So the kids are gonna do the same thing. So I left Montessori school in the third grade and went to Oak Grove. Elementary yay, which will become important in when I talk about the fourth grade

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Ted Wright: and so I show up there. And it's just regular. You know, public school. You do this. You do that. You do this. You don't want to get Miss Audrey in the seventh grade as your homework teacher, because she's mean, like, you know, kind of all the rest of that stuff.

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Ted Wright: So and I was a math person. So I am blessed with the kind of brain that makes leaps, and just sort of naturally can be leapy. So you know, in high school we won the National Math Championship, you know. So yes, all you people out there. This sexy voice and body was a Mathlee, you know. Check me out smart and sexy. There you go! Alright goes! Hey, Jason? Momoa! No, that's Ted right. I get them so easily confused.

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Julie Roehm: Yeah, exactly. Hi, Jason. Nice to talk to you.

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Ted Wright: So

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Ted Wright: I was a math guy and I liked it. But I didn't use it as a sword or shield. I just used it as a as a thing that I did, and I mean I'm still terrible at chemistry. I have no idea, really what a covalent bond is. I remember that because it kind of brought got burned into me. I also can't diagram a sentence at all never been able to figure out how to do that.

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Ted Wright: I do know what a jared is because it ends in. I ng, but that's literally we talked about missachry for a second ago, because, Miss Archie, just, you know, just beat this stuff into me.

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Julie Roehm: but no, I was just a regular kid. Yeah, so what happened in the fourth grade?

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Ted Wright: So this was cool. So I have always been fairly entrepreneurial.

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Ted Wright: And this that's not the cool part I just. I just was. I mean, we used to go on road trips, and Dad would say, so, kids, what do you think? The next 1 million dollar ideas? And you would say, and then he would ask you questions. So it was kind of like Shark Tank, but not really. I mean, we're just doing it to pass the time as we drove on vac family vacation in the summer, whatever we were doing.

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Ted Wright: So in the fourth grade I decided I was going to sell candy.

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Ted Wright: and you know, and and so I set up a little candy store very so surreptitiously like totally nobody knew what I was doing, I'm like, you know, setting up my little trapper keeper, that I bought with my own money off my profit on this, and I had a little candy store, and Angie Roach, and like God! What was her name? Patricia Belcher, Angie Raj

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Ted Wright: and Laura Hammond would all buy gum from me a piece of bubble yum for 25 cents, and the whole pack cost a quarter.

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Julie Roehm: So I have 4 of the pieces. Oh, yeah. So there were weeks. Fourth grader. I'm making like $4, and I know. And y'all this, I'm so old that we used to ride dinosaurs back to before the school. So that is 100% big money.

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Ted Wright: So one day, and I talk about this a little bit in my book. One day I walk into class because I would walk to school instead of ride the bus so I could get up there and set up my store early right.

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Ted Wright: and I walk in and meet the teacher. Her name was Mrs. Pullen. Mrs. Poland actually just passed a couple of years ago, kept track with her, and she had written in on the chalkboard on the word entrepreneur entrepreneur.

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Ted Wright: and she rich. She took up the whole board up there, you know. Oh, Hi, Miss Paul! And I'm you know I'm just here early. Don't mind me, you know. Kind of thing like totally. Nobody knows what I'm doing right. I think I'm getting away with everything, and I look up and I say.

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Ted Wright: what's that

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Ted Wright: cause? I'm that kind of kid, and she says, I think you should go look up this word. And we had one of those blue American Heritage dictionaries with the embossed gold eagle on the front, with the tabs on the side that weighed like 200 pounds. Right? Exactly. It was on his own stand, and he opened it up and on E on ent, okay, look up to the board 3 times. How do you spell this? I get there. I read the definition.

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Ted Wright: and I go. Oh. that's me!

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Ted Wright: And she looks at me, and she says I thought you might think that was interesting.

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Ted Wright: and from then on that was helpful for me, because I knew that this this set of things that I really like to do and I thought was interesting, had a name. How cool! And I'm sure that did inspire you right. That kind of is its own little holy ship moment, because you're like, Oh, I'm this thing and that

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Julie Roehm: probably carried with you. Yeah, it is. And II think about that when I hear about people talking about representation on in the media

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Ted Wright: because I've thought about this in the past, you know, as a as a white dude. I don't have problems seeing myself on screen.

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Ted Wright: but I think about that. I think about people saying, Oh, cause there's a cartoon out there now. It is a a black woman, and she's a doctor, and there's all these stories of which I think Chris Rock actually tells one as well, which I think is where I heard about this, where about

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Ted Wright: low, low, black girls are seeing this person, and says, Oh, I can be a doctor.

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Ted Wright: and I think about my own experience with this pull in, and when she put a name to the thing, and I read the definition, and it talked about a willingness to take risk and capital and all this other stuff. And I was like, oh.

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Ted Wright: that's me. So I knew it helped me

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Ted Wright: have a place and have a name to what I was. So cause some people like that's weird. Why are you doing that, or whatever? And I was like? Oh, cause I'm an entrepreneur like it had a thing, and so I think that acted as kind of a shell, and it kind of protected me when other people would say other things, and I ran a lawn mowing business. I mean, I did. The stuff wasn't like starting my own software company. I ran lawn mow business. No, it's pretty big. I had. I mean, I was like 12, and I had 10 people that work for me, and we cut most of the

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Julie Roehm: banks around there, cause you wanted to work for you at age 12.

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Ted Wright: Well, yeah, because I was like, Hey, cause I would go into these banks the local banks, and if you cut them so they wanted the grass to be nice on the weekends, but nobody went to a bank on Sunday, so you could work all day on Sunday, so you could have your crew that worked Fridays and Saturdays, and you could also keep them busy all day Sunday, if you had banks to go to.

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Julie Roehm: So

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Ted Wright: so we work people's houses. We did churches on Fridays, houses on Fridays and Saturdays and banks on Sunday, and we were done by 30'clock.

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Julie Roehm: Oh, my gosh! That's amazing! That's great! So you did that in grade school. What up did you have any other businesses through grade school, high school besides candy and loneliness? So candy lumbering. And then I you know, math tutoring, because that's that was that was big bucks. You know, you could charge somebody's like failing calculus and the prayers like I don't know. You're never getting into. You know this college and that I was like, I don't know

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Ted Wright: 40 bucks an hour, and they said, Great! We'll just buy 10¬†h. And this is, and this is 1984. So I'm like sweet. You know, my 1975 dodge dart is gonna have a crazy, realistic sound system from Radio Shack.

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Julie Roehm: My gosh, you guys should have had you negotiated. I did some math tutoring and science tutoring, and I don't know other stuff in my when I was in high school, too. But I think

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Ted Wright: I was using like my babysitting hours as my my litmus test, and that I think we were like 10 or 15 bucks an hour back. Then, you know, from up. And I was like, Oh, that's about right, you know. It's like how you value your time cause that's was a going rate. I wasn't smart enough to negotiate that. Well done, 40 bucks an hour. I was just thinking about how much the pain threshold. And and they also these families didn't care, and if they did, then they could. You know, sometimes I help people out just for fun.

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Ted Wright: And sometimes I was like, I'm sorry I'm busy.

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Julie Roehm: Yeah, right? I get it. Okay. So then, high school, you're in high school, and you're thinking, you know, obviously, your dad, your dad was your dad ill throughout.

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Ted Wright: I know. This is my senior year, and for those of you who are. You're listening or unfamiliar brain cancer? You know, once they find it. You're done because it grows, and you don't know until you're symptomatic. And once you're symptomatic, you're done so. It's the same type of cancer that got Senator Mccain.

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Ted Wright: Senator Kennedy. Anyway, you see, who's died of a. They're called neuroblastomas. So, or a neuroblast. So it's just really wicked. And you know, they haven't really made much progress in like expanding somebody's life.

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Ted Wright: Since Dad died in the eighties. So it's just they just haven't figured it out yet. So yeah, so that was weird. Fortunately he was a thinker ahead. And then mom's a doc and in an and is an academic. And so there was. It was not financially crushing. But you know, college was Mom. Mom and Dad were very generous. And they, you know, books, tuition, food room that we got all that covered. But everything else

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Ted Wright: which I don't know as a modern, as a parent. Today I'm I'm paying a bunch of other stuff that

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Julie Roehm: for my son that I can't even imagine having asked my parents for, but so good enough for us to divert. But like I'm like, I'm a total failures apparent. I wouldn't. My kids. II it's our. It's our fault like we should have just been tougher, like, I don't know what happens. Anybody who is in there.

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Julie Roehm: you know, prime fifties, which is, gonna be some large group or kids who are in college about to go to college. Those you guys will benefit from this cause. Those of us who are kids are now out of college. It's too late. But you know.

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Ted Wright: or you got one in. Okay, go ahead. I wanna know why we're we are. We are the way we are. Here's where. Here's where, I'm thinking. I think our parents generation and the generation before I think they were done having kids by their mid twenties. Yup.

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Ted Wright: I think your prime

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Ted Wright: earnings start in the United States in your early to mid-forties.

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Ted Wright: and last for 1015, maybe 20 years.

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Julie Roehm: Yeah. So that means when we were growing up

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Ted Wright: we were out of college or just getting out of college, or maybe, even if we're really late, just kind of starting college when our parents were just hitting, like, I haven't Monday. And I'm cool. I'm not doing that. Okay. So for our generation, a lot of us had our kids when we were early thirties, maybe even mid thirties.

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Ted Wright: So that means we were hitting our peak, earning times when we're when they're 10, when they're 12. And so if you're a parent, you're like, Okay, I could do like my parents did. And like we went to a a public park and the State Park in South Carolinance.

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Ted Wright: but stayed for a week in a cabin which was really great. Remember, I'm 12, so that means my mother was 37, and that was probably the money that they had then to be able to do that.

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Ted Wright: Well.

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Ted Wright: I mean, when our children were 10 we were 45. I'm not gonna go hang out in a cabin in a state park for a week. This I get. I get 2 weeks of vacation. I get three's a vacation, you know. We're going to Maui, maybe, and we're not gonna tell anybody what hotel we're staying in. But we're staying in a hotel where they know my drink when I walk in the door. Yeah, right?

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Julie Roehm: Yeah. So then we fast forward. Right? So it's totally true. My kids were like they had to stay in a motel 8. Once there was nothing else available. My son was like, well, I could put that off my bucket list, I was like, oh, and I don't know he was 8¬†h of think it's more competitive, and there's also more stuff going on.

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Ted Wright: So my wife and I were talking about it, she says, well, look, we can make him get a job in the summer, or he can have an internship with which he did with Jason Aldean.

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Ted Wright: and you know Jason's not paying him, but he now says so. Now he has a resume, and now he's a junior, and people are like dude. Wait. You work for Jason L. Do. You were stylist for Jason L. Dean for the summer, and he's like, associate stylist. That's what it says. It's like, yeah, yeah, so what was that like? And so did he really need to lifeguard or work at his the summer camp that he went to when he was kid and make money he didn't.

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Ted Wright: and the amount of money that it takes to subsidize somebody for the summer that you know Christine and I are very lucky. She, Christine, is very talented. And I do okay, too. And we're able to afford these things. So we do because we push our kids ahead. So Christina actually is the one who had to like. Sit me down because she's like you. Just

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Ted Wright: we can do all those things. But if we do. This is what we're giving up.

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Ted Wright: And you you remember graduating college? You didn't know you had to make your own network from this and Christina's. I mean she was her immigrant family, I mean they were fob. And then she's first Gen. College, so she doesn't know anybody either, so we're all just like I don't know. Writing letters to people. And look, have we done okay? Yes, that we make our own decisions. Yes.

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Ted Wright: Do we want our children to have to, you know. Sleep in the basement underneath the hot water pipes in Georgetown while you're working for free from some Senator from Colorado. No, we do not

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Julie Roehm: right. No, that's so. True. I love that theory. But, by the way, but this is such a good segue, because this is the those are the kinds of questions I feel like that are so part and parcel of what you do, and breaking it down and coming with the answer, and then using those answers

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Julie Roehm: to help uplift companies. So it's just it's such a perfect segue. I'm gonna I'm gonna move forward. I wanna hear about post college. You're in the me. I'm gonna call in the me years right? The selfish me years gonna be happy. Gonna do what you wanna do other than meeting Christina. Tell me about the 2 companies briefly, that you you started and sold

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Julie Roehm: that, that's that basically parlayed your your whole graduate school experience. So there's there were 5. So when I graduated, I did a deal with myself. And I said, Okay, there's 5 things that I want to try and do

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Ted Wright: and and I need to figure out what I'm good at. So I thought politics was interesting. So I used to get women elected into the US. Senate.

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Ted Wright: And so I did that for a while, and I was pretty good. But I met people who are like way better, some that are like super famous now, but they were younger. And I also saw people who are older than me. Basically, if you do politics for a living, you are

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Ted Wright: 50 years old, and you are 40 pounds overweight, and you're on your second or third marriage, and you drink way too much. I just looked down at the end of the bar when I was like 23 like, that's I just don't think that's what I want to do. And that's really the only that's that's the way forward. When you're doing the kind of politics that I like to do, you know, getting out there and running camp and doing campaigns just being committed ended up running some campaigns is great.

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Ted Wright: I wanted to write a book because I thought it'd be cool to say, I believe I wrote a book, and it was terrible, and it was hard so I didn't do that. I did. I did that, but it didn't. It didn't work out well, I wanted to work for a management consulting firm because I thought management consulting seemed interesting, so I

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Ted Wright: got figured out how to get in with booze Allen Hamilton back when poor old Mr. Hamilton was still around, and now his wham sure his widow is like. Oh.

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Ted Wright: why is it called booz, Allen!

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Ted Wright: What a what happened to him, John Hamilton. He was important, too. So, management consulting for a little while.

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Ted Wright: And then I didn't need 2 startups. You know, one was a side hustle, and one was a thing that I actually did and the thing that I actually did I actually started in college.

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Ted Wright: And I ended up becoming the king of fraternity party T-shirts for Virginia and North Carolina. I would sell, you know, IAA lot a lot of shirts, I mean so much that so I went to call it undergrad at Hampden, Sydney, in Virginia, and then the closest town to us was 8 miles away, and it was called Farmville.

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Ted Wright: just to tell y'all how far much out of the country it was and I used to rent a box truck and drive down wins at Salem, and fruit of loom. Had a plant down there, and they would sell

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Ted Wright: error shirts to be, you know. Hey? We dropped a stitch on this. We can't use them blah blah blah, and I buy all the blanks for a dollar 35 unit, and I would drive them to my printer, who ended up buying his whole operation by drive to a printer in Charlottesville, and they would print all my shirts for me, and then we would mail them out. Had somebody in charge for the work for me, and we mail them out, and we would distro them, and and then they would go.

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Ted Wright: So that was interesting.

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Ted Wright: Yeah, that's still going. Yeah, no, I sold it. So that's the company I sold. So it was pretty. It was a decent size operation. You get decent multiple. There was a guy in Chicago that I'd met

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Ted Wright: And interestingly, he was working with a very young designer at the time named Virgil Ablow.

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Ted Wright: who ended up being a very big deal designer. So that's how I got to me, Virgil because I was selling this thing, and there was a year gap where, after I sold it, I was still helping do the sales part, and being there, and Virgil was a high school kid, and he's just sitting there designing T-shirts.

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Ted Wright: Okay, super cool, dude. And he was. I think, I still somewhere. My son keep wanting me to try and find it. I still have a Pyrex shirt that he did back in the day

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Ted Wright: he did this brand called Pyrex because he thought it was cool, and I knew what Pyrex was, because my mom is a scientist. And so I knew what I knew. So I did all those things. And then the fifth thing I wanted to do was I wanted to go to a top business school

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Ted Wright: cause I Dad had gone back late in there later his life. Harvard had an Opm program owner, president, manager.

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Ted Wright: and their pitch was like, Hey.

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Ted Wright: like 25 years ago. Did you like get a degree in something super technical, like chemistry, or civil engineering, or forestry, or whatever. And now your job has nothing to do with chemistry, civil engineering, or forestry. It has to do with managing people and payroll, and all the rest of it.

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Ted Wright: Come to the Opm program, and we will teach you about all the rest of the stuff. so he would go up there for a couple of months every summer for like 3 years.

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Ted Wright: and then he would come back with these cases.

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Ted Wright: which were like magazine articles to me. With this questions at the end it would be like, Oh, what is this? And he'd go, that is for a degree called an Mba.

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Ted Wright: And I was like.

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Ted Wright: cool. And you can just do this. And he's like, Yeah, it's okay. I was like, okay. And I filed that away. And so II knew from a pretty young age that I wanted to go. And then, when I was looking at the schools. You know, I have a theory about business schools. I think there's only 2.

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Ted Wright: I think there are the schools where the professors wrote the book

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Ted Wright: and the schools for the professors basically read the book. And I wanted to go to a wrote the book school.

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Ted Wright: and in my estimation there are only 6.

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Ted Wright: Where, when you're when you're walking around the halls, whoever you run into, who's working there, either literally or figuratively. wrote the book on whatever it is that they're doing

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Julie Roehm: Wharton, Chicago, Harvard.

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Julie Roehm: Stanford in Seattle and France and Northwestern

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Ted Wright: interesting Bill into Northwestern alright. I am out there. Fine. I know people. Their profits, not just Phil. It's Rob Walcott's up there. There's a bunch of other people that are up there, or that have been up there, I mean even Ann Mcgill at at Chicago, I mean, I first saw Ann. Who

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Ted Wright: for those of you don't know, is a brilliant marketing professor at Chicago I actually first saw her. So she was at Northwestern.

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Ted Wright: and when I went and interviewed in Northwestern she hers is the class I sat in, and I was like, oh, I must go here! This is fantastic!

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Ted Wright: And then she moved. Which is not why I went to Chicago. I went to Chicago because my wife is smarter than I am, and said you need to go somewhere where? Not? Everybody is just like you.

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Ted Wright: and you need to learn how to work with bankers, because you really don't understand the risk

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Ted Wright: profile of bankers take. They're much more conservative than you are, and you're going to run into too many problems.

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Ted Wright: And I was like. So you mean, like Margaret Meade, I just need to go and like live with the people and live on their island, she says absolutely. Then you'll figure with their people. They're not just getting in your way because they're overly conservative.

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Julie Roehm: That's amazing. What was your undergraduate degree. In what did you? What did you end up?

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Ted Wright: I'm I'm history, Major.

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Julie Roehm: I history, Major. So you didn't end up doing a science. I was just curious with your mom and your mom and dad. So you're a history major, not a science specific social science, but not a. And then when you went to Chicago, did you know you wanted to study Mark, or was it more entrepreneurialism? Or what was what was your thinking in terms of studying?

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Ted Wright: So I went to business school because I thought it would be dope.

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Julie Roehm: Just the whole picture. Just whatever was, it doesn't matter. It was completely a selfish.

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Ted Wright: self-involved decision on my part.

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Ted Wright: I was like, I just want to go. I just wanted to do it. I thought it'd be cool.

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Ted Wright: and I was 28, and I was like dude. Let's go, and I started playing when I was 27, and III was writing it like I was my actual life.

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Ted Wright: and none of the business schools understood that they're like, I wait you do politics, and I don't get it, and whatever and like, so when everybody said, Hey, I was like, hmm! I need to study my audience a little bit more, and so then I rewrote my experience, explaining it in the language that they could understand. I was like, Oh, that'd be cool. Okay, I get it.

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Julie Roehm: That's how I got in there. That's so funny, I know, sister, but cause I went. You know, I graduated in 95. We talked about this, and there were there weren't.

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Julie Roehm: There were no entrepreneurial classes. There weren't very many marketing like II ended up in marketing just because I ended up hating. Thought it'd be finance, and I hated finance, you know. And so I was like, so I ended up doing marketing and negotiations and strateg like a bunch of different classes. Just cause. That's what was interesting to me. Just because I ended up just despising finance so much.

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Julie Roehm: which we just made me more of a I like to say, a trend setter, but it wasn't really purposeful, and and I was definitely Fe didn't feel like it. The only trend I was setting was to set the low end of the your first income graduating bar. That was my trend. All my friends go into consulting. We're like woo double my salary, but you know.

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Ted Wright: in sports, in in the draft the last person who gets drafted. Don't they refer to that versus Mister Relevant. So you're saying your booth class?

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Ted Wright: I wish, oh, yeah, no, I was. I set the other. I set the other bar. Well, there's gotta be a bottom bar for people. You're welcome, everybody. So if anyone's listening and they're thinking about business school. So for me

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Ted Wright: business school was because I wanted to. If you are thinking about this, and if you're thinking about the 6 that Julie and I rolled off.

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Ted Wright: I would say this to you, I would say that they each have very different personalities. And so you need to think 2 things. What am I missing in my person.

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Ted Wright: and I should go practice that for 2 years without any real consequences. And also, what is it that I can really contribute in there.

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Ted Wright: like? What am I missing? And what do I really want out of this

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Ted Wright: like I knew? And this is only just because I'm weird. So my grandfather and my dad both went to Hbs, and since my dad died, when I was in high school I was. I went and visited him some in the summer, so I knew I could not hang out at the Baker Library for 2 years without just being super weird and emotional. And you know, just because I mean. I've obviously done a lot of therapy on it, but I still miss my dad.

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Ted Wright: So for me it was either you know, my 2. My 2 choices were either Stanford or Chicago.

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Ted Wright: and then and then Christina looked at me and said, Stanford's got a small class, and you're not gonna last there 6 months.

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Ted Wright: And I'm like, why do you think so? And she goes because everyone's gonna come to you with all these great things. And you're gonna be like I wanna go do that. I'll be right back, and you're never gonna come back. And you wanted to do this since you were 13. So go to the place.

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Ted Wright: And it's really gonna challenge you in the classroom cause. That's what you want. You know, you can do this. You built companies. Ever since I've known you. You can make something

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Ted Wright: you want to go and just wrestle in class with people that are smarter than you. So just go

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Ted Wright: hmm.

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Julie Roehm: cool. That's great. I didn't

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Julie Roehm: now, God bless my husband! But he was like I, you know, we were dating, and I was like applying, and he was like, whatever you know. So II didn't, you know. I wish I would have been more thoughtful. I mean, it ended up. Okay. But you know, that's this is why these stories are so interesting. Okay, so now let's graduate and get on to Gret. You want you started in 97

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Julie Roehm: at Chicago. Yeah, either 97 or 98. When did I start? So I was on 2,000. So I started in 98. Yup, okay, 2,000. Okay. And then the next year. So how did so? How did how was Fiz born?

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Ted Wright: So this is also a Booth story. So I literally had my Eureka moment in business school.

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Ted Wright: So I'm sitting in the old, the old Computer Library and friends. If you're unfamiliar with the University of Chicago, we take our data and our and very, very seriously, in my opinion, often times too seriously. But that's a discussion for another day.

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Ted Wright: So we had a computer lab. So this is back again where we all rode dinosaurs back and forth to school. And so your computer screen

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Ted Wright: would basically decay pretty quickly if it was exposed to a lot of sunlight. So we took that very seriously University, Chicago. So we had no lights in our computer lab.

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Ted Wright: So one day, this is 1,999, and I'm sitting there. And I'm working. And I'm using a search engine. Now, search engine back then we're super new. Google had not been invented yet. Google is the main part of the story. So we're using like, Ask Jeeves and running our own Boolean scripts. And you guys should go back and look if you're unfamiliar, let's go back and look and go. Wow! We've really come a long way.

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Ted Wright: So I'm sitting there, and most of the search engines were useless. Which is why Sergey and the rest of his team were able to get some time at Stanford to build this thing, because nobody really built it up.

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Ted Wright: So one day. I'm using the search engine, and it's giving me some dumb answer.

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Ted Wright: and I swear it at it and swear it at my inanimate machine. And the guy turns next to me and says, Hey, have you thought about using Google?

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Ted Wright: And I knew what a Google was. So mathematically, a Google is a number with 13 digits. And so I'm like, Okay, II don't understand what a Google would help me with this. He's like, no, no, no, Google, the computer program literally. That's what he said. He says you know, www, dot

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Ted Wright: again backslashes all the rest of stuff. So I go, and I use it.

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Ted Wright: and my search term for the I would search my mom's name because she's Lynette. She's Dr. Lynette, right? And so I would. That was my, that was my thing. I tested all search engines against cause. You get Wright Brothers, and you get somebody who played football for Notre Dame, who ran the wrong way, and she was wrong, Ray, right? You got all this stuff, and you know my mom would be buried down on like page 6 or 7 of the returns.

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Ted Wright: And so I use Google and

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Ted Wright: 17¬†ms later, or whatever this story came up about my mom. That happened when I was like 8, and I had forgotten about it, but I was around, and so I remembered it was like, Oh, to this thing is cool, so I'm using it.

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Ted Wright: And the next person comes over to me to my left, swears at their machine like 15¬†min later. It's like, Oh, Google, it's really cool.

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Ted Wright: So if everyone remember, Google is mostly a white screen.

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Ted Wright: So at the time the thing that everybody used was mostly blue screen. So just the ambient light in the room was dark with a lot of blue miasma around there. By the time I'm done writing my paper. So 3 or 4¬†h later, the entire room is white

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Ted Wright: because Google had been adopted by all these people. So I looked around and I was like. what just happened. This is super cool.

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Ted Wright: How did all this stuff get adopted? And there's no advertising.

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Ted Wright: So I started looking around campus. I'm like it. Where are the ads? Where's the TV? Where's the billboards? Where's the little posters on? There's nothing

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Ted Wright: the other thing was happening is there's a low technology called Tivo.

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Ted Wright: and that was coming around, too. And that was a big deal at Booth, because you either buy by the month or forever. And so there are lots of people that were just getting real normally about doing graphs about what is the best value, and and XY. Axis all the rest of stuff.

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Ted Wright: So I watched Tivo get adopted, and people are sharing stories about why they like tivo.

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Ted Wright: So I was like, what is this thing? And again, more stories about Booth Booth, of the 6 programs that Julie and I mentioned Booth is the one that treats you most like an adult

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Ted Wright: like the rules are literally like, Okay, glad you're in congratulations. So you have to take Co 20 classes. Most people do it in 2 years. You have to be done in 3 you know, you have to get at least A. C.

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Ted Wright: There's 4 groups of classes. You have to take one in those. Otherwise we don't care need to take 4 outside the business school. It's great.

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Ted Wright: Let us know when you're done. Let's know if you have any questions. So I was like, Okay, dude, let's go like, so I have all this free time.

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Ted Wright: So I basically back reverse engineered from what I saw and

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Ted Wright: got a lot of behavioral economics. You know, Dick, there was very generous with his time with me. Some other people are very generous. Some people said I was the dumbest thing they'd ever heard of. And so I was like, Okay, why is it dumb? And some people just would say, No, it's just stupid. I gotta go. And I'm like, Okay, and then so they were very helpful. And so I basically took my second year of business school and figured this thing out.

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Ted Wright: And so, having but also been in consulting, I knew that the key to consulting is to ask a bunch of questions. And to do those consistently and basically basically set up a machine. And the machine, you ask a lot of questions. In the in the beginning, you get data, you process that data through each one of those questions and out should pop up some interesting ideas that you can follow through with.

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Ted Wright: So I was like, okay, so that's basically what I did. And I was like, well, if I was gonna do this, what would I do? So I graduate I get ready to graduate, and, like Julie, I did very well at Booth. And I had. I had all the options. That people could think of that I might have, and I went to my wife, and I said, Hey.

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Ted Wright: so I've figured out this thing. and I want to go do that

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Ted Wright: to which she literally pulled out a copy of the acceptance letter from the University of Chicago, and she said, Allow me to read between the lines for this, and he starts off as like dear Ted, congratulations!

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Ted Wright: Your wife is not going to pay for you for the rest of your life, to just follow a bunch of dreams.

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Ted Wright: So comma. But she said, comma, so comma, if you're gonna do something outside the norm, it's gotta work. Otherwise you gotta get a quote. Real job, unquote, eventually

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Ted Wright: love the University of Chicago, and I pick picked the letter out of her hand. I said, Oh, my gosh! That's exactly what that says. Fantastic

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Ted Wright: and so we went off, and I, our first very first client, was pass blue ribbon beer and that it turns out that

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Ted Wright: I we were correct in what our thinking was, and we were able to build that from a dead brand to, you know, the leader in its category. It became very, very, very, very valuable and then we took that same thing to another beer brand called Rainier.

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Ted Wright: which was the beer to drink if you're drinking more than 20 and live up in the Pacific Northwest, right? We made that a thing

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Ted Wright: and then we the guy who is the Cmo. Of Intel.

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Ted Wright: saw me giving a talk in Las Vegas, and he was at a difference conference. But he, I guess, drank paps when he was in high school

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Ted Wright: and so he saw. And he came in and said, What do you know to found me? And he said, What do you know about video games.

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Ted Wright: And I said, I think we should go look open my computer. And you should just figure that out. Answer out for yourself. you know, and I'm hauling around a big, you know, Dell Xps that weighs like 14 pounds because I played civilization and Mech warrior at the time, and you need a lot of processing power for both. So

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Ted Wright: so all that Intel inside stuff. While you were being awesome at Chrysler we were the ground troops, the Intel in inside the bong and all the TV.

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Ted Wright: So if you think about if marketing is war, that was the air cover, and we were the ground troops.

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Julie Roehm: That was amazing. Yeah, gone on from there. Yeah.

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Julie Roehm: II mean, I just so people understand, because you're so understated. I mean, this company you've had for over 20 years. 2223 years.

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Julie Roehm: and and I know you're private. It's your own company, you bootstrapped it. It's there's it's like the it's the perfect dream. And so we don't. You don't share revenues. But and you talked about the different companies, but the the scope and size and impact you have. II really recommend P. First of all, reading the book Fiz is is so entertaining it. Yes, it's a business book, and you're gonna learn something. But you're gonna do it in a way that's all through storytelling. It's all stories. And so you're gonna get caught. And you're gonna end up repeating these stories at dinner with friends, I promise you. I swear to God I do it all the time.

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Julie Roehm: I promise. You know my favorite stories, but probably just because I've heard of most, and they're in your book. And so I'm gonna tell you not to tell these stories unless you feel super compelled. I want you to tell 2 stories of, like the most I wanted to be stories of

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Julie Roehm: some of these clients that you have, that you feel like you can tell the story here, but also because it kind of represents a holy ship moment in the

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Julie Roehm: workplace. Whether it was with your colleagues, with your client, with yourself with your family, whatever it was, I want you to include that. So I'm setting you up. I didn't give you any warning on these.

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Julie Roehm: but you know for everybody here, like some of the fa, the best stories. I love the chocolate milk story. I tell it all the time pieces of it, at least to it. I'm like no drink chocolate milk. Do you know why it's got a higher protein count, and it's good for athletes, and like I mean, II I'm like I've I channel my inner Ted. Then, of course, you know, there's there's the great chipotle one, because you I think

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Julie Roehm: you will. You're way too humble to take credit for helping to really resurrect chipotle once really, really struggling there with all the the worries of the quality of food and sickness, and you help that Cmo. And CEO turn that around all through word of mouth, and, you know, use athletes, and I like the whole thing like, I know, like I, those are the 2 stories that I know and II don't know if Chipotle is here, but remember that. But I know chocolate milks in your book.

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Julie Roehm: So I'm gonna have you tell 2 stories. They don't have to be one of those to. You got lots of others, but I want them to include some sort of holy ship moment. That's the people here can be inspired by, because I think we all have them. Once we start our career either whether it's early or mid or late, and you know how you deal with it. And how do they? How do they? You can you turn them on your end? They always have a typically have an epic ending, or somewhere down the road they inspired a happy ending

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Julie Roehm: alright. the better ones more than me.

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Ted Wright: Alright, so inspire people. I I'm glad I yeah. You gave me notes moment like like something that was like, Oh, crap! Like you know what I mean, and I know you got a couple of it like word happened like, Oh, crap! What do we do now? Or you know, like I mean even the one I know. I think when you got

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Julie Roehm: just to help you long, I think you tell a story when you got chocolate milk like eke. What do we do like, you know? What do we do? Oh, no, you know. So there was a little bit of that upfront, at least early on. And then you guys figured it out. But

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Ted Wright: alright. So I think alright. So

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Ted Wright: so inspire people so, or think about like, how can I apply this to me. So I think the the important thing for everyone who's if you become interested in word of mouth.

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Ted Wright: I think everybody should know that

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Ted Wright: it's a process, and that process is replicable. And that process applies to

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Ted Wright: anything that somebody's going to care about.

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Ted Wright: So we get all the time people go like, Oh, well, we don't have a very sexy product, you know, we sell life insurance.

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Ted Wright: And I'm like, you know, who thinks life insurance is sexy Af.

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Ted Wright: and they're like insurance brokers, and I'm like, well, they do. But also

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Ted Wright: you have something weird in your life, and your parent dies, and all of a sudden, your mother. Not that I lived. This does not have to worry immediately about. How am I going to put through these kids because you had a Hella insurance policy

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Ted Wright: that nobody ever thought you'd actually claim on. But when lighting struck you, you know it didn't completely destroy your family. It didn't completely destroy where you were going to go on with life like things could go on kind of in the path. So sex caf, you know, who cares about airbags. People who have been in an accident

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Ted Wright: like they do.

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Ted Wright: right. If you don't, if never in an accident, you don't care about airbags. Yeah. You know who cares about little procs, shoes.

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Ted Wright: mothers who have sons because boys can, and girls can take off their shoes by the time they're about 2 and a half. Girls can put their shoes back on themselves by the time they're 3 and a half boys like somewhere between age, 6 and 16, they finally figure it out. And even then, if you're so, if any parent out there, you're a boy, you're laughing right now, like, yeah, do what is up with that boys do not know how to put on their shoes

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Ted Wright: exactly, and just and and just just put on your shoes.

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Julie Roehm: So

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Ted Wright: II think so. The the ins. The inspirational part is kind of don't stop. So this is the this is a don't stop stop story. So there is a company up there. It's privately held in Michigan, and they are called Bissell.

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Ted Wright: BISS. ELL. And they sell vacuum cleaners, and they've been around for 100 plus years, and they're fantastic. Company, privately held great great company, and the CEO go Bissell at the time. Jim Krasninski got introduced to me.

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Ted Wright: and by the guy who's running innovation. And they brought us up there. And they said, Okay, we really wanna do this thing. And these things and all the rest of stuff, and we're like great.

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Ted Wright: But we in our process, we wanna get all the data from all the things. So I asked if we could go into their R&D lab.

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Ted Wright: and there's so there's like, sure you can take an R&D lab, and there's some guy who's got like bags of golden retriever hair.

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Ted Wright: and he's like dumping him on carpet, and he's sweeping him up. And I said, and I watched him do it. I was like, Oh, dude! You just pulled all that hair up. He's like, we don't really like it, because we can only get like 97.2% of the hair out.

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Ted Wright: And on my mind, I was like, obviously dude. You have never lived with a golden retriever like you are a scientist, and you're looking for 100% hair removal. And people just like, if this stuff didn't make it some sort of to pay weave on my sofa. This would be a miracle.

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Ted Wright: And so we're looking at this. I was like, Have you all thought about doing anything about pets? What the time they really weren't doing a lot of stuff with pets. They now probably a third of their business is pets. But now they back then they just weren't really doing much, and we said, Well, you know, you should probably do. This is like, Well, okay, you know, really pay attention to this thing that we've hired you to do and like, okay, but the pet thing kind of stuck with us. So I snuck a little pet research and I snuck a little pet activation. We ran a little AV test.

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Ted Wright: and it turns out this will

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Ted Wright: is an excellent, excellent vacuum cleaner for removing pet hair.

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Ted Wright: Now, if you're a scientist and you're working at sort of, you know, Osho, level safety and cleanliness. You're right. You're only getting 97.2. But for the other 99.9 9 9, 8% of people we're like, Oh, this is stuff is dope. I should totally go do. This is what is this thing called?

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Ted Wright: So? The other thing that we that we came up with for Bissell

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Ted Wright: was that little kids

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Ted Wright: leave their Lego pieces out on the ground

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Ted Wright: and parents step on them and say bad words, they totally do, so much so that if you go to Lego Land in San Diego.

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Ted Wright: the bathroom that is right at the front has a has a fresco cause they're done. They're Danish. So let's get to some artists really do this. And they basically tell that story in art on the wall while you're while you're waiting in line for the loop, you're reading this story.

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Ted Wright: So we knew about this, and we knew that like. So the other thing. If you're a Lego parent, you know that, Legos.

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Ted Wright: if you suck it up in a vacuum cleaner, and it's like the critical piece like Darth. Vader cannot have a green lightsaber. He has to have a red lightsaber, and if you pull it into some kind of vacuum cleaner that's going like, you know 6 times of gravity, or whatever you're gonna mess it up, you're gonna scratch it, or whatever

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Ted Wright: this'll and we only learn this. My son was a was a Lego person, and he kept those Legos in a room, but I had some vacuum cleaners over the house, and I was just playing around, and this one vacuum cleaner that was fairly low power and hand held, but it would pick up the Lego, and it would kick it up into this little plastic thing. You could see it, and you could open up, and you could pick it up.

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Ted Wright: and it was great at picking up Legos like it picked up all the little tiny Legos, the ones that get hidden in the carpet that you step on when you've when you missed your 3 planes, and you finally come home from O'hare to line at 30'clock in the morning, and that's the one that you step on right when you get into the door. Yeah, it picks up all of those pieces.

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Ted Wright: So we were live.

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Ted Wright: It picks up Legos.

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Ted Wright: And we're like, where can we go talk to Lego parents. So there was a guy who was in Connecticut at the time, and he used to do this tour, which was called Lego Kidsfest.

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Ted Wright: And he would. He bought 6 billion, literally 6 billion Lego pieces from Lego, and he would throw them in 6 or 8 fort, 18 wheel trucks. And we go to secondary markets across the United States and make a big pile of Legos and charge people. 14 bucks let their kids play in Legos for like 3¬†h

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Julie Roehm: like us.

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Ted Wright: so great. So nobody lets their Lego kid go to the Lego Convention center in the middle of downtown. You know Tulsa, Oklahoma by themselves. So these parents are sitting on the outside. So what did we do? We came with the vacuum cleaners, and we're just walking around and we're just click picking up Legos and taking them and putting them back in the pile.

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Ted Wright: So one of these parents, all some of these parents, because everybody here's a little math tip for you 10% of whatever your adjustable market turns out there, they just influencer personality. This advocate personality is what we call

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Ted Wright: we'd have these parents come and say, What are you doing? And we say, we're picking up Legos.

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Ted Wright: and they're like, Tell me more.

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Ted Wright: And like, Will you know that things like, Yeah, yeah, I know. Tell me how much, when I say more. How much does this thing cost? And can I go buy one right now? Why, yes, you can. They're right over here under $30, and here's a little coupon. If you want to give it to one of your friends, you know you can both get $5 off.

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Ted Wright: Well, you just heard of parents. You could see. If you were at the top of these small arenas. You could sit there and you could eventually watch the parents kind of all move. You could watch the story spread, and eventually there's a line for the parents, and they're just sitting there buying the vacuum cleaner

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Ted Wright: nobody knew. Now, there's not a Lego parent. There's so many Lego parents that know this story that their videos that have gotten hundreds of thousands, even millions of views that are done by just some parent is like, Okay, y'all, today's lesson is picking up the little Legos that always bite you on the foot that you step on. Here's the solution.

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Julie Roehm: Yeah, amazing. So the point is, conversation is what drives sales.

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Ted Wright: And if you'll take for this is everyone who's out there. If you'll take and break down your story and think about what parts are authentic.

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Ted Wright: what parts are interesting, what parts are relevant.

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Ted Wright: and if you can really say for sure this is authentic. like, I can tell this to somebody, and I can stand tall before somebody I love and tell them the truth in their face. And that's not a problem.

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Ted Wright: Is it interesting like, can you share this at brunch with your friends within somebody? And there's people at the brunch that you don't actually know.

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Ted Wright: And is it relevant to somebody's life like my son is 21. So he does really throw his lego pieces on the ground.

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Ted Wright: So I'm probably not talking about this at his Sigma Kai, you know Dad's spring weekend, but when he was 8 years old, and we're going camping with the Boy Scouts or the Cub Scouts, or whatever. Oh, this was the story I told, and all these dads like way, man, what is this? And they're pulling out their phone. And they're making notes. And they're doing all the rest of these.

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Ted Wright: So the inspiration hopefully, there is that no matter what you're facing.

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Ted Wright: there's probably a story, and if you find there's not a story that you can for real, say it's authentic, it's interesting and relevant. Then, you know, word of mouth is not for you. And you need to just do broadcast.

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Ted Wright: And that's okay.

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Ted Wright: You know, it's there's some things that are hard to talk about, I mean, are my 3 favorite topics, or the, you know 3 favorite things. When I people say so, what are the things that you can't do word of mouth for.

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Ted Wright: and I always say personal finance.

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Julie Roehm: death.

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Ted Wright: and erectile dysfunction.

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Julie Roehm: But now

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Julie Roehm: the see, the latter, too, I feel like you could. But we could talk about that some other time. I don't know, like I mean a retail dysfunction. I would think at least somebody's talk. Maybe you think guys aren't talking about that. That's why I think it's I think it's really hard. So ladies and gentlemen Julie's producer is Fred. So if Fred and I were just sitting there having a beer and watching the game.

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Ted Wright: hey? And Fred, Fred and I just pretend Fred and I known each other for a decade. And so I go to Fred saying, Hey, Fred, you know my junk. It just doesn't, you know Fred would be like, why do? What is? I'm sorry we're watching the bills play them.

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Ted Wright: The why? Why are we talking about this? There's almost no place that you have that conversation right, because, even though it's interesting, it's it's tough to be really relevant in that situation.

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Ted Wright: Now, Julie, you're as a woman like we would talk about this kind of stuff. Oh, so I have whole. Just so you'll know. Alright. So this is how well Julie and I know each other. I'll just say it this way. I have a whole presentation that I've written about women's grooming habits, and how they have changed in the last 20 years, and I make the case, I think pretty effectively. That is 100 and word of mouth.

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Julie Roehm: Oh, for sure. And what's really interesting about that? Just from let's go study word of mouth marketing, and let's all be like this, and I don't know why I'm doing nasal. But that's my little nerdy science place

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Ted Wright: that's never happened before in history. And there, there's an ability, the the things that it takes to have that happen. There's no new tech. That's not something that just showed up. There was this conversation. And there's some media inputs that I bring in. So there's some media that people watch like, okay, this looks this way. And some people, I guess they look like in that same media that they like it. So there's that. So there's all kinds of really interesting stuff. So there are things and I came to that.

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Ted Wright: Do you remember there was a guy? He was a Senator. He's a Us. Senator, and is from Oregon, and he used to fly back from Oregon to DC. And he would stop in the Minneapolis airport.

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Ted Wright: Well, I thought, this is the Idaho hosted. Are you gonna do. The Idaho host editor who would look under the

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Ted Wright: well. So when you read that one of the things that he talks about when he got rested was that and the cops to talk about this. There was some hand signals and some tapping signals. There was a code. So as a word of mouth marketer. It's super interesting, like, how did that code get to him?

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Ted Wright: And how did he use that? And how do you trace that?

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Ted Wright: So the other inspirate and the other inspirational part of this. And this is the the guy from you're right. He was from Idaho. He was not from Washington State.

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Ted Wright: The other thing to think about this is word of mouth

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Ted Wright: really operates in the same way that viruses spread between other people.

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Ted Wright: So close physical contact helps because most of this conversation is conversational.

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Ted Wright: right? It's mostly between people who know each other. So illness is basically passed mostly between people who know each other. You can trace it. So the field. The science of tracing

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Ted Wright: virus movement is called epidemiology. That exact same science is used to trace word of mouth.

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Ted Wright: That's why we at phys not to be about us. But we at fizz actually have a map

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Ted Wright: of by category of goods, how certain products get the story spread in the United States, and it's not always the same way, and it doesn't always start in the same place. It doesn't move in the same way.

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Julie Roehm: Yeah, it's not like pop culture, necessarily where it's like, Oh, it starts in New York and LA. Or Miami, whatever. It's not like like. That's how we used to track it, you know, from a marketing. Now it's to your point. It's it can pop up anywhere, and it's more often it pops up in 12, one of 12 American cities and the tenth, eleventh and Twelfth city change about every 5 years.

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Ted Wright: Oh, interesting, yeah. But we know so. So I guess the other in inspiring part and maybe I'm just hung up on that too much. Is that hope to inspire people to continue to use that word

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Ted Wright: to think about this as this is a pattern, and you just need to recognize the pattern, and then you can use that recognition to your own advantage.

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Ted Wright: because there's nobody in Edelman will tell you 8 out of 10 North Americans do not believe anybody tells the truth in their advertising.

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Ted Wright: They just don't. And look at what happened this week. I mean like this, you know, this anthropomorphic bakery good committed suicide and and and jumped into a toaster. And then this football team consumed him. And that's what all these marketers are talking about today.

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Ted Wright: Right? Pop tart the Pop tart bowl thing right? So which is great. Maybe they sell 16 bajillion more pop tarts because everyone thought that was funny and they're sold a bunch. And that's great.

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Ted Wright: But it's an interesting question. You know what is the story there? And how does that? How does? How does an anthropomorphic bakery good committing suicide really relate to why people buy pop toes.

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Julie Roehm: Well, that's the difference to to your point, I mean, and and like I'll do the chipotle, you know

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Julie Roehm: chipole and and chocolate milk in a nutshell, I mean you. You may chocolate milk because you'll they'll read about, but they'll you know we won't go into it here, cause I we're stretched in the bounds of people's attention span. Now I already know, but the the chocolate milk is such a great story, cause you leveraged athletes, you leverage coaches, and it was about refueling the body and making athletes better, more. So that's the kind of thing that it is lasting. It's not. It's not of the moment. It's not a

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Julie Roehm: meme. It's you know, it's lasting, and the same with Chipotle. I mean. You help them revive by getting the word out about the freshness. And now all of their yes, they do broadcast. But is all it just reinforces that thing that people talk about in this world that is, is thankfully moved a bit more healthy versus, you know. Ca, and conscientious about

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Julie Roehm: the fuel we put in our body. And so it it's again. It has a lasting element, and I think that's the thing

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Julie Roehm: that I find that you do so well is that authenticity within the message? So that yes, you've got the science behind it, but kind of going back to who you are.

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Julie Roehm: You know you didn't brag on your mom the way I thought you were with, you know the the Cdc. And her involvement, and being one of the first, what 2 or 3 people who started that I mean, you've got such and and just what she continues to do, and how she continue to go around the world and and inspire young women in particular in these science fields. You've got such an authentic

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Julie Roehm: base to your foundation as a human being, and you have continued to

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Julie Roehm: foster that I think, throughout not only your own company, yourself, your family, but in the work you do to support others, and I and I just for people who cause II really I was so excited to have you because II love. You're such a great storyteller, and I want people to to to get the virality that that you always give me. I always walk away feeling better and

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Julie Roehm: and more. Re, you know, revived after some time with you is is your ability to create these sticky stories in your head, but that are truly pat, you know.

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Julie Roehm: inspirational and motivational, and and you give your time. You're always like, what idea do you have? Let's come out. You always have time for ideas and people. I saw you do it with the students at Wharton. Just give me a call. I'll put time on my calendar to somebody who has probably no time. So II just wanted to share that as we we close because it is special. And and II don't necessarily hawk people's books that much, but

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Ted Wright: your book physics. So it's an easy, fast read. It's super entertaining. I hope people get it and get a little bit of inspiration from it, and get some of these other stories that I've teased a little bit. From it. That would be. That would be wonderful, and you know, and so real quick on both chocolate, milk, and chipotle so

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Ted Wright: and say, Hey, come, help us! But that was absolutely I mean. Chipotle has got a chipotle, in my opinion, has the most talented internal marketing team of any brand of that scale that I know of. I'm sure there's other people that are really good, I'm sure if we ever did, everything with liquid death would be like, you guys are amazing. And I can think of some other people that are there. But to a person

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Ted Wright: Chris Brand, who's their Cmo. Put together

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Ted Wright: just the most functional, the most talented marketing team. Internally I've ever seen. So it was really great working for them and still love them all. And still, you know, think the world of them chocolate milk was definitely much more of an Us. Thing fizz chocolate milk was a woman named June Web, who work for the American Dairy Association came to us and said, we'd like to sell more chocolate milk.

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Ted Wright: How can we do that? And what's interesting is if you

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Ted Wright: still go. In fact, you can do a Google search. If you do chocolate milk and athletes.

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Ted Wright: they will basically tell this story of Oh, high school teams use this, and they feel so much better. And they win more games or cheerleaders do. And this is because chocolate milk we didn't come up with any of the science assignments is already beginning, and and it was already created. What we came up with was the interest in telling people that story as opposed to broadcasting that story, just share, just share. So chocolate milk is great because it's 92% water.

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Ted Wright: So it is great for hydration. It is. It has great potential for amino acids and proteins to help your bones and your muscles grow, and, most importantly, for chalk them up. A lot of people didn't realize is it has a naturally occurring chemical

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Ted Wright: that strips the lactic acid away from muscle cells. And you care about that because that burn you're feeling when you're working out. And after working out. That's an excess of lactic acid that your muscles are trying to clear

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Ted Wright: and chocolate milk, and also white fluid milk has this qual is this naturally occurring quality to it that strips that out. And the reason we pick chocolate milk there's half of a word of mouth reason because nobody thinks chocolate milk is good for you, because it's delicious. Goodness. It's like red wine is good for heart disease will bring me another bottle is like, that's not what we meant. But okay.

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Ted Wright: so let's bring more talk about. And then we also found a data point. So and then we found confirming data points. So it turns out that here in the United States kids throw away about 42% of the white fluid milk that they buy at school.

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Ted Wright: and they only throw away about 3% of the chocolate.

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Ted Wright: So part of this job is to getting more calcium and more bones for more to more people, more often than we went chocolate. And it's a good story, and it's true. And not only is it's true, it's also authentic.

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Julie Roehm: And I'll leave everybody with this when you think about the difference between authenticity and truth.

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Ted Wright: Authenticity is the language of friends. Truth is the language of lawyers and politicians. so brands that are authentic

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Ted Wright: when brands that are well, no, I guess that's true. Dude. You just sound like everybody else is trying to pull something off on somebody, so just don't do it.

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Julie Roehm: Love it.

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Julie Roehm: ladies and gentlemen, the incomparable Ted. Right we would all stand and be applauding him if if if my audience was live. But it's truly it's such a pleasure. I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to have you as a guest on the podcast. Thank you for giving me so much of your time today.

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Julie Roehm: Thank you, Julie, you know, love, you love everything that you do. And I appreciate this opportunity. So thank you. Happy new everybody. Happy New Year.