077: Redefining Confidence, Culture, and Connections: Bo Bothe on Mentorship in a Digital World

Danny Gavin Host

00:05

Hello, I’m Danny Gavin, founder of Optidge, marketing professor, and the Digital Marketing Mentor host. Now, get ready to get human. That provides strategic guidance, helping clients grow their businesses through data-driven strategies, branding, marketing, and digital services.

 

00:46

Brand Extract was named one of the fastest-growing agencies by AdWeek magazine in 2023. Bo himself is a father, a husband, a sports coach, and a passionate volunteer. He’s won numerous awards, namely the Houston Business Journal’s inaugural 40 under 40, the Rice Jones School alumni service, and a bunch of others. When he’s not at home, working or volunteering, he’s a City of Spring, Texas council member, part of the Cream Jackson Foundation, and a Family Houston and San Jacinto Museum of History board member. He’s also the founder of ESG Reporting Partners and a former contributor to the Forbes Agency Council. That’s a whole lot, but it’s so impressive. How are you doing, Bo?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

01:25

I’m good, I’m good. Danny, how are you? Embarrassing are you? Kareem Jackson was traded, so there’s a different one there, but it’s all good.

 

Danny Gavin Host

01:37

I’m glad you found a little bit of time for your business, right?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

01:39

Yeah, just a tiny bit.

 

Danny Gavin Host

01:40

Let’s jump right in. Where did you go to school, and what did you study?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

01:50

I went to Texas Tech graphic designer by trade, did design work for years, then went back to Rice and got my MBA at Jones School to have better conversations with my clients about the stuff we were making, which turned into branding.

 

Danny Gavin Host

01:58

Are there any experiences inside and outside the classroom most impactful in directing your path?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

02:04

So, one I lucked or stumbled into a logic class. I thought I was going to take a philosophy class. That was all about, you know, the earth, which is some molecule in your hand. I thought it was going to be that thing, and it ended up being, you know, theorems and like if-then statements, and it was a thinking class. You know how to build good arguments. It was one of the best experiences I ever had, on top of learning how to be a designer and communicate with visuals and elements and all that stuff and then spin that into a career and then into Rice.

02:39

Dwayne Windsor was just mentioned on LinkedIn this week. He was one of my professors in leadership and ethics. One of the most formative conversations I had with my classmates was when he walked into the room and said like we were watching ‘12 o’clock High’, I think it was the name of the movie, and they were trying to get somebody to bomb Japan and nobody’s going to come back. And can you get anybody to do it? Dwayne walks in, and he goes, “Leaders, manipulates, go!” It was just that. It was one of the most incredible conversations about getting people to move, inspiring people for good and bad, and how to use things. Those are some seminal things that have happened in my education besides technical learning that stuck with me. Communication and leadership go on in the world and your life.

 

Danny Gavin Host

03:33

I know these days there’s some discussion around whether it’s worth getting an MBA. So, can you tell me a little about your MBA experience? When you look back, was it worth it? Also, when you’re looking at hiring people, do you find that an MBA is something that’s of value?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

03:47

Kind of funny. I’m a big dude. I lack confidence a lot. Historically, I thought I was small, but I was playing basketball and football in the land of giants all the time, and six foot four is not that big in that universe. And so there are things that I’ve historically thought, oh well, I need this, or I need that to be my shield of armor. And the MBA was one of those. I was able to learn a language and think of things differently. The other side of that was the network I got, the great friends I got out of it, and the technical learning was outstanding. The professors were amazing. The Rice network, much like any great business school, is incredible. But at the end of the day, I was trying to build some confidence. I ended up with an incredible network of thoughtful people who will be with me for my lifetime.

04:36

And so the investment is beyond the education piece because if it were just the education, you’re getting the full-time MBA and just learning how to do a spreadsheet that turns into a technical trade, and that turns into a job that pays me more. That wasn’t what I was looking to do. And this executive MBA. Having 10 years of experience and then getting into it was just phenomenal. So, if listeners are considering an MBA, I’d get some professional experience to understand how you want to apply that business knowledge. But an MBA is also a great way to change the game career-wise. I thought it was great. It was a lot of money. It’s a lot more money now after 20 years. So there’s a little bit of an ROI thing. You’ve got to get into it.

 

Danny Gavin Host

05:19

Do you look for master’s degrees for the people you’re hiring? 

 

Bo Bothe Guest

5:23

Not really.

05:24

I think today it is, but I wouldn’t say it is easy. It shows commitment, but we look for hustle. I barely look at resumes anymore. I mean, they can be so faked and they are what they are. And so we have a pretty grueling interview to where you meet with a number of people in big groups and small groups and all that kind of stuff, just to get to where people can be themselves to see whether they fit us and we fit with them. But if somebody has an MBA or advanced degree, it will rise to the top to say, hey, look, let’s give this a look.

 

Danny Gavin Host

05:53

So Beau. How would you define a mentor?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

05:54

A guide. I’ve had a number of mentors in my life. I work best with drill sergeants. If I’m looking for a mentor, I’m looking for someone to tell me what they think I should do, and I’m enough of a contrarian to choose not to do what they say because I know who I am. But I think a good mentor is a guide. One of the things that I’ve learned in my EO experiences and in my group learning experiences has been the idea of gestalt. A good mentor can bring experiences to the table and not really tell you what you have to do, but can give you kind of, in these situations, this thing happened. It sounds like what’s happening with you or somebody who can give you some context. I’d put them in that kind of guide, whether spiritual or emotional kind of side of things or business standpoint. Those are the kinds of mentors that I do really well with. Some people want to run alongside you or walk behind you and let you sort of lead.

 

Danny Gavin Host

06:50

But how does that balance with that drill sergeant? You mentioned at the beginning, like someone who’s a drill sergeant. How does that match for someone who’s a guide, a leader? Do you feel like you can find someone who has both?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

06:59

Yeah, I think so. I think there’s a point when I’m working with a mentor, and I think my mentor style is that there’s a point where the mentee is typically trying to get over a hurdle. They’re usually trying to get over a hump. I use the MBA to get me over a hump about my confidence. The decision’s not really that hard.

 

07:19

Mentoring someone like me who can overthink, overthink, overthink, there is a point where somebody will need to stand up and say, look, this is not that big a deal; make a decision. The drill sergeant kind of mentor works with me because that level of confidence impacts me. Someone more like a super contrarian would not like that kind of role. And so when you think about a mentor, there’s that guide piece, and then there are those different personalities. There was an old Harvard Business Review, I think, or Wall Street Journal article, I can’t remember which, that kind of broke mentors into these four categories. There’s the wise sage, the drill sergeant, the spiritual guide, the psychologist, the one that goes like what do you think about that? I never will give you an answer. When people are working with mentors, you may need a different one at different times.

 

Danny Gavin Host

08:11

Yeah, I agree. I don’t think there’s one person who can be a mentor for you throughout your whole life, right? You need different people at different points.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

08:20

Yeah, I mean, we’ll talk about my dad, who was an incredible mentor for me, but there was a point where I couldn’t hear him. I think we all get to the point where it’s okay; now it’s time. For me, it’s just a normal growth thing.

 

Danny Gavin Host

08:35

Let’s actually talk about your dad. Why do you consider him one of your most influential mentors?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

08:39

I can’t remember if we talked about it when we got together, but my father grew up incredibly poor. He recreated himself and lied his way into the Marine Corps. when he was 17, he found my mom at an embassy in Tokyo, Japan. She’s from Pittsburgh; he’s from Texas City. Decided that he was thinking about my mom and the family that he was going to create with her in the foxhole while getting shot at, so decided he didn’t want to be in the military anymore, got in the carpet business, recreated that whole thing, grew the business, bought it from my uncle and then lost the business in the 80s, late 80s, went bankrupt, restarted selling insurance and got into financial planning and then started a prison ministry and then had a spiritual life as a deacon. And I mean, there was just a constant I can always do it with him, and there was a constant positive outlook in the world. When we would get up in the morning, he would yell, “I feel terrific. I feel outstanding. It’s going to be a great day!” A little bit of it was that he was trying to convince himself that it would be a great day, and a little bit of it was. He was trying to convince himself that it was going to be a great day cause you can imagine all the stuff he’s had to deal with in his life. He was relentless; he just never stopped. He never stopped being positive. He never stopped believing and being strong in his faith. He was always there for us from a family standpoint. He was always there, just committed to my mother. They put each other’s wedding rings on whenever they’d take them off to work in the yard. They put them back on each other’s fingers.

10:10

From a business standpoint, from a life standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint, he was just unconventional but rock solid. I get down, and I get up, but I never. And I kind of have high highs and low lows. The Italian in me lets it go sometimes, but I never do. And I kind of have high highs and low lows. The Italian in me lets it go sometimes, but there’s never something I can’t overcome. I think that was something he taught me as my mentor in life. And he picked graphic design. We were driving up to tech, and he said, ” I don’t think you want to do advertising. I think this design thing is what you want to do. Because he was looking through the book, he was thoughtful and listened. Marines are super personal. It’s like a family thing. He had vision and insight, which was unlike a normal dad story. He could do anything. But just watching that experience throughout my life and thinking about his life, where he came from, and what he did, incredible Forrest Gump.

 

Danny Gavin Host

11:08

That’s what he sounds like. I get goosebumps. Just you talking about him. What a remarkable man. Really!

 

Bo Bothe Guest

11:14

Yeah, I was very blessed and fortunate to have had him in my life. There’s a Jesuit prayer that you can do, which is more of a meditation, and one of the things is to thank whatever the metaphysical God or whatever it is you believe in, just give thanks. Every time I thank man, I thank God for my dad and mom because I just hit the jackpot with them. I mean, totally. So that’s a little. It’s a lot of why, and I look just like him. So it’s a lot of why I am who I am, except he had a giant head, like I would say that he had a giant face and this tiny head, so none of his hats, like his cowboy hats and stuff, won’t fit me. That’s the only difference between the two.

 

Danny Gavin Host

11:56

So, obviously, he was someone that you looked up to, watched him, and learned from him. How about conversations? When you had a problem, were you able to go to him, or maybe when he noticed something was off, would he come to you? How was that communication between you two?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

12:11

Both, I think. And back to your point about a good mentor. I think you know good mentors should listen a lot, you know, rather than tell. He was always, as a young person, always telling you to know, but there were points where he could see I needed to stop, and so he would hear in these conversations things that I would say, and he’d pick up on, and it’d be that, back to the gestalt thing you mean, like this son, he’d clarify. On the other side of it, he passed away two and a half years ago, almost three years ago, and, man, I didn’t realize how much we didn’t. We probably saw each other once or twice a month, maybe three times, and as he got more and more sick and more homebound, it was harder for us, other than me going to the house. We used to go to breakfast twice a week or do something.

12:55

I miss the little brief 45-minute breakfast conversation. That was always really thoughtful, and it was about deep things: my relationship with my wife, his relationship with my mom, our relationship with kids, his relationship with us, business, politics, and religion. We talked about all that stuff. Even when I was a little kid, we’d have these crazy conversations about Democrats and Republicans and the world leaders and what was going on. What person, when they’re nine, eight, and seven, I mean, what person remembers Nixon and Watergate and Ford and Carter? I remember it like it was yesterday because we would sit on the floor and watch it. We talked about everything.

 

Danny Gavin Host

13:42

Let’s talk about who you mentor now. You’ve mentioned your employees, peers in the industry like me, children, and other people in different groups. What’s your mentorship style like?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

13:54

I have to catch myself sometimes because I do obviously like to talk. My style is probably a lot more about getting to know you, getting to know a person, and understanding their pressures and vision for their life, the things that are pulling on them. It’s easy if it’s a business or family mentorship program because we’ve done new couples stuff with my wife at church, but those situations become all personal. But then you have to pull the business stuff in; in some cases, it’s supposed to be all business. But humans aren’t automatons. They have a lot of pressures and things going on at different times in their lives, so I like to know what outside factors are affecting me personally, whether personal or not.

14:42

If it’s a young person with no context, I try to get them to understand their vision for life and how they see themselves. I think so many people don’t think about that. They think about the moment and what they want to get out of it, but they don’t think 20 years or 10 years down the road and go I want to have a family someday, or I’ll never have a family, or I, you know whatever, and how does that? The experience is built to that vision of what you’ve got.

15:08

On the business side, I try to dig in personally at first. You know to understand on a human level. You know how people make decisions, their lives, who influenced them, and all that. And then I shut up and say, okay, what is the stuff that you got to you want to deal with? I try and let anybody I’m mentoring with, or it’s a kid that has no context, you know, or adult that’s been doing it forever, the room to really kind of think through what they need to get to grow because that should be any kind of mentor should be kind of bump up against that friend, understanding, advisor, wise-guide sort of thing. But also be personal enough to understand all the variables in the conversation or the drivers that make people think a certain way.

 

Danny Gavin Host

15:51

Earlier, you mentioned the Gestalt theory. Do you want to expand on that? Explain to the listeners what that is and how you use it.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

15:58

Yeah. So, on the design side, gestalt is just like, you know, how it all kind of works together. Everything works together, which many people, especially in design today, kind of mess up. But on this side of stuff, the idea of letting someone come to their conclusion without telling, and so there’s always the idea of, okay, what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? Clarifying the question, what do you see? All the kind of drawing out and then letting someone come to their solution is at least the experience we had through EO rather than the telling piece. That said, someone like me at some point is going to look, man, just tell me what to do. I think I know what I need to be doing, but what do I need to do? So, I sometimes throw Gestalt out the window.

 

Danny Gavin Host

16:45

It’s hard, especially for you and me, to talk and share our ideas. It requires so much self-control, like holding back and wanting to say something.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

16:54

If I pray for anything, it’s patience to shut up sometimes and listen. I would say that’s one of my Achilles heels. I can sometimes get excited, and it’s not to hear myself talk. I get excited about one thing and the other problem I have.

17:10

This is what happened in my business school. There was one moment where, like one of the very analytical girls, Michelle, she stood up in front of me once as I was explaining, and I was not getting any feedback. And so sometimes, Danny, if I don’t get feedback, I’ll lean in and keep talking until I get enough. And poor Michelle stood up. I was explaining an answer, and she stood up, turned around, and looked at me. She’s like, Bo, stop talking. What’s your point? I was like, this is in front of my whole cohort, and I was like, it was one of the best learning experiences on top of those learning experiences you’re talking about. It’s like, man, collect your thoughts, make your point, and don’t worry about the feedback because that’s always been a challenge for me. It’s not just liking to talk; sometimes, oh man, maybe I’m not getting across, and if I’m getting no feedback, it causes problems.

 

Danny Gavin Host

17:58

A similar point. But I often tell my children that when they’re rambling, it’s like, hey, just stop a second; it’s okay to be quiet. Think through what you want to say first and then give it over.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

18:08

In a busy world, it gets harder to let white space happen. You know, the mums and the uhs and all that stuff. There’s one right there! We want to fill the space, and when you’re in a mentoring relationship, if you’re thinking about it right, you want to give something of value. Sometimes, it comes out as words, and sometimes, to your point, it needs to be quiet.

 

Danny Gavin Host

18:32

Yeah, I was leaning into the white space. So, let’s pivot a little bit. So what got me really excited and why? Besides, just in general, how much I like you and look up to you. You put out a blog post recently, the article called Mentorship and Growth and Hybrid Work Model a CEO Perspective, and I have the mentorship podcast. So when I saw an article on mentorship, like, oh my gosh, I have to have Bo on. Recently, you posted on LinkedIn that you have a love-hate relationship with remote work. Can you explain what you mean?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

19:01

Yeah, I think that is one of the challenges that I have had. I am, by nature, an extrovert. I get energy in the biological or physical sense. I get energy from being around people. And back to that feedback thing we were talking about. We’ve wandered the wilderness now for four years, almost four. Has it been four?

19:26

It’s been four years since we’ve been mostly hybrid and remote, and a person like me is trying to build an amazing business. I don’t just want to have a business; I want to be extraordinary, unique, and extraordinary in the dictionary sense of those words. It’s hard to get there when you don’t see anybody. It’s hard to be motivated when you’re like me. And so I’ve spent this last four years listening to my team and talking about things and looking at data and all this kind of stuff, and I’m realizing, at least for me, and I had to check myself a lot in this, you know, like am I thinking this?

20:03

Just because it’s what I want to will to happen and what I was noticing with my guys and what prompted me to write this article kind of and go on this little odyssey that I’m on right now, is that we’re not growing the way we need to grow. Now, that doesn’t mean we have to sit next to each other all the time, but the reality is it’s really hard, the extra effort it takes to be completely remote and still share a common bond across different people who learn different ways, doing different things. You know, with an organization that got to be 65 people or 50, yeah, 60, yeah, 65 people, it’s bananas. It’s hard and doesn’t make it right, wrong, good or bad. That’s what I was trying to do in the article.

20:48

But we recently set up Cynthia Stipeche, our Managing Director of Brand Experience, who just set up a really intense mentorship program to combine some of this. So that was a little bit of what’s been going on. I wrote the article and looked at it because I was missing out. But then I think my team was missing out. We weren’t growing the way we should have grown, being completely remote like we were.

 

Danny Gavin Host

21:14

So, tell me a little bit about the hybrid model that you’re currently going through. I don’t know if I told you the story, but a month or two before COVID hit, one of my key employees came into my office, and she said, “Hey, Danny, I’m moving to Montana.” And she got really sad, she was crying, and I was like,” Ooh, um, how about you work remotely?” And she was like, “I can’t believe it, like I couldn’t think, but she said that. So yeah, let’s talk about it.

21:41

So we spoke about it, and right away, I remember messaging like many people, I think Terry Hoffman also. I was wondering how you manage remote people. Like it, can this be successful? And, like, I ended up buying one of the owl cameras. I know you have one of the owls and like, and I found it hard. I found it hard to have some people on Zoom and others in the room; for me, it was just easier for it to be one or the other. So tell me about what hybrid means to you and how you deal with that issue of not having, you know, either extreme or having to deal with both.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

22:15

Yeah, I think we’re trying to perfect it. We were completely out of the office with some optionality to come in. And then, I think, in year two, we said, look, two days a week, but they can be whenever. And then we said, look, one day a week with your team. And, hey, leaders, be deliberate about which teams overlap, and one day a week, have a potluck so you can meet. Then we said, hey, look, certain functions need to be here three days a week. And the team embraced it.

22:52

And then, most recently, because I’ve told you about flagging business and things going on and our clients being semi-remote and distracted. I thought, look, we need to get together and be here. So, right now, everybody’s in the office four days a week, and I’ve horribly disrupted my team and their lives. It is with great intention, and it is a 90-day sprint, and we’re looking at it. So, Danny, we’ve run all these different things to get to what will work and instituted all these different tools. We got mural boards, leaned into Zoom, didn’t have office phones anymore, and joked around here.

23:28

But every natural disaster was one way to untether, and it became complete. This one became a way to untether completely. But we always had a kind of freedom of work; if you needed to stay home and work, we were always okay with it. It was never a problem unless you collaborated with a team or met a client. It was like, hey, man, I need focus time; I’m going to stay home and, with a lot of trust, we don’t count full PTO days, but we don’t count doctor’s visits. We don’t count going to coach your kids and picking them up from school or any of that kind of stuff. So we’ve always had this tendency to have freedom of work.

24:02

But when it became a rule or something like that, this is what we’re going to do, and it got bizarre. I mean, it got really strange. People felt constrained, or they felt so much freedom that they. I mean, it got really strange. People felt constrained, or they felt so much freedom that they couldn’t manage themselves. There are not a lot of people, I’ll be honest. Not many people have the discipline to work at home efficiently and effectively and do the extra work it takes to build relationships that we want to have in our organization so that we’re fully in motion. It’s been a pretty wild ride, but that’s the we’re right now, four days a week. I’m not telling you what I think we’ll land on because everybody, if anybody listens to this, will say, ” Oh my God, Bo made a promise.

24:46

But we’re trying to figure it out because some roles can be heads down. Back to the mentoring piece, we learned that it will be tough if you’re going to be at home 100% of the time doing work and just being efficient. It’s harder for someone like that in that role to really start to grow in their ability to lead an organization or collaborate or lead a team. They do not technically lead a team but mentoring and growing the people around them and all that kind of stuff. It can be done. It just makes it more complicated. And answer, but people didn’t want to disrupt somebody, and suddenly, a project couldn’t move forward for two days because they couldn’t find 20 minutes on your calendar. It was causing a lot of inefficiencies, too.

 

Danny Gavin Host

25:50

Did you try to set up a mentorship structure or program in the hybrid remote sense?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

25:57

Yeah, structure or program in the hybrid remote sense. It’s been about six months in the making, and we’re rolling it out now, even though we’re going to bring it back. But we were doing it informally. We use EOS, so there were a lot of check-ins and a lot of talking, but it was all mentorship within groups, and it was all kind of the formal check-ins, monthly check-ins with key people that really helped us.

26:22

Some people here want to grow, but they’re not as visible all the time because they’re out of the office or doing something. So, I’ve got two formal mentors. Now We’ve got a worksheet and this whole system that Cynthia set up that we’re going to do. That should have happened two years ago. Where we dropped the ball should have happened two or three years ago. We should have seen that. One of the again drivers for this article was that we saw that we made it a rock in our EOS platform. It’s been a six-month kind of okay, define a program that works right, what’s the burden, how many people? All that kind of stuff. Mentorship beyond check-in is focused on helping people grow in their careers, and some of them are kind of family questions that they’re asking, too.

 

Danny Gavin Host

27:06

So I think you’re lucky in that. Correct me if I’m wrong; most of your employees are in Houston, so you should return to the office. It wasn’t like suddenly, over the past four years, you hired someone in Denver, New York, and Canada. I guess for some people, going from remote back to an office could be pretty complicated. So, for those who have to work on a remote or hybrid model, at least for now, what advice would you give them for interacting with people setting up that mentorship program?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

27:36

So, in clarification, we’re 15% remote. We’ve got two teammates in Arizona, one in Boston, one in Pittsburgh, and one in Chicago, and we’ve had more. With our kind of layoffs earlier in the year, we had a handful more. And then we have a couple here, like drive-in from Waller. So you know it’s an hour and a half, you know. So we have people who are not remote, but they would be much less inconvenienced if they were remote. And then we got the other 80%, which are local enough to where it’s not horrible to come in. We’ve had to really lean into check-ins and different pieces that way. If I were a remote employee, I would have breakfast with Bo. I do one at Slow Pokes over here around the corner for people that are local, and then an hour later, I make an online breakfast with Bo because some people are on the West Coast time and others East Coast time, so I got to do it at 11 or 10. So I don’t affect a lunch, but I don’t get somebody up early, too early, From a leadership standpoint.

28:40

That’s just general mentoring. You know, where we just talk about what’s going on in the business, what’s going on in the industry, what’s going on in their lives, how we could be better, or what’s going on with any questions they have. We talked about politics the last time and how the election would affect the business because those things are on my mind internally. So, I’d pick a mentor if I were for somebody outside the office. I just like, I was like kind of guy, so I just say hey, you know, Jimmy or Sue, you know, let’s get together. And you know, do you mind giving me 30 minutes a month? There, I can pick your brain and talk to you about stuff.

29:14

And quite frankly, many people want to do that. They want to connect on a human level. That’s something I wish some of our remote people would have done, you know, and we encourage it. But now that we have this formal program, they can lean into it pretty easily. Organizations really need to. If you’re going to be remote, a significant amount of time you’ve got to put these things in place so that you can keep some cultural connection, so it doesn’t turn into a transactional relationship with your employees where they’re just working, because the minute they get more money, they’re going to be gone?

 

Danny Gavin Host

29:51

Did you hire remotely before 2020? 

 

Bo Bothe Guest

29:56

We freelanced remotely, but the two remote people were moved by their husbands and their spouses, and we just loved them so much that we just went, like you, Danny, we wanted to keep them, and we were able to make it. We had, you know, our test case with a woman who went to East Texas. She’s been a huge part of our company for a long time. And then, you know, our digital marketing manager’s in Boston because he married a Massachusetts girl, and she found a great job up there that fit her better because Houston’s just weird; it’s where she couldn’t get into what she wanted to, and so she went up there, Cage and Chris followed her up there.t

30:36

He’s freezing 10 months of the year, his loss. 

 

Danny Gavin Host

30:39

So, with 20% remote and 80% office, have you had any general complaints about factions, or hey, I’m missing out? I don’t feel like it. Do people speak up about that at all?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

30:49

A little. Our culture has been. It’s been a rough year, so our culture has taken a big hit. But, man, people here have always been helpful, kind, and open-minded. That then extends to the remote team. While there is some disconnect. We don’t get to see them at happy hours and stuff like that; there is also a willingness to reach out. So some people are remote or resource management, or they’re on the digital marketing team, or they’re called in all the time to discussions and conversations.

31:26

One of the reasons I set up the breakfast, though every two weeks, was because they were feeling a little bit like we were bringing everybody back to the office. And the thing that I didn’t realize was that they freaked out. They’re like, yeah, you’re bringing everybody into the office. And the thing that I didn’t realize was that they freaked out. And back to me, being a good leader and mentor of my business, I had to like, oh wait, okay, I heard this one thing that makes complete sense. Let’s have this breakfast, and they can clarify things. And then I also talked to my leaders about making sure, but again, with EOS and L10s and the weekly check-ins and all that kind of stuff, man, there are a lot of excuses to pull in remote workers and people that aren’t in the same proximity, and that’s been really helpful.

 

Danny Gavin Host

32:09

But it shows you that you have to be intentional about it, right? Because? If you’re just working in the office and doing everything you need. You could potentially forget, but if that’s why you need those systems and processes, office and do everything you need.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

32:18

You could potentially forget, but if that’s why you need those systems and processes, I mean, and being fair, I’ll stumble over names, I mean, there was a point where, when I wasn’t doing these breakfasts, I was getting to a point where I was like, oh man, I don’t see Dineshia. I mean, who’s that? And I’m old, so I start forgetting things, and I’m like, wait a minute, I need to meet with these people more often because it’s not the kind of relationship I want. And so, to your point, you have to be really deliberate and thoughtful.

 

Danny Gavin Host

32:42

All right, we are going to move to our top three. Three things that you’ve mentioned that are really important to you are family and coaching, running and exercise, and consuming tons of podcasts. I would love to know your favorite experience or, just in general, what you like about that category. So, let’s start with family and coaching.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

33:02

On the family and coaching piece. It was kind of funny. You were reading off all that stuff. So when I got my MBA, we had two kids. I’d quit my job. I left my partnership and I started my own business. I was the AIGA co-president, so I would only do it with a “co” because it was like man, I had too much going on, and I coached every team. I was a starter for the swim team because I wanted to get the swim meets done so that we weren’t up there all night, and I did all that because I love coaching.

33:28

Back to the mentoring and kind of teaching young people, pulling people together, connecting them, and getting all these families and stuff. But I wanted to spend time with my kids, and I felt that the more I could at least control the schedule when we practiced when the games were, I ended up being commissioner of the basketball league. We could spend time together, and what I didn’t realize out of coaching was that, you know, I’d be dealing with one situation with eight-year-olds on a basketball floor. I’d be dealing with one situation with 30-year-olds in the business, which was the same situation in some instances. So I was really able to use that. That’s kind of the way I think I’m always like, take from here, do this. Oh, that was an interesting experience. How do I use that here?

34:11

The coaching piece was fantastic for me and fully rewarding. When you see these kids light up, you know that they did something they didn’t think they could do. Or we won a game they didn’t think they could win, or they built relationships to where they were just all doing their stuff, or they got to a point where they practiced so well that they didn’t need to be coached any more. Back to what a good mentor should be, teach you how to mentor and coach yourself. That’s been awesome. There’s a huge family component for me. We do a lot around sports, but it’s more for the team part than it was for the competition and getting a scholarship; although my kids all had chances, they all chose not to, which is perfectly fine for me. 

 

Danny Gavin Host

34:47

And what about running and exercise?

 

Bo Bothe Guest

34:48

I’ve always played sports, I’ve always done stuff. I think, as a leader, you just need to check out. There are just moments when you need a clear checkout. Yeah, there are moments when you need a clear space alone. And I didn’t get that in basketball, and then when I turned 50, I had to stop playing, as COVID happened, and then, you know, it was just kind of like, you know.

35:10

So now I do golf and whatnot, but I started running at 40, and some of it was a physical outlet. That quiet time of just spending 30 minutes or an hour eventually led to me running a marathon with my daughter and overcoming something, and now I have to take an ice bath, you know.

35:27

So you know, but that quiet time of just thinking or putting a podcast in and going off and running or a book is special to me because when my kids, we had four in the house and business was going, and stuff was happening. With all this other crazy stuff I do, it was tough to get that time other than the shower or the bathroom, you know, it was like. And so that run in the morning almost became kind of a sacred time for me, just because it was quiet and there was nothing else around, and I could just really get in my head and think a little bit clearly. And then I ran into the, I don’t know if you know what it’s called 20, 20, 20, the 5 am club. It’s a book that it kind of breaks up. You know, you start the day with 20 minutes of meditation, 20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of learning. I really try to style those things, but I combine the running and the learning, and I’ll go for 40 minutes on that one.

 

Danny Gavin Host

36:18

That’s really really good advice. And then, finally, you love podcasts and books Any podcasts or books that you can recommend to the listeners.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

36:25

If you’re stressed about the world and the current environment, a great book is The Storm Before the Calm. It’s an interesting discussion about the overlap of changes in culture, economics, and politics. It makes me feel a lot better about what’s happening. But I think about it in our business, and Danny, you, and I were talking about AI and the changes that are going to happen through that. It’s just a different way of thinking. My portfolio is hand-painted. I learned how to draw with a bar of soap and a mouse, and I learned how to draw with this thing and bent the computer and technology to my will for a large part of my career. We’re in that same phase, but it’s coming at us faster, and that’s a little intimidating.

37:08

On the podcast side, I’m listening to a lot right now because I read a lot of books on founding fathers and leaders and different things. The Musk book was amazing. The Isaacson book—all of Isaacson’s books are great. But I’m listening to the Founders Podcast. You know, I can’t remember his name, but he reads a book and then gets all excited about, you know, whoever you know, and it’s incredible listening to it.

37:31

And the other one is how I built it. This is another one that I listened to, you know, because, as an entrepreneur, I just stayed in, and I can’t remember if it was Founders or how I Built this. I think it was how I Built this. I just stayed in a graduate hotel. The podcast talked to him about how he created that concept. It was incredible, man. It was so awesome and inspiring because I have to reimagine this business today. It’s interesting to listen to stuff about Sam Walton and people you know, dead or barely alive, that have done this kind of thing, and they’re the things that drove them, without actually having to read the whole book, and then also contrasting that with today. You know, Musk and founders and or, uh, and the kind of how I built, this kind of stories that it, that they that the entrepreneur tells or that were written about the entrepreneur, because it’s a challenge right now, you know, managing all these changes in culture, managing the changes in work, all that kind of stuff.

38:35

And so I’ve I into, rather than consuming big, long books, I’m starting to do these podcasts. The other one cracking me up is Smartless, with Jason Bateman, Arnell, and the guy from Will Grace. Sorry, that will date me too, Sean; I can’t remember his name. It is an absolute riot, a great checkout, and they have great guests. So I’m always learning, always trying to again. It gives me more context and more to talk about with other people when I’m mentoring or working with somebody. It’s not just me and old people’s books.

39:14

I’m trying to stay a little bit up-to-date. I’ve really enjoyed leaning into those a lot. The other one is the Wall Street Journal, which has a great little podcast. The Journal is a little 20-minute snippet of what’s happening worldwide. I think they’re super unbiased and thoughtful. They’re really interesting because they introduce you to one little thing like 60 minutes used to when I was a kid or that kind of deal where it was like, oh, this is cool. So anyway, I’m just always learning and consuming but then processing and trying to put it into context for my family, work, or life.

 

Danny Gavin Host

39:52

Your passion for growth, learning, and changing is really awesome and inspiring.

 

Bo Bothe Guest

39:57

This is awesome. Danny, man, thank you. I am impressed with what you’ve built, what you’re doing, and all the people you’re impacting through your teaching and this kind of medium. I know it’s important to you to produce and impact others, and kudos to you, man. What you’re doing is amazing, and I know it’s hard to run the business and teach in school. And congratulations on all your success to this point and growing your family. You should be pretty proud of where you’re at.

 

Danny Gavin Host

40:25

Thanks, Bo. I really, really appreciate it. Yeah, all right. Thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Digital Marketing Mentor. We’ll speak with you next time. Thank you.

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