Designing at Scale: How Rich Thrush Turned Curiosity into a Career Across Brands

Chris Whyte (: 00:00

So Rich, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining me.

Rich Thrush (: 00:04

Thanks for having me. It's exciting. I love to have these conversations.

Chris Whyte (: 00:08

Well, I'm looking forward to diving in. So, yeah, we've had a few conversations now offline, on whatever the terminology is, but now we're actually, the record button has been pressed. I'm looking forward to diving into your journey and kind of asking you bunch of questions about it. But for those who don't know you, I'll try my best to give you a little intro. So, you're Rich Thrush, you're a seasoned innovation leader with multiple...

on time by time there, that'll be one of those places that we market. So you're a seasoned innovation leader with a multidisciplinary background that spans engineering, design and business strategy. You've helped build and lead innovation teams at companies like Motorola, Hasbro, Helen of Troy, and then you've recently joined Guitar Center. Along the way, you've developed category defining products like Braun's non-contact thermometer.

and the unexpected commercial hit Revlon one-step volumizer. So today we're going to dig into kind what you've learned about managing multiple brands, leading teams, spotting opportunities and how big ideas actually come into life in a world of consumer products. So yeah, bit of a mouthful there, but hopefully I got all that. That was all kind of fairly accurate. Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:29

It's perfect. Yeah. Thanks for the background. I've had kind of a varied background, which I think captured.

Chris Whyte (: 01:37

Good, awesome. Cool, right. So today on the show, we're going to dive into quite a few different things here. And we're trying to capture as much in as many interesting insights as we can. But we'll always start with your design innovation journey across tech, FMCG, healthcare and beauty. We're going to talk about what it takes to lead innovation across multiple brands, where good ideas come from and what makes them stick. Lessons from projects that exceeded expectations and those that didn't, like the ones that we mentioned in the little intro.

and your approach to leadership, insight driven product strategy and building consumer trust. And then we'll kind of just finish on kind of guitar center. And if I have it my way, we'd only be talking about guitar center. But I guess it's probably a bit unfair as you've been there about a month. I'm in a band. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I mentioned it at all. yeah. So, so rich, we always start the show with with the one question, why design?

Where did it all begin for you? Where did your design or engineering journey begin?

Rich Thrush (: 02:42

Yeah, maybe I'll start at the beginning, which doesn't have that much to do with design, or maybe it does. My first job, I was a mechanic, and I spent a lot of time diagnosing cars and things like that. But I shifted ultimately into a role where I was talking to consumers and customers. And for me, that was a really great place to be because I was in between the technology and the people. So that was a cool beginning to the world of design, even though I didn't know it, right? Because it was a lot of root cause analysis, a lot of.

explaining things to people in a way that they could get it. for me that actually gets to kind of the core of what I'm into and what I'm excited about. I went to school for design and engineering and later I got an MBA so I think I've had a pretty varied background, maybe more so than the folks that you've had in the past which maybe tend to be focused on one or the other. I'm kind of a Swiss Army knife in ways so I've been in quite a few roles. My first...

real job. I was at Hasbro, I worked in Nerf, I worked in Star Wars, and a lot of that, as you can imagine, was fun. was lot of working with kids, right, and seeing what made them tick and what made them excited. it was a cool role. Also, we worked on Star Wars as they relaunched this sort of series. doing the toys for that was an interesting branding exercise, and I learned a lot from the kind of

Chris Whyte (: 03:46

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 04:06

collaboration with Lucasfilm and the way that they launch a brand and they approach these things. So that was a really great start to my career. In the middle of my career, and I've done probably 15 jobs, but the big ones that I care about or that I really think about are, I was at Motorola and so I was there in a time from the late 90s to the early 2000s and you'll probably recognize that as a really great time for Motorola. I learned a lot.

lessons there and it was a great place to be where there was technology, where there was design, and there was a lot of interaction with people so we did a lot of testing of prototypes and forward-thinking things so that was a cool thing to be a part of and really shaped some of my thinking on how you think about people. And then for the last good chunk of time I was at a corporation called Helena Troy and that's, you probably have never heard of them but they

owner license, Braun, Pure, Vicks, Honeywell, Revlon, Drybar, many, many consumer brands. And so that was a great place to learn about what a portfolio of brands feels like. How do you manage resources across all the brands? What your focus should be and how to build some strategy across more than one thing. I can't say we did it perfectly, but in that situation,

I personally gained a lot on how to deal with those choices to be made and how to build strategy work, which I think also probably informed my final role, which is the one I just recently started at. I'm at Guitar Center and my title here is VP of Private Brands and it's a pretty broad ranging role. it encompasses design, it encompasses engineering, branding, and a lot of other things. So it's sort of like a business within a business at Guitar Center. have a...

as you probably know or you may not know, if you're outside the US, Guitar Center is one of the largest retailers in the world of musical instruments. And my role is not finding the external brands to sell, not Fender and Gibson, but they also have about 30 brands of products that they make themselves. And these are products that they source from a factory and put their name on, they're actual products that have been built through people, right?

Chris Whyte (: 06:26

That's cool.

Rich Thrush (: 06:29

a great team here, focused on doing just that. So it's a pretty, for me, pretty great role. Also being involved with music, like yourself, I've been in bands, so it's a lot of fun.

Chris Whyte (: 06:40

That's awesome. You've been the other side. You've helped the customer journey and now you're on the inside. So that's awesome.

Rich Thrush (: 06:46

Yeah, yeah, that's that's one right. A lot of these roles I have never been the customer or you kind of look at it like a scientist almost where you're trying to understand people and and that's that's great too, right? Because you can step outside of the the need role and you can look at it with complete objectivity. But you know, if you are a customer, you might have an interesting insight to that you can bring to it personally. But both are great. So I love to do both.

Chris Whyte (: 07:15

Absolutely, yeah. That's brilliant. Thank you for that. Yeah, running through that. So, I can't wait to get to dive into the Guitar Center stuff, let's... But thinking back to kind of your early days, you your education or kind of your early career, was there a moment that sparked your interest really in making things better or differently, you know, when you think back?

Rich Thrush (: 07:42

Yeah, many, right, so and I think probably most of your listeners are like this when you're a designer or a technical person. You see opportunities everywhere for improvement or you have ideas. But as I mentioned before, a big part of it is making the choices of what you're gonna focus on because I've seen many people start businesses and even myself going down the path of trying to deliver something or develop something that

is a great, has a great insight, but it doesn't necessarily have the the right gravity around the people that would be interested in it or not. But I can think of things like one of the ones that I love from early in my career, I was at Nerf at the time when, if I can sort of set the stage for the folks who weren't around for the early beginnings of Nerf, Nerf was originally about foam balls, you know, and being able to.

play ball in the house and things like that. But in the 90s, there was a little bit of an innovation that could include foam darts. So you may have seen some of the foam blasters they called them. And kids loved that, right? That was a pretty great innovation. But we realized just by watching kids and their play patterns that that kind of, game, if you're shooting darts at each other, running around the neighborhood or the basement or whatever your situation was.

was ending very quickly. It was a little bit like a standoff. One shot and one shot and then it's over. So we spent a lot of time trying to understand what could we do to extend that play pattern because the best toys have the best engagement. probably the perfect example would be like a video game where you're engaged and people spend half a day doing it because it's just a flowing, flowing situation.

Chris Whyte (: 09:16

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 09:39

So that was the problem that we identified with NERF. And one of the things we did was simply to just allow people to shoot more darts. We started with two and we allowed the game to go on. And we quickly realized, oh my gosh, these kids are playing and now they're much more engaged and have other friends involved and they can continue on. And then we did more and then we did more. So the game was about how many darts can we do? Can we shoot 20 at the same time?

Chris Whyte (: 10:03

You

Rich Thrush (: 10:07

Can we have a sort of Gatlin gun style? it's a weird world to be into as a designer because you typically think so much about form giving and things like this, but this was much more about the real core of how you interact with products and so forth. for me, that was a formative moment and it helped me frame a lot of things where, of course I want to do beautiful products that people love and

and coven, but there's also an interaction framework, even in the physical space, that's really interesting and has, you know, can pay amazing dividends for people that go on for, people still, you know, even adults play with nerve cones. So it was a pretty good gig to be at early in my career and recognize that and work with a bunch of smart people at that time that were analyzing things in this way.

Chris Whyte (: 10:55

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 10:59

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 11:07

That's amazing. It's one of those things, you know, it's like, you're not necessarily massively changing the product, but just by adding that little tweak, you're extending the playtime, you're giving more kids opportunity to see how much fun their friends are having. then they're kind of that then has a like a knock on effect to spreading the word of how much fun it is. And then the nag, nag power of that from to the parents.

Yeah, my kids have had nerves, I had nerves when I was a kid as well. It's a timeless toy.

Rich Thrush (: 11:45

Yeah, I mean, I think I love the fact that, you know, there are people compare the negative aspects of it, like, you know, it's like a battle or something like that. But it's honestly a great way for kids to have that kind of interaction that is not a high conflict thing. It's fun. And ultimately what happens is you see kids exercising and they're moving around. It's not a video game type thing, right? They're out in the world.

They're hiding, they're running. So it's a pretty great way to have a play pattern that you can really enjoy and that even adults are doing. That's the other part, right? I keep talking about kids and of course that's the target audience when you're doing toys. You're trying to find the right people for it. the picture of who could use it, I mean, it goes on, far beyond kids.

Chris Whyte (: 12:16

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 12:24

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 12:32

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 12:39

Yeah, absolutely. So I would let go do with the with the sets that are kind of aimed at adults is not all bigger kids, you know, because other ones with the with the disposable income. So the other ones buying it for the kids, but I make it for the adults as well. I've just ordered the the new Gameboy one. Because I thought that that reminds me of my childhood and it'd be pretty cool that I had a present. I don't have a lot of Lego anymore. That was my toy when I was a kid, but I had a gift for Christmas and a

Rich Thrush (: 12:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 12:52

Right.

Chris Whyte (: 13:08

Just that time where you just kind of just put it together, you're not thinking about anything else. It's quite a meditative state in some respects. It's quite nice.

Rich Thrush (: 13:13

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in the formative years, it's great, especially Lego, I think is a great creative one where you're, especially when you see, I've seen with my own kids where they start to use the bricks incorrectly and they stick the bricks into the side of something else. that's a pretty cool moment where you start to break the rules. That's a great point to be in the development side.

Chris Whyte (: 13:29

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 13:35

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 13:41

massively, massively. So, well, let's talk about diving to some points elsewhere in your career. So you mentioned you're working at Motorola in the 2000s. So through the great kind of boom times and then the iPhone came along and turned everything upside down, you know.

Rich Thrush (: 13:58

Yeah, yeah. No, it has more to do with me leaving the company, Chris. That's an interesting point you bring up, actually. So you're right. I was in a great time and around for some of these developments like the Razor and things like that, which was great to see. And also worked with amazing, talented people, especially I would say the technical people. I spent a lot of time on the audio side.

Chris Whyte (: 14:03

Of course, yeah.

You

Chris Whyte (: 14:17

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 14:27

working to try to make sure that the audio was working and that was an age where you sort of take it for granted right now when you use a mobile phone as an entertainment device. At that time they were not, right? They were just for making phone calls and they were making the shift from being something just to stay in touch but to get into a point where you were actually interacting with the world in a broader way. were checking email, you were listening to music and things like that. working on projects where

Chris Whyte (: 14:36

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 14:48

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 14:56

we had that framed up, where this is an entertainment device as opposed to communication device, was a cool, it was a great twist, right? Because people were thinking about it. And I think that's what led to a lot of the success of those products at that time. They also recognized that they're not just utilitarian devices. They're especially something you carry in your pocket all day or you're holding your hand. It's a reflection on you, just like your clothing or shoes.

Chris Whyte (: 15:07

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 15:24

And that was a big driver in success. But I think you brought up the point of the iPhone and I was not, I was just leaving at the time when the iPhone launched. I didn't feel the pain at the point, luckily, sorry for the folks that were there, but I can say that everybody was well aware of the possibility of a higher end phone with a touchscreen, with a, you know, more,

Chris Whyte (: 15:28

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 15:35

Got you. So you didn't feel that paint? Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 15:54

with more illustrative features and things like that. And it was feasible. So it was totally within Motorola's capability to do that.

Chris Whyte (: 15:56

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 16:04

Hmm. It feels like looking back now just just reflecting on some of the the phones I had in my early 20s. I think you know, it's The iPhone was like such a big leap in terms of where the tech was but then we've not had anything up until You know, maybe they're folding phones now. That's that's the that seems to be like the big advancement, but it's been So long, but prior to that

Rich Thrush (: 16:31

pretty long time.

Chris Whyte (: 16:33

It's like you had the Razr, I had an LG phone that you could flip around and had like the screen turn into a mirror when it wasn't being used. had a, I remember getting a Sony phone that was polyphonic and I could program my own ringtones onto it. I like, wow, this is amazing. But now it's like the new iPhone comes out, it's like pretty much the same as the last one. no offense Apple, it's...

Rich Thrush (: 16:54

Right, at the time, mean, the iPhone was a really innovative device. it was only, it was innovative, but it was also at a price point which was much higher than Motorola. So that was a big part of the conversation. Like no one would pay for a phone that's for $500 or $600, right? This is crazy. We make phones that are 200 or something like that. That's right in the core of the market. That's never going to be a big part of the market. But, you know, Apple was...

Chris Whyte (: 17:11

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 17:24

aware enough to have this idea to come at a higher price point that would ultimately cascade into price points that the general population would chase. And they really created a buzz, which was great.

Chris Whyte (: 17:26

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 17:38

Yeah, but that's it. They must have some kind of crystal ball or something in their R &D team because they do make a lot of good shots, don't they? it's really challenging the narrative around price and what customers will and won't pay for. I know I've read some kind of interviews with Steve Jobs and Johnny Ives in the past.

focus groups and everything are great, but you you'll only get so far by asking people's opinions. You know, sometimes you've just got to go with what kind of and try and lead. So it's quite interesting.

Rich Thrush (: 18:15

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 18:20

Can we, sorry, the sun's coming up here. Let me close the blinds. Pause for just a second.

Chris Whyte (: 18:22

Yeah, sure.

Chris Whyte (: 18:31

Yeah, I noticed that the lighting effect was changing on the... as the sun was coming up.

Rich Thrush (: 18:34

Yeah, it's one of my eyes, so it's...

Rich Thrush (: 18:41

Okay, how's that?

Chris Whyte (: 18:43

Yeah, that's cool. I've marked it, in terms of, come on, sorry. Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 18:49

Let me respond to your question. You were talking about the crystal ball that Apple might have. And I think it's a little bit of crystal ball, but I think it's just like great decision making. at Motorola, were in the case, they had 70 % market share, a massive share of the market. In the US, it was even more.

Chris Whyte (: 18:58

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 19:17

So they were not driven to innovate necessarily. They probably wanted to stay within their own game plan. I was not a VP. I was not an executive at that time at Motorola. I could only guess as to what they were thinking at that level. That's a pretty common case where you're on top of the world and then you get innovated out of that position just because you feel comfortable in your position.

And for me, that's a big takeaway. I'm always looking for, when I'm in those roles, now that I am, then I'm always trying to take 10, 20 % of the effort of the team and put it towards something that could be big and that could be next, even if we're on top. Even if we have 90 % market share, we should always be picking an area where we're trying to innovate, trying to find the next thing that can drive the business. So that's great for designers, right? I think it keeps the team excited too.

Chris Whyte (: 20:07

massively.

Rich Thrush (: 20:09

You set a vision in a certain direction and then even the stuff, the day-to-day work has DNA from that longer picture innovation.

Chris Whyte (: 20:18

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're the number one in the market just means that you're the number one target as well. Someone's going to try and innovate you out of that. So yes, it's a great tough lesson for Motorola to learn, but great for you to take on three careers. So Helen of Troy, then that's been the kind of the bulk of your career the last 10 years or so. Kind of VP of innovation and design, I you said kind of when you left there covering

Rich Thrush (: 20:24

Yes.

Rich Thrush (: 20:45

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 20:48

Quite a broad portfolio of products across different categories. So you've got Braun, Revlon, Vicks, Hydroflasso. You've got electronic devices. You've got substances. Vicks, you have FMCG. You've got homewares. Beauty,

Rich Thrush (: 21:04

Yeah, beauty too, right? mean, it's usually when you have a portfolio of brands, you have a couple of customers that you're focused on. And this is like, you know, older people with blood pressure problems and 19 year olds who want amazing hair, like every bit of it, which is great, by the way, you know, I've had mostly corporate roles I've consulted a fair bit.

Chris Whyte (: 21:12

Yeah.

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 21:19

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 21:24

It's

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 21:31

But it is cool to have a broad portfolio of stuff because you never get tired. That's part of the reason why I was there. I was never sick of the consumers, never, even at the end of Motorola, you know, when you're on your third or fourth mobile phone, you're like, okay, I know how to do this. Similar kind of customer, similar thing again. This is like one day you're working on, you're speaking with older people who are trying to manage their blood pressure. The next day you're in someone's house.

Chris Whyte (: 21:48

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 21:59

and they have a newborn baby and they're trying to take the temperature of the baby or, you know, on and on or you're in a salon. So it was a great way to have a very, it drives you toward process-based thinking because you can reapply the stuff you've done as opposed to weighing on the knowledge that you have already. And that's what we try to do there really is build an approach that is replicable across many different businesses.

Chris Whyte (: 22:06

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 22:15

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 22:27

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 22:30

So that's why I spend a lot of time on process personally because I don't like to be bogged down by it, but I like to understand the principles that drive success.

Chris Whyte (: 22:38

Yeah, if you've got a framework that, know, you know, works and delivers results, but he's, you know, agile enough that you're able to deploy it at different brands or different use cases and still expect good results. Then that makes a lot of sense. So during your time at Helen of Troy, could correct me if I'm imagining Helen of Troy is a business that will go and acquire brands and bring them into the portfolio as opposed to.

No, they didn't create Oxo did they? They bought Oxo or what? Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 23:09

That's correct. I was responsible for two-thirds of the business, so I didn't have OXO, but I had many of the other businesses. And it is a business built on acquisitions. As you can imagine, the new team coming in has different processes. Sometimes they have no processes. If it's a smaller business, I can remember situations like that where they had amazing market success because someone in the business had a great insight that led to...

Chris Whyte (: 23:13

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 23:25

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 23:37

excellent design work and they hit it, right? But then they were struggling to get to the next level. So that's a pretty interesting situation to have all these failure businesses, all these varied methods and then try to bring them under one roof. And how do you create the, how do you deploy resources across 10 brands or even more? A lot of the work was the strategic choices to

Chris Whyte (: 23:39

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 23:46

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 23:51

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 24:01

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 24:06

to find those areas of focus. So would be things almost like you would treat a portfolio of stocks, right? Where we have certain areas where you've got high investment and high intensity and you might throw a lot of resources at that around design and innovation and so forth. And then some brands that hold a role that are just, they're growing, they may actually be high performing. They may be sort of have a lot.

Chris Whyte (: 24:14

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 24:33

market share, may have amazing products, but they've sort of tapped out their area. So those can be counted on to continue and the work may be more about just having amazing colors and telling the story to people in a way that they connect with or expanding in that way. And then there are some that are, you know, maybe end of life or ones that don't have the kind of investment potential and those fall at the bottom line or they just continue to exist.

Chris Whyte (: 24:40

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 25:03

In some cases, don't think Helen Detroit was not highly focused on this, but other businesses might sell them, they might divest and do that. Or they might license the brand out. There's a lot of different approaches to it. But really building that strategy across everything is, I think, one of the key ways to deal in those bigger situations. A foreshadow of that is probably a big part of Guitar Center too, right? We have a ton of brands and a ton of products. But we'll talk about that later.

Chris Whyte (: 25:13

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 25:29

Yeah. Yeah. And that's, really interesting. It's a topic that, um, comes up time and time again, when I'm speaking to founders and senior leaders within companies of all sizes really, but especially, um, businesses that are going through a transition, whether they've, know, they're a startup going from scrappy R and D to something a bit more sophisticated. And, know, they've

Rich Thrush (: 25:53

you

Chris Whyte (: 25:54

they've just want to load more funding or they've just started making money. So now they need to deliver on the order. So then he processes in place. or it might be that, you know, they've, they've been acquired and there's got to be change brought in to get that business to another level, to get more profits into the business, you know? So, but that change is often quite painful because the people kind of in the, in the brand, in the business kind of before the change might not necessarily be the right people.

to drive forward, they might not be aligned with where it's going. I probably not too far of a stretch to suggest that you've probably been through that with some of the brands coming in under your wing. What are some of the key kind of challenges or surprises, I guess, that you kind of have come across and how did you kind of cope with them in that context?

Rich Thrush (: 26:37

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 26:47

I think, yeah, you're absolutely right. Many times if you're in a smaller business and you get acquired, the shift is, one of the amazing things, I'll start with that, is that you suddenly have a ton of resources available to you, especially if there is potential within your brand or your business that all of sudden, manufacturing partners and distribution networks and salespeople and all kinds of finance and things like that, instead of having to go to the bank or...

gravel for the next tranche of investment. You know, here there's a relative pot of money, it's not just laying around in most corporations, but it's there, that you have access to, right? And so you have access to a much broader team, like you may not have had a regulatory team, and all of sudden you do, you have a team that can deal with that. You may not have had a team that can deal with importing and exporting and things like that. So that's one of the beauties of

being pulled into a greater situation like that. There are other difficulties that go along with it, as you can imagine. If you had a job that had 10 chunks of responsibility, you may only have one now. All of a sudden, you've got to specialize in a way that you haven't done before. And you have to go deep within one particular area. So that happens as well. And yeah, I'll say it this way too, right? I think that people who...

make it through those situations and do well in those situations are the people who are open to change and who have a broader way of thinking. So I think of myself as a designer, a technologist, a business leader, but I think of myself as all of those, right? I don't think of one or the other and I've had a design role and I've been probably the most technical designer in that role or I've had a technology role, I've been the most people-based role or a business role, I've been the most

Chris Whyte (: 28:31

You

Rich Thrush (: 28:46

design and technology kind of base person. So ability to shift in those situations is really helpful. And look, it's gonna happen, Whether it happens in an acquisitional situation like that, or it happens in some other area, change is coming. It's coming for you. Whether it's AI or whatever, you can probably go to, my brother and I had this conversation about my grandfather who was born.

largely in a world of horses, right? Cars were around, but they were unattainable for him. And they were, you know, in that area, right? And then he died in a world of like, you know, jets and mobile phones and every other thing, right? So it's pretty crazy to notice the change in one person's lifetime. And then we're gonna live through the same thing. You know, I don't know what those changes will be, but they're happening already. you know,

Chris Whyte (: 29:16

Hehehe

Chris Whyte (: 29:28

Hehehehehe

Chris Whyte (: 29:34

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 29:43

Chris, I think you're the age where probably, the internet was not a big deal when you were young and now it drives an amazing part of our culture and business and that's going to happen with AI and everything else that goes on. It'll be almost hard for us to imagine all the change that has happened over that time period. It actually, you have a, what do they call it, survivorship bias.

Chris Whyte (: 29:51

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 30:10

where you don't, you almost forget about that, the change that you went through, it's just normal now.

Chris Whyte (: 30:10

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 30:17

Yeah, it's yeah, thinking back to it, know, weird computers in the house. first memory of the computer at a Commodore 64, which which I thought was incredible. We were in the meager with a PC at one point, but it was I don't remember what I think I was in secondary school when the Internet became a thing and you could start creating kind of GeoCity's websites and that was

Rich Thrush (: 30:27

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 30:45

Me and my friends will learn how to code HTML. But you think now the teenagers kind of in secondary school now, they must be becoming wizards on AI and prompts. And it's just a generational thing, isn't it? It's just that it's the next step. And who knows what it will be for our grandkids. know, what kind of steps they're kind of learn about. It's kind of scary when you think about it really.

Rich Thrush (: 30:59

Sure.

Rich Thrush (: 31:11

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 31:14

You

Rich Thrush (: 31:14

Yeah, I'm sure you do. think you have kids. I have a couple kids and I try to, yeah, they're gonna go through change too, right? And you can't prepare them for that. The only way that I think about preparing them is just trying to help them understand the principles behind adaptation and how you can, because that's something that goes on forever, right? If you think about how, it is more process-based. Process-based thinking, yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 31:23

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 31:29

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 31:35

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 31:39

Yeah, absolutely. Cool. All right, we've kind of dove deep, but I want to get a bit deeper. You mentioned on our intake call for this that you wanted to kind of go deep and philosophical. So where do ideas come from, Rich? Let's just throw that out there.

Rich Thrush (: 31:48

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 32:03

No, that's a good, thank you for opening the topic because it's a weird one, And actually a good lead-in as we're talking about process because ideas do come from people. That's the short answer. Hey, I have a one-word answer for you. We're done, it's people. But we could also talk about it for two hours, right? And that is...

Chris Whyte (: 32:20

People.

Rich Thrush (: 32:28

That's something that, you know, people don't spend a lot of time thinking about. They're so focused on ideas. Hey, give me a great idea, but they're not focused on how, on how to make that happen. And that's been a bigger role in a lot of the businesses I've been in is what's next. Because you're, going back to the Motorola conversation or the Nerf conversation, any of those is you make, even if you find yourself in a successful position, you really should, you need to be thinking about

what the next big thing is going to be and what can drive people to that area. So I have spent a tremendous amount of time in my career in this area just talking about trying to fill the pipeline of what could be next and then try to filter out which ones are going to be the most successful. And that's a great role for designers. It's a great role for technologists. And a great role for business people too because you've got all those components going on and you might have seen from, I don't know, any given

Chris Whyte (: 33:20

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 33:28

schooling that you've had. They all have their kind of approach. If you go to a technical background, then they have a very technical driven methodical method for innovating. then designers are very often, if you go to some of the schools I respect the most, they spend a lot of time trying to understand people and what their needs are. And then the business aspect is very, very common too. So I think if I try to boil it down when I...

when I work with the team and start really with people is the great place to think. Because ultimately they're the ones that you're trying to serve. And you need to know them like you know, I don't know, your sibling. You need to know if they can, every weird thing about them from their formative years and things like that. that helps you because it helps inform, I mean,

Think about the people you can buy great gifts for, right? In your family or in your life. It's tough for a coworker if you just met them. But if you think about your sibling and how long you've known them, you can find something that really, really ties back to something that's at their core. And that's essentially what you're doing in most of the roles that we have, right? As a product developer, as a designer, whatever your role is, it's really getting to the core of what they need.

Chris Whyte (: 34:54

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 34:56

So observations, great. First thing that I always recommend is just go to someone's house, go to whatever the situation is and watch them and spend a lot of time with them. Probably more than you think is necessary. I like it's almost boring and ask them questions about, was the first time, if it was, if you're working on guitars or something, you might ask someone, what was your first guitar? What was the first time you saw someone play a guitar?

when did you first even think about playing music and why? And really get back, back, back to where they were five years old because those things don't go away. They stick and they're the beginnings of decision making for that particular area. So that's one is observation. I assume you've done some of this. You probably do it in your normal life anyway, Chris.

Chris Whyte (: 35:35

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 35:49

I do. Yeah. I mean, it's the type of the show. It's like, why is my go to, know, or what does that mean? Kind of what impact is that? So I try and it sometimes in my head, I feel like I might be irritating people when they just want to give me a job briefing, but really it's, it's, it's like, okay, the vacancies and the job description that you've outlined is just, it's just one part of it. want to understand what difference, you know, having this person in your business is going to make.

What does it enable you to do? What's enabled the business to do? You know, I want to really get under the skin and that's going to generate ideas. It's going to generate follow up questions. It's going to maybe change the brief. Because quite often I think, you know, people don't understand. I haven't really gone that far back. They've just been either tasked with putting a job description together by someone else in the business or.

they've just had a resignation. So they just rehash the last job description or they're trying to replace. So, mean, trying to replace you in a business would be an absolute nightmare because of how kind of, know, the many, many hats that you wear. So trying to put that on a, you know, on a job description would be, you know, it's almost like the unicorn role. I'm not trying to give you an ego here, but you know, because you were with a, with a business for so long, you do tend to morph and change and trying to replace someone with light for light.

isn't always practical. yeah, and ask those deeper, what's the point really? Would it be easier if we didn't hire?

Rich Thrush (: 37:22

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 37:26

That's a great I mean, it's a great question to ask those those kind of Extreme questions that frame out the space like what happens if you didn't have this role? You know what happens if you had three people fill that role? What happens you can have all these different discussions about about and that will help them frame up the problem That's the next part which I love you you You took it right there which is to frame it up and and lots another part that people struggle with because they

Chris Whyte (: 37:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 37:42

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 37:51

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 37:55

They just say, I talked to a bunch of users. I had some great ideas. But they never get into the actual real problem statement. And that's worth spending a lot of time on and being very particular about it because it provides the guardrails for the team. provides the way you frame the problem can mean many, many different things. I don't know if you know Theodore Levitt, but he has this famous quote about

Chris Whyte (: 38:04

Mm-hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 38:25

see if I can get it right from memory. it's the people aren't looking to buy a drill. They're looking to buy a hole in the wall. And this the idea behind it is, of course, that they're looking for a result. And so you could very frame, you could frame the problem is, let's design another drill, let's design the best drill. But if you frame the problem around, hey, I need a hole in the wall, then there could be a punch, could be a hammer, could be whatever a laser, who knows? I mean, it could

Chris Whyte (: 38:33

Mm-hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 38:55

You could even go further and say, do they even need a hole in the wall? Why are they asking for a hole in the wall? Could we have a sticker to hang a picture or something like that? So framing it is a big deal. And that's a cool conversation to have. And that's what you're doing. I don't know how consciously. It sounds like you do think about it pretty consciously when you fill a role.

Chris Whyte (: 38:59

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 39:13

I do, yeah, I probably think too much in some respects, it's, yeah, it's important, isn't it? Because it's like, sometimes it's like, we end up and we're looking at a completely different thing to what they thought we were going into. And I've not done that just to flex my kind of psychological powers or anything like that. It's more, what is the point? Do you really need it, like you say, do you really need it a whole, or is the end result to have a picture on a wall?

because the whole is one way of getting to that. there are other other options. So, I'm personally I'm fascinated by that kind of, you know, digging what I think it's like the five whys, you know, before you get the actual answer, you know, and the psychology around that and really getting into meaning. And it's probably why I've been in been in my line of work for so long, because I'm able to ask those questions both.

Rich Thrush (: 39:59

Right. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 40:13

to business and also individuals. It's like, why do you want to move on? You know, have you actually spoken to your boss about how you feel? You know, if they could change one thing that would make your life a lot better and keep you. Well, why don't we go and ask for that before we start sending out to interviews, which is going to be a really stressful kind of situation to go through when you're quite happy where you are.

Rich Thrush (: 40:17

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 40:37

I love that you brought up the five whys. That's, you know, one. And people may not be familiar with that construct, which, you know, if can just explain it really quickly, it's just trying to get to the root cause of something, right? So if you ask why, and then you give a pause and ask someone why again, it sounds inquisitive. And I have a friend that does that very aggressively almost. He says, why? And keep going. Which I think is a, he's from New York. So it's a, that's his style.

Chris Whyte (: 40:59

You

Chris Whyte (: 41:03

Yeah, gets away with it.

Rich Thrush (: 41:06

But it's great because you can see how high you go and very often it gets back to these deeper conversations. There was another guy that I worked with for a long time, Steve Russak, and he was famous for this, that we would have a sort of like, our way up the ladder to the highest why we could get. And it's always like, because I wanna feel like I'm a good person or something like that, why do you need a hole in the wall? Because I wanna...

frame a picture, why do we want to a picture? Because I want to have a picture that speaks to me. Why do you want to have a picture that speaks to you? And then you go up to these super high end things. That's probably too far. That's probably at the top of our existential understanding of the world. But it is cool to start going there and have that conversation and see how far you can go and then find the

Chris Whyte (: 41:42

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 41:49

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 41:57

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's quite, can be quite time consuming if you, if you do keep climbing that ladder, but it's, I found it, you know, when I've, whenever it's something's not gone to plan, you know, someone's turned an offer down or the client hasn't made, you know, the offer or what, what, know, you had an outcome that, you know, wasn't really what you were aiming for. I can track it back. So I probably didn't ask why enough probably didn't drill into that. That

that thing that got in the way of that other thing happening, we probably could have uncovered that sooner in the process. Whether it would change the outcome, probably not, but at least it might have changed the amount of time that all the different parties invested in that to get to an unsatisfactory outcome. Yeah, I it.

Rich Thrush (: 42:42

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 42:46

But I think that's one of the ones, especially as I have looked back and I think about how do you get to great ideas? That is one of them is like the collaboration and discussion that you have been spending, taking the time to actually do that as opposed to, immediately you come to ideas as a designer, right? You have these thoughts and of course something pops in your head.

it's tough to just push that down for a second and spend more time collaborate with some people, especially if they're really different, they're the exact opposite of you, they're like a lawyer or something like that. Those types of people for me are great to speak to because they look so differently than me. If you're in a totally different area, a psychologist is another one. When I talk to someone who has a psychology background, it's really...

Chris Whyte (: 43:16

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 43:25

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 43:36

it's really fruitful because they're just thinking in a totally different way than me and I learn a lot and it helps me frame the problem and it helps me think of new solutions. And they may have, what's the other one? If you're a hammer, everything's a nail and if you're an engineer, you find a technical solution to everything. But the solution may be like a marketing or a communication solution. That may be the best one. So if you're speaking to a diverse crowd of people.

Chris Whyte (: 43:55

Mm-mm.

Chris Whyte (: 44:03

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 44:04

then that's a great way to get those ideas and really broaden your thinking a lot.

Chris Whyte (: 44:11

Yeah, I love the curious model of the, you know, the naive, kind of input to a this problem as well, you know, and I mean, naive and like a really nice way in terms of like, they're asking why from a from a place of curiosity and quite not questioning kind of why are doing that? So what, why are you doing that? You know, and having, it's having the lawyer having the psychologist, you know, having the graduate on the team, someone that's, you know,

Rich Thrush (: 44:32

but yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 44:41

not hindered by, you know, this is how we do things. it's always got to be a nail that puts the hole in the wall because I'm a hammer, you know, it's, it's like, well, what, are we doing it like that? And some of the best innovations and founders I've spoken to just on this podcast really, you know, it's quite interesting that they'll come from non-traditional backgrounds. So they're not encumbered by the traditional way of doing things that they're

Rich Thrush (: 44:50

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 45:07

Mm.

Chris Whyte (: 45:09

They have to ask why because they don't know any other way. So they've got to figure it out. So really interesting.

Rich Thrush (: 45:13

Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a great plan to approach really anything in life. If you don't know, you just ask. Keep asking questions and you see people who have succeeded in that way because they're so curious. They're so open to learning new things all the time that they could do anything they want. They just jumped into it and started asking and then it goes and they've developed that mindset, is pretty cool. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 45:20

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 45:32

Massive Ray.

Chris Whyte (: 45:38

Awesome. Cool.

Rich Thrush (: 45:41

And maybe I'll end that thought just on ideas. The other part is, of course, brand and the constraints. And putting guardrails around ideas at the back end of the process, after you've had the chance to dream, is great as well. So that has been a lot of my work as well. What should a brand stand for? What are the true tenets of it? And it doesn't have to be in a way that is, quite often, that's emotional.

Chris Whyte (: 45:50

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 46:10

That's a big part. It doesn't have to be functional things. And that, think, is interesting to ask for any given ideas. Is this the right, does this feel like the right idea? Not even, can we do it for the right amount of money? Is it technically feasible? All these other things. But does it feel like the brand? That's a good question to ask when you're in this about the work you're doing. So I'll leave it at that. As people are evaluating their ideas, you know.

Chris Whyte (: 46:22

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 46:32

Mm-hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 46:38

They very often have these rigid filters for ideas and what to go forward. But how does it feel? That's a great question to ask.

Chris Whyte (: 46:42

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 46:46

I think you mentioned Simon Sinek as well, know, the the the why question comes into play there and there's plenty of examples in in his book around, you know, where brands have kind of launched products like to an underwhelming kind of reception. But then when they get back to their core values and release products that are more in line with their why than they tend to do better.

so, yeah, interesting. So, let's talk about, cause we we went off a bit of a, a bit of a tangent, but a thoroughly enjoyable, tangent, but, let's talk about some of the brands that you've worked on, and managing a, a portfolio of brand. mean, what, what's been the, what's been the biggest challenge in managing innovation across such a diverse portfolio.

Rich Thrush (: 47:43

It's always resources, right? And choices because we can't do everything and even at the biggest corporation you have limitations on the team and where to put them. So going through the strat process to think about where are you going to have those choices and aligning really with the interim team is a big deal. So that's one of the things that I do in almost every role is, where are we going to make our choices?

very often I try to attach and ask to that. if you're working with the executive team, they may say like, hey, I want to do this and do this and do this. Right away, I'm asking for the resources to actually make those things happen, because that puts a little bit of pain into the conversation around the choice. So if they want to do everything, OK, cool. We need the resources to do that. But that almost never happens. It very, very rarely happens.

And the other way around that is to work around the things that you want to focus on and the things that you can get the most out of. that is an exercise within that I think a lot of folks, they sleep on. They don't really think too much directly about it. People are asking for one focus in one area, and then they just do it. But it's worth looking at the whole portfolio of thinking. It could be brands, could be regions, could be consumers, whatever you're.

your thinking is, you can move in those areas and that will, that's a worthy conversation to talk about where you're gonna get the most bang for your buck. And it could be, that bang could actually be dollars or it could be things like brand credibility or it could be leadership in an area. So it may not just be about financial growth but it could also be about other goals that you may have as an organization.

Chris Whyte (: 49:37

Wonderful. I want to talk about some of the brands and some of the case studies as well. you mentioned you've got a few kind of stories in your back pocket. One you've already mentioned earlier about the thermometer, the Braun non-contact thermometer, which was an example of consumer health innovation that ultimately went on to lead the market. I think a bit of an unexpected market leader as well, right?

Rich Thrush (: 50:03

Yeah, absolutely. So if you grew up in an era of stick thermometers, like most people probably listening have, that was that you may have memories from being a child of having your parents take your temperature with a stick thermometer and things like that. So that technology has been around for a long time. And Braun developed a technology for ear thermometry, which was an infrared sensor that would sort of read in the ear, which was really great at the time.

It was a huge jump forward if you grew up in the stick thermometer era. All of sudden, you didn't have to sit on the edge of the bed with a glass thermometer under your tongue for two minutes or something like that, with you rattling against your teeth. That's sort what I remember from my childhood. the, know, so Ron came up with an innovation to take the temperature through the ear, which was really great because you could take a much more accurate temperature in a much quicker period of time, but still it's invasive, right? And if you...

One of the things we learned, as I mentioned, we always spend a lot of time going into people's homes and watching them actually use products like this. We found right away, if you go and watch some parents with children, children are unpredictable, right? So it ends up being a situation where even, you you would think sticking something in your ear, it's not a big deal. For you or me, sure, go ahead. It's not like you're getting an injection or something like that. It's relatively minor. But these situations...

Chris Whyte (: 51:26

traumatic yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 51:27

are very often in like the dad has the kid crying and then the mom is trying to put the thing in the ear and everybody's screaming, you know, and so it's just like that, that changed the, our thinking quite a lot because there were already industrial non-contact thermometers. So there were thermometers that could take a temperature at a distance, but they were not super, super accurate.

Chris Whyte (: 51:34

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 51:56

at that time. they were, so we were framing the problem in a way that we really weren't sure, you know, if that would be accurate enough to do that. But ultimately we realized that the problem was much more about this invasiveness and how frustrating it is to take a kid's temperature. So the ultimate decision making was more around how can I get a great temperature that is accurate enough, but you you don't have to.

stick something in someone's ear and do things like that. So that really led to the choice to develop a non-contact thermometer around non-invasiveness and that was the real point of difference. And that was a great product, right? So it did quite well in the market. It was one of the early entrants in consumer non-contact thermometers. if you're a parent, you notice the difference, right? Instead of having to wrangle your kid, all of a sudden you can just take the temperature with it.

And sometimes they even do it themselves. My kids did that at that time. just take it take it themselves because it's kind of fun at that point. And then, sadly, I think we had COVID, But the business result of that was that we had an excellent product that was already the easiest to use in that area and really well positioned to help people in difficult times.

Chris Whyte (: 53:03

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 53:15

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 53:24

That was amazing jump for the business, which was, know, sort of like it helped the business, but we were already there in terms of the parking in the market and really being the right one. then you have these sort of, sometimes you get wind in your sales like that for a business and sometimes it doesn't happen, but it was already great. And then that put it, you know, even pushed it further. So that was a pretty great success story for the business itself.

Chris Whyte (: 53:52

Yeah, absolutely. It's like you've got to ride. You're to my analogies mixed up, but you can only kind of play the cards that are dealt to you, can't you? You do what you can to set up and you had a successful product before that. then obviously COVID just, you know, either exaggerated or destroyed businesses, I think. You know, you look at kind of companies like Logitech that absolutely flew because everyone was working from home all of a sudden.

Rich Thrush (: 54:21

Right.

Chris Whyte (: 54:22

But then the back end of when things returned to normal and normal, people started going back into the offices. I guess the same with Braun, not so many people buying these devices anymore because we've all got them. I've still got the same main setup that I had in 2020.

Rich Thrush (: 54:37

Right. It goes back to something earlier you were talking about, know, an Apple and being, making a strong choice to go forward with something without necessarily having market data. And I cannot tell you, I'm sure some of your audience has a feel for this, but when you're in a corporation, the risk aversiveness in the team is so high and...

the willingness to test things and test it make sure that they are working. I'm talking about quantitative test. Not just like having users do things, but like, should we do this product or not? we, let's go expose it to 300 consumers versus the key competitors and talk about it. And then in most cases when it actually launches, you know, there are outside influence factors that cause it to be a success or not. So it's like, okay, we spent all this time.

testing quantitatively internally to make sure that we felt good about this. And then, you know, we had COVID or, you know, the factory shut down and we couldn't ship it anyway. You have like these factors that play. I think that's, I would give it a grain of salt. not against trying to put some numbers behind things, but your point about like just understanding is it a great idea for people?

Chris Whyte (: 55:36

Hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 55:44

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 55:52

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 56:01

first and foremost in my mind.

Chris Whyte (: 56:03

Yeah, I you know, we speak a lot about kind of product development and, you know, I've recruited lots of R and D and test, engineers over the years. And, you know, there's a big part of the job that's pre-launch and making sure that the product's safe and they've done all their FMAs and have tested, you know, all the different scenarios that you think might come up, but until, you know, the products out in the market and it's, it's with the retailers or it's with the customers.

You don't really know hardly any of the scenarios because people will do all sorts of stuff to your product. And yes, it also comes down to marketing as well and storytelling. And if you've got the great you can have the best product in the world. But if the story doesn't resonate with the target market, then or conversely, you might find an unexpected market because it of it triggers thoughts that you never

Rich Thrush (: 56:36

Yeah, it's totally unthinkable.

Rich Thrush (: 56:47

you

Chris Whyte (: 57:02

workshops never uncovered so it's good to have a little bit of unpredictability I think just to keep things interesting. But let's talk about, because I'm conscious of time, let's talk about do you need to go by the way if you got a

Rich Thrush (: 57:09

Yeah. Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 57:20

No, I'm sorry, don't have my, I have my, I thought I turned all my alerts off, they pop them out here, so I must have clicked the wrong thing, so apologies.

Chris Whyte (: 57:25

You

Chris Whyte (: 57:29

That's cool. I often have it where my office phone rings, but it's in my ear and I'm trying to turn the thing off.

Rich Thrush (: 57:35

But yeah, let me just double check and make sure that I'm not.

Rich Thrush (: 57:42

because people do keep calling me here. Now it's 7 a.m. in LA. you know, now we get into the craziness. Yeah, I have nothing on my calendar. I don't know why people are calling me.

Chris Whyte (: 57:46

Okay.

Chris Whyte (: 57:55

7am? I'm barely into my second coffee at that point.

Rich Thrush (: 57:59

Well, I'm back and forth between New York and LA, so I'm probably more on New York time. it does feel a little bit different for me. So I'm getting into it here. Okay. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 58:07

Got you.

Chris Whyte (: 58:11

Awesome. Well, we'll wrap things up in the next kind of five minutes. So if that's OK. let's talk about Guitar Center and the opportunity that obviously you found yourself in now. Obviously from my day job's recruitment, so I'm always interested in hearing people's kind of experiences of being recruited, especially when it's as fresh as yours.

Rich Thrush (: 58:38

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 58:39

full disclaimer, I had nothing to do with it. So anyone listening thinking this is a plug? No, just genuinely curious. Could absolutely right. I could have smashed it yet. But so how did you how did you first come across the opportunity at Guitar Center and what was that kind of process? Because it was a relocation as well, wasn't it?

Rich Thrush (: 59:00

Yeah, and for me, I'm interested in roles. And when I see something that I very often apply for it, even just to talk. So even if I'm not, even just to have a conversation, that's a good one. So this one was a posted role. And I believe they looked for a long time to try to find someone who might be a good fit. And that took quite a while. So I think they did have a question of.

where the focus should be within the role because it's kind of multi-ranging. And to your point earlier, I'm a little bit of a Swiss Army knife in some ways in all the capabilities I have. And there were probably killer branding people or killer technical people imagining their journey. And then ultimately they came to some perspective on who might be a good fit. But yeah, I applied for this one. Usually it's people calling me rather than.

Than the role being posted itself. So that was a great way to get into it. And then it was a pretty great conversation. The leadership team here is incredible. So they've been through a lot of change in the last couple of years. So I'm 100 % aligned with their thinking on how to grow the business and so forth. it's really cool to work with people that are in the same mindset and they're dynamic and there's a lot of great change going on here. for me that

drew me to the role. Of course, it's got like all the pieces that I like. It's got the portfolio part. It's got the animation part. It's got the design part. It's got business and how to tell brand stories, which is great. Like owning brands is a lot of fun. So all those pieces are things that I'm super excited about. And then the icing on the cake is just, you know, it's in musical instruments. And I can't say that I'm a fantastic musician, but I've been in bands and so forth.

Chris Whyte (: 01:00:31

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:00:54

For me, it's super fulfilling to work in something that you love. And the people here are just passionate. It's not like other businesses where you may work in CPG or something and people kind of treat it like just a business role and they're just plodding along. But everyone here, there's no one in this building that is not highly engaged and has an opinion on their own. So that's pretty cool to work with an environment like that. It's really, it's fun.

Chris Whyte (: 01:01:11

shh shh shh

Chris Whyte (: 01:01:22

I hope most of your team are guitar players or something else rather than drummers because imagine being in a room full of drummers, there's a lot of tapping going on and that could...

Rich Thrush (: 01:01:33

Yeah, they just, they do have quiet rooms here, which is great. It's such a cool culture because many people are in bands, so they have practice spaces on site and they have a big stage in the other building. So most of that work happens in the other building. And yeah, one of the brands that we have is a brand called Simmons, which is about...

Chris Whyte (: 01:01:39

Okay.

Chris Whyte (: 01:01:46

That's awesome.

Chris Whyte (: 01:01:57

yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:01:58

electronic drums, so you may not know it, which is a growing category as you know, or you should probably guess because of all the parents in the world and their kids, right? Especially as more and more people move in closer environments and apartments and things like that, you know, having electronic kit is a pretty great way to be able to play and have the kind of fun that you can play. And they're quite good now. If you played one in the 80s or the 90s or whatever, you know, 10 years ago even,

Chris Whyte (: 01:02:03

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 01:02:11

Hmm.

Rich Thrush (: 01:02:27

Check them out again, it's worth thinking about an electronic kit because it's not like it used to be.

Chris Whyte (: 01:02:33

Yeah, the samples are a lot better now as well, aren't they? So it's very hard to tell an electric drum kit to an acoustic one now, especially if you're playing a good one. But it's for the ears to differentiate with the sound process, and it's available in the samples on offer. So that's really cool. just as your job title then, was product, is it portfolio?

Rich Thrush (: 01:02:35

Mm-hmm.

Chris Whyte (: 01:03:02

VP of portfolio is it? Private brands.

Rich Thrush (: 01:03:03

VP of private brands, right? It's VP of private brands. And as we were sort of talking before, you can think of retailers as very often having private label things where they go and find something in a factory or a key competitor and they put their brand on it. Our focus is much more around actual design products for people, right? And we treat these brands like real brands, you know?

So it's cool to have that arm of the business that is in that area rather than just putting a label on something else.

Chris Whyte (: 01:03:40

Awesome. And what? Yeah, just just because this is something that comes up, especially at your level is, you know, it's very difficult to find, like vacancies advertised, let alone try and find the right ones because of the digital physical kind of kind of job title sharing and all that kind of stuff. So was it advertised as as VP private brands? Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:03:51

Thank

Rich Thrush (: 01:04:03

It was VP private brands and even for myself, I was curious if that was the right title because I didn't initially, I think I have alerts on things like VP brand, VP product, VP design, and I've helped those.

Chris Whyte (: 01:04:09

Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 01:04:19

So you were already searching for that kind of role. So it was coming up,

Rich Thrush (: 01:04:22

I realize because I have a broader background, but I would encourage people to do that anyway and apply for jobs that are adjacent and look at those things, even if you're at a sort of mid or entry level, because sometimes you're looking for someone who has a little bit of a superpower that's outside of the job description. So that could be if it's like...

Chris Whyte (: 01:04:26

Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 01:04:36

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:04:46

You know, I think they wrote the best job description they could for this role. I'm not sure if they necessarily knew the right person for it. I'm thankful that it came to me and that it was good. Yeah.

Chris Whyte (: 01:04:57

Yeah, absolutely. It did its job in the end, didn't it? It's such an easy thing to get wrong with the job titles in advertising. you put one word in the wrong place, or you use a descriptor that isn't used in one part of the country. That one word could change the audience.

Rich Thrush (: 01:05:19

right?

Chris Whyte (: 01:05:23

of that advert and likewise when you're searching for work you know that one word or job title that you put in or exclude into your search changes what you see as well so yeah I'm just obviously very interested in the psychology around that as well but

Rich Thrush (: 01:05:23

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:05:41

Yeah. Well, I think that's why working with someone like you is great, right? Because it's a little bit of a sounding board. You can collaborate with someone who's more in the field rather than, you know, when I go looking for a role or something like that, then I have my preconceived notions of what I might say about that role. But it may not be the right terminology. It may not be the right description that draws the right candidates. And very often, I think you probably were going here, is that a lot of it happens through networking. So it happens.

Chris Whyte (: 01:05:59

Yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:06:11

once you can post it and that is a big part of it.

Chris Whyte (: 01:06:14

Most of it does. Yeah. One of the guys I met out in Boston on my trip there last month gave me a tour of Boston Dynamics, which was awesome. And they've got a house band as well, which was really cool. But he got the role through applying for a role that he was well overqualified for, but he had the same kind of manager. I just want to meet people. I just want to get in and do interesting stuff. And when he met with the leadership there, they

Rich Thrush (: 01:06:26

Okay.

Chris Whyte (: 01:06:43

And the questions that he asked as well about why they're doing things and what they're looking to achieve. It then opened up an opportunity. So now he's leading a whole division and he's building a team out off the back of a, you know, he sent an application in and he messaged someone he knew well and said, Hey, I've just applied for this role. I know it's well below kind of where I'm at. I just want to do interesting stuff. And now he's, yeah, the technical director, I think, for a, yeah, for a really

Rich Thrush (: 01:06:57

Bye.

Rich Thrush (: 01:07:03

in.

Chris Whyte (: 01:07:12

Interesting business. So I'm Really cool. Right. I'm conscious of time closing thoughts and What are you most excited about kind of getting stuck into with this new portfolio of brands? And you know, and how can people kind of find out more about what you're doing should they be interested?

Rich Thrush (: 01:07:31

Yeah, think when I think first it's a tremendous opportunity, right? If you look at these brands, the development could be twice as big as they are. Any one of them has tremendous opportunities. So that's what we're looking at, right? Is how can we grow and how can we deliver amazing products that people are going to love? Not just products that people are going to buy because they're a few dollars cheaper than a national brand or something.

But things that people actually seek out and so that's the work to be done that I'm most excited about. And I would say in the future, know, the best way to reach me is on LinkedIn. So that's kind of my main channel and I cross post things there and that's a great way to stay in touch. As I mentioned, I'm interested in connecting with people because...

broader reach of thinking is important. And that's usually how I find roles or how I find other people is through those kinds of conversations with people that are very different than me. So I hope to meet some of your audience.

Chris Whyte (: 01:08:38

Awesome. Wonderful. We will make that happen. But Rich, it's been awesome spending time with you today. Thank you again so much for taking the call so early. For those of us who just turned 7am out on the West Coast. The sun is just getting up. We are really, really grateful for your time today and best of luck with the new adventure.

Rich Thrush (: 01:08:52

It's on top now, yeah.

Rich Thrush (: 01:09:05

Thanks Chris for the amazing opportunity. It's been great.

Chris Whyte (: 01:09:07

You're very welcome.