A Tale of Fermented Shark and Unearned Confidence - Stay Calm Industries

Company: Stay Calm Industries

Guest: Evan Johnson

Year Started: 2013

Employees: 1-10

What do you do after losing your job at a coffee shop? If you’re Evan Johnson, you start a marketing agency the very next day. In this episode, Evan shares the unconventional story behind Stay Calm Industries, from landing his first clients as a barista to building a creative team and signing contracts in Iceland. It’s a candid conversation about leadership, hiring, and the “unearned confidence” that often fuels entrepreneurs at the start.

Key Takeaways

• Why “unearned confidence” can be a powerful force when starting a business
• A leadership mindset that gives teams credit for wins while owning mistakes
• The realities of hiring your first employee and what it teaches about management
• Why trust and communication  can help young talent do exceptional work

Transcript

Stay Calm Industries

Russel 0:01

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where owners and experts share the real journey, the early struggles, the breakthrough moments, and everything in between. I'm your host Russel Dubree, former eight figure agency owner, turned business coach, sold my agency and now helps agency leaders create their ideal business. Every agency has a story, and this is your front row seat. This is an agency story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Evan Johnson with Stay Calm Industries with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Evan.

Evan 0:39

Hi Russell. Thanks for having me.

Russel 0:41

Glad to have you. Kick us off right outta the gate here. Tell us what Stay Calm Industries does and who you do it for.

Evan 0:47

Yeah, we're a full service marketing agency. Everything from branding up to websites, print collateral, paid advertising, social media management, the whole thing, and we do it for almost everybody, including, I think we still have like one drug left, but really med device to private boarding schools to traffic protection. We're full service and it's equal opportunity.

Russel 1:14

And where is stay Calm industries located at?

Evan 1:17

We're based in beautiful Allentown, Pennsylvania, so about an hour-ish above Philly and an hour-ish away from New York.

Russel 1:25

All

Evan 1:26

right. We have a lot of warehouses where we are.

Russel 1:28

Nice for all the folks. That's

Evan 1:30

fine.

Russel 1:33

For all the folks that have never been to Allentown, what is something interesting or unique about your location?

Evan 1:38

Uh, so that song that probably all of your listeners are thinking of right now is actually about Bethlehem. Allentown, let's see, in the sixties, we were the world's leading producer of silk

Russel 1:50

really. That is, that is truly unique.

Evan 1:52

Yeah. Yeah. It happened right here in Pennsylvania. Right next door to steel.

Russel 1:56

Alright, we're learning already. There

Evan 1:58

you go.

Russel 1:58

Well, I want to hear more, uh, interesting facts about your journey and your agency. So we'll start from as early as you want to go back to, but I, I'm really curious about young Evan. What was he doing in his life, even before we're talking about career and jobs, what was, what was young Evan doing?

Evan 2:15

Oh, young. Evan was spending a lot of time in my dad's garage learning how to build things, learning how to weld, learning how to, you know, work power tools and stuff.

Russel 2:26

Was this forced or was this on of your own accord?

Evan 2:29

Oh, I wanted to, Right At the same time I was spending time with my mom, learning how to sew, learning how to paint, learning how to do all of that stuff. And then school, introduced me to photography. I did not do well in school. So thank God for photography, business and screen printing classes because that's why I graduated. But yeah, you know, I was learning visual stuff. I was learning how to work with tools and how to create things, which I think has probably served me well.

Russel 2:58

I can imagine. That's very cool. Very fascinating. A man of many talents. I mean, at that point in your life, did you have any sense of where you were headed, what you were, what you were gonna be when you grew up, so to speak?

Evan 3:08

Well, when I was really little, I wanted to be the president, a scientist, and astronaut all, all at the same time. And then I, I distinctly remember around probably 10 or so asking my mom, you know, I, I had read some list of like how much on average certain industries make, right? And I was like, oh, photographer,$20,000 a year. Is that a lot? And she was like, no, it's not a lot. And look where I've gotten now, but no, after high school. I went to school for a couple different things. I went to school for fashion design, left that pretty early. I went to school for autobody and hot rod design. Left that because automotive paint was gonna kill me real fast, like, you know, fall over in the booth and die fast. So, you know, didn't wanna keep doing that and, you know, kind went from there. I, I didn't really have much of a plan at that point. I jobs. Living at my mom's house.

Russel 4:03

All right. Already fascinated how we're gonna turn. We, we know what this turns into an agency story, but where does that begin?

Evan 4:10

So as most things do, it began with a girl started dating a girl down Doylestown, which is, you know, it was about an hour. So I started going down there, started spending more time down there. Got a job at a coffee shop. I broke up with me, still had the job at the coffee shop as happens. Hey, listen, my wife's happy about that, so there we

Russel 4:31

go. Yeah, that's probably fair. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Evan 4:33

And then, you know, one day, July 31st, 2013, they came in and said, nobody come in tomorrow. We're closed. I said, oh wait, can I curse on this?

Russel 4:47

Yes, this is a PG 13 podcast.

Evan 4:49

Gotcha. Uh, and I said, oh shit, I should probably figure out a job. So I was watching a lot of Mad Men at that time.

Russel 4:57

Oh, like closed? Closed? We're talking here. Not.

Evan 4:59

Oh, closed. Closed, right?

Russel 5:01

Yes.

Evan 5:01

Okay. Like we're the leases with somebody else now. Gotcha. Yeah. Yep. So I was watching a lot of Mad Men at the time, and I decided to start a advertising agency. Which just calling it that tells you how little I knew about that world at the time. Right.

Russel 5:20

Is this like mad is like. The reason you said, this is what I'm gonna pick up, because I, I heard a lot of really fascinating skills here, but I don't, not sure. I heard advertising agency and anything you'd shared in your past.

Evan 5:33

No, you didn't. I guess the closest I would've gotten was photography, but, you know, I had always paid attention. I had always paid attention to, well, that brand looks cool, that ad. You know, actually makes me feel something as I was, you know, working my retail jobs at, at Best Buy at AutoZone and saying like, this isn't gonna motivate anybody, but I have no power to change that at this point. Right. So I was watching Mad Men for probably the, I don't know, third time, and this happened, and I, let's do the next day. So August 1st, I. Kind of the very basics. My first website was just a Tumblr blog with all the stuff turned off

Russel 6:23

okay.

Evan 6:24

And we, we went from there.

Russel 6:26

Okay. This is truly fascinating and oddly enough, it's making me sitting there think I've never seen Mad Men. I mean, I've seen Little Clips here and there, but I've never seen Mad Men. I feel like being in, in literally almost my whole career, being in the agency business, this is a little bit of a travesty that I've not watched Mad Men.

Evan 6:44

So it's, it's a classic. Yeah.

Russel 6:45

Yeah,

Evan 6:46

definitely.

Russel 6:47

I've seen enough clips to be intrigued. All right, so here we go. We're, we're gonna add this to the Russell Show list. Okay. An idea and a Tumblr website. How are you even going out in the world getting clients?

Unearned Confidence

Evan 6:57

Well, being a barista was a huge help for that. Honestly, because we, so we weren't at a Starbucks, we were an independent shop, right? So also other small business owners in Doylestown would come to us to get their coffee in the morning. And I worked the morning shift. I was waking up at three 30 in the morning at my mom's house to get showered, drive an hour, and open up by five 30, right? So the bar owners, the record store owners, the small business people were coming and getting their coffee. So I was able to build a rapport with them. So then my first month I was able to sign a bar and a record store in town. And you know, it was probably in total like a thousand bucks a month, but it was enough to pay my car insurance and, and car payments. So, you know, it worked right.

Russel 7:48

This is definitely more in the unique side of origin stories, if not the most unique. Um, I mean, just, just that first conversation. What are you selling? How are you even validating? Like, Hey, I can even do this thing that I'm gonna sell in these conversations,

Evan 8:03

what, almost 13 years later, my wife describes it as unearned confidence. That's exactly what I. Thousand dollars for it. Yeah. And then I went home and learned how to do that. That's how I got someplace. And they were small businesses, they were kind of willing to learn with me and we just kept progressing together. Now neither of them are clients anymore, but that bar is still using that website.

Russel 8:34

Okay.

Evan 8:34

Uh, they haven't changed it in, I dunno, 13, 12 years.

Russel 8:41

It's time to go back to'em.

Evan 8:43

It's time, it's time to, it's time to refresh that. Yeah.

Russel 8:45

Yes,

Evan 8:46

definitely.

Russel 8:46

Okay. I mean, very fascinating. If there is, I don't know if that's a phrase in the dictionary, but deserves your name next to it.

Evan 8:54

Oh, thank you.

Russel 8:56

All right. You got the ball rolling. And where does this go from here? Like were you just building the plane as you were flying it, or did you have some grander plan of what you're really trying to do with all this?

Evan 9:07

Basically I spent about the first six years as a solo guy, you know, always presenting myself as an agency, always, you know, describing myself as a team, right. So it was me, and I know everybody uses the phrase a trusted group of freelancers, right? But it, it was really that, right? For the first couple years I didn't know how to work illustrator, so I had to find designers. What I didn't know, right? So I think as I gained each client, they would ask me, Hey, what about this? And I'd say, yeah, that too. And then, you know, figure that out and incorporate that into the system and incorporate that into what we're doing. I finally signed a client big enough to afford a employee January, 2020, so that was a fun part. We can get into what it's like hiring your first employee just as a worldwide pandemic kicks off. But it was really just trying to grow every day and get better every day, and then eventually starting to replace myself every day. That's the goal now that I'm an A player at running my agency. I'm a B player in everything else we do, but I hire a players to do these things. The 25-year-old across the wall from me is a far better graphic designer than I ever was, but I was good enough to get us to a point where we could hire one, you

Russel 10:34

know? Yeah. I wanna come back to that definitely,'cause that that resonates with my own story is I don't, I did not also possess any of these advertising or marketing skills when I entered the agency business, and that resonates quite a bit. So you said you got a big client. I mean six years is a long time, and then, right. You now make this leap to essentially doubling your size. Was it just the growth of that client or was there anything else just behind this like, Hey, if I don't wanna be the guy for the rest of my life, I've got to go Yeah. Move in this direction.

Evan 11:04

So, to be clear, my first like original big client was probably about a year in. And I was dating my now wife. It was enough for me to get an apartment. That was a huge deal. Right. Still not really sure why that guy put me on. Listen, it was a 2,500 a month retainer. Right? Yeah. But that combined with some other things. I was living pretty good for a 27-year-old, you know? Yeah. In 2020, we signed a client. It was a Icelandic frozen fish company that got referred to us by a video provider that we had worked with previously. They were paying six grand a month. I don't know how I did that, but I got that through. That was enough for me to say like, okay, I don't have time to do this anymore at the skill level that our clients needed. In this room, we have two graphic designers, a copywriter, a project manager, and a digital marketing director that I just sit here most of the time. It's pretty great.

Russel 12:18

Nice. Okay.

Evan 12:19

Yeah.

Russel 12:20

Yeah. Well, I, one I I, and I think a lot of agency owners probably have this. This moment or many of these moments in the growth phases. And if you're sitting at home, think about what that is for you. And if you do hit me up because I'd love to hear what is that, oh crap moment? Like what did I sell? What did I do that I now have to go figure out? But that being clearly in your case, clearly a lot in a lot of these cases of of owners, when I think back on those moments, that's the stretching that. Of catapulted the business, as it sounds like it did in your case

Evan 12:50

with Ice and Catch. We had dedicated to daily social media, produced photo shoots, video shoots, newsletters, e-commerce B2B outreach. There was a ton of stuff we hadn't done before that month. I was out in Iceland signing contracts with the owner in processing facility. I'm probably one of you've. It was a weird thing, you know, I didn't really wanna do any of this, but it was, I gotta do this to be able to get to the next step, right? Because I already knew back then I can't do this forever. I'm not good enough to do that.

Russel 13:29

I always say it. Having an agency, I think gives some of the most unique life experiences. Um, when I think of just so many things, I would probably never have really done in any so many other walks of life that an agency has allowed me to do from trips into the backwoods of Honduras to, you know, I haven't eaten whale, but, um, I I imagine you have more in that journey as well. But I wanna talk more about,'cause I think this will be another take people down memory lane moment of hiring that first employee. Tell us about that experience.

Evan 13:59

So she had been doing some light freelancing for me previous, just kind of writing one or two newsletters a month for, you know, a couple hundred bucks. She was great. I mean, can you imagine doing daily social media for a frozen fish company that only offers two species? And she did that for like a year. Uh, so she started January, 2020. Just as people were starting to, you know, talk about this. Have you heard about this COVID thing? Right. We worked together for about two weeks in person and then we went our separate ways. And then she was working from home. I was working from home. It was a lot. I consider myself. Well, I try to be a very good manager, right? That's the thing that I try and be an A player in. Agency and managing people. And it was tough to learn how to do that, you know, via Slack as we were also figuring out like, alright, well what do we use for project management? What do we use for social media management? This is the first time the person wants to like review the social media before it goes up. How do we build this process? And she didn't have a ton of experience in this either. It went well for a couple years, sadly. She was my first employee. She was also the first person I, she didn't wanna come back in office. Things weren't working out. And uh,

Russel 15:20

yeah,

Evan 15:20

but experience, you gotta call somebody and sit down at in front's experience, you know, different kind. Yeah. But I, I always just try and be the kind of manager I would wanna be managed by.

Russel 15:36

That can go a long way. I think a lot of owners are born out of less than seller work experiences, which creates the, this is the human they want to be. I mean that, that totally makes sense. I think just going remote in that whole business of COVID was unsettling for agencies that have been around and, you know, a lot of experience in those different aspects, but to kind of being, figuring out that all at once, I can see the pain there.

Evan 16:01

Yep. Definitely.

Russel 16:02

Well, that which does not kill us.

Evan 16:05

Exactly. Makes us stronger.

Russel 16:07

Yeah. Here we're, well, I mean, there you go. There you popped in another memory lane. Moment of H having to fire someone for the first time. I feel like this is certainly in my case, when I think back to that moment of. Probably put it off too long and then when you get to that time, I mean, just, I had to just sound when I was doing that the first time, I, I just know I had to sound like I was probably on the verge of tears, uh, as I was uttering. That what, not to make you relive a painful moment, but what was that like for you?

Evan 16:38

Oh, I mean, so thankfully that that original big client I had gotten, you know, that allowed me to move outta my mom's house. At that point, he had become kind of more of a mentor for me. So I was able to reach out to him and ask like, Hey, do you have any advice for this? I wanna make sure that like, yes, I do it. Correct way, but also in a way that is better than any way I've ever been fired. So he was very generous. He hooked me up with his outsourced HR department. He paid for like two hours of their time for me. Oh is, thank you Todd. Yeah. You'll never see this, but thank you. And they were a couple towns over. And so I hopped on a, on a Zoom call with the guy and I went through everything and he was like, okay, well this all makes sense, like you're covered, it's fine. We had called her in and um, yeah, it was probably one of the worst conversations of my life because at at that point I. Basically all of that, right? That like it's just not working out. This sucks. I'm sorry, blah, blah, blah. Not me. It's you. You know? Uh, the worst part was her car had broken down. Been broken down, so she got an Uber ride in from New Jersey and then was like stuck and she had just signed a new lease on an apartment. So that hurt, that sucks. You learn stuff. You learn about the kind of person that you wanna be, and you learn about how you wanna speak around these things.

Russel 18:25

A question I often ask myself is, you know, would the manager or the leader of Russell today, could he have prevented maybe some folks earlier in the business that didn't work out? Like how much of that was my inexperience versus their inexperience? And probably it's a mix of both. But when you look back upon that this particular relationship, is there anything you think had, had you been a different leader and manager, knowing what you know now, could you have navigated that differently? I

Evan 18:50

think I probably could have given her a little bit longer of a chance. I think I was getting frustrated with things maybe too quickly. The way I always explained it and the way I explained it to her is, you're doing this right and we try and get you to do this, and you go back. We try and get you to move here and. Small of a company, we're too small of an agency, we're moving too fast for you to not be doing these things. And you know that's working.

Russel 19:28

It is a hard conundrum, right? I see this a lot in agencies of when you're starting out, right? You can't afford what seems like high-end talent or anything like, or more expensive talent. But

Evan 19:38

yeah,

Skill vs Training

Russel 19:39

I'm starting to see a little more success and those that either wait a little bit longer or do what they need to do to to suffer a little more budget because there is just so much chaos in the startup mode and just like you said earlier of figuring all this stuff out, you know, that like it's hard for the junior talent to keep up. For sure.

Evan 19:55

You have a lot more experience than I do. I gotta disagree. My current lead graphic designer. I hired her basically right outta college. She was working at Starbucks for like six months. She's a monster. She builds private school alumni magazine. She does branding jobs, she builds websites. She does it all. We're her only agency job she's ever had. My junior graphic designer is similar. We hired her right out of college. My had one agency before. Into this, this agency system, you know? Yeah. And they just say, this is what we're doing today. Let's get to it. I've been very lucky in hiring that, you know, I can give this magazine project and know that she's gonna handle it all the way through with a very important client. I think they can kill it. They just have to be enabled to do that. We have a really strong culture, and that's some of the things I take the biggest pride in here.

Russel 21:05

I'm excited that you disagreed. I, I think that that makes for a fun conversation. I wonder, and I would definitely say it's not luck in my experience of when you, when you kind of said of you know that, but I wonder if maybe even given some of your own background and how you came up in the agency business that. You are very good at training or you've solved something on that front to allow some, a little more learning moments and taking, getting, getting people up to speed.

Evan 21:35

We're very hands on. We're, let's sit down and talk about this. Let's communicate. I want you to do your best work, and I wanna do, I'm here to enable you to do your best work. Employee onboarding is something we're actively tackling right now. Now that we have a project manager that can help me with that. It has, that specifically has not been. I think they feel empowered to be able to do their thing and, and work on and be creative. And, you know, I, I tell them, listen, it's, it's just digital stuff. Play around with it, fuck it up. Experiment. See what you can come up with, and then we'll go from there. Right?

Russel 22:19

Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's even something you in right there. The room for failure. How powerful. Of

Evan 22:25

course,

Russel 22:25

right? That's all owners. Or who they are today because they have gone through the, the fires of failure. But, uh,

Evan 22:33

and I tell them, listen, if you messed this up because you didn't care, that's not okay.

Russel 22:39

Yeah.

Evan 22:39

But if you tried hard on this and you thought was great, and the client said, I'm not sure about that, that's fine. You know, that's not a failure. That's just you and the client not necessarily agreeing on a.

Russel 22:57

There's failure one. And I think that can go both ways. I think in, in some cases where failure happens, it can create the burnt child effect where they're afraid to take chances and things like that. And then a more,

Evan 23:07

yes,

Russel 23:08

healthy way is to fail and learn healthily and process things accordingly when, when those moments. Sure. So I have to imagine somewhere in this, you're, you're doing some of that in a good way as well.

Evan 23:20

Something I'm, I'm very clear with them and I'm clear with the client as needed is listen, if there's a problem, if there's a failure, if something went wrong, that's on me. If something awesome happened and you love that design and the campaign went off without a hitch and went great, that's because of that. That's what they built. If it came out wrong, it's because I didn't catch something. If it came out right, it's because of the talent and skill that they brought to the project. Which probably isn't super healthy for me long term, but here we are

Russel 23:58

now, I'm very curious about this, like, because from your perspective, right, ownership is important for you just as much, not to say, well, it's all on them. I'm, I'm being perfect here. The vice versa. That's for them to have ownership and feel responsible for the good and the bad. So how do you navigate that where you're, you're finding that right balance of ownership.

Evan 24:19

We have weekly status calls. I get all of the feedback, right? I get the, Hey, this didn't work. We don't like this, let's do this. We love that, right? So whenever it's a, we don't like this, it's a Alright, cool. I'll get it fixed. If it's a, this went great. It's a awesome, I'll tell the designer I own everything, but they're the ones that. Did the work, right? Yeah. So they get the accolades.

Russel 24:48

Cool. All right. I'll just go back to the idea that you can make both work. What I'm gonna take away there is you're gonna have to solve something hard, whether that's letting failure happen and taking a very proactive training approach, or having more budget, getting some more clients to get a little more. Trained or experienced talent, you can't have both sides of the coin without solving something hard and, um, correct. You've certainly chosen one path and that sounds like that's been successful for you.

Evan 25:16

I think it has. And you know, just because they're younger doesn't mean they're cheap. The lowest raise I've ever given is 8%. I pay for a hundred percent of health benefits. I give them the Employee experience fund. Every year we go on a retreat every year, they get cash bonuses at the end of the year. I really take care of'em because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them. Right. Yeah. I can't do what they do, you know? I gotta treat'em right.

Russel 25:45

Well, I mean that, that's amazing. I think especially too. Have that at your size. Right. It it, sometimes it is,

Evan 25:52

oh, it's my accountance is real dumb, but, but here we are.

Russel 25:58

Yeah. Well, I like accountants to be good on my taxes. I don't know. Sure. If I wanna listen to my accountants to tell me how to run a, a business, especially such a human centered business that we are in an agency.

Evan 26:08

Mark's a great guy and he's like, you could do this differently. I'm like, I know.

Russel 26:12

Yeah,

Evan 26:13

that's fine.

Russel 26:13

I tend to lean towards your approach and again, we gotta figure out all the different ways to make it work, but

Working Towards Autonomy

Evan 26:18

exactly.

Russel 26:19

Take care of your people. That is the leadership trait. As old as time. That works anyway. Awesome. Well, I love a take care of your people business and you're pushing and navigating and wanting to move into this removing yourself from the business aspect. How's that journey going for you

Evan 26:35

this year? It's actually better than it has in previous years. Graphic design team and a strong creative team. You know, as we're able to. Same with the digital marketing and things, so social media, ads, analytics, stuff like that. We're growing that as we're able to. For the past two years I've been trying to replace myself on a business development level. Right. And it hasn't worked out because turns out that's the thing I'm actually really good at. So what we did this year was instead of trying to hire a business development person, we hired a project manager so that she can take things off my, that are important, right? Like print management and stuff. And I can concentrate more time and effort on the things I'm actually good at. Like gonna networking events and gonna lunch and talking to people, stuff like that. And that's been going great. I know that's gonna be the big mountain to get over eventually, but you know, for now I'm, I'm pretty happy with it.

Russel 27:44

I think it's David C. Baker that brought up the phraseology of every agency has a failed salesperson story, and my experience is continuing to point to that. That is a very true statement.

Evan 27:55

They can't do it as good as I can. Right. Which is nothing on them because I've been. Honing this for over a decade, but I'm real good at it. It's very frustrating to see them go out and try and give the synopsis, right? The elevator pitch, the bar story. And it's not how you say it,

Russel 28:16

you

Evan 28:16

know?

Russel 28:17

Yeah. Well, it's an interesting thing to me and I'm, I'm constantly diving into this understanding and there's a lot of nuance to why it does and doesn't, or why it doesn't work. I should say. A first big one though, is just, you probably understand this now, is that. The wealth of experience that you're being just as much a consultant in the sales process as you are selling quote air quotes. Yep. And it's far more the consultant that matters than any other real aspect of, of, of the sales process.

Evan 28:44

Exactly. We finally have a really good sales process figured out, especially for the kind of size of business that we're going after. And it's just something that's repeatable at this point for me. Right. If had. Experience to get to a point where I could trust them on their own, you know? So for now we're trying to replace just all the other stuff I do besides the weird one-off stuff that like my health insurance company wants to audit our employee comp insurance. So great. I get to deal with that.

Russel 29:24

Yeah. The downside of running a business, but, uh, very, very interesting. Well, and, and just, you know, either for your own sake or the, or the folks at home where folks do see more success is something that someone's almost, that comes out of your, a senior AM role or maybe even a PM role that has the interaction skills, but has also grown that strategic consultant type arm by just. Running the product and the service and the business.

Evan 29:49

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think she'll get there, give her two or three years, and I think she can start doing that. Right. And that's kind of the goal, right? Because then we could slot in a different project manager under her and still all under, you know, client and account services.

Russel 30:04

Maybe there's to the folks at home that if you are feeling the pain, look internally first and rarely. Yeah. Does this, I think that is the challenge of it. This outside sales role especially that's not ever done agency sales, that to their own confidence, they think they can come in and sell the whole ketchup Popsicle thing. Well, what

Evan 30:21

kind of salesperson would you be if you didn't

Russel 30:24

Yeah.

Evan 30:25

Right.

Russel 30:25

And then they fall flat on their face real fast and, and realize that, maybe it was more difficult than they thought, whether they admit that or not. But no hate. No shade to them. But not to make anyone feel bad, Russell has his own failed salesperson story. I think they lasted three months, maybe sold one's website. They did make an introduction that actually parlayed into. Very fascinating story, but I won't go into that today. This is all about Evan's story. And so I guess I'm just curious, at this point where you're at, what are you looking at for the future? What's the end game as they might like to say? It's the goal. Yeah.

Evan 30:58

I tell my financial advisor that I won be upper middle class as of like the 1960s, right? I don't need like a suitcase full of gold rolexes, and a boat and a fun car, and like a mansion on the lake. I want one gold Rolex, I want maybe a car or a boat and like a little a-frame up in the Poconos. That's it. That's a, I wanna be able to show up, have them say, Evan, don't, we don't do it that way anymore. And I say, alright. And then, you know, shake hands with a important prospective client and then I get ushered out the door again.

Russel 31:35

Back to the Poconos for you. That's,

Evan 31:37

yeah. You know. Great. Awesome. Is that gonna happen in the next 10 years? Maybe, probably not, but hopefully I wanna own it. I wanna relax, I wanna spend time with my dog and my wife and uh, yeah. But to get there worthwhile dream. It's a worthwhile dream. But to get there, you know, this is the best way to get there for me, right? Is building something that I get to take pride in and that helps people build their own lives and, uh, you know. Hopefully helps our clients make a lot of money so they can keep paying me a lot of money.

Russel 32:14

Double stamp those goals. That, that's might sound, you know, the, the coach and Russell always just says like, look, this has gotta lead to the life you want. Whatever that life is does not matter. This, we don't, we shouldn't work this hard if it's not pointing us in the direction and guiding us to this life we wanna live.

Evan 32:29

Exactly. Exactly. I wanna enjoy it. So

Born or Made?

Russel 32:33

there we go. Here's to the Poconos, here's enjoying life. Absolutely fascinating journey, Evan. So I guess I'll, I'll cap us off with one last big question for you. Yeah. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Evan 32:45

I think they're born, but they can get knocked off course pretty easily. I was always gonna do something for myself, man. It was in me. If things had gone differently, if I hadn't been laid off from coffee shop job with basically no risk at the time, would've I started this thing again. You, you know, this was not the first time I tried to start a business. This was just the one that worked. I think they're born, but I think, you know, it takes a environment full of all sorts of stuff to get them there. Right.

Russel 33:17

Okay. All right. As I would expect with your unique journey, that is a UA slightly unique answer to the fair going with born with a going a Born With the right path.

Evan 33:27

Yeah, exactly.

Russel 33:28

All right. Well I love it. And if people wanna know more about Stay Calm industries, where can they go?

Evan 33:34

Sure. Stay Calm industries.com. We're on Instagram, LinkedIn, same handles everywhere. Take a look at our stuff. You wanna reach out. Hello? At Stay Calm Industries com is the easiest way. We'll send you our brand new pitch deck. It's beautiful. We just finished it yesterday.

Russel 33:49

Okay. All right. Hot off the press, and I wanted to ask this question without the entire episode. Yeah. Where did stay calm industries come from as a name?

Evan 33:58

Oh, that came from the tattoos already had these,

Russel 34:02

okay.

Evan 34:03

If you can see on the wrist. Yes. And I just thought, you know, stay calm. Industries sounded good and it's stuck ever since. Sometimes people think we grow weed, but not usually. Only sometimes.

Russel 34:15

That's fair. It could be a good side product. It's fair. It could be in your, your onboarding, your welcome kit is, uh, you know, okay.

Evan 34:23

We do have a coffee brand.

Russel 34:24

There you go. There's a subtle little thing you're dropping in there that is unique as well. Well, a former barista wouldn't expect anything different.

Evan 34:31

Right.

Russel 34:32

Well, gosh, th Thank you Evan, so much for, for joining the show and reminding us. All the, the importance of running a people-driven business. The many paths that you can take to end up in this spot. But keep on going and live your best life if nothing else. But so many great takeaways. We can derive from your journey today and really appreciate you taking time to share it with us.

Evan 34:55

Thank you.

Russel 34:57

Thank you for listening to an agency story podcast where every story helps you write your own, subscribe, share, and join us again for more real stories, lessons learned, and breakthroughs ahead. What's next? You'll want to visit an agency story.com/podcast and follow us on Instagram at an agency story for the latest updates.

Evan 35:19

I did a red eye out of Newark into the Iceland Airport. Came in at five in the morning, was driven immediately to a fish processing facility where I was told, listen, if you don't wanna smell like fish, don't bring it in here. Well, I, I have nowhere else to put stuff. So all of my stuff smelled like fish. I got shown up to this break room. I'm a tall guy. I'm, I'm six foot four. This fucking seven foot Icelandic man walks in and he starts talking to me. And he starts just grabbing buckets of full of vinegar and various things out of the fridge and starts giving me stuff. So I ate their fermented shark. I ate pickled whales blubber, which was the worst thing, like imagine if like jello went stale, and it's texture just never changed as you weigh it. Okay. All

Russel 36:12

right. We're picturing this.

Evan 36:15

That was all breakfast.

Russel 36:17

Oh, nice. Total normal breakfast, right?

Evan 36:18

Yeah. Lunch came and we got their normal lunch, which was roasted halves of sheep's heads. So they, it's not a galaxy, it's sold next to the rot street chickens in the, in the grocery store. Right. So they pulled us out. They, he, this guy takes a spoon and scoops. It. And as he's doing that, he says, that's how you become a man. And after I eat it, you can hear me say, that's how you become a. And yeah, then we went and signed contracts. It was possibly the roughest thing I've done. But that's, that's agency life, right?

Russel 37:01

That's agency life. Uh, probably should have get a, give a disclaimer at the beginning of that story for the squeamish and, and I'm not a picky eater, but I might have to pack my own lunch when I go to Iceland is all I'm learning here too.

Evan 37:12

Yep. Yep. You can eat horse if you wanna. First time my wife and I went, we had reindeer gpac. Okay. Yeah.

Russel 37:21

Alright. Lots of things to know. There you go.

Evan 37:23

Yep.

Russel 37:24

Everyone should sign an Icelandic client as uh, or maybe an Icelandic fish processing client. I'm sure there's no shortage of them in Iceland. That was a great story.