Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Transcripts may also be modified slightly for the sake of clarity. You can listen to the entire episode here or on any podcast streaming platform. Please note that Innovators on Tap owns the copyright to all content and transcripts of the Innovators on Tap Podcast, with all rights reserved. Please reach out through our contact form if you wish to use any material.
Chuck: John & Richie, thank you for being innovators on tap today. It's great to have you both here. I was reading some stuff I know your dad once told you the last name gets you in the door. And the rest is up to you. And obviously you got in the door and have had great success leading Trek. Do you think it was easier or harder for you as the founder son on your journey to become the CEO?
JB: I think it was easier The easy answer would be it was harder. But it was easier. And the reason it was easier is because I had such a good relationship with Him. And that he and I could talk about all the issues in the business. And because I think we had a good relationship from the time I graduated school, and I started at track trek wasn't doing so well. I started in some really miserable times. And that created an opportunity for me as somebody young in the business and it also, because there were so few players on the bench. I think I was I turned into a necessity for him because I was the only guy sitting there,
Chuck: the fact that the company was struggling actually create an opportunity you might not have gotten as quickly otherwise, for sure. And probably let him take a little more risk with his son than in those roles.
JB: Yeah, you know, it's a big, you know, he put me in some big positions. I was 24 and he put me in charge of sales and marketing, you know, wasn't that big of a company then but still it was a big risk because it was it was doing really poorly. But he saw what kind of potential he thought I had. And I had a really good team of people and we had a lot of fun.
Chuck: So Richie, I'm curious. So did you ever try to get in the door and that trek or if you didn't, why did you pursue a different path other than following in the family business?
Richie: With me, being from this family and having it be such a big company, I felt the need I wanted to go create my own identity for me on a growing up, I was kind of known as Oh, you're the president's son of track the time that JB went into the company when it was in the mid 80s. And it was struggling and it was his dad's business would have been more appealing situation for me to go into.
Chuck: You went to Marquette where your grandfather went, and obviously he's pretty well known there as someone who was instrumental in doing some amazing things like the Burke scholars and the Trinity fellows. Your dad took over the family business and is made it you know, even more successful, a globally well known brand. Do you ever feel pressure, having the Burke last name?
Richie: Yes
Chuck: And how did you deal with that?
Richie: There's some good things and some bad things. I think growing up, you know, I knew we had a lot of resources I got, I mean, my dad spent a great role model just seeing him growing up and how hard he works and also how much he gives back and how generous he is to people. My grandpa did the same thing. I didn't get to see him work that much. To me, he was just my grandfather and I had that relationship with him. Unfortunately, he passed away and Oh, wait, which was my first year at Marquette serves as motivation for me to start my company and grow it and try and do something big. I think the downside of that is it's hard not to compare yourself. And when your grandpa started something that's turned into a billion dollar company that's obviously very hard and very rare.
Chuck: You know, I was the CEO of Cree for a long time. And one of the things I struggled with is running a company. It takes a ton of years. Time, and it puts quite a strain on company or family and trying to find that balance. And, john, you have this perspective as both the son and then as the Father and Richie as the son. I'm just curious for both of you really is, can you share some perspective because I'm not sure a lot of people fully appreciate what that that tension isn't and how you have to work through it.
JB: You know, my father was, was really good about the business and the family's participation in the business. And it was basically if it's your life, and if you want to work at trek your last name will get in the door, and then it's kind of up to you as to, you know, how far you make it. And I think that was a really good philosophy and he really kind of separated out business and family when it came to family. It wasn't a positive for you, and it wasn't a negative in his eyes. You know, he thought, you know, if you were a great parent, or if you work somewhere else, you know, that was great. Live your life and, you know, one of the things I saw With Richie early on, is I thought it would be really great for it to work to track. And I told Richie that and maybe I told Richie that a little too strongly. But, you know, I thought that would be a good idea for it. You know, over time I, I totally changed my thought on that to where the big guy was, which is basically it's your wife, you should do what you want to do. And, you know, I see all the stuff that he's doing now. And I go, Wow, that's really cool. And I'm really proud of what he does.
Chuck: So I think there is always a tension where, you know, your dad and you saw your grandfather, they have these these big jobs, right? And there's a tension also to do you feel like there was ever time when you were giving up some of your time with your dad to the company or vice versa because that's one of the things I struggled with a lot was is how do you balance those two things because running a company can easily become all income. To sing if you let it
Richie: Well, I think as far as growing up in our family one, like obviously my dad was gone a lot on business, but he was also my head basketball coach, you know. So he was he was he was always there when I needed him, even though he was gone on business a lot. And again, that kind of goes back to. I think he instilled that work ethic in me seeing him doing that. And he was always there when I needed him. So even though I was super busy growing this business, he was definitely still there were very supportive parents.
Chuck: Let me shift a little bit. I know you're a fan of apple and Steve Jobs and some of the work they did there. And I know in a previous interview, you mentioned that the advice Tim Cook got from Steve Jobs was the concept not putting yourself in a box. How do you as you lead Trek, get people to be willing to get comfortable with this idea of pushing the limits or breaking down the box when at the same time, they're probably more apt to want to be there.
JB: I think the first thing you need to do is you need to ask. You need to ask people to get outside the box, and you need to really let people know that you have a lot of confidence in their skills that you don't want them just to see X amount. You think they're there, they can do five x, they can do 10 x, or they can do 30 X. That's how great things get done. And when you sit with a person, you go, Well, that's nice, but I think you should maybe expand your horizons here and think outside the box, then you're asking them to do something. And I think that's the first thing is just to ask people, I think the second thing is, is there's a flywheel effect. As soon as you start getting it to go in a couple of different areas, then you can use those as internal case studies and you can let people know, this is what we're doing over here. This is what we're doing over here. Tom did this Sally did that rethink this thing. And I think that's the biggest job of a leader is to get people to, to really push the boundaries.
Chuck: One of the things I sense in those situations though, is there's the This, they're often fighting their own fear of failing. And how do you how do you help people think about that when you're when you're trying to coach them through that piece of it?
JB: I think the biggest thing is it's okay to fail. I really don't care if we fail. We've held people up and said, you know, we took a good swing over here, it didn't work. So now we're going over there. There's an old story about Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. At 64. asked permission from his cousin, the President to land in the first wave on D day, and at 64. He landed there and he gets out of the boat with a bunch of 18 year olds and they were a mile and a half off course and they were all panicking. What should we do all the plans are rubbish and he took his cane and he pounded on the sand and he said, the war begins from here. And so after you make a mistake, doesn't matter. What are we doing next? And I think focusing on what we do next is key.
Chuck: I want to go back this idea of not being afraid of failure and willing to take risk. Is there an example? And it's really a question for both of you. Is there an example you can think of where, you know, you had one of those failures, and it kind of became an aha, okay, I really, this is my biggest mistake. And then this is what I learned from it that sticks out in your mind,
Richie: I think my biggest failures may have been being too hesitant to go all in when I thought I should have because I was afraid maybe what other people would have thought or that it meant might not work. So I think not moving fast enough in certain directions. And then I think other mistakes would have been, I've made some bad hiring decisions, which ended quickly but we've also kept people on too long that maybe weren't a good fit, or that we didn't need to and, you know, then they leave and you see that the company's a better place and it would have would have been better and I'm a very non confrontational person. I don't enjoy doing that. So those were all learning experiences.
Chuck: So it's interesting you say that so when I got asked that question, it was really a people one which was you may even have the right person. But in China, I'm sure you've seen this as businesses change and grow. The needs and skill sets change. And not everyone makes that evolution. And, you know, in hindsight, I waited too long to make some of those changes. And I think I justified it out of, I want to be loyal or give someone another chance. But at the end of the day, it wasn't good for myself or the company or the person. And so I'm curious, do you have an experience that you would put up there as kind of one of those big failure moments that you learned something from?
JB: I mean, everything ultimately gets back to people. And so I mean, there been critical points in Trek's history where some people changes were made and it turned out really well. But if you take a look back as a leader, I should have moved quicker than I did. And you know, those are the biggest regrets I have. In my time has been I didn't move fast enough on some people issues. We have a saying here, if you think you have a people problem, you have people.
Chuck: You've said in the past that the best definition of leadership, you've heard is leadership is the ability to make the dream a reality at the grassroots level. And that leadership is also here's the vision, and I'm going to convince people where we need to go. How did you come about shaping that definition? Or there's some experiences that stand out that kind of got you there.
JB: I've said this before, but I went to Rich's graduation. And David McCullough, the American historian, was the graduation speaker. And he gave a speech on reading, which might seem terribly boring, but it was incredible. And his main point was readers are leaders and you are what you read. And so I read a lot of history and I like to read a lot of biographies. You know, you read about great leaders. And I think time and time again, really great leaders make the dream a reality at the grassroots level. If you take a look at JFK, and you take a look at the early 60s and he says we're going to send a man to the Moon and return him to Earth before the end of the decade. Guess what? And that's what happened. I mean, that's, that's amazing leadership. And I think there are times in history where, you know, you've had to say this is this is where we're going, this is why we're going there and and, you know, you build the team around that and and people respond.
Chuck: You guys both seemed comfortable with changing things up where you didn't your business and the things you've done a track when you get stuck. Most people get stuck in, they stay stuck. What is it about how you think of things that you think helps you get unstuck or not get stuck in the first place?
JB: You know, one of the things we did at Trek, we were not having some good years in the late 90s. And somebody suggested that I hire new manufacturing guy, and because I wasn't very good at it. And so I went ahead and I did that and I heard a guy's name was Tim Callahan. And he had worked at GE and a couple other places and he came in here. And he went into the factories and he brought in Kaizen, which is continuous improvement the Toyota way and eliminate waste, and you're always trying to do better always. And he and I were riding the trek 100 A year later, Mike, you know, Tim, you've done an amazing job, you know, inventories are down productions way up. I mean, you're just killing it. He's like, yeah, it's worked out really good. He says, You know what? He goes, there's a lot of companies who introduce lean and continuous improvement in the factories. He goes, there's very few that can do it in the office. Wow, that's really interesting. He goes, we should start to do continuous improvement events in the office. And so we did that. And we really started to create that culture within track that everything can be improved. And that went from the factories into the office, and then we've taken it to our customers, but this whole company has an overall belief that every single thing we do can be a lot better than it is and we never stop.
Chuck: So do you ever worry though, that some of the techniques of Kaizen and continuous improvement which clearly have a distinct, they almost always yield an improvement in a continuous way? How do you balance that with when you want to think really innovative?
JB: I think the overall philosophy of you're never done, everything can be better. That's the key. So whatever we do here, you know, if we put on if we put on a customer event, we bring 1500 people in to Madison for trek world. We'll sit down and we'll go over the entire we'll go over the entire program is so new, better different, what are all the steps along the customer journey and how could we make this better? And then one is one of the most successful things we've ever done. And then one year some guy says towards the end of the meeting, he goes, You know what one of the customers said they came here and most of the products they saw we'd shipped to him in the last two months. They got most of the benefit out of all the business seminars. And so here's this amazing program that we run for 25 years. And we just said, we're done. Next year, all we're doing is business seminars. And that's all we're going to do, we're not going to show any product. We're a product company. So that is, that's the kind of innovation that we do is we're not afraid to take chances, we'll throw everything out. But we start with the basic philosophy that everything we do can be better.
Richie: I love everything JB just said, I think the best things happen when you're stuck or when you have your back against the wall because you have to change. So that's that's when we've, you know, rebounded our best is in that environment. And I think at the times where things were going well and I took my foot off the gas pedal a little bit and if I pushed harder at those points in time, we'd be farther along right now. Or if I made the changes when I had to make the changes, I try I try and keep it so we set very high goals and I usually don't hit them. But I was working at hitting them. And I think I'm farther along that way and setting, you know, attainable goals that we could hit. But I'd rather just shoot really high, because then you almost always have your back against the wall and you need to keep pushing.
Chuck: This was actually a debate in my boardroom, which was, you know, you guys set these really high goals, and you miss them a lot of the time. And I said, well, so would you rather me set a much lower goal and hit it or beat it by a little or set this high goal. And even if I miss it, I'm still double where I would have been otherwise. And at one point, I actually got the advice, I think it's sometimes better for you to hit the goal you sign up for, which, you know, probably brings me to a topic that I want to ask about, which is maybe the difference between being running a public company that's judged quarter to quarter, and a private company. And john, you said that you had the largest employee stock ownership program in Wisconsin. And you know, we had one at Korea as well, which was for public companies, but when you were asked about it Would you ever go public, you said, I don't need the money, and I don't need the headaches.
JB: You know, that quote came from my father. And I was in numerous meetings with him with bankers and he always had the same replies, I don't need the money and I don't need the headaches. I think one of the reasons why tracks been successful as we look at the long term is we make long term decisions. And, you know, even you know, if you're having a couple of years that aren't where you want them to, we keep investing in the business, we keep playing the long game. And, you know, it's worked out really well for us. And you don't have that public market where all sudden you're going to miss the quarter. And we're going to have a bunch of people running around here doing stupid things to make the quarter and make some some person happy. Looking at a computer screen, I think we've made the shareholders really happy over the last over the last 20 years, and I think we're gonna make them really happy over the next 20 years, but we're gonna do it Based on making good long term decisions for the company, for the shareholders, for the employees and for the community,
Chuck: you know, having survived 65 earnings calls as a public company. Yeah. And yes, I was counting at least after about 40. There's no doubt in my mind that you're able to invest in your business in ways we couldn't even know Korea was an r&d company. We did a lot of long term things. At the end of the day, you're being judged quarterly by shareholders who, frankly do care about what happens in the short term. I want to switch again and go back to something I read about you have a decision making process that's been described as a love of whiteboards. And he says you get input from everyone in the room on one whiteboard, and then move to the next to solve the problem. And you mentioned how you having smart people in the room is key. So I'm curious, how do you go about identifying people at trek that you think can take on these roles that have to be more innovative,
JB: You judge by their history. You judge by how successful they've been or how they've acted or how adaptable they are. And you know how, you know, one of the things that we push or attract is are you open to new ideas? You know, to two key things, you know, if you take a look, I think the most creative moments are in a room with a whiteboard, give me a whiteboard, some markers, always different colors, and give me a great group of people and you can change the world. But the people you need in that room or you need people who are open minded, you need people who can generate a lot of ideas. And you need people who are positive. And if you've got those characteristics, you can do a lot of great stuff.
Chuck: I'm curious, Richie, how about how do you go about trying to find people for your business that you think can had this creativity and then you have your businesses younger? So how do you when you're sitting across the table from that person that's coming in to interview for a job, how you trying to figure out if they're going to have the skill set to succeed in your business, especially on the more creative, innovative side.
Richie: Obviously, I have a creative company. So most my employees are creative. So even just looking at what they've done in the past, looking at their portfolio, looking on social media, that's a very good tool that I use a lot of usually you could see if you have some mutual friends, and then talk to them and actually get a an answer you may not get from the references they list, you know, are they very adaptable because that's important in a startup because yeah, we're always trying to change and get better and people who are setting a certain way aren't probably aren't going to be successful and haven't been successful in our environment, people who can put up with a certain level of chaos, dealing with clients and dealing with the change going on and being able to you know, jump around and still be very effective and then people who continually learn and try and get better.
Chuck: I’m really interested in your whiteboard approach and how you get people to engage in this. I found some interesting research about the value of conflict. And one of the things that said is that in a brainstorming session, they actually have tested this idea of whether are all ideas good as you just take them all, or should you actually let people debate them? And it's called the debate condition. And there's actually been psychology studies that say that if you introduce the debate condition, you often get even better answers. Because what happens is, when someone is challenged, it actually puts their brain into an even higher gear to come up with better answers. So I'm curious that track, is there any challenging allow it or is it kind of every idea is a good idea? How do you manage that tension?
JB: It's It's not every every idea is a good idea. But I put myself in charge of being the facilitator because I kind of have attention deficit disorder and it keeps me in the game the whole time. And it also really lets everybody in the room know that I care and I hear you. So when they say something and I write it down, they know that That their ideas count.
Chuck: You were mentioning your role as a facilitator of these meetings. Do you consider yourself an innovator? Or does that responsibility of having to manage to come? Are you really just a facilitator of the innovators? How do you think about that?
JB: You know, when when people think innovation, they naturally think of product? And I would say, I'm really innovative on the business side, on the product side, man, okay, but I can, I've got a good way of getting ideas out of people, and I've got a good, good way of how do we get that done? on the business side, I've been able to work with a lot of really good people and figure out how we can be innovative on the business side, and that's a part that I really enjoy about Trek. We do some really innovative things on the business side that none of our competitors would do.
Chuck: Richie, How about yourself? Do you consider yourself to be an innovator?
Richie: Yeah, I think I've had to be just, you know, navigating the whole startup landscape and always pivoting my company and I look out, you know what jayvees done too. And just looking at outside sources and always trying to get better and finding new ways to do that. I think that in itself was pretty innovative.
Chuck: So I read a story about how things were back in 1984 when you joined the company, and I believe you said the company had grown fast and like many a family business, it outgrew its ability to manage it. What were some of those challenges that the business face in terms of outgrowing its ability to manage it? And then what did you guys do to close those gaps?
JB: I came home after college, got my wisdom teeth pulled and then next day I showed up at Trek and trek was it was May 1984. And trek was riding high. And I joined the company in almost simultaneously the company began a 18 month collapse. And I was there to watch the whole thing and it was the greatest education. One could ever have in my father owned the business and he didn't run the business day to day. But the key was he, he came out and he took out the top managers and he took over running the business. And he was really interesting because he came out here. And I'll never forget when he came out here, and he just spent about a month just walking around asking questions. And he asked a lot of questions. And he was the ultimate listener. I've never met anyone who could listen as well as my father. And he asked customers a lot of questions. He asked employees a lot of questions. And then he simplified it. He said, You know, we're gonna build quality products at competitive values, and we're going to deliver them on time. And we're going to create a good environment for the employees and the customers. And that was it. And it sounds so simple, but it was so effective because we weren't doing any of those.
Chuck: So for someone out there who's listening who works in a company where they're feeling frustrated, they might be feeling they're in that middle. What do you think happens to a company? How does it miss those basic principles?
JB: I think poor leadership, you know, especially you have to be out of touch with your customers to miss that. And I know when we miss things, and we miss things, too often, you know, we, the answers were there, we missed them. But I think, you know, one of the things you know, for people who are out there and they're working for these companies, it gets back to the, to the Steve Jobs lesson is, is most people have themselves in a box and they're capable of much more and most people don't want to get out of that box, because they don't have the confidence. My Word to everybody here is be a player. You know, if you see something, do something about it. You know, the worst thing is when you know what the answers are, and you just sit there and watch. You watch it and you know, I always have preferred to do something about it.
Chuck: When Cree was going well, I was always worried when we were recruiting because I think one of Business is having a lot of success. A lot of people want to come work there. And my worry is is what you get are fans and that what you actually need to run the business are people that want to play the game, they want to go out and take that next challenge. And for me, it was really hard. And I still don't think I ever got it quite right of trying to figure out that person sitting across to me really wanted to be a player or they just wanted to be on the winning team and say they work there any thoughts how you try to distinguish that?
JB: You know, one of the best things here at track is the longevity of people who are here. I mean, we've we've got players who've been here in the good times and the bad times and and it's just an awesome team. And they're here to mentor the next generation of leaders that are coming up and you know, we just have I've never seen a company with so many awesome people in so many people coming up behind them
Chuck: On the product side - I just came back from Europe. And I noticed that the bike has really made strides there. Two questions. Well, how does track see the bike as part of your business going forward? And the second part is why do you think the bike hasn't caught on in the US yet?
JB: So I think a couple of things is one. The bike is catching on in the US. It's it's at its early stages is about 10 years behind Europe. But if you take a look and you go back to 15, and 16, ebike, sales doubled in 17, they doubled in 18. They doubled in 19. They doubled I think in 20, they'll double again. All of a sudden, every party I go to when I used to go to parties 20 years ago, everybody want to know about a carbon road bike, what should I get? And every party I go to now everybody wants to know, should I get an E bike? So e bikes are happening in the US in Europe. It's off the charts. I mean, there's more ebike business being done in the Benelux than there is regular bike business. The second largest mountain bike market in the world is Germany above 3000 euros. There's more electric mountain bikes being sold than regular mountain bikes. mountain bikes aren't just for people over 50. They're for people who want to go further there for people who commute there peep for people want to keep up with their spouse. I haven't seen a product since the iPhone. When the iPhone first came out, and people said, Look, you can take pictures with this and then you hit this button and you can send it and they’d say no way. And if you take a look at ebikes people go and they test for a new bike and they come back and every single person has a huge smile. You send 100 out and 100 come back with a huge smile. What other products do you know that does that?
Chuck: Richie - As you think about your business, it's still relatively young, but technology is changing every day and the business models moving. As you look out what is the problem or the Innovation Challenge that you and your business do you think are going to face here over the next five years?
Richie: Well, I think what you just Listed is that everything's changing. So fast is a large benefit to companies like ours who could, for example, just pivot right into starting a podcast and offering it to companies in a matter of a year or so where there's so many, I think, bloated agencies out there who build much more than they should, and they move a lot slower than they should. And I think that's an advantage for a smaller company like ours who can win against them on those level. And companies really like working with us in like, as long as we move fast and stay on top of everything and don't get comfortable, we'll be good.
Chuck: So as we finish up, what's one piece of advice for someone out there who's looking to start their own business or who's in a company facing some innovation challenges that you would give them maybe a different way to think about things that could help them out?
Richie: I would say people starting a business. They need to be extremely excited and passionate about it and patient as well because things definitely do take time. usually take more time, money energy to get it to where you think it's gonna be. I think people really, really, you know, overestimate what they can do in a, in a day, a week, a month, a year, two years and but underestimate what they can do long term. So I think that plays an important factor.
Chuck: John, how about you?
JB: You know, we call it seeing something bigger than the barn. And and that is, you can do much more than you think you can. So if you're thinking about starting a new business, or if you're thinking about whether you ought to go talk to your boss about here are the five things we really ought to be doing. You should do that. And, you know, I was, one of the things we always like to talk about is focusing on things you can control and too many people are in a situation that maybe they don't think things are going as well as they could. But if you write down a list of your other things outside of my control, there's also a list of things inside of your control. And if you focus on that list, I always think, add as much value as you can. And the more value you add to a company, you'll be well rewarded. Whether you believe it or not, you might be rewarded with great experiences, you might be rewarded with a new job, you might be rewarded compensation wise. Whether you work at that company long term or not, you will be rewarded get in the game play. That would be my advice.
Chuck: Well, your advice, both your advice is phenomenal. And I'm excited for the people to get to hear that and I just want to thank both of you for taking time to do this today. It's uh, I've learned a lot. It's been a lot of fun. And I met your dad and your grandfather a couple times when I share it on the board. And I would just say that, from the little I knew about him, I'm sure he'd be just incredibly proud of what you guys have accomplished and not only in business, but what you guys continue to do to help others be successful. I think He set a bar for me watching him from the outside of giving back that I think has been so impressive. And you guys have continued that tradition. And, you know, we're we're lucky to have you guys as part of the community and doing a bunch of amazing things. As I was preparing for this today, and now that I've been to the interview, I think your family is an amazing example of the market slogan of what it means to be the difference. So thanks for everything you guys do.
John & Richie: Thanks for having us.