Aligning Identity and Purpose to Fuel Your Mission with Nick Smoot

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to The Future of Teamwork. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 group, and today I've got Nick Smoot joining me from Aesop Industries. Nick's the founder and CEO over there and they've got some really cool businesses and ventures underway. So welcome to the show, Nick.

Nick Smoot: Thank you for having me, Dane.

Dane Groeneveld: And you're calling in from Idaho, right?

Nick Smoot: Absolutely. Coeur d'Alene.

Dane Groeneveld: Coeur d'Alene.

Nick Smoot: I'm not one of the recent transplants that have found the gem in the mountains, but born and raised here and then nice all over the US and even spent some time down in Southern California.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, that's neat. So Nick, for the benefit of our listeners, tell us a little bit more about your story. How did you come to be putting Aesop Industries together and doing some of the cool work you're doing in the communities?

Nick Smoot: I appreciate the question. And I also, again, appreciate having you bring me on to share. So the background for me, the early part of my life was spent working with churches and with schools and doing community development. Really at a quite rudimentary level, was answering the question, how do you get middle school kids and high school kids to behave? And parents wanted that, schools wanted that and kids didn't. And so, I spent almost a decade plus developing a really, really effective approach to getting kids to behave. And it wasn't beating them, I wasn't paying them. It was helping them be inspired to see a version of themself that was exciting to them. And then, magically they would then align behaviors if they knew how or what to align and had access to those and gave them a pathway to go and climb towards that better version of themself. And it had all these other knock- on effects that would create better grades, better behavior, better social relationships for kids. So, that was the core thesis. And then after we had that running, thousands of kids going through the programs and I was 21, took 67 high school kids to Moshi, Tanzania. Yeah, crazy stories. And they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest in the NGOs, kids put together their own boards. But really it was just help people with agency pick a better version of himself, get that out of them, help them build that. And the fathers who had some kids going through the programs were also investors in different real estate and business projects across the US and saw the success that our program was having and approached me and said, " Hey, it would be interesting to see if you'd want to consult for us." And I said, " I do non- profit work, I have no idea what you're talking about, what do I do?" And then my joy of problem solving kind of took over. And then the allure of extra cash, which then led to some fun consulting and turnaround management. And then, being asked by one of them to start a company with them. And so we did an ed tech company to be the first to put the body of psychology on the internet and we created a learning and management system around that. That is a primary test prep company in the world now for psychology. 80 to 90 plus percent of the market is owned by that entity we started.

Dane Groeneveld: Wow.

Nick Smoot: Yeah, it was fun. It was a revolutionary moment and also a very, very eye- opening for myself too, that not only can I have business impact and make money, but I can also do good. We lowered the cost significantly for the psychologist to access curriculum, and we increased the support and the test pass rate. And so, we did good and did well and then did my effort to rinse and repeat that and did it again in PropTech. And we built microsites for mobile with QR codes and then ended up selling that to an entity out of Philadelphia and up in Parsippany, I spent a lot of time with Realogy where embedded there with Realogy and Keller Williams. So I took my prop tech company, did a year and a half of the buyout and moved to LA and started a business intelligence platform in kind of social and mobile local. We were the first to give location awareness to your LinkedIn API data. And so it would show you who lived in your community and if they were on the platform you could chat with them. And we had some business intelligence tools that were matchmaking people and we partnered with Virgin, we partnered with W Hotels and then grew that company and then found an exit. It was during a rough time, to be honest, Solo Mo was experiencing some bad actors around Clancy and highlights. Oddly there's another one that Sam Altman started that was in the space. Sam was the CEO of Open AI, can't remember the name of it, but Sam was doing work with Virgin and then we took it over and did a better job. I don't think I do a better job at AI though, being polite. And then from there joined the Milken institute and Santa Monica was asked to join as a young leader, got a front row seat to how the world thinks about social economic change and the amount of money going into it and the abysmal results, interventions that aren't working well. And then that infused with the Occupy movement was a bit of an inspirational moment of human capital and capital markets being misaligned and sentenced. And so it just launched me into my childhood game again, which my childhood game was, oh, people want these people to behave. I bet I could find a way. And so fast forward Aesop or Aesop industries if you're a true logophile, lover of words. So the tagline is a better story. We are a culture change company and we do it through four primary business units. One is called Innovation Collective, which helps communities put together a strategy on how to build an inclusive innovation economy that gets everyone involved, all the citizens, and creates a belonging based approach versus a transaction based approach. And then we do the same, we use appreciative inquiry in there for anybody who's into psychology and change and kind of human center design. Appreciative inquiry is the process. And then we have IC Rebuild. It's a real estate development and asset management community management company that manages real estate campuses, builds and develops them often for our communities, but also for clients. Then we have a venture fund and venture studio and venture mentor entity called Realigned Ventures that is realigning capital with community and it's human capital and venture capital yacht currency. And then the fourth entity is called Build Cities. It is buildcities.com. It is an iOS and Android and web app that helps connect people in communities to each other. And it lets you list projects you're working on, skills that you want to teach, skills that you want to learn, and then it uses location awareness to start to flight intelligent matches and lets you see what events you can attend. But it also has a crowdfunding component and a prop tech component coming soon with also a co- op. So then your local community becomes an investment club and invest returns off of our real estate, off of our venture funding, off of our co- op membership dues and the local people involved in going to the events and mentoring each other and helping each other on projects get to invest capital into startups, nonprofits, small businesses and real estate in their own community and it is held by a little local co- op.

Dane Groeneveld: Super cool. I feel like I need to stop the show now and go and do a lot of research. That's a lot of cool stuff that you're doing there, Nick. And I don't know how you are-

Nick Smoot: I promise it's one thread. I promise. And the singular thread is activation of human potential.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's huge. And I think you and I share a lot of passion around that thread, which I didn't know until we got on this call, so this is cool. We actually did, and we continue to do some work with Italian bond development economist called Dr. Ernesto Sirolli. I don't know if you'd ever come across Ernesto.

Nick Smoot: Not yet.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, he's brilliant. I'll put you in touch with him and his work, but he found, you mentioned something there in your introduction around when you were at the Milken Institute and realizing that a lot of these interventions at poor, and as a 26- year- old, he was down in Africa working on a agricultural project and they were paying all of the local people to turn up and help plant crops. And he tells the story better than I'd do, but essentially the end game was the hippos came out of the river and ate the crops, and all the people are sitting here going, this is why we don't plant crops. And it was all about how aid and intervention in communities is not the answer. And actually you need to go into communities and listen to the passion and the interests and help cultivate that to your words, to activate that human potential. So he spent a good deal of his career out working in these community projects to go out and find those key influences and energizers.

Nick Smoot: It's lovely. Well, and it's right on to where it's aligning the game of economics with the realities of humanity. And I think in our current situation of capitalism and communism, both, I think how we've structured them is that humans are in service of them. And the reality is there is a way, and this is my life's work, there is a way to reorient a merit- based, innovation- based approach where citizens are giving the highest and best of themselves with agency to create beautiful and valuable solutions to the problems that they see that are commercializable by the markets. And that is a better form of welfare, that is a better form of government, and private R& D, is a better form of philanthropy. And really it is just a few turns of the knob. It scares people because it can mirror what almost looks like a UBI. But if you adjust it to where it's a PBI, a project- based incentive or a project- based income and have people show up every six months to go and pick a project that the market seeds and do a database, there's a few kind of key pieces around it and I've been developing. But I believe that our current approach is de- incentivizing humans across America.

Dane Groeneveld: I would agree.

Nick Smoot: And look at the depths of despair, look at the data, how how's it going? How's it going with your current approach?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, no, I love that. And I love the fact that you make it so community centric. Another guest that we had on the show, John Alexander, wrote a book called Citizens. I don't know if you'd come across that, but he's brilliant. He's brilliant. And he talks about, it was funny with the coronation that just passed for King Charles in the UK. He's a Brit, and he was talking about how we've moved from a subject story. We were subjects of royals and other leaders, tribal leaders, to a consumer story where we're now all consumers we're consuming government services, products, whatever it is. And his view on the future, as you talk about it, is a citizen story. We're now citizens of the earth. We're now citizens of communities where it's for us to collect and to drive the intelligence, the 50 ideas that we're excited about. And going back to your very early story in the schools, create that excitement for who we are and what story we want to shape.

Nick Smoot: And that agency, you just said it, that story from who we are, it's an identity story and consumption brands, they literally big corporatocracy, corporations call you and call me the consumer or the target. Could you have a more insulting identity?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Nick Smoot: And that is not my birthright. My birthright is that I am a creator at my core. And we need to fan that flame of the creator and the problem solver, which is an absolute consistent pattern in all people, we like to solve our own problems. It's a human condition. We like games, we like puzzles. It needs to be incentivized, not flipped to whereas a citizen we're the consumer. Silly.

Dane Groeneveld: No, you're absolutely right. And I love that because problem solving, you mentioned Sam Altman there too, and AI and generative AI, and at the end of the day, everyone's getting a little bit flustered about what's AI going to do? It's not going to solve our problems for us anytime soon. And that's what the human energy can really come from. When you see teams working together to solve problems, it creates that muscle memory, that appreciation, that confidence, and that's super cool. So we could probably geek out here for the whole hour and-

Nick Smoot: Totally.

Dane Groeneveld: But let's get pragmatic because you are doing some real work in communities. So maybe tell us about a project that you've been working on and how you have been able to curate that project and what you're seeing come about in the communities where you delivered it.

Nick Smoot: So in the theme of the future of teamwork, we could address, you know brought up earlier when we were talking Victoria, Texas and a grand example. It's a community that has fallen upon hard times and the downtown was highly under- occupied, there's a myriad of reasons why citizens weren't going downtown. That's damaging business. A lot of young people were leaving, which again, there's no energy downtown. They want to leave and go to Houston or Austin. This specific city has the blessing and the curse of being about an hour and 50 minutes from both cities. So it's far enough away that you feel like you're away from mom and dad and there's energy there that you'd rather go check out, at least. Be the prodigal son for a bit and come home when you have kids, maybe if you can. And so this town has a real team problem, a human resource problem, a human capital problem, a narrative problem, an energy problem where they were the king, literally more millionaires per capita there than anywhere else in the United States.

Dane Groeneveld: From the King Ranch days? No, that's further south in Texas, right?

Nick Smoot: No, no. Like that place, when I say they were the king, they were more millionaires per capita in that city than anywhere else in the United States. They were a part of the whole Eagle Ford Shale.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay.

Nick Smoot: I mean, we're talking like everything ran through this city. And so many good- hearted people there, city council, mayor, county executive, CEO of the hospital, owner of the person who owns this. Everyone is long on that town, they love it. And yet they have these stutter and start efforts. And so how we get involved, a local real estate investor knew about our work from our real estate side and watched one of our other communities and said, you should probably come down here. And he knew that the college wanted to start and the innovation accelerator. And so every city wants one. And so he brought us in and we were able to help them understand a building with a curriculum and a fund won't solve your problems. And instead we communicate, what you really need is you need a percolator. So you don't need an incubator or an accelerator. I invented the phrase" the percolator". And the percolator is a citywide culture where everyone can get in the big pot of hot water, just like coffee grounds and little cowboy coffee. We just percolate where you belong, you move at the pace you're ready to move at. And you have a culture of belonging based transformation. And too many programs want people to enroll or sign up or pay for something. And even in corporations or in businesses, we treat it as if it's a sprint that you enroll for this thing or you transact, we're going to bring in a consultant, then we fix it. Yeah. I was like, no, no, no. You need a constant percolation of the culture you want. And so how this works is we get brought in, we do a mapping, and so in this specific city, the mapping is where we have experts alongside of us, our fellows, our mentors from real Life. We come in and we evaluate the city's economic data, just like a consultant win the company. And you just basically tear through all the data and you go. And then we do sentiment mapping. So we not only talk to the janitor in this instance, we don't just talk to the employees, we talk to the guy who runs the parking garage. And so when we do this in a city or if we do this for a corporation, we go deep because we do this in companies too. One corporation is one of the largest employers in the United States that we work with. And we got pulled in to help them think about how are they doing their hiring and how do employees feel. And so not only were we out on the floor with our employees where they often sometimes go, but we're also in a community talking to non- profits, talking to their targets. So similarly, we do this in a town. We go to the grocery stores, we go to the thrift stores, we ask the people in the town who does everyone love to hate, where do the four people grocery shop? And we spend a couple hours, we have a budget just to buy drinks at bars at night to get all the dirt. Take that information and our team synthesizes it into a singular repository. We then turn it to one of our docs that's roughly 30 to 60 pages. And that doc is a three year playbook. Here's how you're going to build a strong culture that includes everyone that's around a specific kind of output that you all want. And it's going to have the appreciative inquiry process, which is first build trust. And then you have these events where people can discover what's going on in our community around this shared interest area. Where do we see people winning and succeeding? So it's a mix of inspiration and like aha moments for townspeople. We have a very social interaction we call fireside chats. It's a monthly storytelling night where people get to see this. We tell the stories of locals. And then it is dream, discover, so trust, discover, dream. Dream is a mix of what happens after fireside chats when they go home. But it's also what happens on the online platforms we launch, the Build app and Facebook and elsewhere where they get to see people's great ideas. But then we host a thing called Coffee and Concepts. So Coffee and Concepts kicks off in Victoria, and it's people sharing their ideas around the industry vertical. It's also people sharing interesting innovation news around that vertical or the shared goal. And what we do is we model how to turn ideas into action in real time. The room helps each other turn their ideas into action. So it starts companies left and right or it turns ideas into action. It's an hour and 15 minute activity every two weeks basically first and third Wednesday. And then after you do that for about six months and you start creating a culture of, " Hey, our people are doing cool things in town and I have ideas and they have ideas and we can turn these into real fun." We then kick off what we call is our Story Summit. Story Summit is where we fly fly in mentors from our venture fund and are called the Realigned Fellows. And the Fellows, there's a little over 200 of these Fellows from across the world, and they're all around different verticals and industries. And they pick a city and they bring a friend. So one of them flies out with a peer, put them up in an Airbnb. We have a Friday night cocktail party called Show and Tell. The Fellows show up, vicinity comes out and everyone shows off just like as a child. Did you ever do show and tell?

Dane Groeneveld: Oh yeah. Loved it.

Nick Smoot: Perfect. Yeah, same thing, but it's for adults and Kids. And so people get up and they show off their projects they're working on, they could be music. We've had people play new songs. They're working on, we've had people talk about a film. We've had disabled people talk about an invention they created to shower themselves better that they're commercializing and getting a patent on. Software, hardware, you name it, AI products. It's cool. It's very non- judgmental. It's not Shark Tank. " Your product will fail. I'm not investing." Standard is celebratory and curious. So two key principles of that. And after that goes on, everyone goes home. Then the next morning we do an art project in the community somewhere that's like yoga. It's juggling, it's a hike, sorry, it's a community activity first, not art. Then brunch for people want to go to brunch. And then we kick into doing the stories after lunch. And these Fellows share stories of success around life and business. And they go in depth. So they tell stories that teach a lesson. And then we have a big feast at the end where everyone eats together and they talk about what they're inspired by. Who do they want to become over the next three months? What do they want to be held accountable to? And which leadership development pathway do they choose? We have four. One is one where you learn a new technical skill or personal skill. One is an S and a book club where we read books and discuss them. One is a venture studio where you get your idea out of your head through the business model canvas. And one is a personal growth curriculum that helps you audit yourself talk, money management relationships, goal setting, health community engagement, all these things fun. And you do these in small groups across your company or your community that goes on every single month. And then we launch a festival once a year called Think Big, where it's a celebration of all the different activities across the town with a think tank with the government and the county education officials, everybody. So it's culture change engine that starts to just take, and it really in Victoria, bringing it back to a practical side, we did the same thing. We mapped it, we realized, hey, space in energy are big opportunities for you. And so they doubled down on knowns. We're seeing energy in space companies in ag. Fireside chats launched and all of a sudden everyone realized, wow, there are cool people in our town. And the next thing you know, Coffee and Concepts launch. And people go, " I have an idea for a company." And it doesn't matter what it is. Now there's coffee shops all over the town. I have one of the coolest pictures. There's bars, there's restaurants, there's hundreds.

Dane Groeneveld: It brings everything back.

Nick Smoot: Yeah, yeah. Hundreds, if not thousands of people showing up downtown all the time. And I have a picture of the CEO of Beats by Dre and one of the executives there sitting out in front of a coffee shop that didn't exist four months ago, and now it was an old abandoned building and it's so cool and popping off. And the CEO of Beats formerly Susan Paley, and they flew out and she said, I told the person she was with, that was the best date night I've had in a long time, because the two of them are catching up. And they're mentors, they're Fellows in town. And I have a picture and I've snuck of them and it sent to them both. And they're just like, " This is everything we want. And it's good community feels we're giving back." Plus I'm mentoring advising companies. The town feels respected, the coffee shop owner. So it's just, it's a culture change engine.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is a culture change engine. I like the way you've built that. That's a phenomenally organized, well reinforced approach that you've built there too. I think, again.

Nick Smoot: Thank you. It only took a decade of beating my head against the wall, so we're good.

Dane Groeneveld: I can see that. I can see that. I don't know how you look so fresh and young having bounced your head off that many walls. But obviously the passion is the driver.

Nick Smoot: Lots of nose jobs.

Dane Groeneveld: That's it. So that Victoria example, just let me go one step deeper on that. So you said they have this shared goal or shared theme, so space and energy, and then you touched on ag. But if people are at this Show and Tell event and they want to come and play music, it's not only the theme, right? It's anything passionate, entrepreneurial. Yeah.

Nick Smoot: Right. Yes. Well, we like the phrase, creative or creator, we try and kill off even the word entrepreneur.

Dane Groeneveld: Interesting.

Nick Smoot: Or" maker", and the reason why. So we just want people to be creators and we have the verticals that we pick because there's an abundant resource there either intellectually or financially or an opportunity with an industry that's exponential that they can tag onto and be an R& D lab. So as a community, you could be an R& D lab or if you're a corporation, let's pretend a corporation doesn't really necessarily want R& D. You can apply the same thing to their R& D innovation side of the company. But let's say a company just needs to hire more people. Basically more employees around a certain profile of employee, cool. You can still use the same approach to work with preexisting target audiences of your A, prototypical employee, get them before they're hired, create a community that celebrates the winning of those people, help them get together to share ideas and help them create a fun network that you can then hire out of. So it's re- architecting how do you do hiring even? So it changes this transaction to belonging. We have so much transaction in the world. We need belonging and belonging based approaches like this in Victoria, anybody belongs. And as long as you're willing to awaken the creator in, you now are starting to realize I'm flourishing again. Because back to are you a consumer or are you a creator? Your identity is not consumer. And yet if you over consume, what happens? You become obese, you become stagnant and you die. That is a body of water, that is a human, that is an animal that is anything. And so we have to create. And so there's a just basic pure science approach that you consume to create, which then right sizes your consumption. Additionally, there's also a psychological process that people feel the great mystery in the Navajos and the Native Americans who have other spiritual traditions with a creator. And so even if you don't believe in a creator, I'm okay with it. You still have a nature and a desire to create. But if you do believe in a creator or you have some semblance of a religious background, when you hear the word awaken the creator inside of it, you're like, oh my tingly, something has an emotional appeal that's either repulsive where it pulls you back into who you really wanted to be as a child. So I like the idea that the future of work is about activating creators and less about getting people to make things.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. And I think you're right to kill off entrepreneur and make it for those reasons. I've never thought of it that way. We talk a lot, particularly in American society. We put these entrepreneurs particularly tech entrepreneurs up on pedestals. But the reality is nonsense. It is nonsense. And actually we need more creating and shaping at a human level in communities to solve a lot more problems than what's the next best social media platform or whatever it might be.

Nick Smoot: The next best one's called Build_ by the way. It's B- U- I- L- D_ as a selfish plug, it's the social network for creatives. Find your tribe.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That's super cool. So this creation concept, I mean to create is human. One of my recent coaching sessions that I did, the coach was explaining how to move from what he called the goal line to the soul line. He's like the goal line's, how much money do I want to earn? What title do I have? The soul line's really more about how do I connect with other humans? What are my relationships like? How is my health? What's my relationship with the planet? All of those types of things. And his approach for doing that was on a daily basis or on a regular basis to think about what you're grateful for, who you're going to serve and what you're going to create. So there is this constant theme of creation coming about.

Nick Smoot: Just to jump in there as well. I think that's a good approach to a broken society. However, it's still bifurcating your identity.

Dane Groeneveld: Tell me more about that.

Nick Smoot: Goal line, soul line. And if you hold them both as priorities for yourself versus as one identity. Your goal, I say this to my company often and to the execs across the different entities. We are not here to scale this. Scaling has a cold architectural human design connotation of extraction, of building, of dominance. We will build the largest thing. I don't want to scale. I want you spread.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that.

Nick Smoot: And spreading has a mission- based soul to the goal. And so I like what you're saying, soul line, goal line. But I would argue that until we can harmonize our goal line and our soul line, we will never find true fulfillment and true flourishing. We will have these split Jekyll Hyde kind of worlds where you feel like you're whoring yourself out on the weekends over here for work. And look, if your soul line's increasing, you'll probably be a better human over here. But the true calling of the human race is not to be bifurcated. It is actually to ask yourself this question: Who do I want to become and what do I want to create that I believe will add the most beauty and the most value to this world? And that answer will come from your unique identification and story and thread you tell yourself that has then shaped specific skills that you've harnessed for your contribution. And if you can harmonize those things of your narrative and your story and the friction you experience to then be your goal/ soul line that you want to solve for that, then stacks skills that you're willing to learn come hell or high water. You don't have to be paid to do CEs. You don't have to be paid to go do little side hustle credits because now those skills matter because I believe my contribution matters to the world and I must get there. I must get that education I must do it. This isn't about a raise. It's about a mission. So I'm a big believer that corporations and governments and colleges and individuals need to harmonize the soul and the goad line.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. And actually the way you've responded to, that's interesting because I even saw your hands, you were like soul line and goal line. They're different ends of a football field. I think what's interesting, and I love the way you said you got to shape your identity, I drew it here, is that actually it's an x and a y- axis soul and goal. So you've got to decide where what I'm hearing you say is, where am I and what's my one identity? And to your point earlier, how much do I need to consume education skills, materials to be able to produce and create what I want? There's an interesting formula there.

Nick Smoot: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, I like this kind of thing. It's fun. I think we could ramble.

Dane Groeneveld: For sure. So what does it look like for a team in a corporation? We talked about Victoria, but you also said you do this in corporations, so not so much what is the process, because I think you described the process really well. Sure. But what is the outcome? How do people start to show up in their day jobs when you bring a program like this to play?

Nick Smoot: Yeah. I think first it's about identifying a shared problem. Because you don't need us if you don't believe you have a problem that goes for a government, a city or a corporation. And once a corporation says, Hey, we have a problem. Doesn't matter if it's, we're not hiring the right kind of person. We need to hire, we're not being able to hire, we don't have the right sales. We don't have the right innovation pipeline of new R& D. Yeah, whatever it is. Cool. Here's your problem. Great. Then the outcome is a clear document that shows kind of why that problem might be there, but less about the why and more about here's an alternative approach for how you could get there through story, discussion, planning and accountability that your team can participate in or outside contractors, college students. You can build a bigger coalition to solve your customers, your clients. You can build a coalition that works on this together and has shared wins, by the way, not just isolated wins. So when we're fully deployed within a community, we're talking hundreds of events per year. It is truly re- architecting social systems. And similarly in a corporation, it's re- architecting meetings. Meetings are piss poor most of the time, and how much more productive can we be? And we know the data around diminished returns. We know the work from home, we know everything going on where people don't want to gather, but yet we know we need to gather. We know loneliness is spiking. Really the core question is why are we gathering, why do we come to an office and how do we then move it towards shared goals, the individual and the company. And that's a lot of our superpower. Is that model applied to a high rise where the tenants won't come back to work? Cool. What if we could turn that high rise into a place where you're working on things you're passionate about that do help your company and you can invite your neighbor and your friend and your buddy from that other company and you're all hanging out in the building for activities that used to be stuff you'd never go to, but it meets a tingly inside of me because I have a role of play and it helps me achieve my identity.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I love that. That way that you turn gathering and creativity into identity and belonging because we are all talking about return to office challenges. And you're right on the spike in loneliness. My wife and I were talking the other day, we've got some brilliant artisanal craftspeople in our social circle, and they're all doing their crafts out of their garage and selling it at a market on a Sunday. And we're like, why aren't these people in a warehouse that has a lounge where people can come and experience them doing their work, maybe even appreciate what they do and pay the margin they deserve for the product, or learn how to co- create with them or how to follow them. I mean we've lost that from traditional village society and it sounds like there's a bit-

Nick Smoot: So imagine an abandoned Home Depot in Sparks, Nevada of 250, 000 square feet that was purchased and now has a 40, 000 square foot maker space, a theater, a bunch of restaurants and beer gardens and art park, co- working offices.

Dane Groeneveld: I want to pitch a tent there.

Nick Smoot: Oh no, no. Be patient. Be patient. 248 apartments out in parking lot and it's the primary maker space for Burning Man. That's one of our properties.

Dane Groeneveld: I didn't realize that. That's cool. So that already is out there.

Nick Smoot: Yeah. And the cool part is, you're right on. It is it doesn't have to be about the idea that real estate is about tricking somebody into signing some high- priced lease so that they can just toil inside this tiny box by themselves to make the monies and helps me be efficient. At some point we've efficiencied the soul out of humans. And where do we leave room for belonging, gathering transaction to happen in an authentic way because we're co- creating, and now we have a reason to gather again. The why behind space is mind- numbing. When you look at what people have been willing to do throughout history, we pay a premium. We had paid a premium to go to colleges that might be changing. We've look at the Mormons. This is not a comment about religion. No. The Mormons convince people globally to come and gather and take a trip from St. Louis after they came up through New Orleans all the way west into the middle of a desert where there was nothing. What a price to pay. Why? Ask the question, why? When no one wants to come back to your office, ask the question, how did the Mormons convince people to move to a desert? How did the Rajneeshees convince people to move to another desert and build a beautiful, wild, wild country. Crazy story. You better have a better underlying structure than some of these things that I'm talking about of why are you gathering people. But if you gather people to work on innovation, creativity with agency, without telling them here the rules. Give us all your money and you're going to live in this village in Antelope, Oregon, but the principles of culture are accurate. And when you want to say, well, that sounds sketchy, don't do that. Guess what? People are doing the same thing with Netflix and YouTube.

Dane Groeneveld: Tell me how? Where is that?

Nick Smoot: People are going on a journey to a land and they're plugging in, and then the numbers of millions, if not billions, and they're going on a journey. They're getting away their value to go to a place they believe in. So if you want to crack on Colts, just spin and watch how you spend your time at sporting arenas. Spin and watch how you spend your time shopping and on Instagram, spin and watch how you spend your time playing video games, spin and watch how you spend your time on Netflix and YouTube. And then answer me the question, why is that more compelling that you're willing to spend your literal human physical capital. Your social capital, your time, your money to go on that journey to that place. That is a journey to a place. And it's a fast journey, but it's a journey. The amount of time you spend doing that, what else might you be doing and why is that not as compelling? Because you know you want to do something else. So I ask the question why? Same thing with the kids in high school.

Dane Groeneveld: That's fascinating, Nick. It takes me back to, I was with a cult at the Weekend. I went to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder event.

Nick Smoot: It's a cult.

Dane Groeneveld: That is total cult. And I met some wonderful people there.

Nick Smoot: Did you drink the sacred drink of Coca- Cola?

Dane Groeneveld: No, I didn't. Can't drink Coca- Cola. There's too much sugar in that.

Nick Smoot: I don't either, yeah, but that's like the sacred drink of Berkshire Hathaway.

Dane Groeneveld: I saw. Well, it's working for him. He is 92 and he is still rolling.

Nick Smoot: Yeah, exactly. And ice cream.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, but he is an interesting human. I've never paid much attention to Warren before I turned up at this event. What I was more intrigued by was a comment that Charlie Munger made, which ties into something you just read. Charlie Munger turns around, he doesn't say a lot anymore, but he turns around and says, " When did all of the smartest people in the world start running out to work in wealth management? And that's a real shame for society and for humanity." And I was just like, whoa. This is a guy who spent his life building wealth.

Nick Smoot: In wealth management.

Dane Groeneveld: But now he's sitting here at the end of his life and he's saying, we're wasting so much talent just trying to manage wealth.

Nick Smoot: We're not creating.

Dane Groeneveld: Correct. And I think that's what I heard at the conference was actually there was a theme around, there was lots of themes. These guys are in a lot of different stuff. But there was a theme that I was hearing, which is create products that are special for the customer. Build something that takes a customer somewhere. And that was at least my takeaway of where there was some value to be had.

Nick Smoot: Well, and God forbid, we invite the customer to co- create with us and we take a portion of our profits to underwrite that form of community and R&D as a form of marketing. And you start to think more like a Patagonia and you align yourself with the shared interest of your consumer. And the reality of it is, who needs to do that? College. Who needs to do that? Every corporation. Who needs to do that? Government, at the state, the county, and the federal level, we need to start looking at how are we incentivizing people to co- create with us, through our profits, through our taxes instead of these failed interventions and Munger's document of failed intervention of economics. The failed intervention is the game. The game was we serve capitalism. So late stage capitalism of corporatocracy creates single winners in the market. And these single winners in the market now they're finance firms. And so what are people going to do? We're going to live in fear because if I go actually do the other thing, it's not going to give me where I want to go anymore. So I'm going to go try and make the monies and then I'm going to get my soul line, my goal line. True.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Well you just made another really good reference there, Nick, which is fear. So I think the reality is governments and organizations have leveraged fear and continue to leverage fear so that humans feel like, well, I need my job to pay my rent to put food on the table and I can't go and create and do what I wish to do. And when they do have time off, they are escaping maybe to a Netflix or to a video game rather than into a community center to really try and do something. How do we influence, make it safe for humans to go out and not be afraid? How do you bridge that financial fear that seems to be the overload right now.

Nick Smoot: Totally. You use our approach to designing a percolator as what innovation collective, what Aesop Industries has done, which is we de- risk. We de- risk. So you turn the discovery and the trust building into a low risk social activity that is fun. And so when you go out there and you start saying, in the words of the great Seth Gordon, " Oh, people like us. We do things like this." And you start seeing that people in your town are taking that risk and you're learning about the stories you demystify very low risk. It's not about doing it for the entrepreneurs by the way. You invite the United Way, you invite the battered women's shelter, you invite the college students, you invite the rotary members, you invite, you invite, you invite. It is about community and understanding the magic that exists in our own town. It is not a traditional entrepreneurship gathering. So you start with that. These fireside chats. Free beer, free wine, free coffee, whatever. And we kick it. It's date night downtown. Do it a hotel. Where are we going to land a venue? Screw your venue, do it in a park and bring lunches. Any revolution wasn't clean. It was messy. So you start with that and you de- risk it. And then you move into Coffee and Concepts where it's a space two, twice a month. Kick the ideas around. "I got a crazy idea. You got a crazy idea? That's cool. Should we go work on this?" And side hustle, you've got to make it more enjoyable and more user friendly than an O- off on Netflix. O- off, meaning how you authenticate it was like plug, I hit Facebook or Google and then it lets me into my thing and we've made it so damn complicated to find community to go build something and not fun.

Dane Groeneveld: Not fun.

Nick Smoot: It is not fun. It is horrible. And part of the reason why we're having issues in human resource is we've turned work into something that's not fun. It is not fulfilling. People are not flourishing until we start to look at what we're asking them to do and say, would you want to do this? And if your answer isn't emphatically" Hell yes!", then maybe you should rethink the incentive stack. The approach, the risk barrier, I heard it put really well by a gentleman who worked with a lot of homeless folks and he said, it was one of the most lovely things. He said, you know, can provide all these free activities for people who are in poverty, but it's just too far for them to get there. And they're like, but we're going to put it across the street from me. He goes, " No, no, no, it's just too far." Everyone's like, " What is he talking about?" " The distance between here and the distance between here, it's way too far from them." And I think we really need to understand how do we lower the barrier entry to discover, dream, design, deliver. The risk increases and so does the time when you got to make it fun and social. Why can't we have trivia nights at bars, but we can't have storytelling nights about the creatives in our teams?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I love that. I like that you've answered it with your own program naturally, but through just very basic community based approach.

Nick Smoot: I have a free ebook that we're about to release and the free ebook is called Better. And it's working on the subtitle, but it has to do with belonging based cities and economy, how you do the culture change with it. But it is a handful of essays and articles I wrote that talk about the thesis and the culture back in 2016. And that ties it directly to the very clear work of how you do it. And it is all free. It's the science backed approach gives you the charge, the graphs. I don't care if anybody uses what we do. Appreciative inquiry is a tried and true scientific approach to change. Society needs something. And so I want to just get this out there far and wide.

Dane Groeneveld: Spread it. Don't scale it.

Nick Smoot: Spread it. Yeah. Spread it. Steal, steal, steal it all.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. No, that's very cool. And I can only imagine that that flows over you. You are out doing that demystified early discovery and dreaming, but that creates more psychological safety, more clarity, more communication when we get back to our day jobs and say, oh, could we maybe fix this little problem over here too? So it's got to have a massive, give you a massive network effect.

Nick Smoot: You're absolutely right. It gives people permission to again, be creators and problem solvers.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah. That's super cool, Nick. Well, I really like your vision for the future of teamwork, and I love the fact that you're already living it. So thanks for coming on the show today to share this. I think there's so much I'm definitely going to point people towards this ebook. How do our listeners best find you and your projects?

Nick Smoot: Yeah, so couple ways. On Twitter, it's @ Smooter. That's a good old nickname I carry. And then there is also, you can find me on Instagram or LinkedIn, I share a lot there. But if you jump over to innovationcollective. co, you can sign up for information there for free. And that's an ebook blast list we use there. But I would say it's the primary one. If you're curious about our venture fund realignventures. com. You can become a fellow and come mentor our communities. If you want to know more about our real estate, it's IC Rebuild, or if you want to download the apps, it's buildcities.com.

Dane Groeneveld: That's fantastic. Well, thanks again, Nick. I'm really glad we connected and had this conversation.

Nick Smoot: Me too, Dane, I appreciate this.