Debunking the myth of the “Christian business”
Jordan Raynor sits down with Sam Eitzen, Co-founder of Snapbar, to talk about the genius of learning entrepreneurship on someone else’s dime, how you can win at business by “caring about the boring stuff,” and why there’s no such thing as a “Christian business.”
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[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey everyone, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work, for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I’m bringing you a conversation with somebody who’s following Jesus Christ and also pursuing world-class mastery of craft. We talk about their path to mastery, we talk about their daily habits and how their faith influences the work that they do every single day.
Today, I’m bringing you an amazing conversation with my friend, Sam Eitzen. He’s the Founder and CEO of The SnapBar; a photo booth company with an absurdly impressive customer list. We’re talking Uber, Amazon, Disney, Nike, Starbucks, the list goes on and on. Recently, The SnapBar was named to the Inc. 500, making them one of the 500 fastest growing businesses in the United States.
Sam’s story is fascinating. He grew up as a missionary kid in Morocco. He was a youth pastor in the Greater Seattle area for a few years and then he stumbled into The SnapBar. I sat down with Sam to talk about that story, talk about the genius of learning entrepreneurship on someone else’s dime. I got personal here talking about my own story.
We talked about how you can win a business by carrying about the boring stuff that other companies don’t want to pay attention to. We talked about why there’s no such thing as a “Christian business.” I think these were the best three minutes of any episode of the Call to Mastery thus far. If you listen and nothing else, make sure you fast forward towards the end of the episode where we talk about that important topic.
Guys, you’re going to love this conversation. Please enjoy this wisdom from my friend, Sam Eitzen.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:02:00.7] JR: Sam, thanks for being here.
[0:02:02.6] SE: Pleasure to be here. Thanks, Jordan.
[0:02:04.4] JR: Yeah. Let’s start here, what's the 30-second elevator pitch for The SnapBar? What do you guys do?
[0:02:09.2] SE: SnapBar is a visual experience company. We use photos and videos to create events, or experiences at events actually. Think photo booths, sometimes as simple as that. Sometimes way more complicated. Yeah, that's the idea.
[0:02:23.2] JR: That's a really fancy way of describing a photo booth company, for the record.
[0:02:25.9] SE: It is. It is. Yeah. Yes.
[0:02:28.7] JR: I respect that.
[0:02:29.5] SE: The thing is is when you say photo booth company, your parents just look at you as a failure to a certain extent, you know I'm saying? No one really takes a photo booth company straight.
[0:02:38.8] JR: Right. This is a way to avoid those judging stares at Thanksgiving. I respect that. Okay, but here's the deal, right? You guys do things differently. Why don’t you talk about that? I mean, photo booth companies have been around forever, long before The SnapBar. Why is SnapBar in the Inc. 500 when I would imagine maybe none of your competitors are? What are you guys doing differently than the rest of the market?
[0:03:01.5] SE: Yeah. I mean, over the years, there have been a couple that have made it pretty big, us included. I think a big thing actually is just a focus on business and not a focus on photo booths, or really the product that we sell. Focus on business, i.e. the strategy, the culture, the people, the hiring. A lot of the things that are boring, those are so important to focus on.
We've been focusing on them and what started as a little side gig, where we would make some money on the weekends, turned it into a full-blown company, mostly because I think we treated it like a real business and not just, yay, we have this cool photo booth that we take to events.
[0:03:37.9] JR: Yeah. That's a good point. It just reminds me of this truth that you don't need to create something new to build something great, right? I think a lot of people assume that they got to go from 0 to 1, which don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of 0 to 1 and that strategy, but that's not necessary for building a great company.
Hey, Sam. I love your personal story, as well as the founding story of The SnapBar, but let's start with your personal story. You grew up as a missionary kid in Morocco. Take us on the journey from there to the founding of this venture.
[0:04:06.7] SE: My family lived in Morocco for a number of years. I was born in LA, but moved there about two months. It was all I knew as a kid. Bounced around in school from Moroccan and Arabic schools, to French schools, to home-school and beyond. Education was pretty varied. My dad was an entrepreneur in Morocco. We did everything, or he did everything from leading treks into the mountains in the early days, to photography and teaching it to local Moroccans, video production, things that I got to be a part of with him as a young kid. I think that birthed in my brother and I specifically an entrepreneurial spirit, to just try new things, etc.
My brother even at 12-years-old started a jewelry business. Started buying ethnic beads and things like that. From pretty early age, we were just messing around, seeing what we could come up with. Part of it was we wanted to be entrepreneurs, most of it was just boredom. As kids, we were – there was not a whole lot to do sometimes, and so we just experiment.
[0:05:02.8] JR: What is there to do as a kid in Morocco?
[0:05:05.3] SE: Play soccer in the streets. That’s about it.
[0:05:08.1] JR: That's it. It’s our company.
[0:05:09.9] SE: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:05:11.3] JR: Hang on. Back up a second. You described your dad as an entrepreneur. They were over there as missionaries. I mean, they would have described themselves as missionaries, correct Amanda? Can you talk about that?
[0:05:22.7] SE: Yeah, of course. I mean, so in a lot of countries you cannot describe yourself as a missionary. That's something that I grew up with is an understanding, which is just we were not there to do anything. There was no master plan for us converting people. There was a plan to be there, to love people, to speak to people, to share your life with others. That was really the framework that I grew up in as a missionary kid. The term ‘missionary’, so many people misunderstand it. They think you're going on some crusade to change people's minds and that's just not the case.
My dad was there legally as a businessman. Then that's the framework that we grew up, and at least publicly when we spoke to other people. Now of course, we knew why we were there and there was this hope, this desire to reach people, to share the gospel, but that was not something that was – it didn't come first all the time. Sometimes, just living life and being friendly to people and knowing people and working in a business and training others, that was a big part of our childhood and of his work.
[0:06:21.7] JR: Well, as all the research is starting to show, that is the most effective path to making disciples of Jesus Christ, is focusing on serving others well. There’s a great book – did I ever send you The Missional Entrepreneur –
[0:06:36.1] SE: Yes, you did.
[0:06:36.8] JR: - by Mark Russell? Okay, great. It's a terrific book in a really good understanding of how serving first, rather than preaching first, not surprisingly is the most effective way to build relationships and long-term relationships, to which the gospel is just very natural. The presentation of the gospel is very natural, because you already love this person. It's just an extension your love. All right, so you grow up watching our dad as an entrepreneur, right? You grow up in Morocco. What's the rest of the story?
[0:07:04.2] SE: At around 18, I moved to the states, went to school, hoped to become a film director. I was down at Biola University in Los Angeles for six months. Quickly realized, film direction was not for me. It's just something that I thought was going to be cool. Left after six months. Moved to Washington where I was dating a girl long distance at the time. She is now my wife. We've been married for about 11 years.
Got to Washington after leaving school, thought, “Hey, maybe I'll go to Community College. Maybe I'll go to work. Save up some money.” Now I didn't want to go into debt. Biola was not cheap, even with the scholarships that I had had. I got up there and at 18-years-old with my girlfriend at the time, she was 17, we started a business because I could not find work. We started a coffee catering company. I would go into business. We'd have this little van. I'd go into the business, take the orders, radio them out to Kirsten. She would make the drinks and I'd hand-deliver them to a bank, or a hospital, or a car dealership.
[0:07:58.4] JR: That’s amazing. Yeah.
[0:07:59.4] SE: Yeah, it didn't make a ton of money, but we did that for about a year and survived being business partners at 17 and 18. I was completely foolish as to everything about business and that, but we survived. We got married. I think it was a good testing ground for our relationship.
[0:08:14.9] JR: I would say so. How old were you guys when you got married?
[0:08:17.4] SE: I was 20. She was 19.
[0:08:19.3] JR: Okay. Wow.
[0:08:20.0] SE: Pretty young. We've been dating though since about 15, 16, on-and-off. I lived in Morocco and then England and LA. It was what? AIM, I think back in the day. We were heavy on AIM.
[0:08:29.9] JR: That’s amazing. Do you remember your AIM handle?
[0:08:33.3] SE: Not at all. No.
[0:08:34.2] JR: That's probably good. It's probably good. All right. All right. Pick back up the story.
[0:08:37.3] SE: Yeah. I bounced around after that. I was actually a youth pastor for three years, because of the church that I was involved in, needing me to step up and help with the youth. I left that, went to work at REI as a shoe salesman. From there, I got a job at a startup. Through this whole period of time, there were other businesses that I had tried to start. Most of them were completely un-noteworthy, either failures, or just stayed at the germ of an idea and never progressed beyond that.
When I got out of REI and moved to a startup called Rhino Camera Gear, it was the beginning of really seeing how a company could grow. I met the founder at REI while I was on a shift. I offered through a series of events to work for free, because I was so desperate to find a job at this point that would pay the bills. Long story short, I had gone from having some money saved up and buying a house to being completely broken, foreclosing and all these things through a variety of – it was a long story, but I was really desperate at a certain point. I was regretting leaving school and tons of self-doubt piling up on myself about like, “Man, what am I doing here? How can I provide? I have a kid.” At this point, my firstborn, my son.
I started working for free for this company called Rhino and said, “I'll figure out your social media five hours a week. I'll do it for free and we'll see where it goes.” Long story short after two and a half years there, I ended up being the COO. We'd gone from goodness, I don't know, nothing in the bank, hardly any sales. Kickstarter campaign is what really gave birth to the company, to I think 1, 1.5 million in revenue. I had no ownership in the company, but I got to see how an idea would be taken from this seed stage to, “Wow, we’re 13 people. This is our full-time thing. We have salaries.”
[0:10:23.1] JR: What an amazing experience. Can I park there for a second? I love the little bet you placed. I talk to a lot of people who are like, “Man, I'd love to start a company, but I got to provide for my family. I got to do this.” I'm like, “Yeah.” I think your story is great advice. Just go somewhere and volunteer five hours a week, right? Or whatever it is. Place a little bet. Who knows? The Lord might multiply that, like he did for you. That's certainly not guarantee.
Yeah, just this theme of prioritizing learning over short-term income. I see so many young people be like, “Oh, I won't take that job, or take that five-hour a week internship, because it does a pay wall enough.” I’m like, “Why do you need it to pay – That's not why you're doing it. You're going where you're going to learn the most,” right?
[0:11:01.3] SE: Yeah. Or especially when you're young. I mean, I had some pressures that were a little bit for my age, I had already my first kid, I was married and I bought a house in around 2009 or so, which was the worst time to buy a house from the – There was a lot of external factors that contributed to me being in the spot where I had no other options. Therefore, I was incredibly desperate and often acting out of desperation. Didn't help not have a degree.
When you're young and you don't have some of these external commitments and responsibilities, my goodness, yes, take the risk. Be bold. You can start over so many times before it ever really impacts your life.
[0:11:38.4] JR: Very few decisions are irreversible, right? All right, so you're at this startup, you grow up from nothing-ish to 1.5-ish in revenue. What's the story from there to The SnapBar?
[0:11:52.4] SE: Yeah. The SnapBar was a complete accident. My brother and I began this journey because of a friend of ours who was getting married. I was in the wedding. My brother was a friend of the groom. My brother had camera gear sitting around, because his background was as a photographer. He took that actually from our dad in Morocco.
It goes like this, the groom knew of a German blog where they had put all these cameras and cords into a wooden box. The groom's brother happen to be a carpenter, general contractor. So he builds the box, my brother brings the gear. That's after all what a photo booth is, it's a fancy box that hides a bunch of cameras.
[0:12:29.1] JR: Oh, it is. It's pretty simple. Yeah.
[0:12:30.0] SE: Yeah, very simple. We get to this wedding and I'm wearing a bow tie, because I'm in the wedding and I help my brother. He puts on a bow tie, we’ll put on these vests. I mean, our logo is a bow tie, it's changing [inaudible 0:12:41.5]. We do this event. It's just a simple matter of standing in front of a backdrop, clicking on this button that takes your photo, you see it on a screen in front of you. At the time, we couldn't even print, so it was just like, “Yeah, yeah, photo.”
That box was given to us after the wedding and it sat in my garage. My brother was living with my wife and I at the time and it did nothing. We had our full-time job. Funny enough, my brother actually ended up working with me at Rhino. We hired him as creative director. we were both there. He was living with my wife and I. We were talking a lot, all the time about all kinds of ideas.
We had this box sitting in our garage that was doing nothing and people just call it the photo box. Well, we in our full-time jobs, we were staying busy, focused on trying to grow Rhino and do all that stuff. Every once in a while, we'd have a friend say, “Hey, remember the photo box at the wedding? Can you bring that to my wedding, or my party?” This happened a number of times over the course of seven or eight months. Eventually, just got annoying because we'd want to be going to these parties and have fun and people were asking us to bring this photo box, so we started charging them about $99 as a dissuader.
[0:13:44.3] JR: That’s amazing.
[0:13:45.4] SE: They would pay it, so it didn't dissuade enough people. We genuinely tried to move away from the responsibility of taking this photo box with us to these events. It all came to a tipping point nine months after this wedding. We had received a request on our Facebook page. We had a Facebook page. We didn't have a website. It wasn't a legitimate business. There was no filing with the government, but this was just a fun thing that we would do.
We have this Facebook page simply as a photo distribution mechanism. Instead of having a website or giving everyone thumb drives, we'd say, “Hey, go like our Facebook page. There's an album, your wedding pictures in it. There you go.” It was sheer laziness, right? We didn’t want to do any work.
This lady contacted us via the Facebook page and said, “Hey, could you do my wedding?” I said, “Okay. How do you know about us?” She said, “I saw one of your pictures on Facebook.” I said, “Sure. When's your wedding?” Six months away, which for us was an eternity. We don’t know if we were –
[0:14:39.2] JR: Yeah. You don’t even know if you’re going to be living in Washington in six months. Yeah.
[0:14:41.9] SE: Exactly. We had no idea. But we said yes, which we probably shouldn’t have out of respect to her, but we said yes. She says, “Please send over a contract.” We panicked, because we don't have anything. It's not a real business. We download one and we call it The SnapBar, because that was the name of our Facebook page. That was just a weird move. I don't know why we did that. We just didn’t want to call it Sam and Joe's photo box.
[0:15:02.2] JR: The thing in Sam and Joe's garage da, da, da.
[0:15:04.9] SE: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We send over this contract, which was not a real contract. Before we ever had the opportunity to really start planning this thing which was six months away, or tell her, “Hey, this is how you need to pay us,” we get a check in the mail to The SnapBar, but we didn't have a business and we didn’t have a bank account.
Out of sheer embarrassment, really we just held on to the check. We went and we started a business. We started a bank account. Deposited the $300, which we thought was highly robbery, by the way, because we'd only ever charge people 50, 99 bucks. 300 was just ludicrous for us. We had six months to plan around. I mean, I genuinely had anxiety about whether we'd forget it, because I had nothing in my calendar six months away. That was how SnapBar started.
[0:15:47.7] JR: That's amazing. Now you're sitting on the Inc. 500 list. You guys are crushing it. You're doing more than 3 million dollars in revenue. What are the lessons that you take from that? You fell into this business. I mean, accidental on your part. Obviously, sovereignty of God. By the way, I love the picture of the photo booth being gifted to you, as all businesses are. You just got to see it very tangibly, like this thing was gifted to you. What are the lessons that you extract from your story that you tend to share with other founders, if any?
[0:16:19.0] SE: Yeah. It's a great point that you make. It really does strip away a lot of the ability for me to be prideful. Or not the ability for me to be proud, but any pats on the back that I could give myself, or that my brother and I could give ourselves have been really taken away by a lot of these weird circumstances. It was not our idea. We didn't design or ask for this box. It just landed in our laps. This lady randomly found us.
I think in business, there's a lot of chest beating and a lot of shouting from the mountaintops about how great maybe a person is, or the work that they did is. Of course, there's room for healthy appreciation of the hard work that gets put in. There is so much in business, whether you want to admit it or not, that is completely outside of our control, right?
That's been a huge lesson. It's kept, I think as humble as we could be. I mean, there's still work to be done of course, but really it's taken away a lot of the pride that we’d ever have in saying, “Well, look at what we did and look at us landing in the Inc. 500 and look at all the money that we're making.” Because there are so many things that are outside our control to this day, right?
[0:17:25.8] JR: You got from this garage concept, to working with I mean, some of the biggest brands on earth. I'm just really curious, what's the coolest or most high-profile project, or application of SnapBar tech you've seen so far? That you're legally allowed to talk.
[0:17:42.8] SE: Yes. Yeah, I was going to say, we can't legally talk about some of it. But man, we had a really, really cool experience doing something incredibly custom at CES in 2019. It's actually pretty far outside the norm of what we do on a regular basis. I mean, we go to lots of really cool weddings and parties and holiday parties and conferences, but this one stood out. CES One is just a massive, massive undertaking, a huge conference.
We got to work for Google. It was the really big project that they put on with – it was called The Ride of Your Life. It was a recreation of – it's a small world that they built in about two and a half months, a flat “rollercoaster train experience” with massive animatronics and –
[0:18:29.3] JR: Oh, my gosh.
[0:18:30.4] SE: Scent infusers and all kinds of crazy stuff for four days of CES. It was a huge project. We ended up through this process, being in the middle of nowhere in freezing temperatures in Colorado at a rollercoaster manufacturing facility, testing systems. Basically, what we were asked to do was build an automated software system that would capture people in the cars as they would go by certain points in this experience.
Because it was in an actual rollercoaster going really, really quickly and they wanted these to be really high-quality and branded, we couldn't use pre-built rollercoaster capture systems. We used sensors in the tracks to trigger cameras that we had at different locations, all DSLRs. Some of them had to be weatherproof. Just really weird stuff. We ended up having a 100% uptime, took thousands and thousands of photos. It was an incredible experience.
[0:19:24.2] JR: That's unbelievable. I can't believe I've never heard this. I mean, you and I are getting to each other pretty well. That's an amazing story.
[0:19:31.4] SE: I would say visual experiences, right? It's a little bit cool [inaudible 0:19:33.8].
[0:19:33.8] JR: It’s a visual experience. That’s a lot go – That’s a lot. I’d lead with that. Lead with Google version of it's a small world. All right, you started this business, you had no idea what you're doing. You’re a first-time founder. I mean, you had witnessed your dad building businesses, but you really had no clue what you were doing. How'd you learn?
[0:19:51.8] SE: Well, Rhino was a huge learning experience. It was incredible to learn about a startup going from zero to something on someone else's dime, at someone else's risk. Kyle, the CEO there was an incredibly good CEO. It was just a crazy time of taking people that had no business experience and turning it into something that worked. That was a huge learning experience and I'd highly recommend it. It's like an apprenticeship really. You learn so much.
[0:20:21.8] JR: Yeah. Obviously, I talk about the value of apprenticeships in Master of One. Let me just co-sign Sam's advice here. I've never really talked about this, but yeah. Learning on somebody else's dime is a game-changer. Happened for me by accident. My first job out of Florida State, my official title was Executive Editor of this website called sayfiereview.com. It was basically the Drudge Report for Florida political news. I was essentially the CEO. The founder had a full-time job as a lobbyist and a lawyer; brilliant. Absolutely brilliant guy named Justin Sayfie. He continues to do a great job with the business.
Yeah, Justin paid me, I mean, a pretty small salary at the time. I think I was making $30,000 out of school, whatever. Oh, my gosh, what I learned was invaluable in those 18 months and it was basically the impetus for me saying, “All right, I'm going to start my own venture, starting this career as an entrepreneur.” A lot, a lot of wisdom in that.
All right, so you've gone from side hustle to Inc. 500. What have you learned along the way about what the delta is between masterful founders and just good, adequate founders? What's the difference?
[0:21:30.5] SE: To put it simply, I think something I talk to our team a lot about is caring about the boring stuff. I referenced this a little bit in the beginning of our chat, which is that we focused on the business, the logistics, the culture, not as much the product. To be completely honest, I really think that I could be tasked with starting a toilet paper manufacturing company and with this team that we have, figure it out. Because we've spent a lot of time obsessing over learning about the boring things in business.
I get asked a lot of questions from people in the photo booth world, photo booth community. They reach out all the time. Whether they want to buy some of our products, or learn from us, or ask us. So many people get so preoccupied with the specifics of the photo booth industry, which is changing all the time and completely subject to trends and changes in the events industry.
[0:22:21.4] JR: Pretty irrelevant to building a great business, right?
[0:22:23.7] SE: Very irrelevant. Yeah, because the technology is changing all the time, and so they get incredibly worried when DJs start buying photo booths and offering them for free on top of their DJ services. Or photographers end up buying photo booths and are looping them into photography packages. All these things that if you actually spend a lot of time studying competition and pricing and what to price, the more boring, the more tedious things in business, you're able to stand out.
We're not that brilliant at The SnapBar. We've just I think really cared about the boring systems and strategy pieces that a lot of people don't want to focus on. They want to focus on the new tech and the coolest latest piece of gear, etc., etc.
[0:23:05.2] JR: Yeah. I would argue – so I know your business pretty well, right? I've been in the weeds with you for months on this, giving your involvement in my collaboratory. Yes, you guys focus on the boring stuff, but you also focus on the essential timeless stuff that survives regardless of changes in technology. I believe that is creating super fans of your customers. Your customer renewal rate is through the roof. I'd love to hear you talk about that for a few minutes. How do you create raving, super fans of your customers?
[0:23:37.9] SE: That's a great question. It's something that actually, I forget about. I forget sometimes that – well, here's an easy way to put it. Sometimes, we look at some of the basics in our business as minimum standards that you need to even play the game. I don't acknowledge how important they are.
For example, we have a massive focus on just beautiful photos and beautiful aesthetic of our products. It's really easy to forget about that, but people care about beauty. They want things to look good. They want to look good. We do spend a lot of time focused too on just customer service; plain, old how we are making people feel when they are trusting us with their business. Nothing fancy about it. No special tactics.
It's incredible to see the loyalty that's built when you treat people with respect, when you care about their concerns, when you help them solve problems they didn't even ask you to solve for them yet; those things. Sometimes, I actually think that they're also boring. I mean, boring is maybe not the right word. Simple. Really simple, very obvious. That's probably a better word. We focus on those simple things. Making people feel really good.
[0:24:43.6] JR: On the customer success side of things, give us some examples of those simple things that you guys do that you think your competition just doesn’t and that allows you guys to stand out?
[0:24:52.0] SE: Yeah. We rarely hold contracts over people's heads. In the events industry, things can change all the time. I just saw an e-mail that float by my inbox this morning that said based on a road, I think being washed out here in Washington State, because of all the rain we're having, they have to cancel an event. Well, we didn't necessarily say no to any other events to accept this one. We have a pretty high bandwidth, but our contract says we could keep all that money and say, “Hey, sorry. It's just really last-minute. This is tomorrow. We're not going to do it. We've never enforced our contract over someone.”
That's an easy one to say, “Oh, of course. You're going to help and work with those people.” It's incredible how many people do try to take advantage of us. We really don't like holding it over people. We want people to have a great experience. That's one some behind the scenes stuff that we do to make an event work is pretty insane.
We once did a wedding in Telluride, Colorado. A FedEx that was supposed to be open one afternoon where we had shipped all our gear was closed early. Our person from LA that we flew out to pick up the gear couldn't get into FedEx. We call every contact that we knew at FedEx to try to get into this thing, couldn't do it. It was a pretty high-profile wedding. You had to ride a gondola to get to the venue. We had been flown from all over the place.
We ended up dispatching within a couple hours someone from Seattle to build up the set of gear that they needed, drive to get a midnight flight to Denver, pick up a car and drive six hours into the mountains with a new set of gear to make this event happen.
[0:26:31.7] JR: I love it.
[0:26:32.6] SE: The client never knew about it. We never told the planners. That is something not, like not enforcing contracts, because sometimes things happen in the world of events. Just the commitment to go above and beyond for people is something that it's not complicated. It was a pretty simple – it cost a lot of money to do some of these things, but they – whether even our clients know about what we're willing to do for them and what we did for them or not, it creates a system to be able earn those raving fans.
[0:27:01.8] JR: Yeah, it creates a culture amongst the team that ensures that when the client does notice, you're creating those super-fans, right? Because you're telling the team in those instances, “Nothing is too crazy for us to do to make the customer happy.” I mean, that's the lesson that you're preaching to your team, which is so valuable.
Speaking of your team, you recently took off an entire month. You're overseas. You were totally disconnected from work. I think that's the dream of a lot of founders. Being able to work yourself out of the day-to-day operations of the business, if you so choose. How have you pulled that off? Looking back over the last few years, what have you done to put yourself in that position?
[0:27:42.6] SE: Yeah. My goodness. I mean, one, shout out to our team. They're incredible people. I can't even really take credit for hiring them, because I didn't hire most of them. It was people on the team hiring other people on the team. We have created a culture where we expect to go above and beyond for clients, but we also expect to go above and beyond for one another. That is a huge piece of it. Then we try to extend as much ownership and trust as we can to the people that we are employing.
[0:28:05.7] JR: Give me an example of that.
[0:28:06.7] SE: Of the culture that we've created, with the ownership that we’re extending?
[0:28:09.9] JR: Just the ownership piece. I was talking to Horst Schulze, the Co-Founder of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Group –
[0:28:14.2] SE: I love that book.
[0:28:15.6] JR: How they do this really well. How do you guys do that? How do you give ownership in increasing amounts to your team?
[0:28:23.9] SE: Yeah. a big one is just asking them to take the ownership and to say, you're not going to be disciplined for – Discipline is a weird word. “You're not going to be corrected, or we're not going to be frustrated if you make a mistake. You have the freedom to try to do your best. I trust you.” Craig [inaudible 0:28:41.2] I think I heard him speak on his podcast at one point in time and said that if you have people on your team that can do something 50% as well as you, try to delegate. That’s 50%. Now, I don't know if I completely agree with the 50%, because we've had some experiences in sales and marketing where that's not worked out really well. Especially, say with contractors and things like that.
The idea was like, “Look, I'm not the smartest person in the room and I'm not the only person with answers.” We often ask quite a bit from the people that are on our team to say, “I trust you to make the right decision. If it's not the right decision, we'll get back together, we'll talk about it and we'll go from there.” Then we actually make that happen. It's one thing to say, “You have ownership. Please take risks.” Then when a big mistake happens, for you to come down with a crushing blow, it completely robs the person of confidence and trust in what you're actually telling them. You have to back it up.
[0:29:34.3] JR: Yeah, that's really good. I've seen a lot of business owners who lament about their employees not taking more ownership come down really hard on their team when they make simple mistakes. That's a recipe for disaster. If you want your team to feel they can take ownership of their roles, trust them to do the role. If they're not doing the job, if you can't trust them, either one, you've made a bad hiring decision, which is probably your fault, right? Two, you may need to make a change in that role.
Yeah, I've heard that 50% advice before. If somebody else can do the job 50% as well as you, just delegate it. I don't agree. I think you should look for people who could do the job a 100%, a 110% better than you can. But I think the lesson, I wholeheartedly agree with, which is you trust your team. Tell them you trust them and let them fail and be okay with mistakes that people are taking smart, calculated risks, right?
[0:30:29.3] SE: Yeah. I mean, I was going to just completely agree. When you are a founder of a company, in the early days you were making all the decisions and yes, it is very much your brain, your strategy, your decisions that affect the day-to-day. When you build a team, even if it's three, four people, the company is no longer yours anymore. It is now in whatever the ownership structure looks like. The responsibility, the brand that's being created, the culture that's being created, it's not you by yourself anymore. It is a group of people.
Bringing them in and constantly reminding them that this is your company. You can create your dream job. You can treat clients the way you want them to be treated. That's incredibly empowering for people if it's actually given and if you follow through in a good way, because mistakes will happen and things will happens that you would have done in a different way.
[0:31:20.7] JR: I think one of the best signs that you're doing something right as a founder is if people are asking their friends to come to work at the same company. That to me is really the ultimate compliment. Why do you think your team does that? What is it about The SnapBar that they love so much? Don't just give a broad culture answer. I'm going to hold you to a real answer here. What do they see in The SnapBar that makes them invite their friends?
[0:31:44.7] SE: I think it's the people. We had a summit day. It’s like a mini internal conference. The recurring theme that people brought up is, “I love the people here. I love coming to work, not because of the work, not because of photo booths, not because of the events industry, but because of the people that I get to work with.”
There is a genuine sense of care in the room. There is a genuine sense of connection and community that we share with each other. Most of it has nothing to do with company culture. It’s people and how people treat each other. Because we've allowed that to in one sense, flourish and tried to step out of the way as much as possible and let relationships and community build, I think it's pretty natural for people to want to bring more and more people into this. They love it. It's freeing. It's encouraging. Its life-giving. It's not actually something that The SnapBar did for them. It's just simply this space we've created for them to be themselves as great people that care for one another.
[0:32:40.4] JR: I would argue, you guys did play a role in that, right? You're hiring right now right, for a senior level role, a sales director role. You guys play a role in it, because you screen heavily for culture, right?
[0:32:52.8] SE: We do. Yes.
[0:32:54.3] JR: I think that's the practical takeaway for somebody listening to this.
[0:32:57.2] SE: Interesting.
[0:32:58.2] JR: If you want people to love working there because of the other people, then you got to hire people who share the same values, right?
[0:33:03.3] SE: I mean, that's true. Yes. That we can't ignore that. I mean, that's on me, right? I need to make sure that I'm hiring those kinds of people. I actually rely on our team a lot to do screening with me and for me, because I am not the best judge for culture anymore. The team is. We allow the team to speak pretty heavily into the culture we don't want to create, even if I want to bring on some incredible sales rep that’s heavily, heavily driven by say, a competitive sales mentality, where it's, “I'm going to earn all the commission because this is how good I am.” I know that there'd be people on my team that would be really concerned about what that would do for our culture. I try to listen as much as possible.
It's a combination, I think. If we can screen and get the right people in and then let them loose in one sense to affect and contribute and connect and be in community with the other people that are here at the company, I mean, it's worked so far. We have a very, very, very sticky, retentive – again, I don't like using the general word ‘culture’, but we have very few people that leave. We've heard regularly that people, they can't imagine what it would be like to work for another company, is something that I've heard numerous times.
[0:34:11.4] JR: What an ultimate compliment for a founder and CEO.
[0:34:15.0] SE: Yeah, it is.
[0:34:15.9] JR: Hey, Sam. What does your typical day look like? From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, what is a day in the life of Sam look like?
[0:34:22.4] SE: Well, it's always tempting to give the perfect week. I have three kids. I just finished – January was the month of sickness for our family. I can tell you, my routine was completely thrown out the window about January 6, despite my best intentions. If I were to build the perfect day and on a good week when the kids are healthy and I usually get up around 5:30. I take some time to read, drink coffee, let my brain become alive. I try to get to the gym before work. I usually get to work around 8:30. I used to schedule meetings in the morning, but a recent change is trying to push most of them to the afternoon and block out every morning.
[0:34:59.6] JR: Very, very wise. Very wise –
[0:35:01.5] SE: Yeah, to just get into some deep work and crank out what I need to do. Then meetings. I have a lot of meetings. My role as CEO is just really busy and heavy on that. Although, most of them are inside the company, but a lot of connections with entrepreneurs and founders outside. I try to stay pretty connected to the local network of founders. Then I come home and just hang out.
[0:35:24.4] JR: How do you wind out in the afternoon? Yeah, what are your afternoons look like?
[0:35:27.8] SE: Yeah. I mean, at around 4:30 to 5:00 p.m. on most days, I'm able to just start driving home. It takes about 10-15 minutes. That is a crucial time. I used to be on the phone for a good – I mean, right? Every minute of every day, just busy, busy, busy with things trying to get it – squeeze it all in and then turn it all off the minute that I step out of the car to the front door. I've realized that that's ineffective, that the kids don't appreciate it.
I try to stop work as much as possible when I get home. Our kids go to bed at 8. I usually get home around 5. Those three hours as often as possible, and of course as a founder, it doesn't always work this way. I am just disconnected. I don't really work more than 40 hours a week. I don't work weekends, so that already is a pretty good baseline to set for spending time with my family. In terms of unwinding, man, we wrestle, we chase each other. I just try to be there for them.
Again, that's on a great week. It's tough. It's very easy in who we have not been above click putting on Netflix for the whole family to sit on the couch and just unwind for a couple hours and just time that what we need, right? I like to be careful about how perfect I make my routines and systems look. Because at least with the kids, it's never perfect.
[0:36:42.9] JR: Amen to that. Let me co-sign here, the lots of things I'm co-signing on this episode. This advice of not taking the phone call on the way home. I used to do that all the time. It was a game-changer. The worst thing was pulling into my driveway when I was still on the phone and the kids are there and they’re excited to see me and I'm like, “Oh, sorry. No. Daddy's on the phone.” It's horrible. Then I got smart and realized, “Oh, I could stop the car at the front of the neighborhood.”
But, no. Mentally, what happens when you just drive in that silence, or listening to Taylor Swift or Hamilton if you're in my car, that is magical. It just gives you a mental break. I'm in such a better mood. I'm so much more engaged with my kids when I’ve got that break, or before engaging at home.
[0:37:28.3] SE: If I've had a rough day, I'll try to get to the gym after work. I think it's a better thing to exercise before. It gives you a ton of energy. Mental clarity is definitely increased from you. I can work out before my day starts. I also let go of a lot during a workout. Or sometimes, I've even gone to the gym and just sat in the sauna. I don't even worked out. Just like, I need to sweat out the day. That completely alters my mindset and mood and energy levels going back home too.
Again, it's flexibility. Every day is different. Some days are really easy and really great and other days are really tough. Trying to stick to the same routine through all of it and not listening to what your mind needs, what your body needs, that can be dangerous.
[0:38:15.3] JR: Yeah. Hey, I want to invite you to get up on one of your favorite soap boxes. We talked about your dad, your parents doing missions through business overseas, what is commonly referred to as business as mission, or BAM for short. BAM is as it's traditionally defined is that, right? It’s somebody intentionally going overseas to a country that's traditionally hostile to Christian missionaries and doing business.
Why are you so passionate about this, as opposed to the traditional model of donor support of missionaries? I mean, obviously you had a model in your parents, right? What get you fired up about this?
[0:38:52.3] SE: I think, yeah, this is something I feel pretty passionately about. It's the way that missionaries have been supported for years, I think is fundamentally broken, or at least, there’s a lot of holes in it and I don't know how secure and strong it's going to be going forward.
[0:39:08.1] JR: Preach.
[0:39:09.7] SE: The disconnect that you can also experience when you are overseas, whatever you're doing between what's happening “stateside or back home” is pretty huge as well. Both on the side of giving people the ability to help support themselves, giving them an opportunity to be tent makers and not be completely reliant on a group of people thousands of miles away, completely dependent on how the organizational structures and leadership and elder boards at that particular location or a couple locations are happening, which will either disrupt your life overnight, or allow you to live and work and be in relative peace for years. I mean, you have so little control, because that's on one side.
On the other side, when you come back, nobody cares for the most part that you've been a missionary for 20 years or what you were doing overseas. The professional world doesn't care. They don't even know how to interpret it. I know a lot of people, friends of my parents, friends of mine that have come back from serving overseas to nothing, to no pension, no retirement, no real plan on how to reintegrate into the workforce, etc.
I think that business entrepreneurship specifically, can help on both these fronts. One, the natural stance that we have in business is we got to learn, we have to adapt, we have to change, we have to see what people are doing in the marketplace, we have to understand social media, even if we're not a part of social media, we've got to understand it. We've got to understand what people are caring about. That's a natural result of staying current with those types of things. Then of course, if you can build a business that generates some income, now you're less reliant on 100% other people.
You're able to generate a little bit of security or income for yourself, which again will not only help the long-term part of your life where you get to save up and maybe even provide for your own retirement, but it just keeps you current with what's happening. I think business, missions, specifically business and entrepreneurship as a mechanism for letting you have a little bit more control over what you spend your time doing and how you might be able to think about the future can be, isn't always, but can be incredibly freeing and empowering to a lot of people overseas. It's scary to be 100% reliant on things that you can't control and on groups of people you can't really – you don't even see that frequently.
[0:41:36.2] JR: Yeah. Also going back to what I said a few minutes ago, it's also a much more effective means of making disciples. When you're running a coffee shop overseas, you're just in a very natural organic way; first, loving your neighbor as yourself. Then having opportunities open up. Once you've been salt-of-the-earth, now you have an opportunity to shine the light of the world. That's true if you're doing formal business as mission in Morocco, or if you're running a business called The SnapBar in the greater Seattle area, right? It’s the same thing. I'm really curious for you to talk about whether or not you view The SnapBar as business, as mission? If so, why?
[0:42:14.9] SE: Yeah. I mean, it's a tough one. I don't view The SnapBar as a Christian organization by any way, shape or form. I have my –
[0:42:23.1] JR: Yeah. Is there such a thing as a “Christian business”? I hate this term.
[0:42:26.2] SE: Well, yeah. No, to me, but I've been fought on that before. We used to have people really get upset at the events that we would say yes to, because it would be – they just say, “Oh, this isn't the right kind. How can you be condoning this or doing it?” It's just like, “Look, The SnapBar is made up of people from all kinds of different faiths and backgrounds. We are not a Christian organization. We're here to love and serve people and that's what we're going to do and here's how we do it.” Yeah, that was definitely not always something that people would agree with me about.
I see my life as business as mission. The SnapBar is the current business that I am involved in and have the privilege of leading, or I get to look at my work as say, business or entrepreneur as mission. No, The SnapBar in and of itself is really not that. It's just a catalyst for me to be able to contribute in that way. The reason I'm careful about that is because there's a lot of people at The SnapBar that don't share my faith and my belief.
I am careful about taking something that I want to give them ownership in to say, “Well, this is what The SnapBar is about.” But that's what I'm about. I am using my platform to try to connect with people and serve others and just live out in a way that makes people curious about why I think about people the way I do, why I think about customer service the way I do and hopefully, be so good at my craft and so good in leading and so good at how we build a business, that they say, “Well, what is it about you that makes you this way?” Well, there's an opportunity.
[0:43:51.7] JR: That might have been the best three minutes of The Call to Mastery thus far. That was it. I literally have goosebumps saying here, I don't think I could have said it any better myself.”
I think, I have a lot of respect for you because you do something that I think is really hard for founders to do, which is to extract their personality from the venture. Let me let me try and put this a different way and see if it makes sense. When I was running Threshold, I was not the founder of that venture, but I was largely seen as a founder of that venture. We would always talk about the good of the venture. What was good for the venture? When I stepped down a CEO, I genuinely believed that's what was best for the company at that stage.
I brought it from a seedling of a company, to market into significant scale, but I knew it's time to pass the baton to somebody else who could take it to the next level, who had different skills than I had. I think that required what I think you have, which is you are not the business. The business is not Sam, the business is you and your team building this thing together. What right do we have even as founders to call it a “Christian business,” right?
By the way, businesses don't have souls. They have people that have souls and you as the founder have more influence than anybody else as to the culture of that business. The business isn't a Christian. You're just a Christian doing great work. I am curious though to your perspective with if you weren't the founder, or if you were and you weren't following Jesus Christ, what would be different about The SnapBar?
[0:45:24.3] SE: That's a good question. I think I wouldn't care. I wouldn't care about people. I wouldn't care about our customers. I mean, if I'm working primarily for myself and my income or my personal revenue or goodness, I don't know what, why would I do anything to help other people? It always surprises me that people expect business leaders and entrepreneurs to somehow not be completely self-obsessed about growing something to be as big as it can be.
People give, even these titans of industry, like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos a really hard time because – I mean, recently, I read an article about how Jeff Bezos, just people didn't think that he contributed enough to a particular cause, or like the Australian fires or something like that, because it was just a fraction of what he's worth. Also then I asked myself, “What moral compass does the world follow that requires Jeff Bezos to give to the Australian wildfire?”
[0:46:18.4] JR: Amen.
[0:46:19.3] SE: Why should he care at all? He lives in Seattle. Again, and people just have these weird expectations. The only reason that I like to care about people is because that's what I feel I need. That this is what Jesus commanded me to do is to love other people, to care for other people. If I wasn't a Christian founder, I know myself, I would be very greedy. I would not care. I would cut corners for sure. Who cares about culture at that point? Just cut costs.
Why really try to build some company that people really want to work at? You can always find new employees. I know that I would turn it into something that is 100% a mechanism to make me greater, not to help others.
[0:47:00.8] JR: That's really good. I mean, listen, SnapBar is a great business. You guys are generating a lot of revenue. What keeps you ambitious to keep growing this thing? Because you could. Just say, “You know what? We're in a pretty good spot. I don't need to hire a sales director.” Why do you care about continuing to grow the venture?
[0:47:19.4] SE: I love the people. My brother I use a metric personally amongst ourselves when we get together and chat about our success. We talk about how we feel when we show up on a Monday morning. If we can show up on a Monday morning excited for the day despite the challenges and whatever went down that weekend that might have been incredibly challenging and the technical issues and on and on, we know that we are being successful, even on a down month, which doesn't happen often in our story personally, but it will, right?
I spend a lot of time thinking about just the people. I want to create an organization that redefines a little bit about how work is for people. It's such a bummer that people hate work so much. It has such a bad rap. There are so many say – Like, “Thank God for Friday, or I hate Mondays and all the gifts that come with it.” Just the anticipation that people have for the weekend, which is really just an anticipation to get away from the people that they spend a large majority of their life with, that is very sad to me.
I think work has an incredible opportunity to actually really, really bless people and enliven them and bring them closer and community in a relationship with one another and make you a healthier individual, both physically and emotionally and obviously, financially. It's pretty sad, I think the state of work. It's just that work is generally seen as you say, I think in your book, drudgery. That's heartbreaking to me.
I really want to create a place where people love to work, where I like showing up on a Monday. It doesn't matter whether we are making a $100,000 a year or a 100 million dollars a year. I want it to be a place where it is – as an outlet for me. It's something that I enjoy doing, because I love working with people, to build something great.
[0:49:09.5] JR: It reminds me of my favorite t-shirt from Monday Night Brewing, Jeff Heck, who's been on this podcast before. My t-shirts says, “Weekends are overrated.” I love it. This is my mantra in life. Create a place where people can really believe that at a deep soul level that weekends are overrated. That work is good. Helping people, Christian or not, recapture what the Bible has to say about the inherent goodness, the inherent, eternal significance about the work that we do.
Hey, Sam. I love ending every one of these conversations the same way. First question, which books do you tend to recommend or gift the most to others?
[0:49:48.9] SE: Ooh. Probably number one will be Good to Great by Jim Collins. I love that book.
[0:49:52.4] JR: Great book.
[0:49:53.1] SE: E-Myth Revisited. Not the best written book, but very, very helpful for early stage founder – maybe for any stage founder that you have –
[0:50:01.5] JR: I was going to say – I was going to say, I recommend it to founders at various stages. Yeah.
[0:50:06.8] SE: It's a great, great way to just look at systems. Anything by Malcolm Gladwell, just as a way to stretch your mind and have a different perspective. Those books are a lot of fun. I enjoy listening to those. Those would be three.
[0:50:18.4] JR: Yeah, those are good. What one person, or two or three, would you most like to hear talk about how their faith influences their work?
[0:50:26.3] SE: On this show, right?
[0:50:27.1] JR: Yeah, sure.
[0:50:28.3] SE: Patrick Lencioni. I'm big fan of him. Yeah. I’ve read a few of his books. They're really good. We like the advantage a lot.
[0:50:35.7] JR: Yeah, that's a really good answer. I don't think we've heard Patrick's name come up as I mentioned that question yet. That's –
[0:50:40.1] SE: Now that he's spoken at the Global Leadership Summit and a few other events that I've been paying attention to. Yeah.
[0:50:44.6] JR: I believe Patrick, from everything I've heard is a Christ-follower and certainly a master of his craft. That's a good answer. All right, what single piece of advice would you leave this audience who they're across a variety of vocations, but a lot of them are entrepreneurs, or want to be entrepreneurs and they want to do great work whatever it is they do. For the glory of God and the good of others, what one nugget do you want to leave them with?
[0:51:07.0] SE: Yeah. I would say that one thing that has affected my entrepreneurial journey more than anything else is having a business partner in my brother, a friend that I can talk to unfiltered, get inspired by, get inspired with, sit in the trenches with. I know that not every business is going to be able to justify having a co-founder, but at the very least, find a friend. I would say mentor, but the thing is is that most mentor type relationships are not a sit in the trenches type relationship, and you need that.
Yes, significant other would be great and maybe a good friend who doesn't understand your business. If you can have someone who cares about the thing that you're trying to do, the mission you're trying to drive forward and that person can be with you in the good times and the bad times, that is just so, so helpful. I'm a huge, huge proponent of trying to find a business partner that you can align with. It's hard. It's very difficult sometimes, but it's been completely life-changing for me and my brother.
[0:52:07.5] JR: I could not agree more. I've done both. I ran a company called Citizinvestor with a co-founder, two co-founders. One of whom was in the trenches with me every single day for I don't know, two years that we were running it. That was one of the best working experience I've ever had. At Threshold, it was a little bit of a different dynamic, right? I was CEO and I had directors of field operations, Will Barrett who's been on this podcast, director of marketing, director sales, but they weren't at that same executive, co-founder type level. It's just a different dynamic. Having that partner is I'm a huge proponent of equal partnership in a venture.
Hey, man. I just want to commend you for building such an amazing business. Thank you for glorifying our great God through your pursuit of masterful work, for serving your team and serving your customers through the ministry of excellence. Your work is good. It is eternally significant. It is important. Thank you for creating spaces for people, to just smile at events. This is a good and God-glorifying thing.
Hey, if you're interested in hiring The SnapBar, or being hired by The SnapBar, you could find them at thesnapbar.com. Sam, thank you again so much for hanging out again.
[0:53:28.5] SE: Thank you very much, Jordan.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:53:30.7] JR: Man, I love Sam Eitzen. I can't believe I get to hang out with him on a regular basis in my master collaboratory. He is an amazing founder, incredibly humble, incredibly wise. Man, they're just building one heck of a company. I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation.
If you're enjoying The Call to Mastery, make sure you subscribe so you never miss a great guest in the future. If you're already subscribed, you know what I'm going to ask you to do, so please do it. Take 30 seconds and go write a quick review of the show, so that more people can find this content.
Hey, thank you guys so, so much for listening to The Call to Mastery. I do not take it lightly that you choose to spend 40, 50 minutes with me every single week. I love you guys. I love making the show for you. I'll see you next time.
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