TRANSCRIPT

Transcript

Adam Callinan (02:08)
So how'd you get to PAKT?

Malcolm Fontier (02:10)
How did get the pact? I am, I'm a product designer by training and I studied industrial design. did consulting for a while. And then my wife and I, well, we weren't even married at the time. We just started dating, but we decided we wanted to launch a business together and we launched a line of travel goods. Basically we just kind of combined all of our interests.

I had done product design, I'd done some consulting, I'd done a bunch of consulting, but I'd done some bags as part of a consulting project. And I really kind of enjoyed that in comparison to some of the other projects I'd done, like medical equipment stuff. I kind of enjoyed that high touch, low tech product stuff that people get really passionate about. And she was going to do kind of marketing and PR side of things. we love to travel, that's what brought us together. And so we rolled all those interests together. And we did it for a few years back in 2009.

to 11 and we had some success, but we also just, we were not really enjoying the way that business was going. It was a very different era and e-commerce wasn't really a thing yet. So we were spending all our time going to trade shows and felt like we spent all the best months of the year in a windowless trade show in Las Vegas and everyone else is in the mountains, they're at the lake. so we were kind of, we weren't enjoying it that much and she had a change of heart. She wanted to go to culinary school. So we wrapped it up and moved on.

Adam Callinan (03:17)
Ha ha ha!

Malcolm Fontier (03:26)
One lesson from that is that it's impossible to be really good at something you're not enjoying. so in hindsight, I think that was it. Our heart wasn't in it just the way it was going there. And then we wrapped up the line and I went on to do other stuff, worked in a tech startup for a few years. It was almost five years after we wrapped up the line, one of the products that we had designed, was the lead designer on it.

ended up appearing in a movie in 2016. And it was totally out of the blue. I didn't expect it. But it generated a ton of interest in the line. my email started to blow up. Somebody figured out who designed the bag in the movie. And there was a Reddit thread about it. Like, found the bag in the minimalist movie. It was a documentary called Minimalism. That was one of the top documentaries on Netflix for a while.

And here's my website, but it doesn't look like he's designing bags anymore. Well, my inbox has started to blow up. And at first I was like, I have my site set on something else that's actually working on kind of environmental venture using some of my design experience. so it was kind of, I wasn't ready to detour and start another bag company, but it just became too much to ignore. At first, the first thing I did was actually change the contact form on my website so that I just saved my inbox and basically said, if you're here looking for a bag, there are none.

But if you ever do relaunch it and you'd like to be notified, please enter your email address here. And we just started watching that list grow.

Adam Callinan (04:48)
Where was was that website? What was that website? Is it your personal site?

Malcolm Fontier (04:52)
was my personal site, because as a designer that had done a lot of consulting, just said, at the time, was melcalfontier.com, and I had a contact form on there. And so we just watched this thing grow, and it kind of became too much to ignore. And so was like, all right, there's something here. And so I actually reached out to the guys that had put out the movie. are some kind of content producers, influencers called The Minimalists. And I introduced myself, and I said,

I assume that you know, I'm introducing myself as I designed the bag that you use in your movie. I assume that you know, you generate a ton of interest in it. I wondering if you'd be interested in collaborating to relaunch it. And they responded right away. said, Malcolm, we love and we hate that bag. We love it because it's the best bag we've ever owned. They hate it because over a thousand people have asked us where to get one and we don't have a good answer for them. So sure, let's talk. Fast forward a year later, you know, and also I know enough to be careful of that people talk a lot more than they pull out their wallet. So.

Adam Callinan (05:44)
Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (05:44)
So rather than just assuming that all these people are saying they're interested and making an expensive production order, I've said, let's do a crowdfunding campaign to see if people will really put their money where their mouth is. And so it took almost a year to make an updated version of the bag and put the crowdfunding campaign together. In late 2017, we launched it and it went really well. And here we are a little more than seven years later, building a PAKT as a brand with hopefully a

exciting long runway ahead of us all off that crowdfunding campaign success and momentum back then that was spurred by appearance in a movie.

Adam Callinan (06:18)
Yeah, I wanna double click into some of that because there are some absolute gems hidden inside of how you executed that.

And I, I get asked about this quite frequently, frankly, when I'm like being interviewed on other podcasts about bottle keeper and the experience that we had there, which followed a relatively similar trajectory with respect to how we proved out the product and made sure that people would pay money before we spent a bunch of time and effort building it. So in your case, you know, you have accidental movie thing that nobody can plan for. That's just pure luck. just you obviously you made a great product that people grew some interest in. But the fact that ended up in a random

like very high performing Netflix documentary is just pure luck. That being said though, what you didn't do that is really important is you didn't just go out, invest a boatload of money and just create a product and hope people would buy it. And that's a really important point. So when you went into the crowdfunding component, which I think is one of the most brilliant ways, at least from a consumer product standpoint, to get people to swipe credit cards and prove, you know, people that aren't your relatives and your friends, cause they're not good.

judges of success for a product, but prove that they will swipe credit cards to purchase the product. How did you approach setting up that crowdfunding campaign? You said it took, it took almost a year to get that off the ground.

Malcolm Fontier (07:35)
From the time the movie came out, there were a few months before we decided to actually pursue it, connect with the Minimalists and all that. And then it took a good six to eight months to get samples of the product and get it photographed and build that out. so it did take almost a year.

Adam Callinan (07:37)
Okay, okay.

Yeah.

You had those for

the crowdfunding campaign. You had actual functional product and samples and all of that.

Malcolm Fontier (07:59)
There were three bags. There's some smoke and mirrors just in there. There's real products, there were some things that were wrong about the construction that we had to Photoshop in every photo that we did and stuff. But there was three bags in existence and there's only three because we offered it in three different colors. So we had one of each color that we were sending back and forth across the country to test or send to a photo shoot and send to whatever else.

Adam Callinan (08:01)
Yeah, I mean, we didn't. For ours, we did not.

Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (08:27)
Yeah. So what you're saying about the crowdfunding, worked out great for us. one thing that was, there's a of things about starting a business. I never thought I was going to have a bag business again, a second time around. People ask me many times in that five-year gap, would you do a bag company again? You made such great bags. I said, no, life is short. I've been there, done that. There's a of other things that I'm interested in. But I had to eat my words when.

here we are with this bad company. now that doing it, there's certain things that are really, once you're doing something a second time that you learn from your mistakes and focus on the things that you enjoy, try to eliminate the things that you're weaker at. But also in that time and that gap in between the two, working in the tech startup world, I realized quickly that I am much more at home in the physical product world. But there's so many things about the way tech

the tech world and tech startups operate that I'm so glad I spent that time in there and I try to apply that. I mean, one of those is the lean startup concept and the lean startup, the book that, the well-known book and just applying things like that. So I think, using that kind of lean startup method, what is the simplest way that we can test this market and for this, it was crowdfunding.

Adam Callinan (09:29)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that book by Eric Reese was a huge part of our bottle keeper experience early on as well. With that crowdfunding, how much did you do? It was quite a lot from what I recall in the first one.

Malcolm Fontier (09:42)
Yeah.

We did

we're not doing to about 2Million on that.

Adam Callinan (09:51)
Yeah, that's wild. We did $13,000 that our goal was five. We figured

if we could get $5,000 worth of people to click credit card buttons, that was enough and we were stoked at 13, $2 million. That's amazing.

Malcolm Fontier (10:01)
But

even at 13, you're 13K, I'm pretty sure you're probably above the 50th percentile. There's a lot of crowdfunding campaigns that do almost nothing.

Adam Callinan (10:12)
yeah. I mean, we were we were selling $20 products.

Yeah, again, it served our purpose. Obviously, it served yours. got you got to use that capital.

Malcolm Fontier (10:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, it

was a fun and wild ride. I knew there was interest there, but we didn't know how much or how well we'd do with it. yeah, we came out of the, I don't know if you want to get into that part or not, but day one and even the first hour of launch was pretty wild. We exceeded our expectations very fast and we're like, whoa, what's going on here? wow.

Adam Callinan (10:37)
Really? That's yeah, our day one did not look like that. Our day one I ended up in the hospital with heart palpitations. True story. Yeah. Yeah, true story.

Malcolm Fontier (10:48)
So ours, well, we started day two with a hangover because we were celebrating. But what we did actually, for some reason, I don't remember why, announced to our community that we were, because we'd been building an email list saying this is coming and trying to build hype for it, which we think we did pretty well. But for some reason, we decided that we'd go live at 5 a.m. on whatever the launch day was. We were regretting that, which all of sudden, we're right, there's three of us.

Adam Callinan (10:53)
Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (11:16)
someone that you know, Sarah, who's still on a team and a designer that we're working with. so we said, all right, I guess we'll get up at 4 a.m. and we should test this campaign before we go live to make sure it works. It our first crowdfunding campaign. We had to make sure it's working. And so we got up and by 4.30 we were ready and we flipped the switch and turned it on. And we planned to like put through a test order to make sure it was working before 5 a.m. And as soon as we flipped the switch, like...

Adam Callinan (11:17)
Hmm.

Malcolm Fontier (11:41)
We're sitting, we're all sitting at a kitchen counter drinking a coffee and we saw there's an order or two. We're like, wait, did you do that? No. Did you? No. And we're like, wait a minute, what's happening here? And we realized that people were placing orders already. People were there reloading their browser, waiting for 5 a.m. to get there. so, and you know, with crowdfunding, it's all about incentivizing people to get in early, launch day specials first. So I think we had a thing where it's like the first 100 bags would be at

Adam Callinan (11:59)
It's epic.

Malcolm Fontier (12:11)
you get the best price and then after that the price would go up a little bit and at the end of day one the price would go up again. Well, with those hundred bags, we said we'd launch it at 5 a.m. Those hundred bags were sold by 4.46 or something. so by 4.50, 10 minutes before we were supposed to launch, we got our first angry customer service message. Like you said, it's not even 5 a.m. and their early bird specials are gone. We're like, uh-oh.

Adam Callinan (12:26)
Ha ha ha!

Yeah.

Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (12:38)
In hindsight, that's a good problem to have. Well, we were, so by, by 7 AM we decided this is going well enough. It's time to, time to have a bottle of champagne. So we started that and that evening we had a, we had a, we had a launch party and we went on to do about 400 K that day. and, the very next morning we had, we're supposed to, so Sarah, who you know, was, she was managed the whole campaign and set it up and we said that we're supposed to turn off the launch day specials.

Adam Callinan (12:53)
Cheers.

Malcolm Fontier (13:03)
We, at the time we were staying in an Airbnb, she had a downstairs half and I was upstairs and I messaged her, Sarah, we got to turn off the launch day specials. And she said, yeah, I will. half hour later, she still hadn't done it. I reminded her. And finally, going to her downstairs apartment, bringing her laptop to her bedside.

She's like, she was like, she was like, I'm too hung over. can't do it. I was like, we have to do this. ended up putting her laptop on her bed and said, can you please take these down? And she, so needless to say, it was, was a fun start. and I still work, work well, work together. And it's a great, great way to establish company culture. your boss is bringing your, bringing your laptop to your bedside when you're hung.

Adam Callinan (13:44)
Yeah, that's awesome. One more tactical thing on that that I know people are interested in, because again, I get asked about it pretty frequently. How did you create the video content for that crowdfunding? Did you use an agency or did you do it internally?

Malcolm Fontier (14:00)
We did it internally. Sarah, who I've now mentioned a couple times, is actually a photographer and somewhat amateur photographer and videographer. She worked on the site as photographer. That's how we actually originally connected. that's why she was there before day one to help prep the campaign and stuff. And so we did that internally.

Adam Callinan (14:05)
Mm.

Perfect. Okay.

Yeah. And the note there for people considering going and doing crowdfunding to prove out a concept is you don't have to spend a lot of money. Like the whole point is to not spend a lot of money. You can do the things yourself, especially like today in the world of AI where, I mean, I looked at a technology of the day called icon that is wild. The ad content and things that it creates using AI and man.

Malcolm Fontier (14:37)
but

Adam Callinan (14:44)
So that stuff's getting a lot easier. You don't need to spend a lot of money on it.

Malcolm Fontier (14:45)
Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. We've done other videos since then and one of the biggest challenges is finding the right voice talent for doing the voiceover. Recently we said we're never going do that again. AI generated voice that can read your script and you can choose it has gotten so good. We never need to go through that painful process of finding the right voice talent again.

Adam Callinan (15:01)
It's crazy.

Yeah, with this, again, I'll mention it again, because it's so impressive and they've just launched, I think it was a white combinator company, I don't recall, but the whole thing, like the person is AI, their voice is AI, and they're saying your script and it looks 100 % real. You get to pick the person, you get to pick, I mean, obviously the script, goes through and pulls all the data out of your website, out of all your marketing videos, out of literally any content that you've created and then just goes and makes things. It's almost scary.

It's like borderline scary, the direction that that stuff's gone. it's, point again, you don't have to spend a lot of money on this stuff for it to be really functional.

Malcolm Fontier (15:31)
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's cool.

Yeah, one note on that is we just hearing from customers after we launched that campaign and trying to understand our customers because we want to build this into a brand, what's resonating. The thing that they said resonated most was the story that was personal and felt human and we're talking, hey, we're relaunching this because of your request, come along for the ride. So in some ways that marketing angle was kind of handed to us because it was real. We weren't making anything up, but that's the part that really resonated with them.

any fancy video or anything else, it was the storytelling.

Adam Callinan (16:10)
And I'll couple that with Bottlekeeper was the exact same. Like I shot a video, I had no idea what I was doing. I used an off the shelf camera. You know, it was gritty and grimy and kind of ridiculous. And that became the brand for the entirety of the life of that business was just fun and snarky and really, really personal. And obviously that was pre-AI. And I think we're massively new jerking back to human or in the process of doing that right now. So moving on, you're now years into PAKT. You obviously you have

Expanded the product lines Can you talk about that? You've also sort of contracted some things that you've tried and tested with other into other silos

Malcolm Fontier (16:47)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If we, if we'd stop the story where, uh, where we were, I'd think that everything has just been not easy and just, and just, uh, straight up, but no, we're seven years in and, and, uh, I won't lie. A lot of that's been a grind. Um, you know, we said, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna take the momentum from this. I think it's clear that we're onto something good here. Um, but you know, building a crowdfunding campaign and shipping the bags that people, that people ordered is a tiny slits of building up.

building a brand with longevity. so, yeah, and there was this little pandemic thing that happened in 2020, just two years after, you we were a very young fledgling company, squarely in the travel space, even beyond travel space, we were really focused on airline travel and carry-on luggage. So trying to sell airline luggage to people that can't travel, aren't traveling for an entire year is challenging. So 2020 was really tough for us as a young company that didn't have a whole lot of...

that much cash fishing or anything. And then follow that with 2021 when the supply chain or was a total mess as a result of the pandemic and the cost of a shipping container from Asia to the US quadrupled or quintupled. was 2021 was probably the toughest year. But yeah, so we ground through it. was times when, yeah, it was like, all right, can we?

Adam Callinan (18:05)
huh.

Malcolm Fontier (18:13)
We have this in us to keep going and we did and now we're glad we did. And a lot of credit to you for helping us. You and I met through a mutual connection. And that was, I that was probably 21ish, 22, maybe. That's probably 22. Yeah, was when we were really just trying to get back on our feet from all the pandemic related disruption and really trying to say, all right, we're.

Adam Callinan (18:26)
I think it was 22, yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (18:36)
You know, we're mostly bootstrapped for a bootstrap company. We did do an equity crowdfunding campaign just to offer our customers a first chance of buying into the company. And we have a couple of small, I guess, of angel investments, but for all intents and for all practical purposes, we're a bootstrap company. But coming out of that supply chain mess and just really figuring out how are we going to survive, it was really about trying to tighten up how we operate.

try to get profitable and fund our own growth. And big thanks to you for, you I you consulted with us for about six months and helped, really helped in those areas.

Adam Callinan (19:14)
I mean, that was a really interesting time. I'm thinking for the positive words, but the reality is, I mean, this is, let's be honest. I mean, you and I talked about this at great length. Like this is a lot of where pentane comes from. I mean, this is taking some of the things that we did at Bottlekeeper well and figuring out how to implement them with other partners. you were the, and PAKT were the first like real example of seeing a

Malcolm Fontier (19:19)
Ha

Adam Callinan (19:39)
a significant turnaround, but there's a big difference between seeing the data and having the data tell you something. And even, you know, in some cases in these later versions of Pentain, tell you exactly what to do. You have to execute it. Like, you know, Pentain can't execute for you. can't cut team and fixed expenses for you. can't, you know, it's not going to go, at least today, it's not going to go and increase your ad spend so you can drive more revenue in order to, you know, get out of a hole or whatever it is. I mean, it's been really.

awesome to see you from the very beginning of our sort of working together two or three years ago, that bull by the horns and go and do the hard things because that's what made the difference. mean, now your company is a completely different company.

Malcolm Fontier (20:23)
It is. It is. Yeah, I agree with you. I I've said this in other conversations that there's nothing that's easy, especially in business. Even when you're sitting on a pile of money, what I say is people like to use the term self-made and things like The way I see it is having a pile of money makes it easier to make expensive mistakes. You still got to figure it all out and figure out how to repeat it and scale it.

Adam Callinan (20:52)
Yeah. So if we now fast forwarding, you know, a couple of years past 21 and 22, and we are going to eventually come back to sort of how you mentally, physically dealt with, I mean, that one or two years of just grind is hard. But let's come back to that. How do you see PAKT today? What do you what's sort of your vision and future with what you have going on in PAKT now?

Malcolm Fontier (21:19)
Yeah, so, well, as we haven't mentioned for any listeners that don't know what we're doing, we make travel gear right now with a light. I'd like to, be a little biased, but I think we make some of the world's best travel gear. With a deep product design experience, we really focus on making a top-notch, a really top-notch product for a specific market. Our customers tend to be experienced travelers that want to

Adam Callinan (21:26)
Yeah, that's a good idea. Why don't we start there?

Malcolm Fontier (21:46)
basically avoid headaches and just travel better. I'd say PAKT helps you travel better. And another way we like to describe it is that we like to make the journey as enjoyable as the destination. And so, obviously people just think about the journey as getting to where they're going to go and have fun. But we like to think that our travel gear actually can make it easier, avoid some headaches through the airport, boarding an airplane. just so we, myself and most of the team are...

very experienced travelers and we're always looking at those little pain points in travel, whether it's TSA and putting your things through the x-ray or whether it's when you get to that plane and that unspoken little stressful moment of getting your stuff out and putting it in your seat, putting your bag in the overhead while everyone behind the plane is just looking at you like, all right, hurry up, hurry up. And so we just try to think through how can some little creative solutions make your journey easier.

And yeah, and so most of our audience is really about experiences and experiential travel. And so we take that one step further and we set a goal for ourselves that our products are also an experience that you, you we help you go get to those places where you're to have the experience, but the product itself should be at the end of the day, should be an experience that you're like, wow, this thing is awesome. I love using this thing. And so where we're going, I mean, before this serendipitous, you know,

movie appearance that led to launching the company. I told myself I would never, any new company that I did, I would make sure that I had a truly unique offering that was something new at the world. But then here I ended up back in the bag space where to be honest, it's a very crowded space. There's a lot of companies doing good, really nice products. And so we are competing against that. so the opportunity that I see is just...

is to become one of the dominant players in this travel good space. And that's what we're setting ourselves up for is to, I won't say we're there yet. We're building a name for ourselves. We've done a good job at that, but we still have a long way to go. But we're building a team and the processes to allow us to scale to that in the coming years.

Adam Callinan (23:47)
Amazing. looking back the challenge of 20 and 21.

Like how did you manage that? Are there things that you, and to be clear, or how did you not? I mean, I can look back at times in Bottle Keeper where we, the end of 2016, we did 8 million in revenue, we printed money. It was super profitable because we had no employees. And it was such a roller coaster of a year that like my wife and I were in Europe with friends over New Year's. Like there's nothing negative to be about. And I was a fricking disaster. Like I was literally like,

Malcolm Fontier (24:16)
Okay.

Adam Callinan (24:19)
depressed anxiety ridden in a coffee shop because you have these like huge dopamine of half our revenue comes in December and then December 20th, the whole world shuts off. And it was like that situation caused me to make some significant changes in my life. So I will start this question by saying I failed at it massively for quite a while. So how did you deal with that and then and maybe what have you implemented to continue to deal with it in your life?

Malcolm Fontier (24:45)
Yeah, I think what you said there resonates with you touched on something that basically entrepreneurship, there's rarely is a spot where you can just sit back and relax like everything's great. You know, it's either there's either not enough sales or something that really needs to be fixed or you know, when it goes really well, you're like, oh shit, now how are we going to do it now? Especially when you're as you know, from the physical product space. It's not like software, you can just print unlimited copies instantly. That's like, you know, it's so it's

Adam Callinan (25:12)
Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (25:15)
even success can be really stressful. The way I deal with I I am a big believer in like practice, like balance and just knowing, I think to me, you really have to know how and when you do your best work. And for me, I know that just, that I need variety. I'm not just because that I can, know, just because I could work 16 hours a day doesn't mean that's the solution.

I am going to, I do my best work when it's a contained period and I balance that with something else, a total change of pace, whether it's exercise, getting out, doing one of my many hobbies or something, and then coming back to that. So I guess that's kind of indirectly answer your question. mean, the other parts, mean, with 2020 and 21, was one is...

Adam Callinan (25:51)
Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (26:00)
getting creative, let's not panic, let's put our heads together and get creative here. Like one way in 2020 was to, when we saw that no one could fly, we quickly, we had products that were in development that were geared at air travel. And so we quickly pivoted, made some changes to those and immediately started working on luggage that was geared for road trips. Like, all right, this is what people are gonna be doing for a while, let's make road trip luggage. And so we did that and I think that was.

helpful. We pivoted all of our, things that we could change quickly, like our marketing messaging, rather than, you know, you can change the copy on your website a lot faster than you can launch a new product. you know, so we quickly pivoted to highlight some of the, versatile our products were and different places you could use them and stuff. That's one way. And then, and then other ways, mean, financially cutting back everywhere you can. But, you know, also trying to, we did a lot of leg work trying to.

Adam Callinan (26:38)
Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (26:58)
figure out where we could get loans from and things because you need to fund your inventory. And so we, at the same time, a lot of lenders were pulling back or raising their minimums for revenue and stuff for who they would lend to because of the market. And so we had to do a lot. We just kept beating the bush till we found options that would work for us to help us get through. as a founder of a small company, you...

have to sign your name on the line. you have to personally guarantee all those loans and stuff. And so that can be the hardest part to stomach. Or talking to your wife about trying to convince her to allow you to sign another loan for the company. That could be big challenge too. But we got through it. And yeah, it makes it tougher when you come out the other side.

Adam Callinan (27:44)
I do want to talk about some of your hobbies because they're pretty epic. But before we get there, how do you, I mean, we've spent some time, you know, hiking around in the mountains and the Elkwoods with bows and chasing critters and whatnot. How do you look at or have you found benefit mentally and in business from going out and doing some really hard physical things? Is that something that you consciously think about or is it just part of who you've always been?

Malcolm Fontier (28:50)
I like challenging myself physically and I think it makes it, it helps me do better work. You know, and one thing we've talked about in the past is how you, is how you balance that, how you balance that balance between, you know, lot of entrepreneurship these days is in our spaces, is in front of the computer, which isn't always good for your health. And so it's like for me, it was really about knowing how you.

I mentioned it earlier, knowing how you do your best work. For me, it's really about having that balance and making sure I get enough exercise. One of the biggest things for me in the last couple of years has been basically making my workout and challenge myself physically. Instead of thinking of it as something I have to fit in on either side of my work, is making it part of my work.

The way I've done that is actually one of my favorite ways to start, start the day is with a road bike ride where I just bang out for an hour. go as hard as I can. and so I've actually incorporated that, that most days, most days of the week, start my, start my work day that way. but I'll actually put it in, I make it productive. if, one, I'll listen to, I'll listen to a podcast or something that that's, that's inspiring, whether it's a, how I built this or, or some other business related podcast, that.

gets my mind going and gives me new ideas. Full honesty, this morning it was this one called Growth Mavericks. And I think it's a perfect one. think in the future it might be part of my regular rotation in my morning workout. But other times if I feel like I have an idea or I already know what I need to work on, I'll go out for that ride and just put on some.

music and just think about the challenge there. And I find that I just do better thinking away from the computer. so, you know, the coffee gets me up and going first thing in the morning, but then, but getting that exercise before I start my work day is what really gets me fired up and makes me do better work. And what I've just found is that, you know, with even one less hour in my, my, know, tech, in my, you know, formal work day in front of the computer, I'll actually have a more productive day because I took that hour to go, to go do that. So I get more done and

do better work and feel more inspired incorporating that into my work day.

Adam Callinan (30:53)
And do you think doing that, I mean, as one of probably a lot of examples of things that you'd are difficult, add or build for you some sort of mental durability? I mean, the way that I look at those things is that you go and do something really hard that's harder than you think you can do, and then you go and do it, and suddenly that thing that you approach at work that seems really challenging suddenly just isn't that challenging. And I've seen that firsthand. So have you found that as well?

Malcolm Fontier (31:14)
Yeah.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's like, you and I share some interests. When you're running up a mountain with your bow in hand and you feel like your lungs are going to explode, but then you keep pushing through it. Yeah, you realize next time you do that, you're like, no, I've got this. And same thing for work challenges. And also, it also cuts closer to perspective.

things in perspective when some of those challenges, whether it's physical, it doesn't have to be a truly life-threatening activity like learning to fly an airplane, but just going to the gym and pushing yourself as hard as you can. Wherever that pushing your comfort zone means for any individual, it can take different forms.

Once you come back to work stuff and it's like, when you've done something that truly challenged you and took everything you could to get through it, now we've got something, our first world kind of business problems when there's a strike at the port of Los Angeles and your shipping container is delayed. And it's like, all right, we need to figure out a way around this. Don't panic. There's way through this. And so it puts things in perspective. Yeah. I'm also, yeah, another.

Adam Callinan (32:26)
Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (32:29)
I also think just mentally challenging yourself. I'm a follower, believer in stoicism and just some of the stoic principles, voluntary discomfort and some of the things that stoics preach and I've incorporated I think are super helpful in that being comfortable outside your comfort zone when things get rough. I think it's important.

Adam Callinan (32:56)
What are a book or two that you'd recommend in the Stoics? mean, Marcus Aurelius is always great. Meditations, there's a bunch of them though.

Malcolm Fontier (33:02)
Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorites

has been, think, might not, let's see if I get this right. I think it's called The Guide to the Good Life. And definitely did quick search. It's been almost 10 years since I read it. But it's, the one reason I like that, it's actually, it's basically interpreting stoicism for the modern world. And I think it's super valuable.

Adam Callinan (33:10)
Mm.

Malcolm Fontier (33:23)
Yes.

Adam Callinan (33:23)
That's awesome.

I'll check that one out. That is part of the challenge of a lot of the old Stoic stuff. mean, meditations is still reasonably relevant because it's been translated and re-translated like a thousand times, but a lot of the old philosophical Stoics are a bit more nuanced and challenging to translate into your daily functional life as a business operator. So I'll check that one.

Malcolm Fontier (33:46)
Exactly.

exactly. I think challenging yourself mentally is as important as challenge yourself physically.

I am very stoic and I approach it and I think it benefits me. But there's times when I can take it too far and that if I was a little less stoic, I would actually be probably

a little better leader and partner and work in life. so, yeah, so it gave me a different perspective. I'm not walking away from stoicism, I think, but always, you know, challenge your own beliefs, test your mental limits and, yeah, and look for, you know, look for those inspiration and, and, you know, motivation in all different places, sometimes in unexpected places.

Adam Callinan (34:19)
inspiration.

Yeah. I mean, I think in most circumstances, balance is appropriate. You get too much on the extreme of anything in it. Some bad, some not great things can happen. So, no, that's great. I'm glad you, you brought that up.

Malcolm Fontier (34:36)
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam Callinan (34:39)
And what are some of your hobbies? I mean, you're a pilot, like a boat captain. You have this very diverse set of experiences, places that you spend time, not work related.

Malcolm Fontier (34:43)
I'm sorry.

I have,

it's true. some, some of our hobbies overlap, but I am a pilot. I am a licensed boat captain. I love two wheels. So I spent a lot of time on motorcycles. These days more, I still have, I still have a motorcycle or two, but, these days it's more pedal bikes. So I downhill mountain bike, I road bike. And yeah, I also archery and bow hunting.

or overlap. So there's a few hobbies. Yeah. One example of one of those hobbies just kind of playing into, think, is aviation. I guess so I became a pilot and a licensed boat captain in the past seven years while launching TACT. So one way that played it in is like, just because I'm really passionate about these hobbies and I kind of refuse to, never want to save anything for, I've seen an end

end poorly for too many people where they thought, oh, I'll save this for retirement and I'll save this for when I have more time. I refused to do that because I basically, never know, nothing's promised. So I'm going to do it now because just a while, because that's how I can, while I can. so, yeah, so while building packed, I got my pilot's license, which takes a lot of time. I became instrument rated and since then I've logged 500 hours of flight time. but basically by

having hobby like this, basically forces me to basically maximize my productivity and my time because I don't want to use all 16 waking hours at work. I want to finish this by four o'clock so I can go to that flight lesson. So I can go mountain biking. I can go to the archery range or whatever it is. And it just forces you to get more done, maximize your productivity in the time that you've set aside for work stuff. But with aviation, there's some direct...

There's some direct ways that I think it relates to my work days. Flying a plane, especially instrument, instrument meaning that you can fly through non-visible conditions, whether it's through clouds and fog and stuff, find an airport that you can't actually see and approach that runway. Sometimes until you never see the runway until you're a couple hundred feet above it. That, it takes some serious mental fortitude, I guess.

Adam Callinan (36:49)
Yeah.

Malcolm Fontier (36:49)
And,

but doing those, there's actually one way it played out recently. There's an aviation term that pilots use called, aviate, navigate, communicate. And it's something I always keep in mind is that it's basically prioritizing your tasks. says that you need to aviate first, meaning fly the plane. You need to make sure that thing is flying level. It's, you know, everything's running smooth before you worry about where you're going. Next, if the plane's running.

is doing what it's supposed to do. You're not headed towards the ground or something else. Now you can worry about which direction you're heading that you're on the right course. And the last is communicate because if your ATC or traffic control is talking to you and say, are you headed? So don't even worry about responding to them until those other two things are out of the way. And it came up recently with a team member. She came to me panicked about a problem. And I looked at it and I was like, I don't.

this may not be a problem. We have these other things that we actually need to deal with first, and this is already underway. If this goes the way we think it's going to, this thing that you see as a problem will no longer be an issue. So I actually responded to her thing just by with aviate, navigate, communicate, knowing that she wouldn't know exactly what it was, and that would probably annoy her a bit, but that's okay. I'm used to annoying the team, that's part of my job. And as soon as she said, what are you talking about? I explained where it came from, and she's like, okay.

Adam Callinan (38:01)
Ha

Yeah, of course it is.

Malcolm Fontier (38:10)
You know, wouldn't always work out this way, but in this case, that other thing that we're working on worked out the way we thought it did. And the thing that she was panicked about became a non-issue. so.

Adam Callinan (38:19)
So translating that into non-aviation terms, I think of prioritize and focus. Both of which can be difficult to do but are absolutely mission critical and the more that you do them, the better you get at

Malcolm Fontier (38:32)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, it's always like, you know, there's when as a founder and you, you know, and you go to work or you step into whatever your office is and think about where you're going to work on that day. It's really about, all right, what is the top thing that needs to be, that we need to address here? Is it a problem that needs to be solved? Is it a, you know, an area of the company that's weak? Is it a, you know, whatever, whatever it is, focus on that. And so that's something that, you know, I'm big on and to relay that to the, to the team.

So we're always, you we put some different processes in place so that we're always, know, well, we, if you're familiar with EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, but, that's been a, we implemented that a couple of years and, know, that, and that's been something that really helps really identify, you know, what are, what are our goals for this quarter, which apply to our, which if we achieve those, apply to our goals for this year, which then, which if we achieve those, helps us achieve our three year goal. And really breaking it down like that because, you know, anybody can go to work and keep busy all day.

But at the end of the day, at end of the week, did it move the needle, get us closer to our bigger goals? And so that's something we're always trying to work on.

Adam Callinan (39:35)
Yeah, it's great to have framework

like that in place.

Malcolm Fontier (39:39)
And run. Um, yeah, I agree. And, um, another fact to some of those hobby things, you know, um, some people, I've definitely had people think that like, just like adrenaline. I do like adrenaline. Um, but, um, but it's actually for me, it's actually, I'm going to get more accurate. think what I'm drawn to is challenging things that require managing risk. Um, and, um, I know I listened to your recent podcast, um, actually on my

on my bike ride this morning. I like to listen to podcasts and I have been listed to this one called the growth Mavericks this morning. It was perfect for the ride. But I know your guest Cal had a plane crash and it could happen, but I have to say I've not had any kind of plane crash and I hope to keep it that way. so for me, it's really just about managing risk. like, I love the thrill of learning to fly an airplane and ride motorcycle, I've dabbled in motorcycle racing.

the boat captain part. mean, I never, I never, I didn't have any intention to change careers and do any kind of boat work for pay. But I actually became a boat captain to become a safer boater. One thing I do like doing is offshore fishing. And I was captain a boat where we go out, this relatively small boat, we go a hundred miles offshore, spend the night fishing. there's some serious risk with going a hundred miles offshore when it could take you.

at least a half a day to get back to shore. And so I became a boat captain just to force myself to learn to become the safest and most knowledgeable boater I could. so for me, that's a lot of it. It's just about learning to manage risk and do it safely and take things that might scare the shit out of you. And people say, you're not scared of anything. I was like, I'm scared of a lot. But I don't let it stop me. Instead, it motivates me to want to.

figure out how to manage that risk and be able to tackle it head on. And so that's.

Adam Callinan (41:31)
which translates

perfectly to entrepreneurship. I mean, like, let's be honest. Most of what we do operating businesses is risk mitigation. It's maximizing the upside while trying to minimize, everything you can to minimize the downside. So that's great. Really strong parallels there. Awesome. Where do you want people to find you to find PAKT? Obviously we'll put links to everything in the show notes, but.

Malcolm Fontier (41:39)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Most places online were at Paktbags.com. I'm sorry, at Paktbags.com. That's Paktbags.com. But also all of our social channels are also packed bags, P-A-K-T-B-A-G-S. I have a pretty, personally, a pretty small digital footprint. I'm not really, not on socials much. Or if any inbox on any social account I have is a black hole that I turned off notifications years ago and stopped checking. So don't try to reach me that way.

But people can reach me through PAKT, if you need. Yeah, I encourage you people to check out PAKT.

Adam Callinan (42:26)
Well, thanks again, Malcolm. I appreciate your time. Enjoy the rest of Florida.