Episode 70 - How to MARKET & SELL Your Work, ETHICALLY

Woodworking is B******T!

In this episode of 'Woodworking is B******T!', hosts Paul Jasper and Eric Kurtzfein explore the ethics of marketing with guest Dave Dennis,

Key takeaways

• Marketing is not just advertising—it's the ongoing story you tell about your brand through every interaction.
• Markets are conversations; if you don't participate, others will define your brand without you.

Main topics

• Ethical marketing for artisans and makers
• The role of storytelling in brand building

Notable quotes

"Markets are conversations. And if you don't participate in the conversation, the conversation will happen without you."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reminder that ethical marketing isn't about having perfect

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:06) Thank you. Speaker 3 (0:15) Here again, we are with another barn burner. We are, uh, this is, uh, woodworking is bullshit. Your favorite podcast about why we do the things we do, not how we do the things we do. I'm your co I'm your cohost, Paul Jasper of fine. Uh, Oh my God. Really, Speaker 2 (0:34) really stumbling out of the gate. You good, bro. Speaker 1 (0:38) You don't really don't edit these. Huh? Speaker 2 (0:42) Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the one take, Jake. Keep it going. All Speaker 3 (0:44) right, go. Okay. I'm your host, Paul Jasper of Copper Pig. We're working scientists by day, woodworker by night. And I got my boy in the chair, Eric Kurtzfein, furniture maker and content creator. Como estas, bitches? You haven't gone to the bibliotech lately. No, I have Speaker 2 (0:59) not. Don't install a biblioteca. Speaker 3 (1:02) Today's episode is something we've never touched on, and that is marketing and the ethics of marketing. Obviously, we all know that marketing is important for the sale of anything, and we are all subject to marketing in our daily life. I think we all see about 500 advertisements a day or something on average, but also with respect to all, like the majority of listeners are... makers of some sort or artists or, and even if you're not, I'm sure this comes into your job. And so who I thought could help us with the difficult discussion on marketing and the ethics behind it is my friend, Dave Dennis, Dave and I, Dave is, hi Dave. Speaker 2 (1:50) It's the audio format, Dave. I'm going to need you to hit me with a hey. Speaker 1 (1:55) I don't want to talk over Paul. I had my coaching. Dave Speaker 3 (1:59) is co-founder of Ventana Surfboards and Supplies, who also has a very successful 25-year-plus job in the tech sector. And he has helped to build Ventana Surfboards and Supplies from... Speaker 3 (2:17) something very, very small into a trusted, awesome brand that it is today. And Dave has just talked with me so much over the years about marketing and the importance of it. And I kept saying, I needed Dave. I needed Dave in my life. Do you remember me saying that to you? Yeah, Speaker 1 (2:36) we would text at like one in the morning and I would get, I need a Dave. And the reality is you're way better at it than I am. Speaker 3 (2:43) Actually, I'm not. That's not even close to true. But you are one of my favorite people. You inspire me and I couldn't think of anyone better or nicer to have on the podcast today. Thank you, Dave. Speaker 1 (2:53) Thank you. Speaker 3 (2:55) So we're going to ask Dave, you know, Dave, obviously you've thought about marketing a lot more than I have. When you hear the term marketing, like what does that mean to you in a general sense? Speaker 1 (3:10) I mean, it's everything that represents your business or you as a person publicly. Right. I think of marketing as storytelling. Speaker 1 (3:20) It's basically, it's the story that you're telling everyone trying to get the right message to the right person at the right time. And it's, it's, it's so much more than just like an ad that you're sending out or a piece of content that you're putting on the web. It's like, it's everything that goes on around your company that the public sees how you represent yourself. You know, when you're having a one-on-one conversation in a store, what your brand values are, how you represent those brand values. how you make product choices and service choices based on your brand, based on those brand values. Like it's so, so expansive. But to me at the baseline, it's storytelling. It's you telling a story about you, your brand, your business, what's important and trying to hit a target audience that that resonates with and having a clearly defined target audience when you're doing that. I don't know if you've ever read the Clue Train Manifesto. You know what that is? No. So it was a, I can't, there must've been like 180 points on this thing. It was called the clue train manifesto. It was published online in the early nineties and the very early days of the internet. And it's totally worth a read because it's completely relevant still. But the one point in the manifesto that always stood out to me is that markets are conversations. And if you don't participate in the conversation, the conversation will happen without you. And that didn't used to be, that didn't used to be the case at scale, right? Like you'd go to the. you know, the PTA meeting or something, you'd have three or four conversations about some new restaurant that you liked. Now there's Google reviews and Facebook reviews and Yelp reviews and TripAdvisor reviews and Reddit threads and Instagram posts. I mean, I could go on for another hour, right? The conversations are happening without you, whether you like it or not. And since markets are conversations, you need to be involved in those conversations and telling your story all the time. And that's marketing. Oh, dude. Damn, that's so dense Speaker 2 (5:18) off Speaker 1 (5:18) the job, man. Right? I just made all that up. Give Speaker 2 (5:22) me Speaker 1 (5:22) a sec. Well, first of all, go read the Cluetrain Manifesto. You're going to be blown away because they turned it into a Speaker 2 (5:28) book. Can you spell that? Cluetrain. Speaker 1 (5:30) Like, get on the Cluetrain. Get a clue. Oh, okay. Speaker 2 (5:34) Cluetrain Speaker 1 (5:34) Manifesto. Speaker 2 (5:34) I didn't Speaker 1 (5:35) know Speaker 2 (5:35) if that was like a Coltrane or like, I don't know what was happening. No, no, no. I mean, you Speaker 1 (5:38) guys are probably a little younger than I am, so you were probably in middle school or something when that thing came out. Speaker 2 (5:42) In the early 90s? Yeah, I was definitely in middle school in the early 90s. I Speaker 1 (5:46) was in college. I know you guys are younger than I am. Speaker 3 (5:50) All right. So markets are conversations and they're going to happen with or without you. So it's to your best interest to be in them. Part of that. Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:02) And to be authentic because they're going to call bullshit. Great title for your podcast. The markets are going to call bullshit on you faster than you can imagine. And if you're not in the middle of those conversations and doing the mea culpa and being authentic and managing your relationship with those markets, you're screwed. Speaker 3 (6:22) So my very first reaction to that is you're saying be authentic about your marketing. But I see so much deceptive marketing on a daily basis. Yeah. Speaker 1 (6:36) Well, the other thing is that people are also very gullible. Speaker 2 (6:40) Yeah. Right. So Speaker 1 (6:41) you could, you know, you can, you can be an authentic, I mean, we're seeing that all over the place and, you know, the political sphere and everywhere else, and you're going to be able to convince an awful lot of people. Speaker 2 (6:51) Does the inauthentic marketing ploy, does that make for, I'm going to say sustainable business, and I don't mean like ecologically sustainable or ethically sustainable, but does it, does that business sustain itself over time? Or when people receive the product, realize it's a piece of shit, does that company then inevitably fold? Speaker 1 (7:13) I don't know the answer. I think it really depends on the company. It depends on the product. It depends on the misstep. It depends on how they react to it. There's also like, I'm a total relativist. Like I don't believe that there's authenticity and inauthenticity. It's a continuum. And so you can be totally authentic while, you know, not talking about the pieces of your business that may be not aligned with what your market wants or what your brand is trying to get out into the world. Right. Like, so it's, yeah. Speaker 2 (7:45) Well, Dave, can I ask you, can we dive into the Ventana of it for a moment? Because the way you just described it felt like, and I know we've only known each other for 15 minutes. I'm an idiot. You should know that up front. like when I hear you describe things like markets and conversations are happening and get on the clue train, et cetera, et cetera, that feels all very like big macro economics. And I am a furniture maker who makes objects for individual clients. You were CEO of a surfboard manufacturing company. I don't know what the volume. Speaker 1 (8:27) I would say co-founder, like CEO. When there's two of us, it's sort of. Speaker 2 (8:31) Okay. Speaker 1 (8:32) And I'm doing it for free on the side. I appreciate your Speaker 2 (8:36) humility. I'm being authentic. Speaker 1 (8:39) Yes, for sure. Okay. Speaker 2 (8:42) So you're co-founder of this company that, you know, is it like started to develop a reputation in a brand and you had clients, I don't know what type of volume you were producing. Did the rules still apply in the way that you just described them to high end, low volume? Speaker 1 (9:02) Yeah. Like I'm not Speaker 2 (9:04) on Google Maps and I don't think it matters. No, Speaker 1 (9:07) I mean, I think ours is small enough scale where it's very easy to manage the conversation. I think if we had grown to the size that I always had in mind and I was never willing to quit my day job, I actually did a TEDx talk 10 years ago called Don't Quit Your Day Job. And so like in our small scale, it's actually. quite easy to manage those conversations. As you grow, I think it's extremely difficult. And I have some of that experience in my day job. I work for Microsoft. But I think at the smaller scale, with a limited customer base, it's actually much easier. Speaker 2 (9:46) What does the conversation look like then at that point? Like, so at Ventana, when Speaker 3 (9:53) you Speaker 2 (9:53) say to limit the conversation or be a part of the conversation, are you working with individual clients doing custom work? Are you making a product and selling it to a very niche audience? Like what is the conversation that's happening? Speaker 1 (10:06) Yeah. So we, so we'd sell hollow wooden surfboards made only out of reclaimed wood. And that's the core of the business. We have ancillary products that go along with the brand, like Paul's wearing that t-shirt right now, because not everyone can afford what we're doing, but a lot of people, the brand and our values and what we were trying to do in the market resonated. So we wanted to have products that fit what we were doing, you know, $5 bar of surf wax that was giant and organic and cool, all the way up to our surfboards, which are kind of the core of what drives the brand. Speaker 1 (10:42) they're $10,000 to $20,000 each. Speaker 2 (10:44) And Speaker 1 (10:45) it's probably the most expensive turf boards in the world. They're also probably the highest artisanship. But so the conversation is interesting in that what you could say is, and this is frankly true, we're a brand that sells to very wealthy people. A lot of our folks are wealthy venture capitalists and tech people in the Silicon Valley. And we have a pretty good sustainability story. And so the story, and I've heard this a little bit, and sometimes I'll see it in places like Reddit, like, hey, you guys can talk about sustainability and environmental responsibility and everything, but it's only accessible to this tiny group of very wealthy customers. So that's kind of bullshit. And the reality is, it kind of is bullshit. So we do try to have a range of products that can appeal to lots of people and that each one of them is aligned with three brand values that we've had for the last 12 years. And I can tell you with every single product, what part of their brand values are not being met and what part of them are and what part of our story is bullshit and what part isn't. But frankly, talking about the part of your story that's bullshit is part of the authenticity. Speaker 3 (11:59) Do you know what I mean? I can talk Speaker 1 (12:03) to you. I can tell you all about your t-shirt. Like I could spend the next two, three, five minutes telling you about that t-shirt. Okay. Speaker 3 (12:09) Tell me about this t-shirt. Okay. Speaker 1 (12:10) I'll give you the authentic story and where it's great and where it falls short. So that, that one is a recycled polyester made from recycled plastic bottles and organic cotton. Okay. That sounds all great. Doesn't it? Speaker 3 (12:25) Well, polyester, you lost me with microplastics. Speaker 1 (12:28) Exactly. So that was where I was going to go. So even though it's recycled, all of that recycling happens in China. And most of it happens when people from, you know, US and elsewhere are shipping plastic bottles over there that get shredded and turned into polyester, which when washed and dried get turned into microplastics, which are apparently in all of our brains now. So we've stopped using polyester, even though it's got a great recycled story. The art on the front was done. I can't remember who did that for us. It was done by, I think it actually may have been our logo designer. It may have been a local person also. Now that's really cool. It's nice. It matches one of our best surfboard designs. The ink that you have is plastisol. So it's a plastic-based ink, not a water-based ink. So it's not quite as good for the environment. And then you have the microplastic story. However, the... The silkscreener that did all of our shirts at that time was a group called Barrios Unidos. And Barrios Unidos provides job opportunities for people that are coming out of prison and former gang members and things like that. It's a nonprofit. So that's a great part of the story. Speaker 2 (13:35) Our Speaker 1 (13:36) hang tags, like you know how you usually go into a store and you have those little plastic things that get shot through with a needle? So we never allowed any plastic tags to be put on any of our products. So what we did was we took, and you've used some of this wood because we've done collaborations. We took mahogany guitar neck off cuts from the Santa Cruz Guitar Company and we turned those into little tags. that had a piece of paracord on them that were left over from a product that was made by another local company. And we put a key ring on it. And that would be the thing that was stuck as the price tag on all shirts. And that was also, the paracord is also a leash cord. So if you were without a leash cord for your surfboard, you could take it literally off the key chain tag that came on your shirt that was recycled wood. So we had this great collaboration story with Santa Cruz Guitar Company and this terrific sustainability story about using their trash. But all paracord is made overseas. It's got a polyester story. The metal rings that we use for the key chain were also all come from China because good luck trying to buy any of that stuff in the U.S. anymore. So I could keep going, right? Oh, my God. I Speaker 3 (14:46) could keep Speaker 1 (14:46) going and going and going and going. So this whole idea of like, so I can tell you an authentic story about the positive side, but in the reality, when you look at the negative side, it can be considered greenwashing. But because I'm sitting here on one of the world's most popular podcasts, I'm being authentic about both sides. And I can do that for every single one of our products. And by the way, I can connect all of it to the $10,000, $20,000 surfboards because the design on the shirt is a really... you know, one of our most popular surfboards in the wood. Can Speaker 3 (15:18) we Speaker 1 (15:18) go back to that, Dave? Speaker 2 (15:20) So, so I don't know how much, like a good middle of the road surfboard costs. Speaker 1 (15:26) About a good middle of the road surfboards, about 1200 bucks, eight to 1200. Okay. Speaker 2 (15:31) Okay. 800, 1200 bucks in, in like competition grade surfboard. What are we talking? Speaker 1 (15:36) A little more than that. It depends on the size. It depends on who made it. It depends. Okay. So it's 2000, Speaker 2 (15:41) 3000 bucks. Maybe Speaker 1 (15:43) three grand would be way up there. Speaker 2 (15:45) We'd be way up there. And so you're selling the Rolls Royce of surfboards out here. Speaker 1 (15:50) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I got my partner to come together with me, he was already building boards. I said, you know, everybody loves Bosie. A lot of people, not everybody, a lot of people love Ferraris, but they can't afford them, so they buy the T-shirt. Speaker 3 (16:04) The Speaker 1 (16:05) surfboards are almost never ridden. Speaker 2 (16:09) I was going to ask. Yeah. Do they? Speaker 1 (16:11) So we had two rules. Always built to ride. Every board was built to ride, even if it was going to hang on the wall. And we would never buy wood. Speaker 1 (16:21) So we're a wooden surfboard company that had a rule, and there's a tiny exception to that, that would never buy wood. And that kept us honest, but only using reclaimed materials. And so those were the two things. But they ride great. They're super fun, but they're so expensive and they're art pieces that they're almost all hanging on the walls. Speaker 2 (16:40) And where were you getting your material supplied from? Speaker 1 (16:45) So you can see a long list if you go to ventana.surf.com. But we created this thing early on called the Upcycle Partner Program. And there were two reasons for that. One of them was because we wanted to have a great sustainability story. The other one was because we wanted to be differentiated from any other surfboard maker in the world, even if they were making wooden surfboards. And there's not a lot that are. And so we would go out and find, I would generally, go out and find really interesting places that I thought would have really cool wood with a really cool backstory. that could differentiate our products and get people really excited about them. And I'd go ask for their trash. And so I'll give you a few examples of really cool stuff. We have tons and tons of offcuts of every kind of wood you can imagine from the Santa Cruz Guitar Company. And Paul has a bunch of that as well. And he's done some collaborations with them. They're celebrating their 50th year. They're one of the best acoustic guitar makers in the world. And their wood is sustainably sourced. So it's like this cool double thing. We have wood from the boat that John Steinbeck took into the Sea of Cortez in 1940 and wrote the book, The Log from the Sea of Cortez. That just came from me asking the guy that owned the boat that was refurbishing it. And they brought it down to us for free from Washington. And I have some Speaker 3 (18:02) of that. And I have some of that that you sent me. And when you cut it, you can smell the diesel fuel that was flooded into the wood. Amazing. Speaker 1 (18:11) Our most profitable product, you're going to laugh. Our most profitable product is a bookmark. And the bookmark is made from the hull of the original Western flyer boat. And it's, if I gave you this piece of wood, you'd smell it and go, this smells like diesel fuel. It's gray. It's Douglas fir, but it looks like God knows what, because it's been so saltwater diesel fuel engine oil, you know, for years. It's the boat sank three times. Like it's crazy. And, uh, but then when I tell you the story back to the thing about marketing being storytelling, this piece of wood. is a bookmark that's made from the hull of one of the most famous fishing boats in the world. And it was made by one of the top artisans in the world who makes some of the most incredible surfboards in the world. It's the same wood that's used in products like Copper Pig makes and that are in our boards. And it takes a minute to make and it's $24. Speaker 3 (19:05) So it's Speaker 1 (19:06) literally trash that's made by my partner. It takes them a couple minutes, but we sell it for $24 because the provenance is so amazing. So I'm so glad Speaker 2 (19:18) you used the word prominence, man. I've been trying so hard to get that word. Because that word for. our listeners who are unfamiliar with the term, like that's a, that's an art world term, right? It's a gallery world term museum world term where like, where, where does the thing originate from? Where, where, where does its value come from? Cause the value is not necessarily the object itself. It's the story behind the object. And Dave, like what, everything that you've just said, and I'm not saying this to be snarky because I do the exact same thing. I'm not trying to be a dick. And I, it sounds to me like you would agree with me. You're not selling surfboards, man. Fuck the surfboard. You're selling the story. You're getting people to spend $20,000 on an idea, Speaker 3 (20:04) which is incredible Speaker 2 (20:06) if you can do it. And a Speaker 3 (20:07) surfboard. It's both. No, the surfboard Speaker 2 (20:09) is just representative. If they're not riding the surfboard, the surfboard represents the idea that they love about Ventana.