- We do (opera singing)
there is this magical thing, and it's like, okay.
(upbeat music)
I know where you are and I will burn you down.
(both laughing)
(upbeat music)
This is the best explanation of my life I've ever seen.
- Is it? (laughing)
(upbeat music)
Hey everybody, welcome to the show.
It's a show about screw-ups, about missteps,
about not quite getting it right.
I think we hear enough stories
about people who are wildly successful
and like to tell you how successful they are.
Well, we're gonna talk about some of the hurdles
and some of the challenges and some of the things
that make 'em tenacious enough to be successful.
Instead of just the beautiful story in the end.
And today, I have Randy Harrington
of Extreme Arts and Sciences.
I know that we're gonna be talking about consulting,
we're gonna be talking about working with executives,
other big companies, Fortune 500 companies,
and how do we take what they're doing
and distill it down so that it works for the public
and for technology and everything that's going on now.
I'm really excited to talk to him on the show.
(upbeat music)
Everybody welcome to the show.
I am here with Randy from Extreme Arts and Sciences, right?
It's a digital agency in Capitol Hill, here in Seattle?
- Yep, yep.
- Welcome to the show.
- Thank you, glad to be here.
- It's great to have you.
Tell me a little bit more about what you're doing right now,
about the agency that you've got,
Extreme, - Extreme Arts and Sciences!
Well, it's a wild agency
because, what we're trying to do
is to find this new niche in time
where strategy and digital
come together in some sort of cosmic catalytic way.
- Is that like a wrinkle in time?
- It is like a wrinkle in time and the really good news is,
everybody's looking for ways to connect digital
and strategy, so they're like, right on, okay!
But the bad news is, every time we do something,
the next time we do it, it's a completely different thing.
So we're sort of iterating, iterating, iterating.
- Because of like the pace of digital, is that what it is?
- Yes because, we're doing all this cool crap,
but that was so yesterday,
that we're have to go do more cool crap.
- So you get to like, work with executives
to make sure that they kind of tie those things together.
Do you do like, ad work, video work,
things like that as well?
Or is it mostly that type of coaching
that you're working on?
- No, I wish there was more connections,
actually, they're one of the challenges we have
is that there's just so much organizational distance
between strategy and the deployment
of whatever the hell it is you're trying to do.
That, they're two different worlds
and I would like to see them a little closer together.
So, what we end up doing a lot is producing collateral.
There was several years there
where we were just producing slide decks
like we were drunken pirates.
That was the coin of the realm, you know.
"I need a deck, I'm gonna go to Vegas and I need a deck."
- And then it turns into a book, right?
Like I need a deck, like,
bullet, paragraph, bullet, paragraph, bullet, paragraph.
- Right, and so there's a whole lot of education
that has to go in to that.
We've done plenty of video work, and we've done animations,
and we've built games, and we've built registration sites,
and we've done web,
blah, blah. - All over the place.
So just depending on what's coming up.
- That's the problem.
Every single client, we wanna serve well,
which is great, but we do (opera singing)
there is this magical thing and then it's like,
(hand dusting)
okay, let's go on to the next thing.
- I was just picturing the old Looney Tunes,
(laughing)
the opera singing one, right?
- That's right. (mimics opera music)
- Like who, is it Elmer Fudd
like singing as it comes through?
(mimics opera music)
- This is my world.
- Gestalt. - Yes, Gestalt.
(laughs)
- Tell me a little bit more then
about how you got started in this world.
Like, let's see how far back we can go.
- Back in the day.
- Were you pummeled as a child?
And then went in to art so that you could compete against,
like how did you get started doing this type of work?
- So, military brat, father, Air Force,
and we traveled all the time, basically grew up in Hawaii.
- So mostly in Hawaii?
- Yeah, junior high to high school, which does not suck.
So it was great, it was a terrific time.
But Hawaii sets you in to a frame of mind.
It's a big gestalt in and of itself.
You get Hawaiian, sort of sinks into,
- By the way, that's gonna be our new word
for like toasting,
for the entire time. - And I'm sorry.
- No, its fantastic.
- It's better than (foreign language).
And I could have busted that one out, so.
And next thing you know, I was a competitive debater
and I got a big debate scholarship
to the University of Mississippi.
- Is that the Ole Miss?
- That is Ole Miss.
Yes, in Oxford, Mississippi.
And so I'm like, "hey!"
- Oxford, Mississippi, that's like Faulkner country, right?
- It is big time Faulkner country!
Look at you busting out the literary references.
- I know.
- I know, that's awesome.
- I like to impress, yeah, myself.
- I have danced on Faulkner's grave,
which is one of the things you do.
- Wait, you danced on Faulkner's grave?
- Yes, you dance, you do a little jig
and you pour some whiskey on the grave.
- (laughs) I did not know that!
- Yeah, it's a thing you do.
- That sounds like a Faulkner thing.
- But anyway, I got to Ole Miss
and that turned out to be kind of a culture shift, you know?
- Because it's super laid back, correct?
When you do the stuff in Hawaii, right?
- [Randy] Yeah, right, right.
- Like, then everybody's like, what day is it?
I think it's Tuesday.
- Yeah, and Oxford, back in the day,
the guys were wearing like ties to class
and what not, you know?
And I was like (disgusted sigh).
Had a great time with the debate program there.
Ended up coaching there for a while.
Then went and did a Master's at Chapel Hill,
started coaching debate up there.
And that's a weird thing because you travel a lot
and you're exposed to lots of different ideas
and you just have this pace of work
and learning that's insatiable,
you're just kind of on it, on it, on it.
But I think that it was those two things together
kind of happened in me, where it was like
this kind of free lifestyle of coolness and this sense of,
I just need to absorb crap all the time and learn
and put it out there, you know, go talk about it.
So then I studied organizational communication,
ended up getting a PhD at Oregon
in organizational communication,
and that's kinda how it all,
- Kept going. - Yeah.
- [Shawn] All the way through.
- All the way through.
- Hey Jack, how are we looking?
You want a drink?
Are we close?
- If you're serving.
- [Shawn] We're ready?
- Yes sir.
- Okay, what is it, and what do we call this one?
- Tonight I have the Grand Evolutionary.
Top ingredient in this is gonna be Abuelo Panamanian rum.
Then we're gonna use a port, barrel-aged Reposado tequila,
hibiscus-infused from Centenario,
and that'll be .75 ounces.
.5 ounces of Hendrick's Midsummer Solstice limited-release,
it's a very botanical, forward gin.
And then .25 each
of banana liqueur,
Yellow Chartreuse,
and Harlequin Orange Liqueur.
Dash of lime bitters.
And a dash of Cardamom Bitters,
actually a drop of Cardamom Bitters from Scrappy's.
This is garnished with Northwest flora,
the drink is an idea of walking through a forest
to a mountain across many countries at the same time.
Here we have a little bit of dry ice.
We're gonna add a little bit
of sweet pea essential oil to it.
Biale fruit from India used as the sacrifice for the gods.
Little bit of apple, dried lime,
and a cinnamon stick.
Peach resin from peach trees,
it is the sap and amber from the peach tree.
And a little bit of pine honey.
This is honey from a pine tree.
And there you have it, a Grand Evolutionary.
It's actually named after our friend here's book,
that he wrote.
- The Grand Evolutionary!
- [Jack] And kind of tracks his movements
across the globe and across disciplines.
- Wow! (laughing)
- This is the best explanation of my life I've ever seen.
- Is it? - Yeah.
(laughing)
- All right, we're bubbling.
Are you, down the hatch?
You ready to go?
- Yeah, give it a go.
- We figure it out.
- It's a two-hander. - Okay.
It's a two-hander! (laughs)
Like I see black fruit in your future.
- I know.
- Okay.
- Cheers!
- Gestalt! - Gestalt!
- Wow, that's delicious actually.
- Yeah. - It's freaky delicious.
- It's good.
- It's got like 77 flavors happening all at once.
- Yeah, the Dr. Pepper (laughs)
- It's three Dr. Peppers.
- [Randy] It's three Dr. Peppers.
- [Shawn] It's three Dr. Peppers!
(laughing)
- [Jack] It's the original recipe, that they broke up
with all the iterations of Dr. Pepper we now see.
- [Randy] You know you're actually not far off.
I think there's something there.
- [Jack] Alright guys, I gotta taste some of that.
- I wish, I wanna take a picture of the inside of this glass
'cause it is a piece of modern art.
(upbeat rock music)
- You went to school, you're obviously,
like, fantastic at communicating
by going through all that stuff.
What about working?
Did you have day jobs, did you do other types of things
as you went through in Oxford?
- I did some interesting things,
I did a lot of work in radio for a while, in fact,
when I was in Oxford,
I worked at what was called "New Country",
it was "New, New Country" back in the day.
- New, New Country?
- Yeah, WOOR-FM!
And I worked seven to midnight,
and I got a call one night,
from, the station, of course,
is a little shack out in the middle of a field,
you know, the big, old tower out there.
And this guy called me up,
- The guy at the crossroads selling his soul to the devil.
- "I want you to play some Hank Williams Sr."
And I had no Hank Williams Sr. in the control room at all,
and I said, "I'm sorry sir, I don't have that."
And he goes,
"I know where you are and I will burn you down."
(laughing)
- So it was a rough night for me that night.
- Did you have to find some Hank Williams Sr.?
- I literally could not get it, so yeah.
My other favorite story from that one was,
a woman called me on a Sunday and she said,
"Hey, it's very important that you play Elvis's
"Hawaiian Wedding Song, at precisely 1:27."
And I said,
"Well, actually it's not on my playlist
"and I can't really do that."
And she says, "You don't understand.
"We're having our wedding here at the Sonic drive-in
"and we're all gonna turn on our car stereos
"and the bride and groom are gonna walk down the middle
"of the Sonic drive-in to Hawaiian Wedding Song."
So, by God, I played Hawaiian Wedding Song at 1:27, yeah.
I wish like hell I had pictures of that.
- That is amazing, that's incredible.
So you went from that, it sounds like you still kept,
like a career in that.
What did you do after?
- Yeah, so then I went up to Carolina, got married, yay!
Still married, yay!
(laughing)
So I went up and did a Master's at Carolina,
then I went down and taught at UNC Wilmington,
and while I was there, some guy comes up to me and he goes,
"I think you should be on the TV news."
And I said, "Okay."
So, I went and was a TV New Anchor
for about three and a 1/2 years, CBS affiliate.
- CBS affiliate? - Yeah
- In North Carolina?
- In North Carolina.
And it was a kick in the pants, it was a lot of fun.
- Well fast-forward a little bit then,
you go from there and then--
- Came all the way to Oregon.
- To Oregon?
- Yeah, went all the way to Oregon to do a PhD.
I flew out there, I left in July,
it was 172 degrees in North Carolina,
I landed in Oregon and it was just.
- Oregon?
- It was Oregon, it was beautiful,
it was like I got off the plane
and it was like 73 degrees and no humidity,
and I was like, I'm home.
- You do the non-secure-ish thing, right, eventually?
Like, did you work in the real world for a while
or did you really start your own thing?
- No, I really jumped right in.
I got a gig working for the FDIC.
- I don't know what that is, what is that?
- It's Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Washington.
I spent some time doing that
and in the process learned every conceivable way
that a financial institution could fail.
And that sort of began the roll in to consulting.
- Okay, so you went in to consulting.
- Yeah, so I started doing some keynote speeches
and stuff like that.
- Just like solo stuff?
- Yes. - So it's like?
- Lone wolf. - Lone wolf. (laughs)
- Harrington Associates was my creative name,
back in the day.
- Harrington Associates? (laughs)
- Yes, yes, it was, I just went for it.
- Now, why didn't you stick with that type of stuff?
That sounds like it's probably, lucrative-ish.
- A lawyer told me, that I was working for one time,
he goes, "You know, when you're working for your self,
"and you move the wheelbarrow all day
"and then you put it down, when you come back,
"it won't have moved at all."
And that was an interesting thing to think about.
So, it was the first time I started thinking about
maybe doing something more than just being out there.
- Then moving on to doing the Extreme Arts.
- Yeah, to do Extreme Arts.
At the time I was really obsessed also with the idea
of what Navy Seals can bring to,
I know!
Where did the come from?
- "I was obsessed with Navy Seals."
- I had done some homework and research
for an academic paper,
on high-performance team development.
And I met a bunch of drunken sailors
in Fort Pierce, Florida.
- Wait, wait!
- That's a whole nother story.
(laughing)
- That's my favorite kind of story.
Drunken sailors in Florida.
- Extreme Arts is this basic idea
that really small groups of people,
can run circles around the, kind of,
big cumbersome organizations.
So we want to be the kind of seal team of consulting
and intentionally be small
and yet, highly capable.
- Did it work? (laughing)
- We've had successes.
- (laughs) And like some, not successes?
(upbeat music)
- Some of the basics I think,
are the things that I've screwed up on the most.
Having a company name that makes sense is one of them.
You know, Extreme Arts and Sciences, I mean,
I still don't know what it means.
And I'm kind of okay with that,
but it turns out to be a problem.
I actually was pitching the company
to a hospital group where a nun
was the main person on the ward.
- Extreme, extreme, extreme!
- She said,
"I don' think we can have anything called extreme."
That was a sign.
So I think getting the basics right is a thing.
I think I struggle a lot with details and planning.
I'm a big picture person
and I wanna just go fast and get it done.
And I've learned to shut up and listen
to the people who are detail people
and who actually think through things.
Every time I've really had a major issue,
- It's been details and planning.
- It's been details, yeah.
- What's interesting, that sort of,
maybe attraction's the wrong word,
but you had this pull towards Navy Seals
and would think that's definitely the details and planning.
- It is, and you know one of the secrets,
that they will be happy to tell you actually is that one
of the ways their successful is,
they don't do things where they won't be successful.
So they don't go do it unless they're going to crush it.
And there's a certain level of wisdom there, you know?
Because they've put it all together.
- Like they figure it out.
- They figure it out.
- It's not that they won't try something hard,
but they'll figure it out before they go
to do the hard thing. - Exactly.
And they will rehearse and plan,
and rehearse and plan for days.
- So still taking what other peoples would consider risk,
but plan it out and have it ready to go.
- That's exactly right.
(upbeat rock music)
- Well what are you thinking about the future?
Like, are you gonna continue doing what you're doing?
If there's something else that you're interested in
or that you're thinking about trying?
- You know, it's one of the nice things
about our wackadoodle business,
we're having our 20 year anniversary, go team.
But it's been, 20, one year startups,
is the best way I can describe it.
We've been perpetually in start-up mode.
- Just every year?
- Every year.
- 'Cause you have to reanalyze what's going on,
what the technology is, the way everything is set up, yeah.
- So the future, yeah.
I am getting to the place where I feel,
there are more opportunities to express more art.
I wanna do more art.
And be involved in more,
- Like, what do you mean by that?
- Music is a thing for me.
- But what type of music?
Like, do you wanna record, do you wanna play?
- I do play some music, but I'm not very good at it,
so I don't do that in front of people.
- What do you play? - I play guitar.
- You play guitar? - Yeah.
- Yeah, I think we have a guitar.
- Nah, that's all right.
(laughing)
But what I am doing,
so I have this passion for the Delta Blues,
I have passion for the Mississippi Delta.
Mississippi Delta, you should have a passport
to go to the Mississippi Delta.
It is the most screwed-up place in the world,
and yet it's magnificent.
I mean, there are people there, the poverty is desperate,
you know, there's like no hospitals that work.
I mean, it's just crazy.
But at the same time, it's a beautiful spot.
- It's where the blues come from, right?
- That's right!
And, oh dude, oh man!
Gah! - See?
- I know, I mean you can't make that up.
Look at that.
- No, it's just like Dagobah.
- It is! (laughs)
So you take the Mississippi Delta,
you got that in your mind?
So I go study Ukulele
in Molokai.
- Wait, is that the right way to say it?
- Both are correct.
Yoo-kuh or oo-kuh.
- Oh I'm saying Ukulele.
- Ukulele.
My master plan right now is to connect,
I wanna take artists from the Mississippi Delta,
to Molokai, have them learn Hawaiian,
then take people from Molokai, to the Mississippi Delta.
- Like, being able to connect those two thing together.
- Yeah, because, here you've got these two worlds
that are completely different, but the same.
There both desperate poverty,
they both have serious problems with social issues,
drugs, access to healthcare, you know, unemployment,
diabetes, all these problems,
but the music and the art
coming out of both of them is stunning.
- So you're thinking about like,
a non-profit type of thing to pull together?
- We're talking about putting together an album and a video.
- You've done some amazing things all the way across.
Like being able to do,
like at Ole Miss and debating,
all the way through to what you're doing right now.
It's really eclectic and it's really unique.
- It's weird, for sure.
It hasn't always been great economically,
but, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
You know, I couldn't imagine going
and doing like a job-y job, job, job.
Even an opportunity to come and hang out with you
for a little while is pretty cool, pretty interesting.
- Ukulele it up, right?
- That's what I'm saying, G.
(laughing)
- All right, drink some more Dagobah.
Thank you for being on the show.
- It is a delight.
- It's been a pleasure.
- Yeah. - For what it's worth.
- Gestalt! - Gestalt!
(speaks in foreign language)
- Hey everybody, thanks for watching the show
and if you like what you see, if you love what you see,
then subscribe!
Ring the bell, ring the bell.
The cool kids, that's how they say it.
And then I'll show up or we'll show up.
And if you have a screw-up that you wanna talk about,
go to effups.com, I hope to see you on the show.
(upbeat rock music)