The Place: Lola Savannah

The Cup: Brett selected an iced, soy, decaf mocha and I too went the decaf route, choosing a lovely iced passion fruit tea.

Background: Brett is one of the strangers on my wish list, and a few months back I was at an event and saw Brett standing by a wall listening to the presenter. I approached him after the presentation and introduced myself. I explained my project and told him he was on my wish list. Nearly before the question exited my mouth, he said yes, he’d be happy to have coffee with me. EEK! Seriously exciting moment!

How did he make it to the wish list? A year or so before I moved to Austin, I was contacted by a recruiter who had a position at a company called Bazaarvoice she wanted to talk with me about. I had never heard of the company, so I did some research. In doing so, I watched videos made by happy employees, learned all about the corporate culture and read articles and watched videos of co-founder, Brett Hurt, talking about the unique business philosophy and their impressive results.

I’ve long been intrigued by the role corporate culture plays in creating successful companies, or not-so-successful companies in some cases. Bazaarvoice stands out as a shining example of the incredible success that can be found by taking impeccable care of every stakeholder – starting with the people within the organization.

The timing wasn’t right for a move to Austin, so even though the position, the company and the leadership team were incredible, I couldn’t justify a 5+ hour daily commute. I remained a fan and kept the company on my radar because I knew with the talent they had, huge things were on the horizon for Bazaarvoice. I was right.

Just over a year ago (Feb. 23, 2012), Bazaarvoice held it’s IPO and went public. If you are interested in learning more about the company, visit the Bazaarvoice website.

Brett stepped down from his role as CEO last fall but continues to be very active at the company in his role as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors. He tells me he spends about a fifth of his time focused on the company he founded in 2005. It feels a little bittersweet, but it’s apparent that Bazaarvoice is still very important to Brett and not surprisingly, a huge source of pride.

The majority of his work time is now split between his role as Venture Partner at Austin Ventures and as an angel investor backing companies like Compare Metrics, Deep Eddy Vodka, Pictrition, BounceExchange, BrickTrends, AlertMedia, and RealMassive as well serving on boards and as a mentor to entrepreneurs at various levels of start-up. We’ll learn more about what keeps Brett busy in a moment, but first, some:

Common Grounds

1. What is the best gift you ever got? My children – there is nothing more important to me. {Brett went on to tell me that he often expresses gratitude to his wife Debra for the incredible gift of their two children.}
   
2. What is your guilty pleasure? There is no pleasure I feel guilty about. OK, maybe binging on a video game. This weekend my son and I played a new game, Bloon Tower Defense 5. We had a great time, but I looked up and realized four hours had gone by and I thought, “What a waste of a day.” {As Brett considers the time further, he tells me that five times during those four hours, his son hopped up, hugged him and said, “I love you dad!” He decides it was time well spent.}
3. What was your favorite TV show as a kid? Saturday morning cartoons and Scooby Doo. {Brett and I also got onto comic books and realize we share an affinity for the Richie Rich comics. Brett recently got a hold of his old comics and now his kids are enjoying Richie Rich as well. Who didn’t love Richie Rich?}
4. Where is your favorite place to eat in Austin? Uchi or Uchiko. No doubt about it. I’m also excited to try Qui.
5. What is something you’ll regret not doing if you don’t do it? Spending time with and taking vacations with my family. I told myself early on that I can never get so busy that I don’t do it. {We’ll dive deeper into Brett’s vacation philosophy in a bit.}
6. What is your best feature? I am very authentic and I really care about people. And I’m going to tell them the whole truth.
7. What is the last thing you fixed? Someone’s perspective about how they should grow their business. They were going down a path that would create a small business. I jolted them to think about something much bigger. I really enjoy that!
8. Success or failure – which is the better teacher? Both are very important. Back in the Coremetrics days, there was a night when I said to Debra, “I don’t know if we can make payroll.” I went to sleep and woke up with a smile on my face and peace of mind. I knew I had tried as hard as I could and that I’d do it again if I had to. {Things ended up working out and Coremetrics was eventually acquired by IBM.}

Regarding failure, Brett went on to say, “The line between success and failure is so thin. How do you ever call something a failure? As long as you learned something, nothing is ever a failure.”

From the very start of our conversation, I knew Brett and I shared at least one common trait – curiosity. Typically, when I meet with someone, there’s a little back and forth, but mostly it’s me asking questions followed by the stranger offering up their responses. Brett began our visit with a couple of question of his own. “Where did you get the idea for this project and what was your inspiration?”

After I gave him the scoop, he told me he thought it was a great idea {woo hoo!!!} and went on to tell me about one of his favorite classes he took at the University of Pennsylvania. This is how the class was described to Brett: “A class that will forever change how you relate to and manage people.” Adding to the mystique were these nuggets: it’s only 3 days (full days), there is no agenda and he had to sign a waiver because if a person was unstable already, the class might prove the catalyst for them going insane.

What? Seriously?!?!

I want to take it!

Brett felt the same way. He and his classmates spent three, trying days in a room surrounded by three psychologists providing audible commentary to no one in particular. He said some people broke down and cried from the stress. Eventually, you begin make sense of it and create order. Brett says that it was about deprogramming. From the time we’re kids, we are programmed by agendas, deadlines, expectations. This class offered none of that, but eventually, with nothing else to do, they made their own order.

Brett says, “It was very ‘Lord of the Flies’. Eventually, we started to create meaning and assign roles. I turned out to be the leader.” I didn’t find that surprising.

So did the class live up to the promise of changing how he related to people forever more? Yes! “It taught me that 99% of the time we’re dealing with just the very outer layer. The experience was emotional and very profound. I learned to relate to people beneath that outer layer and it forever changed my leadership and management style.”

He then tells me he thinks my project is about the same thing – going deeper with people and allowing them to tell their story. The story that exists below the first few layers we tend to share most freely. I completely agree. Cool, now we have two things in common.

As a fan of Brett and an admirer of his work, I am an avid reader of his blog – which is an incredible gift to entrepreneurs and humanity in general. He shares so much knowledge and insight in his blog posts – a person could arguable get a solid business education just by reading his posts – including the books, links and videos he mentions.

One book he quotes frequently is Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl, and this is a favorite quote of Brett’s from the book:

Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.   ~ Viktor Frankl

As Frankl speaks of finding one’s purpose in life, I am curious what Brett considers his to be. He tells my his purpose has long been, “To change the world for the better through technology.” Over the years the methods have changed, but Brett’s been using technology as a change catalyst since he was seven years old when his mom bought him his first computer.

Brett’s mother passed away last year and he wrote a beautiful tribute to her that you can read here. Here is an excerpt where he talks about his mom’s role in him becoming the successful entrepreneur he is today:

My mom bought my first computer when I was 7 years old. It was one of the original Atari’s with the BASIC programming cartridge and plug-in keypad to program it. My mom thought it would help me learn math. It did. She also learned how to program with me. This is a moment I will never forget – the investment of her time in learning what would become my lifelong passion – to change the world through technology. I immediately took to it and spent the next 14 years of my life programming over 40 hours a week. My dad didn’t quite know what to think of this – that I was missing out on being outside with the other kids or going fishing with him. I spent some time outside, but I always couldn’t wait to get back to my computer and write more programs. My mom saw that I was following my passion, and just like she let my father follow his passions (again, you can read about some of his passions in his tribute), she was firm with my dad that I should be allowed to live mine. This took enormous discipline. Think about it: what would you do if your child was on a computer 40 hours per week from age 7 to 21? Would you have the discipline to let your child live their passion – to be consumed with it – or would you instead strive for more “balance”? Were it not for my mom, I would not have turned into the entrepreneur I am today and created jobs for many people and ripples of change for many businesses through our software and services.

In just over an hour together, its abundantly clear to me that family is Brett’s top priority and always has been. He and wife Debra just celebrated their 17th anniversary. Eight years ago they became parents, and now have two kids who bring daily joy. Brett tells me taking time away with his family is very important, and he will take 8-10 weeks of vacation this year. Even when he was in busy start-up mode at Bazaarvoice he took 5-6 weeks of vacation a year. I am curious how he managed this and he admits that in the beginning it wasn’t this way.

“Advice I give young people just starting out is to take advantage of the energy you have in your 20’s and work dumb now, so you can work smart later. I often worked 80+ hours a week in my 20s. Those reps allowed me to work smarter in my 30s. We had our first child at age 32 so thankfully the children came along after I figured out how to be more effective and efficient.” Bazaarvoice is actually the fifth business Brett started. The other four he was running simultaneously when he and Debra were newlyweds. Brett says, “Luckily for me Debra is fiercely independent and she believed in me. From the start Debra bet on me.” I know from experience that this kind of support is not often talked about in reference to success in business, but I contend it’s one of the most important factors. You have to have someone in your court at all times – someone who believes in you no matter what. Clearly, Brett and Debra have this.

We return to this “working dumb” concept when I ask Brett about how he finds time to read all the books he cites in his blog posts. He shares with me that running Coremetrics provided huge realization of just how much he didn’t know about managing people. To overcome this lack of knowledge, he began devouring every book he could find on leadership and management. At the end of his first two years in business, he’d read over 200 books. He says, “I got in lots of ‘reps’ when I was young.” Reps being a term frequently used in reference to exercise, in this case he applies the term to putting in the time – no matter what the task.

Brett says, “After reading so many books, you begin to see patterns and find a few universal truths. There are probably only around 15 books that I quote from frequently. I still read, but now I see things through a lens based on doing lots of reps.”

Speaking of patterns, Brett’s new role as Venture Partner has him doing a new sort of “rep”, which is face-to-face meetings with lots of entrepreneurs. Brett estimates that in the last seven months, he’s met with 250 entrepreneurs. He says now that he’s on this side of the table he’s seeing new patterns. Patterns of what makes a successful entrepreneur, and a successful idea. He can hardly contain his excitement and optimism as he looks ahead at technology start-ups, and particularly the start-up scene in Austin.

Brett tells me his friend, futurist Derek Woodgate, once said this, “The cool thing about you (Brett), is that I can write about the future, but you’re creating it.” Brett added, “Entrepreneurs change the future.” Brett believes exciting things are in store for Austin. He says, ” There is a ton of start-up energy and talent, but what Austin is missing is the know-how on how to grow a company.” He talks about one other component missing in Austin – failure. Brett says, “The process of trying and failing leads to the discovery of what works. One of the things that’s needed to happen is more experiments. Many will fail. But some will lead to big outcomes. There has been a fear of failure that’s held Austin back. My goal is to shake things up, inform people about the possibilities, and I feel duty bound to help other entrepreneurs in my city.”

I ask Brett about a rumor I’d heard a while back that he was working on a book. He said it was true, but the project is on hold for now. He says he will someday write the Bazaarvoice story – all the glory and the guts. But a few years ago when he was ready to write it, he realized it would not be the complete story. Brett saw a bright future ahead and knew the readers would be better served if he waited and gave them the whole thing at once. For now, the blog serves at the best manifestation of his desire to help entrepreneurs and business people in the most scalable way.

Brett and I cover many topics in our time together but one we kept revisiting was the effect that technology is having on our connections and relationships with one another. As we talked earlier about going deeper – beyond the first layer or two – I am curious what Brett thinks about the role technology plays in our connectedness. “I am an optimist about it,” he says. Adding, “People have always reacted to new technology with a very short-term perspective. Every advent has seen this. The telephone was called ‘an invention of the devil’. People will naturally modulate and demodulate based on our needs to connect. We really are a lot smarter than we give ourselves credit for sometimes. There is a lot to be said for physicality.”

He shares a story to illustrate his point.

In 1990 Brett launched a game called Renegade Outpost with his childhood best friend that would just two years later be called the most popular game on the internet. Some of the code from this game is rumored to be found very popular modern sensation, World of Warcraft. This game provided hours and hours of fun for thousands of people. The game, while played in a virtual world, presented an opportunity for friendships in real life as well. Brett tells me about a group of five technology workers in Florida who were avid fans. They decided to host a fan event and asked Brett to come and be a part of it. He did, and cites this as an example of how our need to connect with one another in real life doesn’t go away simply because we are connected virtually.

I tell him about an article I read in The Atlantic recently about how Facebook is making us lonely and want to know his thoughts. I enjoyed the article and tend to agree with many of the claims. Brett doesn’t agree and here’s how he sees it. Reminding me that he’s an optimist about the whole thing, he says, “Social media allows you access to more people on that outer level. From that point, you can choose who you want to go deeper with. For me, Facebook has allowed me to connect with old connections and school mates I haven’t seen in 15-20 years. It allows you to reconnect or stay connected with the people you’ve gone deeper with at some point.”

I can appreciate his argument. And he’s certainly not suggesting social media is a replacement for real life interacting. It’s simply a tool we can use to figure out who we might like to connect with on a deeper level. It allows us a sneak peek into who someone is and then we can decide for ourselves if they are someone we’d be better off knowing or not knowing.

Considering that the entire reason Brett and I are having a conversation at all is due to his virtual presence on the internet, I can hardly argue. What began as an interest in a company with an unusual name led me to investigate who they were and what they stood for. What I found, I liked, and although the timing wasn’t right, I used social media to stay in touch with the company. This eventually led me to read more about the founder and I began reading his blog. Through the blog I discovered a man deeply committed to family, his faith, entrepreneurship, kale shakes and his fellow journeyers through life.

Technology allowed all that. Isn’t that remarkable? Brett is right, we have tools at our disposal that allow us to connect with people we don’t know and to continue relationships with those we do. It’s incredibly powerful.

Brett also reminds us that what happens off the screen is even more important. Make time for the people already in your life. Be the champion in the corner cheering on those you love no matter what. When you spend too many hours playing video games with the kids, realize that perhaps that was the best use of your time after all. When you know something and think it might be useful to someone else – share freely. When you admire someone and think they are remarkable, tell them so. And don’t be scared to ask them out to coffee. If they are as cool in real life as they are on the screen, they’ll say yes and your life will be even richer for it.

To learn more about Brett and get the best free education I know of, check out his blog. You might also like to follow him on Twitter.