Emmett Shine’s shop, Gin Lane was doing amazing brand work for companies you have heard of and probably have in your home. But something wasn’t right. The partners and staff decided to reform Gin Lane into Pattern, a company focused on the very issue they hoped to address – making their lives feel more whole.
Links: Gin Lane’s metamorphosis announcement: https://medium.com/@patternbrands/https-medium-com-patternbrands-hello-were-gin-lane-and-now-we-re-pattern-57ebccc94a28
Summary article: https://www.theproofwellness.com/emmett-shine
Pattern’s first brand, Equal Parts: https://equalparts.com/?utm_source=pattern&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ginlane
Transcript by Otter.ai
Adam Pierno 0:24
Alright, welcome back to the strategy inside everything. We have a very interesting conversation coming your way right now. In August I was I found a link i guess is the best way to say it to an article on Medium. And it was really, really compelling. And I quickly tracked down the author and reached out and said, I have to I have to talk to you. And after a little bit of back and forth we were able to work it out. Mr. Emmett shine of Gin Lane, now Pattern and Equal Parts joins us today. And how are you?
Emmett Shine 0:58
Hey, I’m doing well and happy to be here.
Adam Pierno 1:02
Thank you so much for making time. I really appreciate it. Unfortunately, I was just in New York, I wish we could have done this in person. But I didn’t adequately set that up. So we’ll have to go into it and explain why I just listed three companies, that’s really a big part of the story. But before we do that, would you give people a sense of your career and who you were up to? And through Gin Lane and talk a little bit about what you did to build in lane and then what it became?
Emmett Shine 1:30
Yeah, yeah, sure. I’ll go I’ll go back a little bit, I guess. You know, I grew up on Eastern Eastern Long Island and my mom was, you know, a fine artist. And so I grew up around a lot of art and people making art not in in a, you know, commercially successful way per se just doing it for that’s just their, their call in life. And so I ended up at NYU for photography went to Tisch You know, I think in my mind I was was painting and making art at a really young age, and I’m good at it but I kind of realized I like network and maybe get to a level of mastery that I wanted or that my mom was at. And I think photography was this new medium for me that I was really excited to explore and try to you know, find my own personal mastery at and at NYU I got introduced to the world of digital I got a computer and I learned you know, Photoshop and got a you know, was able to rent the digital camera and learn that about, you know, more of the Adobe Creative Suite and learned about websites and HTML and JavaScript and really just kind of live in what was called the digital darkroom and just taught myself on these, you know, software programs that would save me a lot of money instead of having to, you know, go shoot all my, all my photos on film and have to develop it and then you know, go The process I could just shoot a digitally uploaded to a computer edited, and then I could you know the little website and share it. And then if I was shooting, you know, products I could actually like sell them for myself and other people. And by the time I was a senior in college, I, you know, was making enough money that I just I dropped out just to work full time doing graph ic design and web design and photography. And after a few years of doing that, I was running into business challenges where it was hard to always get paid on time. So you know, you gotta pay rent and people would say ‘Okay, finish the job and I’ll pay you in 90 to 120 days.’ And so I thought
Adam Pierno 3:42
That’s still a problem. Yeah.
Emmett Shine 3:43
And so I thought if I did, I worked for a company to would take me more seriously and I’m from South Hampton on eastern Long Island and Gin Lane is the name of a very rich kind of street in that town. And so I thought everyone will know, you know, it was like, in my mind, it was like a Park Place or Fifth Avenue. There’s no no emotion. So I was like yeah Gin Lane Media this company I worked for and it kind of worked but then I had to incorporate and bank account which I didn’t understand to actually cash a check in for the first two years of Gin Lane which you know would later become a whole normal legit creative agency. It was almost just like a proper myself and a few friends from NYU to do our billing stream to be paid on better terms and just have a friend who is more confident and had a booming voice call people up and say you know, pay my quiet but over the years you know, we we got it in with the the art and design crowd and build a lot of their websites when I was kind of important for artists and designers and jewelry or galleries to have like a web presence and in order to do that we had to come up with their brand name and their typographic and their logo and you know, how to present yourself and how to build CMS and how to do ecommerce and so that got us into the fashion crowd and start work with you know, Stella McCartney and a lot of, you know Theory on the line J.Crew And that got us introduced to a new agency called Partners and Spade that had was was floating in the same circles and these new startups called like the no bows and evergreen, and then Warby Parker, and so we got kind of introduced to those guys and just started sharing information to how we were, you know, building our website showing images and integrating some of the more progressive technologies at the time that we were testing with smaller fashion companies. And we really felt like birds of a feather with these entrepreneurs that were doing more of this direct to consumer at work. And then we got the chance to launch Harry’s to market and then build the online technology for sweet green and reformation about the same time and that kind of really stretched us into, you know, this this emerging world in New York City where, you know, people that would have worked in finance and engineering side and people that would have worked more in fashion. On the design and strategy side, we’re kind of converging on, you know, this digitally native vertically integrated space and You spent really the next kind of half a decade immersing ourselves and, and, you know, the fountain of youth of creativity is like calling it just launching brand after brand after brand. And then, you know, a few years ago, myself, my partner, Nick and some of our team here, we worked together for half a decade to a decade. You know, we just started feeling for a few different reasons that maybe there was, you know, another challenge for us to kind of, to kind of go after which ended up becoming
Adam Pierno 6:30
Yeah, I want to, okay, so that’s a great that’s a great setup. Thank you for taking us back and going all the way back because your your foundational story is is important to this. When I read the the initial medium article, and I saw what you were trying to solve, and the issues you were facing, which which we’ll talk about next. I have to admit I had not heard of Gin Lane and I was not really familiar with your work despite Being a student of the, of the industry. So my initial thing was like, Well, I don’t know if this is a big story or not, you know, I don’t know how I should feel about this because I don’t know. Yeah. But after a few very quick clicks, I said, Oh, no, this is a very important. This is a very important shop doing, you know, brands at Oh, right. I do know this. I’ve heard of this. I recognize this. Obviously, I know all the brands you just mentioned and and the brands you’ve helped along the way. So let’s let’s talk about the decision you made. And some of the root causes of it and then we’ll we can come back to Gin Lane and the transition. But what what was it that you started to notice at Jen lane or maybe you didn’t start noticing it with your team or your staff, but maybe it’s just society or systemically you started reading and being aware of the issues?
Emmett Shine 7:50
Yeah, I think, you know, there’s three main catalysts for myself and, you know, the leadership here as as well as really the The core team which, you know, bought into what became Pattern quite early, three main reasons why we wanted to, you know, take this risk and go from a very, you know, good, profitable, enjoyable, professional career and go on a limb and try something different. The first The first was we we wanted to keep working together. And like I say, like when we helped launch Harry’s about almost seven years ago now, our full time headcount was was 22 employees. And, and that’s what we’re, you know, six and a half plus years later, when we, you know, took on investment for Pattern. We were about 26 full time employees. And so, while while our reach and our and our work grew each year, and we very purposely kept our headcount quite low, because we wanted to really make sure that the work we are putting out was that the level of quality that we shall we could manage you know which we really struggled if we tried getting over you know three dozen people from the head count of the amount of work that you were doing that it felt like it had to generate kind of seal of approval and so as is that is that
Adam Pierno 9:14
Does that commitment to quality from your background and fine art and your you know, your upbringing and you’re studying at Tisch?
Emmett Shine 9:23
Yeah definitely like my mom, you know, like she doesn’t care if I’m if I make money or brand I work with make money, you know, she cares about you know, the artistic integrity and in the craftsmanship of the work we did and so, you know, that was always a big drivers for me is trying to, you know, my peers also my friends are like, art snobs, you know, they’re not like, I don’t know, whatever you caring about some acquisitions, bad or whatever, like, and so I would always try to work with normal brands, but bring it sense of like, craftsmanship or artistic integrity as much as possible. Sometimes it’s hard and challenging. But that’s always been a big driver for me is, you know, is representing myself and my values to my work.
Adam Pierno 10:15
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Okay, I cut you off though if you if you would continue to step part one of the three was you, you were maintaining the same size to maintain the same commitment to quality. And the same group of people that were all working very well together to get to that point.
Emmett Shine 10:33
So basically, what happened is we’re getting older, you know, and when you’re moving from your mid 20s, to your late 20s, and early to mid 30s, you know, your life changes, you got to make sure that you’re there for your parents, maybe you’re getting married, your couple of dogs, you’re moving in together, you’re, you know, having children and so few things happen. I think one personally, you need to, you know, earn an income that can support that and the second thing is you want professionally your Career to be challenging and rewarding. And I always like to say that Gin Lane was like this incredible storm, you know, farm team, like in baseball, you have like farm leagues. It’s like we always drafted, you know, raw talent and then helped to our system, mold them into, you know, incredible, you know all stars. But imagine if you know, the Kansas City Royals have all these great players. How do they compete with the New York Yankees that had a massive payroll? And so what I didn’t want keeping the sports analogy kind of going is what happened to basketball. The Oklahoma City Thunder where they had Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, James Harden, you know, with some other awesome players, which is just crazy, right? There’s like three NBA, all stars playing together that organically were drafted. Everyone knew Wouldn’t it couldn’t last. And so I think
Adam Pierno 11:52
it has to be broken up eventually, right?
Emmett Shine 11:53
If we just stayed a really small independent agency. Everyone was going to go form their own companies and do their own thing and we Didn’t want that one to keep working together. And so we needed something which could allow us to stay tight as a team but have a bigger challenge to go for. And as an agency, the only way that we thought we could do that was to just really increase from a headcount perspective, the amount of work we had to do, which we didn’t want to do. The second. The second thing was we wanted to go deeper on our work, right? So again, we didn’t want to go horizontal in terms of going to be hundred 200% headcount shot. We also were, you know, the average length of time that we work with, you know, a client was like six to nine months, which, which is cool, but like, when we’re done launching a brand and getting them set up, you know, it’s kind of like, I don’t know being like a midwife or whatever, we’re just constantly helping people. Like, pat on the back and they go their ways and you’re, you’re there if they need you, but they but they usually move on with everything except I think after, you know, over a decade of doing this, we were like, Hey, man, We really want to try going deeper. And and, and try operating and running some of these businesses and thinking about the creative and decision making posts, you know, getting them and setting them up into market. And I think the third one, which is the kind of right guys, the cultural, the cultural part is, is, is this notion of an increased awareness around burnout and anxiety and time. And I think one we, we, we started feeling it ourselves where, before we really settled on what this model can be, we had explored, you know, different options, hey, maybe we take on some larger, you know, fortune 100 kind of clients that are down to allow us to do more creative, expressive work, and that will allow us, you know, this freedom to grow as an agency but still kind of preserve this model and we found it really, really, really hard and really stressful and just, you know, I’m working in general where you’re trying to always put yourself and be excellent. It can be really challenging and really draining. And I think we A few years ago, we kind of hit a ceiling in terms of that, that work life balance where, you know, we found ourselves having to kind of by our own design, and it wasn’t like we had to it was that we felt that we had to challenge ourselves and push ourselves to do more. And the end result was we ended up feeling less happy and less balanced, more anxiety and more stressed. As you started talking about it internally, we realized we all were feeling this. And as we started talking to our significant others and our peers, you know, in their own different forms ways, it seemed that this was a prevailing sentiment for a lot of young adult workers within especially at first, where we were centered in the information kind of knowledge economy, so people that you know, primarily work in cities in the US and you know, they went to college they need to city greatness and where they’re from and you work in a computer and some transferring of information. Communication and, you know, these jobs are highly stimulating, but they’re also highly demanding, and they don’t really turn off. And so there’s been a lot of narratives around, you know, Millennials want flexibility and, you know, the freedom of the gig economy and millennials, you know, want to freelance. And some of it, you know, is true, I think people do want more flexibility and more freedom. But I think another part is, it’s a byproduct of like socio economic trends from the 70s. And where there is, you know, automation there is, you know, globalization there is, you know, post the recession in 2008. The floor did go out on a lot of job security is for a lot of people and if you couple that with right, you know, your your student loans and owning a lot of debt, and then the wages aren’t rising, it’s you just find yourself treading, we have to work really long hours and work multiple jobs to keep up with the supply and the cost of living. And then the other side, we’re dealing with like, information that just be loses you You’re on, you’re smart, you’re on your smart phone, all kinds of shit. So I’m the president where there’s just an endless amount of information, whether it’s social media or work, they just kind of follows you like a shadow everywhere.
Adam Pierno 16:14
So, yeah, and that how much of that was Jen lanes cultured? Oh, I’ve worked at places where it’s really important to always be on and always be plugged in. And I’ve worked at places where it’s not really that important. How much of that plugged into your smartphone was part of gin lane or how much of it was just lifestyle and smartphones are fantastic, so we’re always checking them?
Emmett Shine 16:36
Yeah, you know, I think everything in life is relative like I think we’ve for at least the past like half a decade, you know, with my partner, Nick and one of our on the founding team of Pattern shoes, when they really came on here and they really helped. You know, maybe the early days of Julie when I was kind of running into my, my mid 20s. There definitely was more of like a programmer. You’re late, you’re just young and you’re just really psyched on your job. You know, you were dinner and you drink beers and people like kind of single and just working long hours and again as we mature to I think they did a great job on the agency side of setting some barriers to protect the work life balance. Maybe not even for myself I you know, if I want to work longer work long, but more importantly for for the employees. Right. And so I think Julian has been, you know, a place that has a really strong culture where we do ski trips and summer trips, and we make lunches together and we see movies together. And, you know, we have summer Fridays, and we good you know, from vacation too sick to personal leave time off. That being said, it’s all relative. We are in New York City working on computers and in in the internet. Right. So like,
Adam Pierno 17:52
you know, it’s nice to be still going to be working
Emmett Shine 17:54
Exactly. I speak to my friends, you know, our back home and have more of a traditional 20th century. God, you know, their, their relationship with work and information is a bit different.
Adam Pierno 18:08
For sure, and you can’t win, especially in the creative field, it just takes a long time because you can’t manage creativity, you don’t know where an idea is going to go when it’s going to come. how it’s going to impact the chain reaction of 20 other ideas behind or ahead of it.
Emmett Shine 18:24
This culture is also so new, right? It’s like smartphones and rolling and really traveling since like 2000, teens, whatever it’s like it’s under 10 years that it’s really been like a very prevalent part of our lives. And so I think there’s this magic these magic tools, but there’s there is a downside to where like, it’s hard to turn it off and it’s hard to set boundaries where you wouldn’t have if you finished at the factory. You know, your boss wouldn’t come to your house at eight o’clock while you’re having dinner and asked you to you know, look at some blueprints that you need to review The next day the next day in the factory but with with you know, the internet in your pocket and and given time and the different tools from email to now slack etc, you can do that and that happens and people don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing but it creates again as always on culture which in some ways I don’t think it was totally healthy
Adam Pierno 19:22
no and and the articles he said in in the medium article as well as lots of literature and research proves that that there are massive negative repercussions to follow. So did you outright closed in line or is Gin Lane still open as a part of a Pattern the new the new company that you started?
Emmett Shine 19:43
Yeah, one of one of like, patterns like we had this little guide that we put out we launch it, you know, has like really resonated and been shared thousands of times and it’s like 10 simple steps for daily enjoyment and one of them is do one thing at a time and you know, there’s a deeper dive into it, which is the fall sort of multitasking. And like, the way that our brain works, we, we, it’s kind of like, if you have like an apple laptop, and you have different windows and you’re toggling between one that has, you know, slack in and the other one has Spotify and and the other one has, you know, Asana, Trello, or your email or whatever it is, that’s what the brain does. And so when you think that you’re like, writing emails, and like watching TV, or you’re speaking to someone and texting someone, the brain is like shifting back and forth between the different windows super rapidly, which would causes a less affected Miss of being president or focusing on both paths at the same time. And why I say that is that for us, we didn’t feel we could effectively run an agency and try to build our own brand. At the same time, because in different incarnations over the course of 10 years, we’ve always been very entrepreneur Oh said, I don’t think like a typical agency. I think, you know, we’re entrepreneurs that somehow found ourselves being an agency and we work with other entrepreneurs and help build their businesses, it’s really hard to try to build a product, a SAS product or a tool or own brand, while having the rest of the organization focused on serving, you know, clients. And so, early days, we can kind of shelve some of those ideas to really make sure we could have the quality to do client service at the level we wanted. And as we decided to transition into June lane, which we really began in earnest going through this process in September 2008. And for August 2019, we were basically closed of all you know, client agency work and, and now in fall, you know, 2009. I mean, it’s our entire staff here, which we essentially like aqui higher. Julian brought our whole team over and Then we’ve brought on a number of other specialists for areas that we didn’t do. So supply chain growth, retention, acquisition, business intelligence, customer service, customer experience. The whole team here is just very concentrated on our own brands.
Adam Pierno 22:19
And that’s amazing. And so the gin lean staff that that was brought over, they are focused on doing this similar work of building out the brand and making sense of how its communicated and how it lives and behaves in the world. On these new brands that you’re launching through Pattern.
Emmett Shine 22:35
Yeah, the kind of architecture is that like, Pattern is like a like a family and brand and, you know, I think we’re still trying to figure out our terms in one way people can call it like a hold co but I think that feels quite like 20th century. But gene lane is essentially like this Creating Shared Services at the center of the different brands that we’re building so you know, Pattern in its own right. I like to Say like there’s a numerator and denominator. And so, for example, our first brand equal parts that the numerator sits on top of Pattern, which is a denominator but Pattern is also a numerator and denominator because it is consumer facing right so there you know, we have a social account we do events we make content, we speak to you know, people we’re building a community and and so the team that was delayed is the hub for the creative outputs from the branding the positioning our direction, the content creation, the user experience the you know, the site design and product development.
Adam Pierno 23:42
How so why equal parts as your first product It seems you have a pretty it looks like you have a pretty aggressive roadmap laid out every six months for the is what’s on your website. What made you decide on equal parts as you can give a little background on your body parts of this but what made you choose that one is the first the first brand and the family?
Emmett Shine 24:05
Yeah, so So trying to connect some of the commands from the three reasons why we wanted to try to go for our next challenge energy lane, they lead to Pattern which is a synonym, you know, for habits and I think we saw an opportunity to help ourselves as we were seeking and looking for answers and literature. You know, and kind of guidance on how can we, you know, better find a balance with our personal time, our quality time with pastimes, you know, I think that was something that we felt we had kind of lost a lot of us and office and spend as much time you know, with hobbies or, you know, feeling in control of, right, you’re supposed to have, you know, eight hours to sleep eight hours to work, eight hours, if you will, to do what you want. And I think most of us don’t get eight hours of sleep You know, work probably more than eight hours. And there’s, you know, between commuting time and work seeping into your, into your personal time, you know that personal time is destroyed, it’s a very small amount of time and a lot of it is spent, you know, statistically on our, on our smartphones, which again, I’m not a Luddite and I love my smartphone and have built a career to some extent by working with brands that are, are native to it, but I think I think it’s like it’s like working in food when you know, and, and being an advocate for, you know, food labels or working in an alcohol and being an advocate for people having, you know, a more healthier understanding or relationship with with wine. Like, I just don’t think with consumer technologies we as yet have more of a national and individual understanding relationship of what is that right balance and so I think we saw an opportunity for Pattern to try to build a family of brands brands around this notion of Enjoy daily life, enjoy daily life. And so, you know, what we’re seeking to do is build brands that, that don’t just sell people products. And what is unique about our model is because each brand is, you know, kind of owned under the Pattern umbrella. Our real goal is going to be this notion of like, you know, from a business perspective, customer lifetime value and what you can say cross brand retention, but from a consumer perspective, it’s trying to build a community around people who are you know, looking to seek and have activities that are strong beach and as alternatives to dealing a lot of their personal time has to be absorbed by either you know, work or being on a screen in a way that is more passive. And so our first brand equal parts, is cooking in in for home cooking and features, you know, really beautifully, intuitively Design cookware and we spent a lot of time doing research and speaking to people and so you know, looking at young adults in America, what made sense we have, we don’t have as much time as prior generations. We don’t have as much space. We also don’t have as much like what I call like activation energy or like willpower when we come home from work. And
Emmett Shine 27:23
then a lot of us don’t have a lot of discretionary income, you know, credit cards kind of get us through a lot of sticky situations but that’s just like, you know, something that is kind of it’s like pushing the dealing with it kind of down the road and so you know, people parts, again, the cookware is designed to be affordable sold in kids. There we use aluminum, which is a material which which is lighter, it’s you know, which we also heard a lot of like, oh seems to have cast iron, they’re quite handy. They also can be hard to use, right? So like aluminum heats up faster, it’s whiter. Everything is coated with ceramic which is non toxic, and it’s nonstick and There’s a bunch of other design decisions in terms of how they stack in terms of the matte black colors we chose, that we thought made a lot of sense in a gender agnostic way for the modern young adult. On the other side of it, there’s coaching. So we have a team of widget certified professional home chefs that are very passionate about teaching young adults in America, how to form more healthier habits around cooking at home. So, you know, statistically, again, it’s like, I think we order takeout like three times more, three times more than our parents. You know, whereas it costs us five times more to order in versus you know, making your own food. It’s a flow inducing activity, you come home from work and you got a lot on your mind. Nice to just turn the stove on open the fridge rater, put some music on and just get cooking and many times actually faster. And healthier to do than ordering in or eating out. So we saw cooking as is awesome Trojan horse to enter into the house and very intimate way to work to create some new behaviors with the young adults that we’re talking to and looking to build a relationship that is an NGO way into their home, which is where our subsequent brands are going to spend a lot of time focusing on between products and guidance trying to form these new habits that are a bit healthier in terms of protecting and advocating for you know, personal time to be intentional prioritize.
Adam Pierno 29:41
Yeah, you know, as if this didn’t come through before in anything I had read before we before we’re speaking right now, but hearing you tell the story of Jen lane and through your through your description of Pattern and Equal Parts. I’m hearing a I hate to use the word ‘pattern’ to describe what you’re doing at Pattern but I’m hearing the fruit Lack of community. And can you speak to that a little bit it sounds like you were trying to preserve the group and the community and the what you had built edge in lane. And even now as you’re expanding it through Pattern and the first the first part of equal parts sounds like you’re being very intentional, maybe less about the anxiety and the stress of technology but more about connecting people through products and through behavior.
Emmett Shine 30:31
Yeah, I’ll I’ll go in a funny way they talk so let’s try to bring in something contemporary that I’m reading or thinking about and be finding with it so like, I know if you read the blog legal why I highly recommend if you like going down, rabbit holes about any topic but the writer just came out last month with it. It’s like a 10 part series. It’s called the story of us. And he’s like, reverse engineering to some extent, took about two and a half years. What the hell happened 2016 election and, and Brexit and how, you know, national politics are being intertwined with society and technology and there’s just this whole confluence of stuff which just feels very new and very different and I think stressful for a lot of people. And anyway, he goes all the way back to like, like a genetic and Gene level and like evolution and how, what is an organism from cells and what is an Oregon and what is an animal and, you know, what are humans and you read, you know, Sapiens with you all are weary talks a lot about how what, you know, this this kind of cognitive revolution about 50 to 70,000 years ago that really sparked this progression of Homo sapiens to become, you know, these crazy weird creatures that we are today. A big part of it is is our ability to share stories and have an imagination and, you know, to some extent, foresee or predict the future, which separates us from, you know, a lot of our other animals and animals. And so he basically, it talks about the difference of answers to spiders, and I’ll pull this all back, I swear. But Aaron was like, where’s this going?
So, so and you know, GR us are truly an organism as a colony, and they’re not, you know, an organism at an individual level. And if you remove an ant from, you know, it’s a colony, it will guys 10 times faster than our normal lifespan of what an animal have when it’s when it’s collected. And that’s because it’s like separating apart, you know, or an organ or something from your body or moving so they are meant to work, you know, as we would say homeostasis as a collective where spiders They’re an individual creature, they are individual and individual level. And the comparison for humans is that we’re kind of hybrids, right? So we can be, you know, free will ascend to an individual creature that can, you know, just go live in the woods by ourselves all, you know, Henry David Thoreau style want, but truly, we are also, you know, social creatures, we have been part of tribes, you know, for very long time, it’s very important, you know, for for being human and, and basically what what has happened is, you know, there’s this notion where humans are, are there tribes, that is, you know, the organism is in that tribe and with modern technologies and stuff, you know, have these super tribes right, which is a whole other different kind of conversation for another day, you know, those that identify with Judaism versus in LA versus Christianity or if you’re a member of Facebook, if you’re a fan of the Green Bay Packers or if you work for Facebook, right, these are sharing kind of made up narrative that we buy into. And when you look at humans, people that are isolated, you know, they have more Remote Jobs or they’re not as part of society. But you can see in America, the rates of you know, drug and alcohol abuse, depression and suicide, just unequivocably so much higher. And that’s because, you know, we are biologically and socially designed to be cultural creatures. And I do think, you know, they say there’s nowhere lonelier than in the big city, like you’re surrounded by people getting same time you feel like you don’t have any strong connections with any of them. And then when we’re on our phones, and we’re texting people, and we’re liking stuff on social media, you feel like you’re, you’re you’re forming connections, but they’re not these multi sensory, true biological socially, what we’re used to ways of forming relationships, and so I do think community is something really important to me, and something that’s been important to Gin Lane. We We’ve been two people left hand lane, we always maintain a very close relationship with them. Because it’s like, what’s cooler life, if you can be an adult that you maintain a positive relationship with your ex girlfriend or ex boyfriend or someone you worked with, you know, it’s hard if you’re in high school or something, you’re just all hot blooded and emotional, but if you share, you know, you share experiences with someone isn’t that special. And so I think, you know, for Pattern, we’re looking to try to build a community of people who are looking for a different way of thinking about attention and presence and balance. And so, if you’re an employer, you know, maybe don’t try to work, you know, your employees into the ground. If you’re an employee, you know, make sure that you set up more barriers to protect yourself as much as you can, about being intentional about your time. You know, and I think again, as a millennial Millennials are maturing getting older. We’re dealing with a very interesting compression of a transition. Our parents are getting older, you have to be more present for your parents, all the stuff they’re going through for yourself, you know you’re getting coupled up, you’re getting married, you haven’t kids, there’s such a in your late 20s to early to mid 30s. So much change. That’s such a transition.
Adam Pierno 36:16
It happens, it happens. It seems like it happens really fast. All of a sudden, everybody starts getting married and your parents do age. I have one last question for you about what you’re doing and it as I was thinking about this conversation heading into it. I’ve seen brands being built. I’ve seen products being built and you know, those aren’t light tasks. That’s a heavy endeavor. And when I see the ambition of Pattern, it’s not like you pulled off the highway and said, Okay, we’re shutting down gin lane, and we’re going to just change it into something smaller or something where it’s a lifestyle business. It’s very ambitious. So the question is, if we’re focused on if Pattern is meant to be focused, community and enhancing the participants in Pattern’s lives. You know, what are you? What are you doing differently from a business standpoint, to, you know, people can be just as consumed with things like brand building design, in the creative side as they can with things like logistics and supply chain. How are you? How are you building it out at Equal Parts and Pattern to protect people?
Emmett Shine 37:26
Yeah, for sure. And I think if you go back to the three main reasons why we want to make this transition, you know, one, we we wanted to create an ecosystem that would give, you know, our team and our leadership and some of the awesome talent we have here and that we’re bringing in a lot of room to grow, you know, and I will say, you know, if you look at, you know, Microsoft or, you know, Facebook or, you know, Apple or some of these larger tech companies that we launched to some extent, you know, if you’re on the engineering side, there’s a lot of flexibility. You know, Google is the greatest example you can be an engineer at Google for, you know, 1012 plus years working in different, you know, departments or divisions or teams. And I think on the creative side for designers and strategists, etc, we wanted to have a place where you have diversity, but it also can be concentrated. And so you can work on one brand or one part for a year or so. And then you can move into another area. And I think that is the diversity. So when sending you light from the agency world, we just wanted less diversity. The second part is related. The first part is, we wanted a model that would allow us to more adult style, it’s like, it’s hard to make a movie, it’s hard to write a book, it’s hard to, you know, buy a home or build out your dream home. These are things that like, I think they’re also hard for where your brains at as a teenager in your 20s you know, it’s once you get into your later 20s or, you know, for most people your 30s or 40s where you can have that that discipline willpower and cognitive space to envision something that will take multiple years out to do. And I think that’s something that we’ve been seeking is is a creative environment that allows us to envision multiple year endeavors and then take time, you know, day by day, week by week to go to it. The third part is, is combating the, you know, the anxiety and the burnout. And you’re right, like we’re not per se taking our foot off the pedal, in terms of just coasting and building some lifestyle business. It is ambitious, but I think it’s very important in life to hold yourself accountable and practice what you preach. And, you know, if you fall short, just own up to it, but we’re definitely trying to, you know, living by these notions that Pattern is trying to stand for about, you know, balancing your day and trying to make it enjoyable. And so you know, our team is, we’re here by nine, nine o’clock, nine to 10 o’clock and we’re out of here by six o’clock. We’re not working on weekends, we’re trying as much as possible. Obviously, you’re in there. You got to work late sometimes, but I’m not you know, trying to demand People, you know, answering my phone calls and are coming into the office crazy. And we’re trying to we’re trying to, I think another challenge is we’re trying to build, you know, a business that can grow and be significant. But we’re trying to do in a way that isn’t as 20th century startup ideals where where people are sleeping under, you know, their desks, and if you wear these badges of honors, about working yourself into the ground and being able to survive it, like it’s almost like a genetic mutation for entrepreneurs that are able to do that, and it’s not fair to many normal people that their life is and allow them to do such psychotic things. It also is it’s a very high risk proposition and you you spend 80 hours a week for three years and it doesn’t work out and you don’t have any equity, your normal employee, you’re burned out and you know, you show for it. I don’t, I don’t want that culture. And I don’t think that that should be cool, or what is promoted. So you know, we’re not perfect, but at least I can guess what we’re also trying to live by.
Adam Pierno 40:57
Wow. That’s a That sums it up very nicely. And it’s it’s impressive what you’re doing both in terms of the the ambition and the scale, but also the goal and the commitment to trying to make it better. So, Emmett, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining me for this for this conversation. It was fantastic.
Emmett Shine 41:18
Yeah, thank you. You know, if you’re listening, hopefully it’s useful to you and stuff. So thank you
Adam Pierno 41:24
Very good and where can people I know I’ll link obviously, to Pattern and to Equal Parts. Is there any other place that you would send people online to find out more about what you’re doing? Yeah, the websites are Pattern brands calm and my mom mentioned before painted all the watercolors and stuff on the website. So that’s been I
Emmett Shine 41:44
Yeah, the websites are Pattern brands calm and my mom mentioned before painted all the watercolors and stuff on the website. So that’s been
Adam Pierno
I was gonna ask you about that because they’re beautiful and that they’re tucked in there so neatly and I thought somebody somebody did these with love you could tell the somebody cared about
Emmett Shine
Yeah, and they also like, again, you know, I’ve got all the data and I know all the best practices AB this new Shopify, this whatever, but like, I Still want to bring that artistic integrity and wonder, you know that you can make a movie at Pixar. That can be a great success. But you know, the artistic integrity is so awesome in the storytelling so awesome. And so they were just trying to create little worlds, you know, yeah, we want people to buy our stuff and build relationships with customers. But I think we’re also trying to tell stories and make people a world to be immersed in.
Adam Pierno 42:25
Yeah, the ball the watercolors add soul. And, you know, they prove that they’re
Emmett Shine 42:30
not all just XX codes and in vectors, you know, like, that’s, that’s cool. Again, I think just balancing in any little bit of like, analog activity goes a long way.
Adam Pierno 42:42
I agree. All right. Well, thank you again, this this was awesome. And thanks for making time. Okay. Thank you so much.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai