Full Transcript for Noah Kaplan: Building Creative Businesses That Last

as he's leafing through it, he stopped on one drawing, which was a drawing I did of a scientist kind of looking over a specimen. 00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:24.160 And I drew it chaotically in crayon, tons of color, really expressive. 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:29.920 And he said, Why did you use crayon when you drew this picture? 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:33.360 And I told him, because I had a box of 64 crayons. 00:04:33.519 --> 00:04:37.199 And I was like, I think he liked that I wasn't trying to like overthink it. 00:04:37.199 --> 00:04:38.879 And it wasn't an abstract answer. 00:04:38.959 --> 00:04:42.639 And I always actually consider myself an artist as a trade. 00:04:42.639 --> 00:04:47.439 You know, it's something you do, it's work, it's something you learn, it's something you study. 00:04:47.439 --> 00:04:50.240 It's not always that abstract, it's not always that heady. 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:52.560 It's got stuff and you make stuff. 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:58.079 And he said, "How are your grades?" And I said, "They're fine." They were not stellar, but they were fine. 00:04:58.079 --> 00:04:58.480 Yeah. 00:04:58.480 --> 00:05:06.480 And he said, "Do you want to come to the University of Michigan?" I said, "I have no idea." And he actually FedEx-ed me an acceptance to the school. 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:09.199 So I didn't apply to the school in a regular way. 00:05:09.199 --> 00:05:12.079 Um, so that little chance interaction led me to Michigan. 00:05:12.319 --> 00:05:13.120 Wow, that's amazing. 00:05:13.120 --> 00:05:16.240 Yeah, it changed your life, you know, and the turn of a dime. 00:05:16.560 --> 00:05:16.959 Exactly. 00:05:16.959 --> 00:05:20.079 And you're in some ways you'd say, Well, you've just fallen in your mom's footsteps. 00:05:20.079 --> 00:05:21.600 But in fact, that had nothing to do with it. 00:05:21.600 --> 00:05:22.240 It really didn't. 00:05:22.319 --> 00:05:26.319 And my mom isn't appeared because she loved the sweatshirt from the University of Michigan that her friend wore. 00:05:26.319 --> 00:05:32.959 So for my mom's 80th birthday, I drew her a drawing of that sweatshirt, which led our entire family to this state. 00:05:33.199 --> 00:05:33.519 Wow. 00:05:33.519 --> 00:05:34.800 That's that's totally amazing. 00:05:34.800 --> 00:05:35.360 Thank you. 00:05:35.360 --> 00:05:38.879 So you're in art school and you graduate. 00:05:38.879 --> 00:05:40.319 And then what happens? 00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:45.519 As life and luck would have it, I get a call from a friend who was working at the athletic department. 00:05:45.519 --> 00:05:46.560 His name was Stan. 00:05:46.800 --> 00:05:47.279 At Michigan. 00:05:47.519 --> 00:05:48.319 At Michigan. 00:05:48.319 --> 00:05:53.680 And Stan calls me, and we had worked together as artists at like upstate summer camps. 00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:55.360 You know, we are leading art programs. 00:05:55.360 --> 00:06:00.639 And Stan calls me and he says, "Noah, do you know how to draw portraits?" I'm like, "Yes, Stan. 00:06:00.639 --> 00:06:08.639 I know how to draw portraits." Like, good, because I just almost took a job drawing portraits for the University of Michigan, but I don't know how to draw portraits. 00:06:08.639 --> 00:06:10.160 I'm a ceramicist. 00:06:10.160 --> 00:06:14.720 This we knew, but Stan knew to get us in the door. 00:06:14.959 --> 00:06:16.959 So he calls me into this meeting. 00:06:16.959 --> 00:06:20.480 I'm completely not knowing what it's about. 00:06:20.480 --> 00:06:28.160 I come with my normal portfolio, which I had been building for a long time, for four years and from before. 00:06:28.160 --> 00:06:31.519 And I walk into a meeting to learn about this project. 00:06:31.519 --> 00:06:35.839 And there are like 30 people in the meeting wearing suits. 00:06:35.839 --> 00:06:37.360 Like this is old school Michigan. 00:06:37.360 --> 00:06:40.240 They're at a conference room that you could barely see the end of. 00:06:40.240 --> 00:06:44.399 They sit me down at the end of this table and they describe this project. 00:06:44.399 --> 00:06:48.319 It was all about drawing scholar athletes for the University of Michigan. 00:06:48.319 --> 00:06:49.439 Weird backstory. 00:06:49.439 --> 00:06:52.399 I was also a scholar athlete, but in high school. 00:06:52.399 --> 00:06:54.879 So it was also a weird twist for me to just be there. 00:06:54.879 --> 00:06:56.240 Stan was also an athlete. 00:06:56.319 --> 00:06:57.439 So what sport did you do? 00:06:57.600 --> 00:06:58.079 I was a wrestler. 00:06:58.319 --> 00:06:58.800 Wrestler, okay. 00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:08.560 What was amazing about this experience was kind of the approach for me was always just walk in as yourself, be who you are, don't try to oversell yourself. 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:11.360 And so they started lighting me up. 00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:14.319 There's people that I recognized in the room, executives. 00:07:14.319 --> 00:07:16.720 And they're asking about these portraits and what you could do. 00:07:16.720 --> 00:07:24.000 And it turned out there'd been almost 45 people identified as scholar athletes at the University of Michigan since the turn of the century. 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:26.720 So some of these were living people, but many of them were historic people. 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:29.680 There were historic people dating all the way back to the turn of the century. 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:31.439 So I got to see these photos. 00:07:31.439 --> 00:07:38.160 And the vision that they had was that they wanted to commemorate these people in some kind of way with portraiture and put it up in a building. 00:07:38.319 --> 00:07:40.800 And so I got in there and they started grilling me. 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:41.600 "Can you draw? 00:07:41.600 --> 00:07:42.879 What kind of drawings can you do? 00:07:42.879 --> 00:07:46.160 How would you mount the all these?" You know, very simple questions. 00:07:46.160 --> 00:07:47.279 And then they wanted to see the work.

00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:48.399 But you had no prep at all. 00:07:48.399 --> 00:07:48.959 You had no idea. 00:07:49.199 --> 00:07:49.600 I really didn't. 00:07:49.600 --> 00:07:52.319 I came with my portfolio, which was like a win. 00:07:52.319 --> 00:07:53.759 So I turned the pages. 00:07:53.759 --> 00:07:55.600 You know, I had studied life drawing a lot. 00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:58.319 I drew hundreds of portraits throughout my life. 00:07:58.319 --> 00:08:01.839 I took life drawing every single semester of all of college. 00:08:01.839 --> 00:08:06.160 So I had tons of work there, and it really is in my wheelhouse to draw portraits. 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:11.040 And so when I started looking at these portraits, it was just like a pile of photos, black and whites. 00:08:11.040 --> 00:08:13.279 The first thing I noticed was the haircuts. 00:08:13.279 --> 00:08:16.079 Many haircuts have changed. 00:08:16.079 --> 00:08:17.839 Haircuts have changed over time. 00:08:17.839 --> 00:08:19.279 Facial hair has changed. 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:19.680 Yes. 00:08:19.680 --> 00:08:21.040 People used to look older. 00:08:21.199 --> 00:08:25.519 I think they used to, I don't know if they lived different lives, but like they seemed more mature. 00:08:25.519 --> 00:08:26.720 Some of them look like they were 40. 00:08:26.720 --> 00:08:28.160 And these were these were college athletes. 00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:29.199 These were college athletes. 00:08:29.199 --> 00:08:31.600 And it was really cool, though, is to to see these. 00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:34.080 And as life would have it, I get this project. 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:35.519 So now you're not going back to New York. 00:08:35.519 --> 00:08:36.559 Now you're staying in Ann Arbor. 00:08:36.960 --> 00:08:37.440 I am here. 00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:37.840 Yeah. 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:40.480 I'm now working professionally as an artist. 00:08:40.480 --> 00:08:46.720 And these portraits, I don't even want to tell you what I charged them for these portraits because it was not a lot. 00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:49.440 But to me, this was a very simple time. 00:08:49.440 --> 00:08:54.000 You know, my rent in my house back then was $350 a month. 00:08:54.799 --> 00:08:55.279 Different times. 00:08:55.519 --> 00:08:56.000 Different times. 00:08:56.000 --> 00:09:05.759 And like each portrait, while it was barely $1,000 each, um, for me, I can do portraits pretty quickly, especially at small formats. 00:09:05.759 --> 00:09:14.320 So I would do one to two portraits a day as I was starting to build up my other work, my other actual portfolio work, you know, my studied work. 00:09:14.320 --> 00:09:16.159 So this was a great job to launch. 00:09:16.159 --> 00:09:17.600 Crazy great job. 00:09:17.600 --> 00:09:26.879 It also just showed me not only is there a need for art, but almost everybody universally wants art in their lives in some way. 00:09:26.879 --> 00:09:34.879 And so it gave me a quick perspective and a quick job and cash to be able to kind of live this life right away. 00:09:34.879 --> 00:09:37.440 That job happened before I left college. 00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:45.440 So here I am going into my art career with a gigantic commission that would take me almost 16 months to finish. 00:09:45.440 --> 00:09:47.600 That's how I got into music. 00:09:47.600 --> 00:09:54.799 That's how I started meeting all the artists and engineers and friends because I had to not only create drawings, but we had to figure out the woodwork. 00:09:54.799 --> 00:09:57.360 You know, I made all the plaques for them out of mahogany. 00:09:57.360 --> 00:10:01.440 I had to learn about mahogany, how to finish the mahogany, how to cut it, how to write it. 00:10:01.440 --> 00:10:12.639 That's when we started building our first wood shops, so which turned out to eventually be the wood shop of the company, which is now called Leon Speakers, which at that point was a garage wood shop in our basement. 00:10:12.879 --> 00:10:15.120 So then where did Leon Speakers come into the thing? 00:10:15.120 --> 00:10:23.039 Like the technology and the audio and sort of seeing these as I mean, the custom, the handmade, the bespoke, like that's sort of part of your life from the beginning as an artist. 00:10:23.360 --> 00:10:26.559 My father was a doctor, was always he was a true folk artist. 00:10:26.559 --> 00:10:28.639 We always grew up like working in the shop. 00:10:28.639 --> 00:10:30.320 He loved working in the shop. 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:33.039 He's been a completely raw, untrained artist. 00:10:33.039 --> 00:10:35.039 He makes insane things to this day. 00:10:35.039 --> 00:10:38.720 You know, he'll recreate his house in Brooklyn out of little wood objects. 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:42.559 He will, you know, craft hundreds of little characters out of wood. 00:10:42.559 --> 00:10:44.080 He'll create projects for us. 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:45.519 He always was having us work in the shop. 00:10:45.519 --> 00:10:48.080 So I was always working around woodworking. 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:52.000 And I was doing woodworking and playing in the shop and experimenting in the shop. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:59.120 And then I learned a lot more about that in college when used to actually take technical and shop class, you know, learning in wood shops. 00:10:59.120 --> 00:11:03.360 So I knew what to do, but the technical expertise definitely came later. 00:11:03.600 --> 00:11:09.039 What started to happen at that time was something that was a carryover for my whole life. 00:11:09.039 --> 00:11:11.360 Like, so I am an extrovert. 00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:13.440 So I like to be around people a lot. 00:11:13.440 --> 00:11:19.279 And one of the weird things about art is you end up a lot alone. 00:11:19.279 --> 00:11:26.000 You know, some of my days working, I'd be alone for 10 hours working on, you know, a commission or a portrait. 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:29.120 Even those little portraits, I mean, you got to get in that right headspace.

00:11:29.120 --> 00:11:31.519 So music was always kind of my battery. 00:11:31.759 --> 00:11:36.879 Since I was— for as long back as I can remember, I always had my stereo, I was always obsessed with music. 00:11:36.879 --> 00:11:41.600 It was kind of like not only my energy, but it was a vibration that kept me moving. 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:45.279 As I started doing this other work, there was a lot of other artists around. 00:11:45.279 --> 00:11:56.559 Because what that translated to over time was I started not only listening to music obsessively, but I would, you know, go into the city, I would start through crates, I would dig into like different genres of music. 00:11:56.559 --> 00:11:59.039 And eventually I was like, I'm playing, I gotta play. 00:11:59.039 --> 00:12:07.279 So I started playing music to kind of just um distract myself or to take a break from drawing and working alone because I like physicality. 00:12:07.519 --> 00:12:07.679 Yeah. 00:12:07.759 --> 00:12:09.120 Did you play a particular instrument? 00:12:09.929 --> 00:12:16.159 I play guitars and percussion and anything that would shake or move, or I could bang or bust or break. 00:12:16.159 --> 00:12:21.279 And I like to play it real physically, so a lot very rhythmic stuff. 00:12:21.279 --> 00:12:22.960 I come from an artistic family. 00:12:22.960 --> 00:12:24.960 So my brother was like a true musician. 00:12:24.960 --> 00:12:28.879 I watched him playing in New York City and live shows and Ben, he's younger than me. 00:12:28.879 --> 00:12:37.600 And we started playing music a lot, and we started a band, and through that band, we started meeting lots of different artists and engineers and recording people. 00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:42.000 And at U of M, the coolest part is like this amalgamous of people that you meet. 00:12:42.080 --> 00:12:53.840 We met this one person who worked under Amir Bose from MIT, who was living here, and he saw that we were like really into sound and music, and he started hanging around. 00:12:53.840 --> 00:13:02.799 And so I would say organically, like the swirling thought of Leon speakers was coming to formation, but we had no idea that it would be a company. 00:13:02.960 --> 00:13:03.200 Yeah. 00:13:03.440 --> 00:13:04.720 It was more of a collective, you know. 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:14.159 But in a way, yeah, you've built this collective, you built a community of creative people just through your work, and then then that becomes then the catalyst for a range of ideas. 00:13:14.399 --> 00:13:20.480 It was really organic and time felt really slow then in a beautiful way. 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:24.799 I every morning, every day, we'd wake up and meet outside and play. 00:13:24.799 --> 00:13:29.279 Till sometimes at sunrise, sometimes we'd be awake all night. 00:13:29.440 --> 00:13:29.679 Yeah. 00:13:29.840 --> 00:13:36.399 You know, sometimes I'd work through the night and play in the morning all day and like, you know, walk and then meet the community, meet in the town. 00:13:36.399 --> 00:13:42.080 And so as we started to think about things, like we started to look at the way things were being built and being made. 00:13:42.080 --> 00:13:47.840 Like we explored making instruments, we explored making guitars, we built a pirate radio station. 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:54.639 We built a 30-foot antenna off of the house and broadcast ridiculous music shows from it. 00:13:54.639 --> 00:14:00.000 Um, and so we were just doing a lot of exploration within the arts, and there was no boundaries. 00:14:00.639 --> 00:14:02.399 And so the days floated. 00:14:02.399 --> 00:14:09.200 And in a day, I could create where I can do a portrait and then write a song and then go next door. 00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:14.240 We could work on, hey, we want to make, you want to think about a product, or go help somebody else with what they were working on. 00:14:14.240 --> 00:14:20.159 Help one of the engineers figure out a problem they were having with electronics or how to plug stuff in or how to create a system. 00:14:20.320 --> 00:14:28.960 And once we started recording more, I started becoming really interested in all that equipment and how it worked, the whole signal path from the microphone all the way to playback. 00:14:28.960 --> 00:14:31.120 And you start getting really invested in this. 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:36.639 I started getting moderately obsessed, which I realize is like a thread that keeps me moving to this day. 00:14:36.639 --> 00:14:40.399 I get obsessed, I dive as deep as possible and I'll explore it forever. 00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:42.480 You know, and I still explore it forever. 00:14:42.639 --> 00:14:48.559 But so, like when we were doing those original things, we started looking at the products that you could actually get at the time. 00:14:48.559 --> 00:14:54.000 And this is in the mid-90s, when really mass market had taken over the entire world. 00:14:54.000 --> 00:14:55.600 We didn't know what that meant. 00:14:55.600 --> 00:14:58.399 We we were we couldn't really afford fancy things anyway. 00:14:58.399 --> 00:15:05.519 You know we saw those fancy things in studios and you start hearing, you're like, wait, why is that so good and this is so bad? 00:15:05.519 --> 00:15:10.159 And like, oh well, this is from 1975, you know, this is a NIV recording console. 00:15:10.159 --> 00:15:11.279 You're like, what is that? 00:15:11.279 --> 00:15:20.240 So I started just becoming really curious about why it looks so beautiful, you know, why it had wooded accents, why the knobs were so tactile, why the lights look so interesting. 00:15:20.399 --> 00:15:26.000 And this goes back to like understanding that things used to be drawn, everything started as art. 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:27.200 Ah, I see, yeah. 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:33.600 And it led to my belief that every literal thing is created through an artistic lens. 00:15:33.919 --> 00:15:40.639 So when we started imagining like speakers or studio

monitors trying to get them and seeing like, I remember I typed into the early internet. 00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:45.200 I was not technically savvy, but I was a searcher and explorer. 00:15:45.200 --> 00:15:53.360 So I uh in the early internet, I typed in like studio monitor speakers, and slowly pages after pages of black boxes came up. 00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:57.440 So even when you think of a speaker in your mind now, what do you see? 00:15:57.440 --> 00:15:59.039 Yeah, you see a black box. 00:15:59.200 --> 00:15:59.679 A black box. 00:15:59.679 --> 00:16:03.120 Pretty, pretty ubiquitous, boring standard. 00:16:03.440 --> 00:16:06.159 And boring was not in our vernacular at that time. 00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:15.360 We were like borderline extremists when it came to like, you know, creativity and what we thought creativity should be and how much output and how much work we were doing. 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:18.320 So we started just seeing why were they built this way. 00:16:18.320 --> 00:16:23.440 So we'd go to like Kiwanis or like the PTO and like buy old speakers and chop them up. 00:16:23.440 --> 00:16:25.840 Then we bought both speakers and like cut them in half. 00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:28.240 And we're like, oh my god, they're making out of plastic. 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:30.799 And wait, they just colored in this little part. 00:16:30.799 --> 00:16:36.639 Like these speakers from the 60s, 70s, 80s were made of like wood and beautiful veneers, and they had interesting grills. 00:16:36.639 --> 00:16:41.360 And then you'd go and see the ones we had now, and you cut them, it's like made of plastic and yeah, you know, as cheap as possible. 00:16:41.360 --> 00:16:44.080 That didn't sit right with us. 00:16:44.080 --> 00:16:50.559 So we started making the original speakers for our studios in the wood shop out of solid hardwoods. 00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:51.120 Got it. 00:16:51.279 --> 00:16:52.159 And we would paint them. 00:16:52.159 --> 00:16:57.840 And one of our first moves was actually to go to Zingerman's, which everybody who went to University of Michigan knows. 00:16:57.840 --> 00:17:01.919 We went to Zingerman's where we thought a possible customer base could be. 00:17:01.919 --> 00:17:13.200 And we said, "Hey, can we leave these little catalogs here?" Where we had created these little, we over the time speeding up, we had started making speakers for friends and family or for us people. 00:17:13.200 --> 00:17:16.720 For our studio, for playback, for playing. 00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:24.319 We started looking at all the electronics and the amplifiers and the woofers and the tweeters, and again, obsessed at that point. 00:17:24.319 --> 00:17:28.079 And you start realizing it's a really beautifully simple device, like an instrument. 00:17:28.079 --> 00:17:33.759 We had the woodworking skills to be able to build them, and we learned a lot from each other and learned about wood. 00:17:33.759 --> 00:17:36.079 And it was just like a really fun thing to explore. 00:17:36.240 --> 00:17:37.920 Was it a business at that point? 00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:39.440 I wouldn't say so. 00:17:39.440 --> 00:17:42.240 I was a lucky man in that I had that art gig. 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:47.759 But from a musical standpoint, we were playing so many shows, but it really wasn't paying the bills. 00:17:47.759 --> 00:17:50.880 So, you know, this was another beautiful distraction. 00:17:50.880 --> 00:17:56.000 Keep me out of the studio to get around people and really collaborate and learn. 00:17:56.240 --> 00:17:59.200 So, what was the thing that clicked that turned it into a business? 00:17:59.519 --> 00:18:04.319 I really never thought of a business, you know, working as a business. 00:18:04.319 --> 00:18:09.920 Like, I thought of everything as an approach, you know, like a an exploration or an approach. 00:18:09.920 --> 00:18:14.160 I learned through this art lens that some things are universal. 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:25.200 Like the thing I learned as an artist that I always tell young artists is that if you ask or inquire about what people love or what they want, like I'll ask you the question right now like, do you like music? 00:18:25.519 --> 00:18:26.079 I love music. 00:18:26.079 --> 00:18:26.400 Yeah. 00:18:26.559 --> 00:18:27.759 Would you ever want a piece of art? 00:18:28.000 --> 00:18:28.400 Absolutely. 00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:30.960 So I learned that those questions were always yeses. 00:18:30.960 --> 00:18:32.720 To me, they're absolute yeses. 00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:37.519 And so I was always like, I knew that there was a desire there for people to have something meaningful. 00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:42.960 Art is all about like finding and discovering meaning through imagery or through exploration. 00:18:42.960 --> 00:18:48.079 And so, similarly with the speaker company, I just was super curious. 00:18:48.079 --> 00:18:50.480 I never thought I would be a business person. 00:18:50.640 --> 00:18:53.519 You know, years past, I have a wood shop at this point. 00:18:53.519 --> 00:18:54.960 I have a little space downtown. 00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:58.240 It's called Noah's Underground Gallery, Leon Speakers. 00:18:58.240 --> 00:19:00.000 It's a collaborative art space. 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:02.559 We used to do the U of M art shows down there. 00:19:02.559 --> 00:19:05.519 We were kind of like an underground counterculture. 00:19:05.680 --> 00:19:10.000 So just to lend a little bit of context there, we opened this place. 00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:16.480 It is a business and it has retail, and we had designed it and made it beautiful and people started coming down. 00:19:16.480 --> 00:19:18.640 And one of those people is from U of M. 00:19:18.799 --> 00:19:26.960 His name was Jack, and he said, "Oh my God, this place is amazing." He's like, "How'd you become so entrepreneurial?" I was like, "What is entrepreneurial? 00:19:26.960 --> 00:19:27.599 What does that mean? 00:19:27.599 --> 00:19:28.240 I've never heard

of that. 00:19:28.240 --> 00:19:29.599 What is that?" And he's like, "You're like a n entrepreneur". 00:19:30.559 --> 00:19:36.559 I'm like, "What the hell is that?" And so I became curious about what he was talking about. 00:19:36.640 --> 00:19:40.400 He's like, "No, you know, like, you'd create a business plan?" I'm like, "A business plan? 00:19:40.400 --> 00:19:40.799 No. 00:19:40.799 --> 00:19:43.359 I'm an artist, you know, I'm a musician. 00:19:43.359 --> 00:19:51.359 Um, I could create a, I could paint for you." Um, which is funny because I realize now like visualization is part of a business plan. 00:19:51.440 --> 00:20:02.240 But he's like, "Oh, there's a program at U of M that helps local businesses create business plans." So I literally went home, looked up in the directory, and called the business school. 00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:02.880 Wow. 00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:04.160 On the telephone. 00:20:04.160 --> 00:20:06.480 This is a thing with a cord and you hold everything. 00:20:06.799 --> 00:20:08.480 Yeah, I've seen those in the museums. 00:20:08.720 --> 00:20:09.359 Yeah, exactly. 00:20:09.359 --> 00:20:11.599 So I do this, and what happens? 00:20:11.599 --> 00:20:14.640 The guy who created the map program picked up the phone. 00:20:14.799 --> 00:20:15.039 Wow. 00:20:15.119 --> 00:20:19.599 I'm like, "Hey, I heard you can help local business owners with a business plan." He said, "Yeah, we have a program. 00:20:19.599 --> 00:20:21.279 Like, we're actually doing this right now. 00:20:21.279 --> 00:20:24.880 Do you want to present your idea?" I'm like, "Yeah, I do." 00:20:24.880 --> 00:20:31.680 So at that point, I worked collaboratively again with the industrial design people from the U of M to create a presentation. 00:20:31.680 --> 00:20:38.319 And at that point, we learned that the bookshelf speakers were really drawing people's attention because of the natural hardwoods. 00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:42.799 But this is at the beginning of a new era of television that was also going on. 00:20:42.799 --> 00:20:49.359 I mean, I had a local friend who worked at a company called Morantz, and they had just put out some of the first flat panel plasma TVs. 00:20:49.359 --> 00:20:52.880 And we got one in our little space somehow. 00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:53.839 We beg barred. 00:20:53.839 --> 00:20:57.039 We're like, we need this thing, it's super important, it's going to change everything. 00:20:57.039 --> 00:20:58.400 And it did change everything. 00:20:58.559 --> 00:21:04.640 So we had designed these studio monitors that we were making and we changed the form factor of them after seeing like what people wanted. 00:21:04.640 --> 00:21:10.559 So accidentally, we had made some of the first speakers to match flat panel televisions at the time. 00:21:10.559 --> 00:21:12.160 So they were like studio monitors. 00:21:12.160 --> 00:21:15.200 We weren't really seeing this contextually, how important it would be. 00:21:15.839 --> 00:21:19.839 We also did other things like we filed patents for a product called Picture Sound. 00:21:19.839 --> 00:21:24.000 So, like we were seeing that like technology was moving onto the wall and into living spaces. 00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:28.400 We were too young and definitely too broke to be able to afford anything fancy. 00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:36.000 But we started to see and look through a window where people were buying these televisions for like $25,000 for a small television. 00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:56.160 And so it really opened us up as we traveled back to New York and started showing our products to other stores in New York City, the hi fi stores that we had grown up seeing, getting their feedback and coming back and realizing like, oh my God, like there's definitely no one trying to work on new technologies for making sound for these TVs and definitely nothing artistic. 00:21:56.319 --> 00:21:59.440 So, like the first products had like silk screens on the surface of the speaker. 00:21:59.440 --> 00:22:00.640 And guess what? 00:22:00.640 --> 00:22:02.400 We created a presentation. 00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:04.720 We called the speakers Plasmax. 00:22:04.720 --> 00:22:09.039 We came to like the most clunky, hysterical 3D presentation. 00:22:09.039 --> 00:22:10.079 Um, and we did it. 00:22:10.079 --> 00:22:16.240 At that time, I had like long dreadlocks, probably four feet long and I'm like presenting to the business school with my partners. 00:22:16.240 --> 00:22:20.240 PS, we won the competition. 00:22:20.400 --> 00:22:20.640 Wow. 00:22:20.799 --> 00:22:25.759 And so we got an amazing group of young business people who helped us write a business plan. 00:22:25.759 --> 00:22:28.960 And that really opened up my eyes to what this was. 00:22:28.960 --> 00:22:30.640 So I was born with hustle. 00:22:30.640 --> 00:22:31.680 I was never afraid. 00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:37.440 Uh, you know, I never actually planned on getting a job because my job was clear to me from day one be an artist. 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:42.960 And so through curiosity and really not knowing what I'm doing, it's led me down amazing pathways. 00:22:42.960 --> 00:22:44.720 And you get to meet so many smart people. 00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:56.799 And that's what I love about being at the U of M and still being here 25, 30 years later is I can't believe the projects that we've done and the people we've met and how diverse it's been. 00:22:57.200 --> 00:23:00.559 And so what is it about art thinking that makes that possible? 00:23:00.559 --> 00:23:02.880 Is that is it the willingness to put stuff out there? 00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:06.720 Is it the willingness to experiment and iterate and try something new? 00:23:06.720 --> 00:23:13.039 Are there things that you think are sort of the key to why an entrepreneur or why an artist can go into that space and not even know it? 00:23:13.519 --> 00:23:14.720 I love that question. 00:23:14.720 --> 00:23:25.599 I think it's very different in introspective for

anybody who's answering, but for me, art is an approach towards life that leads you towards exploration and expression. 00:23:25.599 --> 00:23:38.799 You know, so when you're always expressing something, and sometimes that expression isn't that deep or that meaningful, or like when you're even just drawing something to see if you can, there's a learning that's going on there, and you're wondering like, how am I gonna do this? 00:23:38.799 --> 00:23:40.640 Why, why do I know how to do this? 00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:45.279 And it also left me always imagining different ways to do it. 00:23:45.759 --> 00:23:49.279 There's immense ways to approach the same exact thing. 00:23:49.279 --> 00:23:55.599 You know, if you put a skull on the table and you have 50 artists around, they're all gonna see it a different way. 00:23:55.599 --> 00:23:57.119 They're gonna use different mediums. 00:23:57.119 --> 00:24:00.480 So you're seeing the same object, but you're seeing it through different lenses. 00:24:00.480 --> 00:24:09.599 So it gave me this strange thoughts about the way human beings look at things and how our senses perceive them and then how we output them. 00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:15.440 And so I always allow myself to let my imagination float wild, which I still take time to do. 00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:19.519 So I allow myself those thoughts to break free of convention. 00:24:19.519 --> 00:24:23.839 And I think convention can be a cage, but I always felt free of it. 00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:30.079 Well, one of the conventions you're also breaking, seems to me anyway, is the the notion that arts are a team sport at all. 00:24:30.079 --> 00:24:35.359 Like that you're seeing art as something that is part of your extroverted proclivities, right? 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:37.039 It's about connecting with people. 00:24:37.039 --> 00:24:40.240 As opposed to, I think, the notions that I was raised in with art. 00:24:40.240 --> 00:24:44.240 You know, there's the lone genius sort of in the wilderness, nobody understands them. 00:24:44.240 --> 00:24:54.880 They're sort of misanthropic and and nobody, you know, you sort of totally so and nobody gets them and they're ahead of their time and they're they, you know, they're lonely. 00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:57.759 And uh and yours you're just totally the opposite. 00:24:57.759 --> 00:25:07.759 You know, art is about, you know, hanging out and sharing ideas and bouncing things around and exploring through other people the possibilities that they would add to your creative vision. 00:25:07.839 --> 00:25:07.920 Right. 00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:08.880 I love that. 00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:14.960 Um it's like you think about a group like the Beatles, who were a massively powerful art group. 00:25:14.960 --> 00:25:21.359 Not only are they creating music, but they're creating the visuals, the stories, impossible depth that they created by collaborating. 00:25:21.359 --> 00:25:24.799 Though I think because I worked with music too, that I just was so open to it. 00:25:24.880 --> 00:25:28.880 And I wasn't the best musician ever, you know, at playing, but I was always there for it. 00:25:28.880 --> 00:25:32.640 I could always appreciate everybody else's skills and talents. 00:25:32.640 --> 00:25:43.279 And so I think, you know, appreciation of others and what has been come before us and the study of what comes before us and like leaving yourself open to learning as like a lifelong thing. 00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:43.680 Yeah. 00:25:43.680 --> 00:25:44.079 Right. 00:25:44.160 --> 00:25:46.640 So like art is about learning and exploring. 00:25:46.640 --> 00:25:50.160 And so all these collaborations always lead you somewhere. 00:25:50.160 --> 00:25:54.720 The other thing I've let go of is even needing to know where they're going. 00:25:54.720 --> 00:25:56.240 That was a whole different phase of life. 00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:59.119 You know, in your first phase of life, you're like, can I pay the damn bills? 00:25:59.119 --> 00:26:01.279 You know, what's going, what's coming up next? 00:26:01.279 --> 00:26:04.319 You know, you're building a family, you're building a house, you're building a business. 00:26:04.319 --> 00:26:06.000 At a certain point, it flips. 00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:08.559 And I always allowed myself to do non-commercial work. 00:26:08.559 --> 00:26:14.640 In fact, probably most of my best work was done procrastinating for instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing. 00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:18.000 But no, I think art is incredibly collaborative. 00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:29.599 And even the projects we're doing right now, like the one we just finished, was with a group called Mesantoukani that was an artist I met at a trade show doing a Leon Speakers event at a design show. 00:26:29.599 --> 00:26:37.920 And through our collaboration, you know, even today, we are exploring the depths of new work, new products, new imaginative things. 00:26:38.240 --> 00:26:45.279 You know, we can't forget to talk about Mothfire because I have become a big fan of craft beer and love Mothfire Brewing. 00:26:45.279 --> 00:26:48.319 And so, how did how do you get from speakers to beer? 00:26:48.640 --> 00:26:49.839 Speakers to beer. 00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:51.200 That is an incredibly important. 00:26:51.680 --> 00:26:52.559 Musicians never drink. 00:26:52.559 --> 00:26:55.119 So I wouldn't have possibly have happened by accident. 00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:56.480 Exactly, exactly. 00:26:56.480 --> 00:27:01.200 S o as we were building Leon Speakers, I never would have imagined how much travel I would do. 00:27:01.200 --> 00:27:07.599 You know, I was traveling to different states, coast to coast, all the time, you know, spending almost a third of my life on the road. 00:27:07.599 --> 00:27:15.680 And at night, what I would do is I would look for who was playing local music and what breweries were open, and then what vintage shops I can go to. 00:27:15.839 --> 00:27:19.839 So I started living through

that lens of craft breweries. 00:27:20.079 --> 00:27:20.720 I see. 00:27:20.720 --> 00:27:21.599 And then you st— 00:27:21.599 --> 00:27:28.720 I started becoming completely enthralled by the styles that were going on on, you know, the West Coast versus the East Coast. 00:27:28.880 --> 00:27:32.720 Oh, I remember, yeah, going to Denver and going to left-hand brewing and all over it. 00:27:32.960 --> 00:27:33.839 It's it's incredible. 00:27:33.839 --> 00:27:36.799 And you start noticing like, wait, how did the style evolve? 00:27:36.799 --> 00:27:39.279 Like, why and why how did hazy IPAs come up? 00:27:39.279 --> 00:27:42.319 I'm like, this was as interesting to me as rock and roll itself. 00:27:42.319 --> 00:27:53.599 The other cool thing was like watching them start in these little industrial lots and seeing them just evolve into full-scale businesses and campuses and you know, lines forming when people are releasing beers. 00:27:53.759 --> 00:28:01.279 That's when the spark came like, wait, we have to create something that will bring the energy to our campus, to our factory. 00:28:01.279 --> 00:28:06.799 I had been working there at that point where we are currently in the campus for almost 10 years. 00:28:06.799 --> 00:28:08.079 We worked all the time. 00:28:08.079 --> 00:28:11.359 We're just we're still like a crazy obsessive art studio. 00:28:11.359 --> 00:28:13.839 And we'd be working there all day and then it'd be in the dark. 00:28:13.839 --> 00:28:14.880 No one's around. 00:28:14.880 --> 00:28:18.000 We decided at a certain point, we're like, you know what? 00:28:18.000 --> 00:28:21.119 We need, why isn't Ann Arbor have any hazy IPAs? 00:28:21.119 --> 00:28:22.640 Why don't we have any West Coast IPAs? 00:28:22.640 --> 00:28:23.680 Who's making the beers? 00:28:23.680 --> 00:28:27.680 We have like three breweries at the time where like, we need to start making beer. 00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:30.160 So we started like almost a beer club in the file room. 00:28:30.160 --> 00:28:38.319 Fast forward a few months, all of a sudden we had a professional one-barrel custom-made system from Colorado with all the stainless steel rigged into the back of the factory. 00:28:38.720 --> 00:28:52.319 In a way, you've been answering this question the whole way, but in terms of like what you say to young artists today, whether they're current students or recent alums, what are the keys do you think of of helping them uncover their artistic potential? 00:28:52.559 --> 00:28:56.319 I love talking to people about the trade and the craft and the work. 00:28:56.319 --> 00:28:58.319 You know, not to get in your head. 00:28:58.319 --> 00:29:02.160 You can get in your head because of all these myths and stories that we've all grown up with. 00:29:02.160 --> 00:29:09.359 You know, we only see the top .0001% of what's ever been created right in museums or in books. 00:29:09.359 --> 00:29:12.880 And now you're exposed to so much on social media, it can almost become

overwhelming. 00:29:12.880 --> 00:29:13.200 Right. 00:29:13.519 --> 00:29:16.880 The best thing to do is the work, relentlessly work. 00:29:16.880 --> 00:29:28.640 And when you're doing that work, to be around friends, to be around other people thinking about other things besides art, you know, the the multidisciplinary thinking that it takes to like just move beyond what you were doing. 00:29:28.640 --> 00:29:36.799 So I'll meet with young artists now and I'll look at a work and be like, "Can you do this same work again?" "What do you mean?" I'm like, "This is the first thought you had to do this. 00:29:36.799 --> 00:29:47.680 Maybe you can try it, treat the background differently." "What do you mean?" "Do you know what a ground is?" "No." So by studying all art throughout history, like, you know, at least I can now aim people at new thoughts. 00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:52.640 And like when you look back on art history, you know, it wasn't Michelangelo just working by himself, right? 00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:54.079 It wasn't Da Vinci working. 00:29:54.079 --> 00:29:56.720 They were companies of people behind them. 00:29:56.880 --> 00:29:57.039 Right. 00:29:57.039 --> 00:29:57.359 Yeah. 00:29:57.599 --> 00:30:02.799 All these early marble studios, these were factories of brilliant workers and crafts. 00:30:02.799 --> 00:30:03.920 The studio of Rembrandt. 00:30:03.920 --> 00:30:07.279 The studio of Rembrandt, these are craftspeople and they're led by vision. 00:30:07.279 --> 00:30:14.480 So figuring out what your vision is, your purest self, and like knowing that it's just an exploration and not don't take it too seriously. 00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:23.759 Play around, absorb it, change it, break it, shred it, throw it out, throw wine on it, step on it, ruin your favorite thing. 00:30:23.759 --> 00:30:28.319 Those are the thoughts I love to do because art school did definitely get heady at times. 00:30:28.720 --> 00:30:31.440 And I think it was more like a crash into it kind of person. 00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:35.599 And I still am like, I don't throw a lot of thought at it for better or for worse. 00:30:35.599 --> 00:30:39.119 It's like, let's go, let's make this happen, let's create the vision. 00:30:39.359 --> 00:30:45.119 That sense of play and the sense of feels like today, like there's so much like weight put on every little thing. 00:30:45.119 --> 00:30:50.319 And you know, you're gonna put it online and everybody, the world's gonna judge you for every little thing. 00:30:50.319 --> 00:30:59.200 And part of it was that that moment you were saying earlier in your career where you could play and it wasn't that expensive to do stuff and you didn't care about it, and you just made it happen. 00:30:59.440 --> 00:31:09.119 You made it happen and like you did a lot of work, and you know, a lot of the studio artists I work with, like the best work, you know, those little scraps of paper where you doodled on or you wrote this thing that inspired you. 00:31:09.119 --> 00:31:11.279 And those are the things I'm looking at now. 00:31:11.279 --> 00:31:14.000 The finished work is beautiful at the end, often too. 00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:15.920 The museums, the galleries, what it takes. 00:31:15.920 --> 00:31:19.599 But that journey to get there to me is definitely the more interesting part. 00:31:19.599 --> 00:31:23.279 Once it gets to commerce, you're like, okay, let's hope people buy this work. 00:31:23.279 --> 00:31:25.119 And that's a lot of pressure for people. 00:31:25.279 --> 00:31:29.279 S o it is real, like it is real business at the end, and you got to really think about that. 00:31:29.279 --> 00:31:32.160 So I'm not saying career-wise or business plan-wise. 00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:35.920 Like, I love thought of planning about what you want out of your art career. 00:31:35.920 --> 00:31:37.039 What do you want? 00:31:37.039 --> 00:31:41.759 Discovering what you want out of your career is very hard for people to do. 00:31:41.759 --> 00:31:42.960 I didn't realize that. 00:31:43.119 --> 00:31:47.759 I wrote a piece of paper when I was 21 years old of what I imagined I'd be doing right now. 00:31:47.759 --> 00:31:50.799 And I have the drawing, it's terrible drawing. 00:31:50.799 --> 00:31:59.680 But I had imagined this world, you know, and in this world, you know, that it was a music venue and a stage and a gallery and a space for people. 00:31:59.680 --> 00:32:01.359 It's so weirdly right. 00:32:01.359 --> 00:32:05.440 So to get to where we are now, like, how do you get into spaces and places? 00:32:05.519 --> 00:32:22.799 And I've learned to love throughout all this, that my favorite parts about this has been the people I've met and the times where we're all just put everything aside and just be together, be people, be connected through whatever we're doing, laugh, drink, eat a burger, order a quad, order a triple. 00:32:23.119 --> 00:32:30.799 S o in this town where I've been now for 30 years, where we have factory spaces and a campus, and now, you know, campus at York. 00:32:30.799 --> 00:32:37.599 Like, if you go look around, you'll look in the details that like these are all art and music spaces, yeah. 00:32:37.599 --> 00:32:39.759 Um, and places for people to be together. 00:32:39.759 --> 00:32:51.279 And my hope is that people are hanging out and being together and creating and living and expressing themselves and spending time with friends, because sometimes today you could feel so disconnected and it's insane. 00:32:51.519 --> 00:33:05.200 And so that's really still what keeps me here and draws me here is like all these real historical spaces, the culture of the campus, and like kind of the open atmosphere for thinking, you know, intellectually, academically, artistically, musically. 00:33:05.200 --> 00:33:06.000 It's still alive. 00:33:06.400 --> 00:33:10.960 Well, I hope everyone listening to this just feels inspired to just go hang out and see what the possibilities are. 00:33:10.960 --> 00:33:13.119 And thank you so much for coming in and talking with us today. 00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:14.160 It's been an awesome conversation. 00:33:14.480 --> 00:33:14.960 Same, same. 00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:15.920 Thanks for having me, Mark. 00:33:15.920 --> 00:33:17.119 Appreciate it. 00:33:20.400 --> 00:33:23.839 Creative Currents is a project of the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative. 00:33:23.839 --> 00:33:30.240 Please subscribe to hear more great conversations with artists, scholars, and arts leaders from across the campus and across the globe. 00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:34.160 Send your comments and suggestions via email to creativecurrents@ umich.edu. 00:33:35.519 --> 00:33:40.480 This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Jessica Jenks and edited by Brian Lilly. 00:33:40.480 --> 00:33:48.559 Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Neely, an alumnus of the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theater, and Dance. 00:33:48.799 --> 00:33:55.279 To learn more about the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative, please visit our website at arts.umich.edu. 00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:58.640 Thank you for listening and for being part of the Michigan Arts community. 00:33:58.640 --> 00:34:00.799 It makes our campus so fabulous. 00:34:00.799 --> 00:34:06.480 Until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep your creative currents flowing.