Episode 17 // Kyle McIntosh of MAC6 talks AZ and Attracting Collaborative Brands

Mike Jones: All right, we are recording, so feel free to piss off everyone in the world.

Kyle McIntosh: That’s sweet, good plan.

Chris Stadler: I didn’t know we could do that, that’s awesome.

Mike Jones: New rules, everybody. There’s a new sheriff in town, this is Mike.

Kyle McIntosh: This is a political podcast now?

Mike Jones: This is now a political podcast.

Chris Stadler: Actually, can I ask you one favor, Kyle? Do you mind shutting the door? Then we’re good to go.

Kyle McIntosh: Does that go underneath?

Chris Stadler: Oh, yeah.

Kyle McIntosh: I don’t think I’ve ever deployed that before.

Mike Jones: Deployed it, I like that. So I think we’re looking good here. We’ll just keep going.

Kyle McIntosh: Cool.

Mike Jones: And we’ll jump straight in. So, should I do a little intro?

Chris Stadler: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Jones: This is Mike and Chris from AZ Brandcast, we’ve got another episode lined up right now.

Chris Stadler: What’s up Mike?

Mike Jones: Hey Chris, how’s it going man?

Chris Stadler: Good. It’s going good, how are you doing?

Mike Jones: I’m doing well. And always, we’re talking about branding, brand strategy and what it means to be doing that in the State of Arizona. And we have an awesome guest on today, I’m really excited about having him on, I’ve been talking this for a long time. This is Kyle McIntosh, from MAC6.

Kyle McIntosh: Hey guys.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: Hey Kyle, thanks for joining us.

Kyle McIntosh: Thanks for having me.

Chris Stadler: I see you around the time in the office, but this is kind of cool to get to talk to you.

Kyle McIntosh: We get this more intimate setting here.

Chris Stadler: Exactly.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: Get to know each other over some Scotch.

Kyle McIntosh: Yeah.

Mike Jones: Yeah, to let our listeners know, they might hear a little clinking today because we’re all sipping a little Scotch.

Chris Stadler: Yup.

Mike Jones: From the Great Isle of Scotland, we’ve got some, I’m gonna butcher this like nobody’s business, Glenmorangie.

Chris Stadler: Someone out there right now is cringing. It’s a Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky. I think we’ve been sipping this one since January, very, very slowly.

Kyle McIntosh: And it’s still delicious.

Mike Jones: Yes, yes. We can thank my former Art Director Stephanie Hayworth for picking this one out.

Chris Stadler: So Kyle McIntosh, does that mean you’re Scottish?

Kyle McIntosh: Yeah, yeah. Mostly Scottish, English a little bit and Norwegian, but yeah, mostly Scottish.

Chris Stadler: Okay, all right.

Mike Jones: A little Viking blood in there maybe?

Kyle McIntosh: I’ve got a lot of Viking blood in there. I’ve got the big forehead and the liver for Scotch.

Chris Stadler: Nice. Oh I love it.

Mike Jones: So we’re gonna be very polite to this guest today.

Chris Stadler: Don’t anger the Viking.

Mike Jones: So I’ve been watching on Netflix there’s a show called the Last Kingdom and it’s a story of the Viking invasion of England.

Kyle McIntosh: Oh really?

Mike Jones: And it’s very dramatic, it’s not totally historical

Chris Stadler: Is it the one with the guy who is actually English, and he get’s taken-

Mike Jones: Yup.

Chris Stadler: … And then he becomes this serious Viking.

Mike Jones: Yeah, the call them Danes.

Chris Stadler: Danes. Yeah, they were Danes.

Mike Jones: They were Danes. So he’s raised as a Dane even though he’s Anglo-Saxon by birth. Through the story it’s him as an adult and he’s lost his Danish acceptance, and now he’s kind of floating in between both worlds trying to figure his way.

Chris Stadler: But he’s a super awesome warrior.

Mike Jones: Oh yeah, superior warrior and I’m only on like episode three. Not very far into it. But King Alfred shows up in episode two. And that’s … If anyone is familiar with English history, King Alfred is the English King who kind of protects England from completely being overwhelmed by the Vikings. And so the only reason that any of us who are descended through the English, or Scottish can claim to be any kind, well I guess the English really, can claim to still be Anglo-Saxon at all is because of Alfred and his kind of last stand against the Vikings, the Danes.

Kyle McIntosh: I’ll have to check this out, this is my people I don’t know about.

Mike Jones: It’s nice and violent.

Chris Stadler: It is that.

Mike Jones: Lot’s of heads roll, and there’s axes and swords and-

Kyle McIntosh: Good T.V.

Mike Jones: Yeah, it’s good T.V.

Chris Stadler: Very good T.V.

Mike Jones: I’m rolling my eyes a little bit but yeah, it’s good T.V.

Chris Stadler: Yeah. And if that sounded really obscure to anybody, don’t worry, Mike loves history.

Mike Jones: Yeah, yeah, that one does get pretty obscure.

Chris Stadler: That’s why I like it.

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 00:04:11]. That’s like 1,500 years old.

Chris Stadler: If we weren’t on a podcasts you and I will talk about that for the next 20 minutes.

Mike Jones: Oh, man.

Chris Stadler: So, I’m not offended.

Mike Jones: That’s good, otherwise we would have problems Chris. I don’t think this podcast would last if you were offended by my historical rants, and pursuits, and passions. Thank goodness for my wife who puts up will that stuff.

Chris Stadler: Also thanks for all the, did you know he has a shirt company, that is historically based.

Kyle McIntosh: Yes, yes.

Chris Stadler: Based on Presidents, right? What is it called Taftly? Taftly.com.

Mike Jones: I’m gonna get you a different shirt Chris. I felt so bad yesterday. So I gave Chris a shirt, ’cause he’s been asking me for months, “When do I get my shirt?”

Chris Stadler: See this is my fault.

Mike Jones: And I said, “Well, go pick one out.” And he never picked one out, so I picked one out for him, and of course, I pick the one shirt that is the most overtly, Progressive Party. And it’s a call out to the original Progressive Party, which very different than the current Progressive Party. The Teddy Roosevelt Progressive Party. But it says Progressive Party on it, and [crosstalk 00:05:18] without the context, no one would know that you’re not promoting the current day Progressive Party.

Chris Stadler: So Mike gives me a gift, and what do I do? I blurt out Progressive Party.

Mike Jones: Well, no. Then I realized, Chris is the furthest from Progressive Party, you’re somewhere on the Libertarian side of-

Chris Stadler: To me Progress means something totally different.

Mike Jones: … and I was just like, I’m an idiot.

Chris Stadler: So but then I felt bad, I was like wait a second, Mike is giving the best shirt, the one with the coolest design-

Mike Jones: It is the best shirt.

Chris Stadler: … Two color printing, and so I felt like a heal.

Mike Jones: No, don’t, don’t feel like a heal.

Chris Stadler: And now’s feeling, and then I feel bad, and I’m like you know what, I forget to wear it, I was going to wear it today, just to prove to you how grateful I am. ‘Cause I felt so bad.

Mike Jones: Basically, the moral of the story is I owe you another shirt.

Chris Stadler: No you don’t owe me anything.

Mike Jones: Yeah, I do. I’m gonna get another shirt.

Chris Stadler: You know what? You’re awesome. Taftly-

Mike Jones: Then you can tear the sleeves of the other one and make it a new one, like a running shirt.

Chris Stadler: Yes.

Kyle McIntosh: Oh, yeah,

Mike Jones: Totally. You could all over the Progressive Party.

Kyle McIntosh: That running shirt that screams Roosevelt.

Chris Stadler: Or when I’m plowing my backyard, I can-

Kyle McIntosh: Plowing your backyard.

Mike Jones: You’re making my ice jingle.

Chris Stadler: Awesome. Taftly.com is it?

Mike Jones: Oh, my goodness.

Chris Stadler: We might as well plug it.

Mike Jones: Yeah, you just plugged that hardcore.

Chris Stadler: Taftly-

Mike Jones: I wasn’t expecting that.

Chris Stadler: … Taftly.com. It’s not Taft.ly?

Mike Jones: T-A-F-T-L-Y.com.

Chris Stadler: Yes. Yeah, totally. So are we good now? I’ve plugged you’re …

Mike Jones: I feel so bad. We start out the podcast by plugging my dumb historical T-shirt company.

Chris Stadler: It’s not dumb, it’s fun, and it makes you who you are. That’s why we love you.

Mike Jones: It might be a little dumb.

Chris Stadler: Yes. Kyle is nodding his and saying yes.

Mike Jones: It might be a little dumb.

Chris Stadler: No it’s not, it’s awesome.

Kyle McIntosh: But it’s awesome.

Mike Jones: Yeah, if only it actually worked. If only it actually sold shirts.

Chris Stadler: Maybe it will sell one or two now, I don’t know.

Mike Jones: I think we sell one shirt a month right now, the last three months. When you don’t advertise anything on the internet it doesn’t work. That’s what I figured out.

Chris Stadler: That’s funny.

Mike Jones: You have to advertise things on the internet, if you want to sell things on the internet.

Chris Stadler: So if you buy a Taftly shirt, and we see you in public, we will talk to you. Won’t we Mike?

Mike Jones: Oh, yeah. I’ll come and give you a big hug,

Kyle McIntosh: Oh, yeah.

Chris Stadler: Yes. And I’ll shake your hand.

Kyle McIntosh: Team Taftly.

Chris Stadler: [crosstalk 00:07:30] Team Taftly.

Mike Jones: Hashtag Team Taftly.

Chris Stadler: So Kyle is joining us from where?

Kyle McIntosh: From MAC6.

Chris Stadler: MAC6.

Kyle McIntosh: MAC6.

Mike Jones: And a little backstory there. So Kyle and I got to know each other about almost two years ago, a year and nine months ago, when I was looking for co-working space for my company. MAC6 kind of popped up on the radar out of nowhere, and I got to meet Kyle and Jen who were at the time were doing a lot of work on the space. Jen a little a less now, but Kyle’s still in it, and the rest of their awesome team. And we’ve gotten to know each other the last two years as we’ve been working out of here. Man it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made for my company, has been moving here. A lot that has to do with what you guys are doing with MAC6, the values that you have. The co-working space is awesome, the community is great, but what you guys are doing, building culture, helping other companies do that. I mean even this podcast room, you guys have made this happen, which is freaking awesome.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s awesome to hear you say that. The big thing we were looking to do, is a lot of the stuff we do is under the umbrella of real estate, but it’s not really what we do, it’s building communities, non-transactional, holistic real estate where people come to work and they have a sense of place.

Mike Jones: So what do you mean non-transactional? That’s an interesting word.

Kyle McIntosh: Mostly a lot of what’s out there is, I need a certain square footage for my people. I’m going to beat you up over the rates that I’m going to charge you for that square footage. You might have a Property Manager that you deal with if there’s a leak or something goes wrong, but that’s the extent of our relationship. As opposed to one aspect of what we have is space, great. But we’re looking for this relationship, this deeper relationship where, what are your goals as a business, and space is one part of that. But how can we help you get what you want out of your business, while creating an atmosphere for your people that’s beyond just a space that they show up, that they can be their best, do what they love, feel like they’re supported, and be around other people that are doing the same.
I mean that’s really our goal, we call it holistic real estate, where space is only part of that, it’s this whole culture, environment, everything of where someone is showing up for more than a third of every day. I mean that’s a big thing.

Mike Jones: Yeah. It’s funny because I come at this from the aspect of being on the receiving end of that for our team, and for me personally. Just the perspective that you guys bring to the table on that is so unique and refreshing.
We went through a whole process of shopping for a new space, almost two years ago, actually it was about two years ago this time, September-ish of 2015 that we started shopping. I mean we got real estate agent involved and we were looking at spaces, I looked a dozen different spaces physically, probably another 100, maybe 200 online.

Kyle McIntosh: Wow.

Mike Jones: And that experience was so just … I mean we had a great real estate agent who was helping us, and he was very helpful. But just the negotiating process, and really just feeling like we were lacking that community aspect that I’ve always loved about co-working spaces that I’ve worked out of in the past. But to see that done not only in a co-working space, but you guys are applying that to all the spaces that you manage. And even extending that outside of those spaces with some of the cultural development services you guys are offering, it’s just really refreshing.
It’s not just about, hey there’s a desk and there’s chairs, get to work.

Kyle McIntosh: You need that too.

Mike Jones: But like actually striving to build a community, provide value beyond that. You guys do lots of trainings, you do lots of workshops in here, bringing in outside experts of different areas of business and opening that up to the community. Even something as simple as a weekly lunch, where we all hang out and sit together as a bunch of different companies, and exchange idea, celebrate success, and encourage each other when we’re failing. I’ve just had so many great conversations with the community here. And that’s I think is a testament to what you guys are doing.
This is starting to sound like a giant praise fest for MAC6.

Chris Stadler: All right Devil’s advocate. Okay, Devil’s advocate.

Mike Jones: All right Chris.

Chris Stadler: Come on man, I mean it’s all about the dollars, right? It’s all about [crosstalk 00:12:33]. So how did this all workout? How’s it working out for you guys?

Kyle McIntosh: No it’s an interesting perspective too because it’s a business, it’s a for profit business. As we started out initially as a business, as an incubator, and we had to go through a long process of, do we want to be a for profit, or non-profit, and have the discussion. And the philosophy of how we run the business is that you don’t focus on the dollars, but by doing the right things and extending the value through the community, it’s going to come back in a monetary fashion as well. That’s not what you focus on. It’s the opposite of quarterly returns approach, but it’s gonna come back if you’re doing the right things, provided value for people.
And we’re growing. It’s going to be … We’re working on profitability, we’re in early stage-ish business ourselves. Absolutely, it’s a for profit business, you’ve got to focus on that as well.

Mike Jones: Mm-hmm (affirmative). But things are going well, right? Or are they? I don’t know. Tell us.

Kyle McIntosh: No, they are. We’ve learned a ton over the last six years, we’ve had ups and downs, and we’re at a place now where we’re finished inventing the business. And so there’ll be shifts and little iterations in what were doing as we grow, but we’ve got something that’s working and is growing now, we’re filling up the spaces, we’re seeing more monetary profitability, we’re getting our stuff together with processes, just internally getting more focused as a team. So it’s all growing, it’s all going really well, but at the same time as I’m sitting here with an ownership hat on, or business leadership, so I’m, “Let’s do better, we can, I know [crosstalk 00:14:08].

Chris Stadler: Totally.

Mike Jones: Yeah, I don’t know anything about wearing that hat. Chris is like, shut up, you wear that hat too much.

Chris Stadler: So all I can say is, those lunches Mike were talking about, always delicious, and it’s like five bucks. I can’t afford not, I can’t lose money on it, I don’t want to lose money right?

Kyle McIntosh: We do.

Mike Jones: Yeah, you guys are very gracious with those.

Chris Stadler: Yeah, right. I know that’s not a money maker for you.

Kyle McIntosh: Loss leader.

Chris Stadler: Well, ’cause I know I’m paying, I can’t get more than the five bucks of food, and there’s always leftovers for everybody. So it’s kind of like Communism a little bit. So there’s that, you know?

Mike Jones: Business based on Communism. That’s a conversation for a whole other episode.

Chris Stadler: Another podcast, yup.

Mike Jones: The Commy episode.

Chris Stadler: Yes, we’ve got to have one of those.

Mike Jones: How to be a Communist and make money. Hmm.

Chris Stadler: Hmm.

Mike Jones: Let’s not go down that road.

Chris Stadler: I think my mind just popped.

Mike Jones: I want to hear a little bit about the three different areas of, I mean the real estate term, I guess that’s probably the best term. But, I think a lot of our listeners would be really interested in how you guys have divided that up.

Kyle McIntosh: Sure.

Mike Jones: And the different offerings that you guys have. I know I always like hearing about it.

Kyle McIntosh: We’re sitting in a podcast room in a building. And so we’ve owned for quite a while. And so part of what we do is renting space out to more established companies that are looking for a place, two to 20 something thousand feet, or the extension of what’s inside this building right now. And quiet occupancy is really the real estate term of what people expect in a building like this.
A number of years ago, five, six years ago, we had the entire second story of this side of the building we’re in. It was essentially empty, and we we’re looking at what to do with it. We could have filled it up with more quiet occupancy but as we’re building this model of working with companies, hands on, investing in these companies we decided, all right let’s just blow this floor out and build it as, initially what was our incubator space.
So, we had a place for the companies to work, it was an asset for us to be able to have everybody in one space, be hands-on, be working with them. And we very quickly realized that we ran out of mental capacity to work with enough companies to fill that space up. And so-

Mike Jones: I’m sorry, what do you me by mental?

Kyle McIntosh: … We wanted to have enough hands on time with each company that there just wasn’t enough time to add more companies to the portfolio.

Mike Jones: So is it kind of like student to pupil ratio, kind of deal?

Kyle McIntosh: Exactly.

Mike Jones: Okay, I gotcha.

Kyle McIntosh: But at the same time we had this vision of the space being a very collaborative, very full space of people that collectively didn’t have to make the same mistake twice. They could learn from somebody sitting next to them, or share resources, or whatever it was. And so we started sort of with the model of, we didn’t call it co-working, we started adding people that made sense to be part of that culture, and that community. And over time as we shifted away from being an incubator, some of the companies upstairs are still, we’re still invested with those companies, still working with them, but we’ve just moved more to that working model.
It’s different from a lot of the co-working that’s out there. We don’t necessarily do drop-institutes, we look for a yearly … We’re looking for companies that make sense to be a part of the atmosphere that’s up there. Everybody has to fill out an application to be a part of the space, and just really it’s, are they the low bar of just … Are they wanting to be kind of a participatory part of this environment, not looking to screw people over. It’s a pretty low bar, but at least some guidelines of sort of how to be a part of this space.
So we’ve got the 10,000 square feet upstairs that’s co-working, and while early on, we were working again as an incubator, we decided, there’s a lot of tech incubators out there, they’re working with SaaS businesses, tech, whatever they call it, but it’s a lot of tech out there. We’re not not tech, but that’s not what we do.
So we’re industry agnostic. We like working with all kinds of cool companies. Business is simple, go get the work, go do the work, get paid for work, and then do it better. Whether it tech, or manufacturing, whatever it is, and so we started getting these companies coming to us saying, I’m a manufacturing company, I’m in my garage, I can’t afford 10,000 square feet, and the overhead of a 10 year lease, there’s nothing out there to support the space side of what I need.
So we bought a building just a couple of miles up the road here, 38,000 square foot manufacturing facility, and we made a decision to treat it like a co-working space. And so although there are a couple of companies that, because of the nature of what they do need clean rooms, the rest of it is delineated by chain link fence, and it’s very open and collaborative. It’s become a really interesting community over there of the same that goes on up stairs in the co-working, people sharing resources, sharing knowledge bases, sharing I have an issue, have you dealt with this? They become very similar to each other while just what the businesses are doing inside are very different. The model is essentially the same, just different type of space.
We’ve treated the co-working space as kind of our hub of all this. So everyone has that as a resource to come and gather. So even the quite occupant where the model usually is, you come tell me if there’s an issue with your space. They are invited to our trainings, they are invited to some these lunches, and so it’s really become this sort of three space community of shared resources and assets, that we’re beginning to see more and more sharing between the spaces going on that’s been pretty cool.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome.

Kyle McIntosh: Yup.

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Jones: That co-manufacturing space, there’s something really special about that. I know when I first got the tour over there it was like, this is different. I haven’t seen anybody doing this in the valley. That’s cool, it’s really cool.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s cool, just the visceral experience of walking into that space, there’s flames, and there’s chemicals, and there’s you know? There’s a company making candles, there’s a company making teas, it smells amazing, you hear the clinking and clanking of people making stuff. Every time I walk in the door, it’s just I love it here.

Mike Jones: Yeah, we had [Truce 00:20:58] on last episode, and they’re in that space and they do all natural cleaning products. But yeah, it’s just been fun to talk with them too about the community that’s starting to develop over there as you guys have filled it up, there’s just more and more opportunity, I think, for those tenants to work together. And there’s just so much passion right now for creating a community of like minded people and helping each other, using each other’s services and using each others products. I’m excited to see more of that happening, which is really cool.

Kyle McIntosh: And again, to question about, there’s a monetary piece of this, we’re monetizing that space. And we can’t necessarily even own the community over there, they’re doing that, them being the companies over there. And there’s a monetary piece of that as well, lets shared knowledge bases about how to sell these consumer good products on Amazon. But at the same time, you can feel something different over there about the connectedness that’s these companies are having between each other that’s just, you experience it, you feel it, and it’s beyond just the monetary side, although it’s leaning to more profitable … All the companies over there are growing as well.

Mike Jones: Yeah, that’s so cool.

Chris Stadler: So Arizona, do we want to get some of these questions?

Mike Jones: Shift gears a little bit, slightly, only slightly.

Chris Stadler: Yeah. So what’s special, the good and the bad, you can talk about the good and the bad, about starting and building your business in a State like Arizona?

Kyle McIntosh: I’ll say some things that probably other people might answer the same way, common think a little bit, and to some extent I only know about building a business in Arizona. I mean I’ve met people from all over and can to speak to the differences a little bit, and some of it is probably perceived, and some of it is reality.
The good parts of building a business in Arizona, the tax rates, it’s relatively inexpensive to run a business in Arizona. So we get a lot of call centers, and people putting second locations like that out here. Just because of the nature of how our Government has set up the tax rates. But beyond that, the Universities have created, and there’s the three public Universities and then a strong push right now by G.C.U., Grand Canyon Universities, they’re really putting out a lot of effort into both entrepreneurial efforts, and innovation, and some of that’s coming across in specific subsets where you U of A has the med tech, and A.S.U. is doing a lot of innovations, N.A.U, has some very interesting things going all. All four of them have different things, but from a workforce base that’s coming out of that, and just from shared resources that they all have. It is a different thing that we have here. You know there’s places that have Universities, but just the collection of the four of them. And the work that I’ve seen from some of the work we’ve done, and a lot of others that are helping them to co-facilitate some of this, has been really cool to see, in the last number of years.
We put together with Micheal [Hule 00:24:23] with Corey Law Group, a competition called A.C.V.C., Arizona Collegiate Venture Competition, and it was the first time that all three of the public Universities had competed against each other at the same time. And it was this pitch competition, and these kids, and it was just very cool to see.
I think the most important thing to me, that I think gives us the coolest, and just the best value proposition of where to build a business, is the culture of Arizona, and the sort of multi-culturalism. And so we’ve got this, both from a workforce, and just from a products that are here, architecture that’s here, proximity of Hispanic, Native American, and the melting pot of everything else that, you know the United States, and just I love it, I love seeing it, and there’s just an individual enjoyment I get from both arts, culture. But it adds something to the more different view points and things that you can have inside a business, whether it’s a age, sex, race, just getting this different view points that are different from yourself.
I think there’s a huge resource in Arizona that’s we have beyond just the arts culture external from business, but business as well, there’s a lot of places that don’t have it, there just a lot more homogenous and don’t have access to that.

Mike Jones: Yeah. That’s a really interesting point. I think we’ve started hear that more as we’ve interviewed more people. I was listening back through some of the interviews we’ve done just recently at Phoenix Design Week, and that came up a few different times. It was kind of like a new thing for me, ’cause I think my perception of Arizona can be somewhat small minded, or somewhat stereotypical. Like when I think about if I were to put my head inside someone else’s head that doesn’t live here, I have a stereotype of Arizona, Cowboys, Cowboys and Indians, right?

Kyle McIntosh: Yep.

Mike Jones: Or, super conservative Farmers and Ranchers with a couple millennial urbanites sprinkled in for good measure. Yet, when I think about my daily experience in Arizona it’s different. It’s very multi-cultural. It’s like I’ve lived in West Mesa and it’s … I remember our first apartment after getting married, we lived just north of the 60 in West Mesa and it was like, you walk outside and you see eight different ethnicities on one street. And there’s pockets of different groups, not just ethnicities, but philosophies, ideologies, religions, everything. And I think about it and I’m like wow, our State is not what it used to be.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s changing.

Mike Jones: It’s totally changing, and it’s very diverse.

Chris Stadler: So, I’ll tell you what notice. I come from Oregon, so but I was an Army brat. So I grew up on Army bases, Panama even, and what’s interesting is, so I grew up that way, and you see everybody from every culture in the Military, but the all can work together. So their bringing their point of view and they’re all like … At my school we would just absorb, we’d be around all these people from different cultures, mostly African American and white guys, well you know white people, still you’re like, it wasn’t this big deal.
Then I went to the University of Oregon and now it’s like everybody’s racist, racism is everywhere, around every corner, and you don’t even know you’re racist if you’re white. So, I’m just like whoa, this must be a bigger problem than I thought, but then I come back down here, and feels a lot more like the Military in the sense that you see a lot of people that are able to work together because that’s not getting in their way. ‘Cause that’s always the issue and I was thinking about that at Design Week because people are … You need diversity, but the diversity that I’ve always thought was valuable was the diversity of point of view, not necessarily like, oh, my skins colors different so it’s diversity. No, I have a different upbringing, a different point of view, different experiences, and what is see in Arizona is a lot more people who are, they may come from different backgrounds, but they kind of meet somewhere. There’s a place where they talk and work. And I don’t know [crosstalk 00:29:24] I feel like I’m starting to hear that-

Mike Jones: We all show up at the Cubs Spring Training Camps.

Chris Stadler: Yes. I don’t know if that’s what you guys are seeing, or not. But that’s what I’m kind of starting to pull out of this.

Kyle McIntosh: And not just, can work together, but value working with different types of people and view points. One of the things other than Cubs Spring Training games, one of my favorite things to do is, ’cause I live fairly far away from the office, is to drive to a different way to and from, and go through different neighborhoods, and just see even just the buildings and things that are out there. And it really cool, this is totally different from where I live and I had no idea this was out here, I’m gonna go check out this Chinese Cultural Center, or driving a Priest through Guadalupe and seeing the beautiful art that’s on the walls over there, and there’s really cool stuff to be see, but you don’t see it all the time.
One of my favorite phrases, the truest things I believe is truth through perception, and if you’re in an environment, and you’re going to University in Florida and people are perceiving that you just don’t get it, you just don’t understand, versus you’re in an environment where people are just expecting that you are valuing this multi-cultural, so think it depends on who you’re surrounding yourself with, and I think the other thing that’s shifting in Arizona is that valuing, having multi-cultural versus knowing it’s out there, but what do we do about it.

Chris Stadler: Yeah. Like not knowing how to take advantage of it, or not knowing if you even want to or not.

Kyle McIntosh: Right. Being scared of it.

Chris Stadler: What’s the value of it? Right, yeah.

Mike Jones: That’s awesome.

Kyle McIntosh: I think that the one … I hate to say it’s a bad thing about staring a business in Arizona, but it is that perception of, and it’s changing too, but political perception of what Arizona means, or what it means to be in Arizona. And I think that’s a thing even internationally, that we had a reputation for sure that it is still there to some extent, and is changing whether you agree with it or not, but it is limiting to some businesses that are thinking about moving here, even if the tax benefits make sense.

Mike Jones: Yup. Yeah we definitely have a perception, I think externally, that doesn’t necessarily reflect the internal culture, at least not entirely. It’s almost like one little part of our culture has been over amplified external to Arizona.
Yeah, I was just hearing from the Ambassador from Mexico, I think is in the State this week talking with Governor Ducey. We do 13 billion dollars worth of trade with Mexico as a State. That relationship matters.

Kyle McIntosh: Yeah.

Mike Jones: Yeah, there’s these discussions at the Federal level about immigration, and border security, and all of these other things that matter to some people, and some people don’t care. But here in Arizona this isn’t some ideological issue, this is a day-to-day, this impacts people.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s a reality.

Mike Jones: It’s a reality. There’s people, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, there’s people trucking stuff between here and Mexico and back, every single day. That border for us is not just a wall, or a division on a map, it’s like-

Kyle McIntosh: G.D.P.

Mike Jones: … It’s G.D.P., yeah, which is just crazy to think about. Sometimes I forget about how integrated into this larger context Arizona is. I think that’s important to remember.

Kyle McIntosh: For sure.

Chris Stadler: So what kinds of companies should be here? We ask this a lot don’t we Mike.

Mike Jones: We do.

Chris Stadler: But it’s a good question.

Mike Jones: Yeah. I love the answers we get every time, they’re always different and there’s one answer that’s always the same, that I’m finding, and that is the answer to the who shouldn’t be here. But I’ll let Kyle go first and we’ll see if he lands in our survey.

Chris Stadler: So I’ll give you the whole question. So what kinds of companies should build more of a presence in Arizona? And who shouldn’t? Who’s gonna get the least value, or is gonna screw up Arizona, let’s just say it.

Mike Jones: Let’s just say it.

Chris Stadler: Who’s gonna wreck competition?

Mike Jones: Let’s just say it, should Amazon be here? Should Amazon move their second-

Kyle McIntosh: That’s a much longer-

Mike Jones: We could talk about that.

Chris Stadler: That’s gonna become our standard test question. Litmus test.

Kyle McIntosh: Should move to Arizona? I’m seeing a lot of companies move to Arizona more and more, and I’m just hearing about it through these groups that we’re connected with in various ways, there is on a commerce authority and just these sort of business development for the State of Arizona groups. And they’re seeing a lot of success, I’m guessing probably because of the cheap doing business here, but in putting a second location here. So you’re seeing the potential Amazon, PayPal, these deals, the Silicone Valley Bank is in Tempe.

Chris Stadler: Really?

Kyle McIntosh: Yeah. It’s great for us. All of that is great for businesses in Arizona having extended resources that expand beyond the border of our State. Having a workforce that is diverse among different types of companies and industries. And it’s not just Arizona, but because I think the workforce that we have over the years because of how much, what Intel’s done and because we have a State that I believe could do a lot more of it in a way that would be profitable, beneficial, creating jobs. I’d love to see more manufacturing here.
It’s something I’m personally kind of tied in with, but I just think we have a huge ability to support that here with people who have been there, done that with an up and coming workforce. Even from the philosophy of the micros of the world, of don’t send everyone off to University, you can do something with your hands and create a ton of value for people.
I’d love to see us do more of that in the Country, but I just think we’re in a unique place to support that in Arizona.

Chris Stadler: So wait, now you’re saying don’t go to College?

Kyle McIntosh: Hey kids.

Mike Jones: I could check that box on my list, don’t go to College.

Chris Stadler: So I used to teach at the University and I’m skeptical about College. But I wanted to hear what you [crosstalk 00:36:17].

Mike Jones: You heard it here first kids. Professor Stadler says don’t go to College.

Chris Stadler: It may be because of that experience.

Kyle McIntosh: One of the good things about Arizona is all the four Universities and the things they are doing. There are great things about these Universities and about University, some of it in general. The push for everybody to go to College is just ridiculous, and it’s putting us in a horrible situation with the fact that plumbers are making $300 and hour because no one is doing those jobs anymore. Is a system of something that we’re really supporting the wrong ideals for “everybody”. Because if you want to go to College because it supports a vision or a dream that you have with something you want to do with your life, great, and those resources are out there. But to push everybody into that, it’s just silly.

Mike Jones: Yeah. We won’t even open up the can of worms of student debt. That’s like a whole other-

Chris Stadler: Yes.

Kyle McIntosh: Yeah. If it was another topic, I’d be fine with talking about it.

Chris Stadler: Yeah. Well just I mean how easy, I mean essentially the Government is cheapening the cost for students, or at least the short term costs-

Mike Jones: The short terms costs, yes.

Chris Stadler: … And then creating a huge demand now for all the four University spots. I mean it was kind of nice for me because I probably got paid more than I ever else would have. But at the same time, it’s a lot of money chasing after something that may not pay you later. The question is if you’re gonna be coding website do you need to go to College?

Kyle McIntosh: If you’re gonna do a lot of … I mean the financial debt is the one piece of if that everybody talks about. But the intellectual debt that it’s creating in our society where 80% plus of the workforce is either disengaged, or actively working against what the company stands for, because their not happy at work. They aren’t in a job they like, or a company they like, or are brought in with the culture they spent all this intellectual capacity to go to University to get them to place where they hate what their doing. I mean that’s detrimental to people’s life.

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Kyle McIntosh: So now it’s kind of creating a surplus of people who can fill those jobs, so now the companies get to choose, so there’s a surplus of you now.

Mike Jones: Yeah. And there’s a huge emphasis, this isn’t quite related, I’ll get to it, I’ll connect it. There’s a huge surplus of people who create digital things, but who are maintaining the rest of our physical world. And this a huge issue on a much larger scale about how much emphasis is put on creating rather than maintaining.

Chris Stadler: And manufacturing, and [crosstalk 00:39:18].

Mike Jones: Yeah. Well, I mean turning the crank, the reality is most crank jobs are run by robots now.

Kyle McIntosh: That’s true. Mostly truly crank jobs.

Mike Jones: But highly specialized craftsman, that doesn’t exist anymore. You just mention plumbers, they’re making like ridiculous amounts of money which is great for them. But that means that most of our plumbing is actually going unmaintained. Because there isn’t enough people at an affordable rate to allow for the maintenance of plumbing. And-

Kyle McIntosh: Infrastructure.

Mike Jones: … Infrastructure especially if you want to talk about that at a larger scale, not like home plumbing, but what about the sewer system in your city. I mean I can’t even tell you how many times it’s like you hear about somebody in your neighborhood’s sewer connection with city hasn’t been touched in 50 years.

Kyle McIntosh: You wouldn’t believe the statistics.

Mike Jones: And it’s completely destroyed. And it’s just not a Government funding problem, it’s also there’s just no one to go fix, ’cause no ones trained.

Chris Stadler: Okay. I will tell, a little multi-cultural injection for you. So I was in Panama, right, the Panamese just hate maintaining stuff, they just hate it. Culturally they just they don’t have the stomach for it.

Mike Jones: Nobody like maintaining anything.

Chris Stadler: No, no, no. So they would always lose power and we always had power because we maintained stuff and they didn’t. So there’s something to that. We don’t to get to a point where-

Mike Jones: This is an issue within the start-up world, right? Where we glorify start-ups that only create new things, and we devalue start-up who work on maintaining things. Think about when’s the last time you heard a new headline about a start up that worked in the service business, any kind of service business.

Chris Stadler: Well they don’t even call the start-ups if they work in the-

Mike Jones: Exactly, yeah. They’re not called a start-up.

Chris Stadler: They’re start-ups, but they just don’t call them start ups.

Mike Jones: ‘Cause it won’t “scale”, and it’s like everyone of those businesses, everyone of those start-ups that’s creating something new, that has to be maintained at some point. And it’s like we glorify the creation over the maintenance. And in the long run that leaves us with tons and tons of stuff that we don’t know what to do with, and eventually it’s a total waste.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s part of the new bubble that’s being created with these, it was dot com and now it’s all these new IPO’s that are coming that are getting to a point where all the sudden we’re not making any money. Which is just the symptom of exactly what you just said, they’re creating something in between people without creating anything. [crosstalk 00:42:03].

Mike Jones: Oh, wait, they’re not creating value.

Kyle McIntosh: Right.

Mike Jones: Yeah, yeah, okay.

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Mike Jones: I think we beat that one up pretty good.

Chris Stadler: Yeah. We did a good job on that. We could talk longer about that one. So do you want me to ask the next question to you Mike? [crosstalk 00:42:22].

Mike Jones: Wait, wait, wait, no. I want to hear Kyle’s perspective on Amazon.

Chris Stadler: Okay.

Mike Jones: Should Amazon come to Arizona?

Kyle McIntosh: This is tough.

Chris Stadler: He’s on the hot seat folks.

Mike Jones: Yeah, this is the hot seat question.

Kyle McIntosh: There’s so many good questions right now about Amazon, with what happened with Whole Foods, with them picking a new place to put their next thing. It’s not just Amazon, it’s a company like this that’s gonna come in and create jobs like this in place. And it was the same when should Tesla come and put their huge battery plant here, and they went to Reno. I don’t know, is the answer to that. ‘Cause I can’t look in the future and see the plus, minus score, if they do move to Arizona and the jobs they create, and the culture they’re creating. It’d be great to have them from a tax base I guess.

Mike Jones: Assuming they don’t get a giant break.

Kyle McIntosh: I’m not assuming that.

Mike Jones: I mean if they can attract more people who pay income tax. Well I don’t know if income tax would work out for the State at all. But, at some level, more people equals more taxes.

Chris Stadler: We’re assuming crony Capitalism on this show. Hopefully no Government people are listening to this, because sometimes when they get involved the crony Capitalism changes …

Mike Jones: Government people we love you, but we’re just saying. We do need to have somebody, from some level of Government, on this show at some point. So if you’re listening, and you work for City, State, or Federal Government, we’d love to have you on.

Kyle McIntosh: And I-

Mike Jones: Hit us up, Azpodcast.com

Chris Stadler: You’re opinion will be valued.

Kyle McIntosh: Yes. And especially about this hands on person, and you’re not the person that was talking about [crosstalk 00:44:04].

Chris Stadler: If you’re come on the show, you’re totally not who we were talking about.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s just so hard to say. What I don’t like that’s happening is the amount of energy that’s going into trying to get a company like that to move here. And the perceived or real breaks that are being offered, in equality, in opportunity for a type of business like that, versus supporting local, and what’s here already from these Government or sub-government entities. And it being a total waste of time if they don’t move here, and it never comes to fruition. I guess these are two issues, we have these big staff people that are spending all kinds of money to wine and dine and get them to come here. To be able to tell that story, and we’ll see if it creates a net positive if they do.
And second issue, why are we not spending that same energy, whether it’s time, mental capacity, on supporting what’s here, and growing that, both inside of Arizona and outside of Arizona, so we can tell the story about these cool local companies that were able to grow and do awesome things while there here, and externally that’s …

Mike Jones: I’m just nodding my head over and over.

Chris Stadler: So that’s nice that you say that, but what are you doing to build community? Oh, wait.

Mike Jones: It’s like what he does every day.

Chris Stadler: I knew that one.

Kyle McIntosh: That’s awesome.

Chris Stadler: But seriously what are some things that we could be doing that are not happening right now. Let’s say there is some things that you guys are thinking of, as I’m sure you guys think about this as thinking about MAC6 and the future and stuff like that.

Kyle McIntosh: And it’s not just us, there are people that are doing awesome things in our community. And so one of the, and I thought about it earlier from part of the earlier question about potentially tough to do business in Arizona. The group of investors that are in Arizona, again this is a complete generalization because there are lots of investors too in all sorts of stuff, it’s focused on medical technology or SaaS. And part of that is having University of Arizona, having a great medical, there’s a lot of technology coming out of there. But there’s not a lot of support with being interested in other types of businesses, ’cause exactly what you said, they’re looking for 100X return, even if it creates no value at some point, from the investment side.
But one of the cool things that I’ve seen over the last five years in particular is, both the group in Tucson and the group in Phoenix are now a part of, it’s probably 15 to 20 groups in different States kind of around this part of the country, and so efforts like that, that are supporting Arizona businesses while also reaching out and saying, we recognize we don’t have everything here, but where are those resources that we can support what’s here. And so connecting with these groups that have other interests that are supporting Arizona, supporting businesses from outside Arizona, there creating connections so that the community isn’t just …
So MAC6 upstairs in our co-working space is a community. It’s part of the three spaces, it’s a bigger community, it’s part of Tempe, it’s a bigger community, I think more mindset like that, it’s part of Arizona, that’s a bigger community part of the Southwest, part of the United States. And it’s not necessarily saying we have to grow everything to a national, international level, they recognize in the value of other people that have resources that you just do. So recognizing not just where you have value, but you’re not great at and finding resources for other people to make those connections, I think is the most important thing that we, anybody, can do to support themselves and everybody else around them. It just having that mindset that there are others out there doing things to sort of support his collective whole that you’re just one piece of. So make those connections.

Mike Jones: Speechless. Chris and I are speechless.

Chris Stadler: How is that, what are some examples of that happening right now?

Kyle McIntosh: The investing groups is one example.

Chris Stadler: Specifically there connecting people, they’re connecting-

Kyle McIntosh: A much larger group of investors, with a much larger group of interests, with a much larger group of companies to take a look at and see if they want to extend their portfolio to other things.

Chris Stadler: ‘Cause that was a critique we heard. Because we heard, in fact someone said it’s interesting that a lot of the investors here, maybe they don’t understand the tech as well, and then in the valley, in San Francisco, Silicon Valley who have people who understand the tech more, and they have money so they’re a lot more discerning, but there also a lot more able to manage and understand what’s going on with the investments, right? How would you react to that? Is that part of what you’re saying?

Kyle McIntosh: Yeah. Silicon Valley it’s the one people talk about, because that’s where the big, big money is. But what’s interesting is, there’s these little micro pockets of Silicon Valley, like Boulder and Austin, and Seattle, and Boston, and New York, and Phoenix isn’t there yet.
But it’s sort of like how, I used to work in cable T.V. and Phoenix is in the 12th to 13th biggest market in the United States. We’re kind of in the range, so we’re kind of like second tier. And so it’s been cool to see, not just Silicon Valley, but these other pockets and connecting with those, because they’re still just a pocket, even Silicon Valley doesn’t have all the resources they need to support the companies that are there. They have a ton of money. But like I said, tech or manufacturing, or anything, it’s get business, do business, get paid for business. There’s people who are better at parts of that from all over the place and to start to see people work together to connect those pieces. We talk about Silicon Valley all the time, but it really is starting to see more of this connected between these different groups, which has been cool.

Chris Stadler: So, are there any companies who shouldn’t move here?

Kyle McIntosh: I’m interested to see what other people said too, and if I’m fitting in with is.

Chris Stadler: Come on, throw someone under the bus, man.

Kyle McIntosh: Who’s our direct competition?

Mike Jones: Upwork. Upwork should never move here.

Kyle McIntosh: A personally philosophy of business that I have. I mean it’s Conscious Capitalism. And it’s boiled down to a longterm view of business, as opposed to a short term, quarterly results would be the exact opposite of that while providing great value for all of your stakeholders, including the financial ones, but including vendors, shareholders, your community, your customers, everybody, hat making more money in longterm. And so that’s my personal view of business.
So personally, I don’t businesses here, anywhere around me that are sort of that, screw you, so I can make more money in the short term, I don’t care if this relationship goes bad, because I’m gonna take as much from you as I can in the short term, and find the next you, and the next you, and the next you, and the next you. And so I can’t point out any of those that are off the top of my head, yeah, get out of here, I don’t want you. If I lived in Virginia I’d say the same thing, it’s not just and Arizona thing.
But I guess there’s not a grouping of business, or industry that I’d like to not move here. I’d like to see are business that are here grow and expand outside of Arizona as well. And part of that is, again, it’s G.D.P., it’s money, it’s Arizona doing well. But the other part of that is, it’s just cool to be able to tell that story when you have a GoDaddy, when you have a WebPt, when you have an Infusionsoft, and these sort of Arizona companies that you can tell were not Silicon Valley, were never going to be Silicon Valley, I don’t want to be Silicon Valley, because we have our own culture.
But we have some really cool companies that are growing like hell, and can provide value to a mass group of people. And so I’d love to see more than that. No I don’t want to kick anyone off the island at this point.

Chris Stadler: Do you Arizona supports that though? Do you think the culture we were talking about before can support than in a way give us a little bit of advantage and maybe some leadership in that-

Kyle McIntosh: To be able to tell that story of expansion?

Chris Stadler: To be able to support that whole conscious Capitalism infused thinking, or conscious Capitalism inspired thinking? Where is not just about the quarterly results that cause us to break stuff just so we can get the next quarter. Just that, we’re actually building community because we want our vendors to be good, because we want them to make enough money to stay in business and continue to be able in R and D maybe, or whatever, to improve and then grow to a bigger, better level.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s an interesting question when you put it geographically like that. Because there’s always gonna be people, and these are the ones that get into the news, right, they do bad things. They’re just always gonna be [inaudible 00:54:18] run businesses. I’d say anywhere you go, there’s a large subset, a majority of the companies anywhere who are doing good things, who are providing value to their customers, providing value to their employees, and they probably, a majority of those, wouldn’t say. I’m a conscious capitalist. There just doing what they think is right in good business. And so the articulation of it might not come across. But there’s a ton of businesses that I could point to in Arizona that are doing the right thing.

Chris Stadler: If you want you can point to a few of them.

Kyle McIntosh: Taftly.com.

Chris Stadler: That was on the tip of your tongue.

Mike Jones: Oh, man. Oh two plugs in one episode I’m feeling really good right now.

Kyle McIntosh: I know. You might have to design some more shirts now.

Mike Jones: That’s terrible. The company of like one and a half. 75% would be me and 75% is my wife who ships all the stuff out.

Chris Stadler: That’s 150%.

Mike Jones: Yeah. No, one and a half people. 75% of that, or one-

Chris Stadler: I know, I get you now.

Mike Jones: Point 75.

Chris Stadler: Seventy five percent of a person.

Mike Jones: I was trying to make it clear that the half person was not my wife.

Chris Stadler: Your logic is good.

Mike Jones: I was not counting her as a half person.

Chris Stadler: Yes. That’s right.

Mike Jones: If she’s listening right now. Well, she’s not listening right now, if she’s listening at some point in the future, which she will not be, she does not waste her time listening to AZ Brandcast.

Chris Stadler: She’s with the Government employee waiting to hear us talk about it.

Mike Jones: No. She’s with two future interns right now. Growing them into fine human beings.

Chris Stadler: Sounds good.

Mike Jones: My son and my daughter.

Kyle McIntosh: Molding minds.

Mike Jones: Yeah, molding mines definitely.

Chris Stadler: Creating tomorrow’s conscious Capitalists.

Mike Jones: Yeah, yeah. We talk a lot about sharing, which is probably more of a Communist view of things. But ultimately in our house we talk about how you guys don’t own anything, Mom and Dad do.

Chris Stadler: It’s only Communist if they make you do it, if you’re forced to share. But you know I guess, in a family-

Mike Jones: That’s a future lesson, ownership. A future lesson on ownership with my kids.

Chris Stadler: All right, but back to Kyle. Enough about my opinions.

Mike Jones: Right.

Chris Stadler: Kyle, what do think? Maybe a couple of companies?

Kyle McIntosh: That are in town doing great things.

Chris Stadler: Yeah.

Kyle McIntosh: There’s a lot of them. I can speak to … The interesting thing is there’s a little cool organization Conscious Capitalism Arizona, I’m on the Board of that. So I can talk about the group of people on the board. Every one of them. I mean [inaudible 00:57:08], WebPt, those are the one’s people might now, or are big enough. What’s interesting is we have people on the board from, an ex-employee from Exxon, and it’s interesting because people have, and again, truth through perception, how do you compare. Whole Foods is kind of the poster company for Conscious Capitalism, because he wrote the book Conscious Capitalism, but forget Whole Foods, how do you compare a grocery store to an oil company, and the positive and negative ramifications of what they’re doing to shareholder, customers, the Earth. And so the easiest way to really boil this down is some change in a positive direction, there attempting to make positive change. So if it’s and oil company to an oil company, can we compare two. Can a cigarette company be a Conscious Capitalist company?
Potentially I could make an argument for it, I thought about this, and I looked through a number of magazines to see how they represent themselves in magazines. The way that American Spirit represents themselves with massive warnings mandated on top of individual company warnings, they put on top of that, to a camel which is A, buried in their website, and hidden text almost, all right I can make an argument just looking how they advertise of who’s doing something more valuable to their end consumer, or driving someone away from potentially be a part of their end consumer.

Chris Stadler: That’s an interesting thought experiment.

Mike Jones: That’s really interesting.

Chris Stadler: Just to take it to the … all right these people basically sell things that are bad for you, really bad for you. Although, I do submit that if you don’t know cigarettes are bad for you right now …

Kyle McIntosh: I come also from a more Libertarian perspective, that it’s your choice, if you’re not harming then make your choice.

Chris Stadler: And nobody appreciates that more than me.

Kyle McIntosh: But at the same time, whether cigarettes, or it’s what’s in our food, or whatever, lying is one thing, but sort of even omission can be worse sometimes, if it’s things that are in our food that are … There are people that don’t know about whatever it is. That’s just microcosm of thinking about business as a whole. And so there’s great companies in Arizona. I’d submit that everyone of the companies that works in our space is a Conscious Capitalist company, whether they’d be able to articulate one word of Conscious Capitalism just because I know that I see how their employees are, and feel about themselves, and they have crappy days sometimes, but they generally are happy feel supported and are in role that they can do something positive on this Earth.

Chris Stadler: Yup.

Kyle McIntosh: I think that companies that are giving that opportunity to people are great companies.

Chris Stadler: That’s awesome. I think I see that too around here.

Mike Jones: I agree. You guys are all waiting, is he gonna conquer? Is he, is he?

Chris Stadler: Like there’s any doubt.

Kyle McIntosh: I agree.

Chris Stadler: Did you get it through the goal post?

Mike Jones: Yeah. I did. No, I’d agree. I agree.

Chris Stadler: I’m gonna give you the honor of asking the final awesome question.

Mike Jones: The final question. All right Kyle. Here’s your moment, your moment to shine. Basically, is there anything specific going on with MAC6, or that you want to plug? And then obviously some way to get in touch with you or the right person, or people for that?

Kyle McIntosh: Sure, to find out.

Mike Jones: To find out more.

Kyle McIntosh: We talked a lot early on about kind of what we do in the spaces we have available. You touched on it I think, the programs that we’ve put together as well to build culture throughout the entire level of the organization, through leadership, through everybody in the organization. Through their values, and do really do some [inaudible 01:01:33] so the culture creates a framework for creating high performing teams that are really doing this Conscious Capitalism, getting to the point where we’re saying we’re accomplishing our mission.
Those are the two sides of what we do. We have programs, we have space. And so we’re trying to build a business and we feel like we’re good at those two things. And so anybody that interested in talking about those two things, taking a tour of the spaces, learning about the programs if you’re stuck and wondering how do I get to that next level of business, I’d love to talk to you.
At the same time, I say MAC6 isn’t MAC6 without the companies in our spaces, and we stand on the shoulders of their greatness. And even just come see if you’re interested in these companies that are working out of these spaces, as well and seeing these communities, we’re doing more coming up here to promote who they are and what they’re doing, beyond just, he come rent a desk for us. So there’s more of story coming out to be told.
MAC6.com is the easiest way to let us know you’re interested and love to even just have a conversation about any of this, or come take or tour, or come work out of our space for a day. Come hang out. We have educational events. I think you said something earlier about collecting places for human beings being an important part of the community, we have a big training room upstairs, where we said when we built out this space, this is going to be a place where people can stand on that soapbox and disagree with other, and have civil disagreements, and arguments, and discussion. So even if you think Conscious Capitalism is ridiculous, and I’m a Socialist, I don’t believe in any of this, and business is awful. Come have that conversation, we’d love to have that conversation.

Chris Stadler: Or maybe you believe in Unconscious Capitalism.

Kyle McIntosh: Unconscious Capitalistic.

Chris Stadler: And you’re like, it’s all about the dollars. We hate people. It’s all about the transactions. Spreadsheets.

Kyle McIntosh: Spreadsheets and controlling people.

Mike Jones: Because spreadsheets are inherently evil.

Chris Stadler: Oh, come on, you know I don’t believe that.

Mike Jones: I know you don’t. I’ve seen your spreadsheets, they’re amazing.

Chris Stadler: Awe, that touches my heart man.

Mike Jones: Yeah, they are.

Chris Stadler: So you’re saying you’ll give people tours?

Kyle McIntosh: Tours and even just work out of the space. MAC6.com is the easiest way to get to us, but what I want is people to come face-to-face. I want to meet people, talk to them, hear their story, hear what they’re up to, and if they find a place to call their business home, then that works out. If we can help you grow your business, that works out. I love hearing people’s stories.

Chris Stadler: So if they come is there a chance that they might have Mike sighting? I feral Mike sighting?

Kyle McIntosh: Wait, ethereal, feral?

Chris Stadler: Will you walk by and do a British voice and describe what’s going on as Mike’s working by himself.

Kyle McIntosh: I will. I will absolutely.

Chris Stadler: Here we see Mike in his natural environment.

Kyle McIntosh: Call now.

Mike Jones: That’s funny.

Chris Stadler: I like nature shows. We should do that. Seriously, let’s talk to the freaking, the people.

Mike Jones: We need and Arizona nature show.

Chris Stadler: A nature show, but walking through the MAC6 doing like documentary wild life documentary. You’d have someone hiding behind the pillar and then running to get … Maybe put out some food in the middle area, where people put food that you can just eat, and then just have someone stalk the food.

Mike Jones: Yeah. You need those big long telescopic lens though. So you’re across the space like 50 feet away, and you’re narrating.

Chris Stadler: The natural habitat of the entrepreneur.

Mike Jones: There’s Chris as he walks up to the humus, oh he dips his spoon into the humus, he puts it on his plate.

Kyle McIntosh: It looks like their collecting around the watering hole.

Mike Jones: Yeah.

Chris Stadler: As they do at 2:00 every afternoon, in the Serengeti of-

Mike Jones: Pretty much that’s the coffee pot. That thing has people at it 24/7.

Kyle McIntosh: That is because of you.

Chris Stadler: Okay, okay so that leads up to, so favorite part, favorite perk of MAC6? Who wants to go first?

Mike Jones: I’ll go first. This podcast room.

Kyle McIntosh: It’s pretty cool.

Mike Jones: Here we are on a podcast, in a room that Kyle made happen, with the help from Sam at Pelican Media.

Kyle McIntosh: Yes.

Mike Jones: Who we should have on the podcast sometime.

Chris Stadler: Sam used to do the documentary.

Kyle McIntosh: Oh, yeah.

Mike Jones: No, this has been-

Chris Stadler: Awesome.

Mike Jones: … This probably one of the … I mean there’s so many great perks. I don’t know if I can stop with podcast room.

Chris Stadler: So, the coffee is awesome. I come in sometimes to beat the traffic, I’m sometimes here at six. So I’m here at six. I just like the coffee is already, [Chrissy 01:06:44] already has that thing cued up usually, or I just fill up the stuff real quick and then I have coffee, and it’s always really good because it’s fresh and comes from a good place.

Mike Jones: Sagebrush Coffee.

Chris Stadler: Sagebrush.

Mike Jones: Down in Chandler Arizona.

Kyle McIntosh: Yes.

Mike Jones: Locally roasted.

Chris Stadler: Indeed delicious. And, the lunches man, five bucks, I’m a cheapskate.

Kyle McIntosh: Whenever there’s Greek food we collect a lot of people for lunch.

Chris Stadler: Greek was so good this week.

Mike Jones: That was this week, yeah, it was good.

Chris Stadler: And then the favorite perk that I imagined is the gym. ‘Cause I haven’t actually used it yet.

Mike Jones: The imagined perk. I love it.

Chris Stadler: It’s like Sting, I don’t really know his music, but the just the fact that he does it. All right Kyle, your turn, perks?

Kyle McIntosh: Well since you gave a couple, I’ll give a couple. One of them is, so over at the Parkland Manufacturing Facility I’m going to attempt to see what percentage of my Christmas shopping can I get done from those companies over there.

Mike Jones: That’s an awesome idea. Just ’cause there’s so much-

Kyle McIntosh: It’s cool stuff, I just thought it would be a cool idea to see. And similarly, I was gonna say my New Year’s resolution perk will be starting to use the gym again.

Chris Stadler: I’d pick a different time then New Year’s though.

Mike Jones: I just want to know if your kids are really into plasma cutters? ‘Cause that would make and awesome Christmas gift.

Chris Stadler: Wait, do they have a water jet there.

Mike Jones: I don’t think there’s a water jet. But one of the companies in there does a lot of work with plasma.

Chris Stadler: I need to cut some AR500.

Mike Jones: Hey good luck with that.

Chris Stadler: Yeah, good luck thanks, that helps a lot.

Mike Jones: No problem anytime.

Chris Stadler: So just to be clear, this is not an add for MAC6, we just love it. It’s a good feeling [crosstalk 01:08:34].

Mike Jones: I know it felt like a giant MAC6 love fest.

Chris Stadler: I know, it was.

Mike Jones: But it’s because we love it here.

Kyle McIntosh: Thanks guys.

Chris Stadler: Just for the record, we’re not getting paid for this podcast, it’s just all from the heart.

Kyle McIntosh: Taftly.com.

Chris Stadler: That’s true yeah.

Mike Jones: If we’re keeping tally that’s the third time we’ve plugged Taftly.com, oh, my goodness.

Chris Stadler: Mike initiated none of it.

Mike Jones: Yeah, thankfully.

Chris Stadler: Again, it’s all from the heart man. This is good, this has just been a love fest, this is awesome, we need to drink whisky more often.

Kyle McIntosh: For sure.

Mike Jones: Can I make one more plug. I want to make one more plug because it’s come up a lot, on this episode with Adam Goodman, and I think it’s worth sharing. A group that’s really considering, if you’re in business, you’re running a business, you own a business, you manage a business, you work somebody who manages a business, come to Conscious Capitalism, the Arizona chapter meets monthly, go check out Consciouscapitalismaz.com, and you can find a lot more about understanding what that means. But basically, it’s like do good business, right? Take care of people, and all the other things Kyle mentioned and unpacked fuller in a great way.

Chris Stadler: We have a lot of ideas on the podcast, but kind of what I think Conscious Capitalism is something we can all kind of buy into from all our political perspective and everything. And I think everybody who’s even been on the show with very different political perspectives, they’re all kind of onboard with that idea. Just like how do we make trade work best for everybody.

Mike Jones: Yeah. I mean it’s not a political mindset, it’s not a political ideology. It’s just a great frame work to look at go, hey, we want to do business from a set of values, we want to do good work and make people’s lives better. How do we do that? Through leadership, through purpose, through taking care of all of the stakeholders and not leaving people out, and through creating a great culture.

Chris Stadler: Even if you’re a Communist, maybe we’re not there yet. Kyle wanted-

Mike Jones: [crosstalk 01:10:48] could be like the second-

Kyle McIntosh: We have collected, and are continuing to collect a group of diverse people that disagree with each other, having a set of values that you run your business through, does not mean you have the same set of values.

Mike Jones: No, no. And I don’t think there’s a single meeting I’ve been to, that I’ve been to of theirs in a chapter where I haven’t had some kind of, yeah, we’re gonna disagree on some points in a conversation. Everyone comes with different perspective, a different … There’s a diversity of perspectives go full circle on this conversation. And that’s one of the things I like about that group so much, is that it’s not just a bunch of neophytes bowing at the same alter of ideology of how to do business, but really people who are like, we all have the same goal, do business well, how do we get there? And everyone has a little different flavor on that, which is really cool, really cool.

Kyle McIntosh: Definitely.

Chris Stadler: I dig it Mike.

Mike Jones: Sorry, I had to do one more plug.

Chris Stadler: This plug episode, and I hope it’s entertaining, I thought it was an interesting conversation.

Mike Jones: I had fun, not least because of the Scotch.

Chris Stadler: No, no indeed.

Mike Jones: Which is gone.

Chris Stadler: That bottle is done.

Mike Jones: All right. Well to wrap up, this is AZ Brandcast with Chris and Mike. Chris tell us what you’re up to and how people can get a hold of you.

Chris Stadler: So I’m Chris Stadler and you can get a hold of me at Chris at Chris@Chrisstadler.com.

Mike Jones: This is Mike Jones, I run Resound a Brand Agency right here in Arizona with an office right out of here with an office in beautiful MAC6, we love it. And you can get a hold of me at Resoundcreative.com, so give us all a shout out.

Chris Stadler: That’s right.

Mike Jones: Thank you Kyle so much for coming on today.

Kyle McIntosh: Thank you guys.

Mike Jones: We had a blast.

Kyle McIntosh: Me too.

Chris Stadler: Yes, we did.

Mike Jones: And we’ll talk to you all next time.

Chris Stadler: Bye everybody.

Mike Jones: Cue the-