00:15 Lisa
Welcome to the Atlanta Startup Podcast. I’m Lisa Calhoun, the host today, and I’m super excited to be interviewing one of Atlanta’s top entrepreneurs and a good friend of mine, Steven Carse with King of Pops.
00:39 Steve
Hey, good to see you.
00:40 Lisa
We’re in Steven’s office, and it is super fun. I mean, he has a rainbow on the whole wall, which is—thank you for posting this in your actual courses.
00:50 Steve
I appreciate it. Good to see you.
00:51 Lisa
Good to see you, too.
00:52 Steve
Fun to be in the office. Haven’t updated it since we moved in, but it’s still looking good.
00:58 Lisa
It’s still looking great. I mean, the worldwide headquarters for King of Pops here on, you know, DeKalb Avenue is quite a destination for me. I really enjoy it.
01:09 Steve
We painted the building a couple of years after we got it, and more people asked us then if we had purchased the building than when we actually purchased it, because it was this nondescript beige color with fences around it. Then we got a grant from the façade improvement grant, so we were able to make it fuchsia and plant some trees and get rid of the fences. I think it looks at least better.
01:35 Lisa
The artwork is great, and some of the planting is really beautiful, like the bottlebrush and things like that. I really like it. So what’s your favorite flavor this month as we do this interview here in June.
01:47 Steve
So we did a road trip campaign this year where we are experiencing flavors from across, really, the South. My favorite that we created—I can’t release all of them quite yet—but we have a Mango Mojito one that is very good when it’s this heat dome–level weather that they say we’re in. New word that I’m learning, but just very hot out. So it’s a super refreshing one. So I’ll go with that Mango Mojito.
02:17 Lisa
Where can people get King of Pops?
02:19 Steve
That’s a great question. We’re in mainly pushcarts around the South. We’re in a select number of independent grocers, and then we’re in Whole Foods and Fresh Market. But those are like the headlines—when people say Whole Foods and Fresh Market and things like that, people usually write that down and forget everything else. But we’re kind of the inverse. Like, 95% of our sales are happening out of little pushcarts that are pop-up events, that type of thing. You really have to either go to our website to see where they are or follow us or a franchisee on Instagram.
02:54 Lisa
Cool. And you’ve still got a good catering business too, right?
02:56 Steve
Catering business is about—yeah, it’s over half. It’s almost—almost 60% of our sales are us going to, on the small end, weddings or graduation parties. On the large end, corporate activations where they’re trying to put a custom wrapper with a certain flair in front of a customer in a fun way. So we’ve done stuff with CeraVe, which is kind of random. I had an all-natural bug spray company reach out to me to see if I could make a pop with their bug spray. That was kind of a fun one to explore. Their whole shtick was like, it’s definitely safe to eat. I was like, I don’t know, we might make this as the white label opportunity, but I don’t think we’ll —put our name on it.
03:38 Lisa
Citronella flavor.
03:40 Steve
Exactly. Yeah. Their claim was that a lot of the ingredients are natural flavors, and we’ve been known to make some lemongrass flavors.
03:50 Lisa
Absolutely.
03:51 Steve
There we go.
03:53 Lisa
Coconut?
03:54 Steve
Yeah. Yeah. It’s definitely that time of year where we cannot make enough pops. We’re trying to both get the pops cranked out, get some new flavors cranked out, and then help people find them. Which is—it seems like we’d have figured it out 15 years in, and we’ve figured out a lot of things, but it’s still a challenge.
04:13 Lisa
You know, I’m going to hold the thought of asking you about your book because I know that’s new too. But because you just talked about, you know, we could have figured it out 15 years ago maybe—there’s so much change in the world, right? I mean, right now we’re even in a period where most people would say we’re kind of at hyper-change. And could the pace of change continue faster? I was wondering what things you believed 15 years ago when you started this that possibly you don’t believe anymore. And that’s—not a wrong or right question—it’s more like just kind of the evolution of you as an entrepreneur and someone running a business these days.
04:52 Steve
Gosh. I mean, I think the things that I think are maybe—they feel like getting older and being jaded—and so I almost hesitate to say them out loud. But I think some of the harder truths of running a business have proved to be true, that in my early days, I wanted to believe were not. So that might just be like…
05:14 Lisa
Yeah.
05:15 Steve
I wanted this place to be the most important thing for everybody that worked here.
05:20 Lisa
Yeah.
05:21 Steve
And I think that really inspired what a lot of people felt about King of Pops. It was really hard on me because it might have been that for 50% of people, but there’s another 50% of people that this was just a job.
05:36 Lisa
Yeah.
05:37 Steve
And for half of my time doing this, I was not okay with that. I was like, “This can’t just be that.” So I think I’ve realized it’s okay for somebody to be making pops or selling pops and that just to be a job. And I’m kind of at peace with that. So that’s one thing.
05:57 Lisa
You let that go.
05:58 Steve
I kind of let it go. Yeah.
05:59 Lisa
Yeah.
06:00 Steve
I think that’s been healthy. And I think there are people that love it just as much as in the early days, but there’s also people that like it…
06:09 Lisa
They’re on their own journey. It’s just a part of it.
06:12 Steve
Yeah. And so that’s been—that’s been one learning. I mean, I think a bit more tactical one is like, revenue versus profit versus cash has been—I’m still learning.
06:26 Lisa
Yes.
06:26 Steve
I’m still learning that lesson. But we’ll talk about it a little later. We exited a distribution company where, really, our unfamiliarity or discomfort with that compared to the popsicle business—it’s basically the opposite as far as margins and cash flow in a lot of ways—was a real challenge for us to get to know. But learning those lessons, I think, is going to help us run a better business for King of Pops. I think in the early days, I just thought mainly revenue, and then profit kind of matters. Fifteen years later, I think I’m realizing that cash flow matters as well. Seems like I could have learned that faster.
07:19 Lisa
Cash flow is key at King of Pops, I guess.
07:25 Steve
I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m leading the company in that way, but I need to think about it more. I’m thinking about it. Let’s just put it there. I don’t know if I’ll say it’s key quite yet.
07:34 Lisa
Oh, yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, your brand has a lot to do with fun, enjoyment, and I think of it as also so full of sensations. I always look forward to the flavors, and I’m never disappointed. And there are always flavors that I never thought I would want to try, and then I’m like, “Who thought of that? Before that’s gone, I need that one.”
07:57 Steve
Scarcity is an interesting part of our business. That’s like a happy mistake. It started out of going to farmers markets and having—you know, they had three boxes of mangoes—or that’s not a good example—three boxes of blackberries, and then figuring out what we’re going to do with that when we get home.
08:13 Lisa
Yeah.
08:13 Steve
And now it’s kind of morphed into figuring out how to do that at a larger scale. We’ve added franchisees to the mix, and this has been a really fun challenge—but a hard challenge—in that in order for there to be scarcity in a lot of flavors, you just have to constantly be running out of flavors. And it’s like, “But that flavor is selling so well. Can’t we just have it forever?” I’m like, “Yeah, we could… miss this and this.”
08:41 Lisa
Yeah.
08:42 Steve
So it’s been interesting to manage that. I think our customers feel that too. There’s a tech solution for us to be able to show where each flavor is at each time that we’ve not figured out. I think it will get easier and easier over time, but we haven’t invested in it or done it. But it is kind of like that mystery that you spoke to.
09:07 Lisa
Like, what a hack.
09:09 Steve
What the heck’s gonna be there?
09:10 Lisa
Check in. Exactly.
09:11 Steve
So yeah, it’s—I don’t know. It’s an unintentional part of our business that has probably helped and hurt us in different ways.
09:19 Lisa
One of the—you’ve always been an innovator around your business. I mean, I think that you’re just a natural innovator. And so I remember—it’s been a few years now—but you were exploring growing some of your own flavors. Any lessons learned from some of those experiments?
09:33 Steve
Yeah, we grow produce still at King of Crops. So that’s still there. You know, COVID was not the best for a lot of businesses, including the popsicle business. So our farm team strategy has changed, and now we basically have a $1-a-month lease with a guy that’s a great farmer, and we buy the produce from him. So we’ve got blackberries, blueberries, muscadines. And yeah, farming’s just hard. Like, yeah, it is expensive. If you see it and you’re connected with it—like, if I go out there and eat those blackberries, to me, they’re like, “Oh my gosh, so much better than any other blackberry.” Is that the actual truth? If I were to have a panel of people tasting those, they’re probably pretty good blackberries, but not worth 2 or 3x the cost for a lot of people.
10:24 Steve
So it’s really about the story. I think it plays into that a lot—of, like, we care about these things. I think you can observe that. One thing that we’ve never told people, because it’s not true, is that we’re organic. Like, we use a ton of organic ingredients—maybe even majority. But to be certified organic, you have to be obviously using all organic and all XYZ. In our hierarchy, first thing is delicious, second is local, and then third is organic. Like, that’s not—it’s not the highest on our totem pole at this point. But yeah, I don’t really know where we’re going with that, but…
10:58 Lisa
No, that’s really cool. Like, local being important—I think that really matters a lot.
11:02 Steve
Yeah.
11:02 Lisa
You know, to Atlanta, to Georgia. And Georgia grows so many great crops, so it’s nice to know that they’re finding their way in.
11:09 Steve
Oh yes. Oh yeah.
11:10 Lisa
Yeah. So you’ve talked about some of the hard things, and yet I know this book—which I really enjoyed reading—that just came out, Work Is Fun… First off, how did you sit down and write a book? Let’s get real. That’s a lot of work—a heavy lift. It’s beautifully written. It’s easy to read. I really enjoyed it.
11:31 Steve
Yeah. I mean, the process for me was 5 a.m.—I’m going to have two hours by myself—and wrote from 5 to 7. Took me about a year and a half to write it. At the end of that period, my wife was pregnant with our second kid. So I had a very good deadline. You don’t know the exact deadline, but it was going to be somewhere between eight and nine months. So that really pushed me to ship. I’m actually the opposite—I think a lot of people have this tendency to hold on to things and be perfectionists.
12:03 Lisa
Yeah.
12:03 Steve
I have the opposite problem, in that sometimes I will ship things that aren’t ready and too soon. So I was really wary of that. But having—I had a writing coach, and then a legitimate publisher—it helped make sure the quality was there. Yeah. So I mean, I had written a lot of the ideas over several years. I compiled them over a little over a year, and it’s just 100% before work. Seven was kind of when my daughter was waking up. I was in charge of that. So—it’s amazing—like 5 a.m. pre-kids, I didn’t do much. I slept. Now it’s like my power two hours. I still do that. And I have a—I’ve got, like, my own little ChatGPT coach that’s like, “Okay, what am I going to do during my focus block? Does this count?” And it’ll kind of advise me, like, “You’re not really doing CEO work. Anyone could do that.” It’s usually actually positive. But that’s my aspiration for it—to be like, no, this is the thing that you need to do while you’re not interrupted.
13:16 Lisa
All right, I want to get back to the book, but you know I love AI.
13:20 Steve
Yeah. Yeah.
13:21 Lisa
And so what do you mean you have a ChatGPT coach? Did you build a project or a custom GPT?
13:26 Steve
Yeah, just like with authors and thinkers that I appreciate—that have either built businesses that I want to emulate or have talked about things in ways… I think I’ve actually heard that this is going to be problematic in some ways, because it could narrow our thinking. I think a lot of people will end up doing this because it’s so effective. It’s like, “What would [blank] person do?”
13:51 Lisa
Oh, absolutely.
13:52 Steve
So you want to make sure you’re somehow throwing in some variety. But it’s hard.
13:55 Lisa
I have very often gone to therapy when I need therapy. I’m a taker of therapy, but I haven’t been to a therapist in a while. I love ChatGPT because I have a GPT that’s like, “What would Tara Brach say?”
14:09 Steve
Yeah.
14:10 Lisa
She’s the author of Radical Acceptance, and that tends to be some of my frontier issues around, you know—let go, accept things like that. And so it’s helpful. It’s awesome.
14:19 Steve
It’s so helpful. Yeah. So I mean, that’s been powerful for me. I mean, a lot of times I know, but still the act of writing is helpful. Even if you’re just writing a prompt, you can kind of guess what it’s going to say. But then it does say it—or it says something that surprises you, or it adds one other detail that you want to take into consideration. So that’s been really helpful. And then the other thing on AI that just popped into my mind about this is like—I wrote a book, I would think, as the last period where, like… I don’t know, I guess it’s going to continue.
14:54 Steve
It existed.
14:57 Lisa
Right.
14:57 Steve
And, like, it could do it, but it just wasn’t good enough.
15:00 Lisa
Right.
15:00 Steve
And I think that’s going to be so challenging for writers of my caliber, who are not professional writers, that want to put out something—to still… I don’t know that you shouldn’t use it or should use it—but to put the same amount of time into thinking about what you want to say. That’s going to be—I think, just no matter how you believe—positive, negative, etc., about AI, I think that humans are lazy, and that’s going to happen. At least a percentage of people. There will still be people that do all of the things, and there will be people that somehow have some checker that says, “AI didn’t touch any of this.” But, you know, the percentage, at least, of content put out is going to be just a curve of influence in people, I’m sure.
15:52 Lisa
You know, I completely agree, and that’s what we see at Valor too. But on the other hand, humanity—and our culture past our lifetimes—has been on this curve where what we produced has been going up and up since, you know, clay tablets. That wasn’t a good thing, and so it wasn’t—there wasn’t a lot of replication.
16:08 Steve
I’m not saying—sure. I didn’t think it’s a bad thing. I just think it was interesting for me to think about it like—it’s like writing on a typewriter or handwriting something. So, you know…
16:25 Lisa
Right.
16:25 Steve
I don’t do that. So—not as good as when the people that wrote whatever Meditations…
16:29 Lisa
You know what, I think that kind of the touch of the author—the fact that you did the critical thinking to be able to produce a book-length piece about something that’s passionate to you and share it with the world—that is never going to go out of style. And I don’t think AI can compete with it, because even if AI is smarter than us, and AGI happens, we will still want to hear from people about the people’s experience. And so it’s still going to be a rare skill to distill that in a way that others can understand. Speaking of Work Is Fun, you mentioned seven kind of frames that people need to think about.
17:08 Steve
Yeah.
17:09 Lisa
What do you think—if I don’t want to push you into a false “most important one”—is there one that’s really very foundational for you?
17:17 Steve
I think for me, the one that starts the book is just story. Thinking about your life—and in the context of the book, your work life—as a story, and being a bit intentional about it. I think people are hesitant to write a vision about their work life because it might not happen. And that’s probably true. It’s probably not going to happen the way that you write it out. But the opposite is to not write it out and just kind of end up wherever it comes…
17:48 Lisa
Yeah.
17:48 Steve
…wherever you end up. So, I mean, we’re in this weird process with our company vision, which is kind of the same idea but putting it in the context of your company, where we wrote the 2030 vision.
17:58 Lisa
Yes.
17:59 Steve
It’s kind of getting closer. We wrote it over a decade ago now. And it’s like—it’s just wrong. It’s wrong. But there is a sentiment to it, and a heartbeat to it, and a feeling of it that—when I read it to our franchisees during training or in orientation—like, yeah, I’m like, “A third to half of this stuff is just absolutely—there’s no way it’s going to happen in five years,” and we can kind of already…
18:25 Lisa
Some we don’t even want to happen.
18:26 Steve
We don’t want to happen anymore. Yeah. Like, it says we’re going to own multiple farms—like, we’re definitely not going to own multiple farms. That’s not going to work for our business. But talking about that and saying that out loud still implies something about what we were thinking then that’s still helpful for the future.
18:44 Lisa
I think the very process of crystallizing your vision into something you can share with others is always…
18:49 Steve
…is worthwhile.
18:50 Lisa
I mean, you call it story, but even—you’re making me think about the budgeting process we go through with Valor and seed rounds. We’re usually working with a first-time founder. That first-time founder almost always has some degree of very natural resistance to budgeting. I have natural resistance to budgeting too. I mean, it’s just not fun. But when you budget what’s going to happen, it’s really just putting dollars to your plan.
19:15 Steve
Yeah.
19:15 Lisa
So let’s not focus on the numbers—let’s focus on the plans, and then the numbers. With the plans, it’s always not going to be the way you thought, but by seeing it and crystallizing it, you can talk to your team and say, “Here’s the adjustment we’re making.” And it just becomes so much easier. Right?
19:34 Steve
And I think more fun. I think—from the book—it’s also more fun. Like, without that context, a strategic plan of hitting this number of sales and all that—those can be fun goals, but it’s not the fulfilling type goal that will make you like it for years. In my instance and time—and I think the last one, which is partly here—“These Are the Good Old Days,” is really about patience and understanding that the part of the story that you are at right now is good. And the time when you get to where you are—or don’t get to where you are—is going to feel about the same.
20:18 Steve
So I always feel a little awkward saying, “These are the good old days,” out loud. And I always think, like, it’s going to be okay to say, like, a month or three. I’m like, okay, it’s two years later. It still feels like the world has so much bad, terrible stuff that this is not a true statement for the world at large. It’s a statement for yourself. Like, for me—I’ve got a one-year-old and a three-year-old, and I’ve got a business that I like, and things are good. Right?
20:49 Lisa
Yeah.
20:50 Steve
And I could say, like, also—I’m waking up at 4:15 because my son still doesn’t sleep through the night and he’s 15 months old. And my daughter is throwing tantrums. And the business is not performing as well as we’d like. I could look at the same— I think it’s just a perspective. The whole book is really just a perspective of, like, you’re going to spend a lot of time in this thing called work. You probably have to do it—most of us have to do it. Some of us do it just because we still love it and we could not do it. But the vast majority of people have to do it. You should put in an effort to figure out how to enjoy it. And you might not even succeed, but you should put in the effort.
21:32 Steve
Like, if you’re not putting in the effort to enjoy it, then—like… I don’t know, a different way to say it—this sounds old-fashioned, but shame on you.
21:39 Lisa
Yeah. I love the way you put it in the book—that you have a relationship with work. And you use that word, “relationship,” and it’s really pretty undeniable for most of us. So you work on your family relationship, you work on your fun—like, work on your work.
21:58 Steve
Yeah. So that’s been—I mean, that’s been cool. I mean, I think all of these things are also, like, the power of writing a book. You know, will this be a huge success, etc.? I think it’s going to be an important book for the King of Pops community and a small community, but also for myself. Like, yeah, I thought a lot about this. Now I wrote it down—not that far—and I’m sure in 20 years, I’ll look back and be like, “This was a silly thing that you wrote.” But right now I’m still feeling pretty good about everything, which I think is an accomplishment in its own right. Something made it out into the world and I still feel good about the message in there.
22:36 Lisa
Yeah. I was talking to a founder of a company earlier today, and he’s like, “So what about, you know, when you make mistakes—like hiring badly?” I was like, “Hey, who says that’s even a mistake?” Because people have to learn.
22:51 Steve
Yeah.
22:51 Lisa
So you hire the best you can, right? And then you learn that you could do differently now—and then you do differently. But you have to learn.
23:01 Steve
Yeah.
23:01 Lisa
And so one of the things I love about the way you’ve said, “These are the good old days,” is it was one of the first things I ever heard you say. Yeah, it’s a classic Steven Karst framing—that from a perspective of yourself in 10 years looking back, there’s always going to be some golden light. And so, find your golden light in the present. Yeah, I really like it.
23:24 Steve
It’s hard. I’m certainly not accomplishing that all the time, but I think I’m trying. I think that’s the—
23:31 Lisa
Yeah, that’s the fun part. I want to ask you about not just your growing family that I get to see riding the BeltLine and biking—lots of great bike lessons. They’re coming along so well.
23:44 Steve
Kind of safe, kind of not safe. Debatable.
23:46 Lisa
It’s a kid—you know, can’t be perfectly safe. But what about working with family? So, you know, you have the opportunity and have worked with Nick really since the very early days of Pops. What’s it like to work with your brother? What would you say to people who are considering working with family?
24:03 Steve
I think, you know, we’re the exception, right? I think you read blogs or hear things or news stories—it’s typically negative.
24:12 Lisa
The media really hates working with family. But as you know, I work with my husband. And I mean, to me, it’s an ideal life.
24:20 Steve
Yeah, I think it’s ideal. I mean, I think—for me, it’s been, you know, great for talent reasons and for trust reasons—and really, like, just for kind of the fun reasons. But it’s been cool. Like, I mean, we can—in a single breath—he has a young family now as well—but in a single breath, we can be going from, like, “Are you going to be at swim lessons today?” “Did you see that report?” “What do you think of it?” and “What flavor?” We can context-switch in a single paragraph.
24:55 Lisa
Yes.
24:56 Steve
And then other people will just be—
24:57 Lisa
Like, “I do that all the time.”
24:59 Steve
It’s that—I love that.
25:00 Lisa
I do too. What was—you actually used a phrase in your book, and I apologize I don’t remember—but it was work, not balance…
25:08 Steve
Blend. Work–life blend.
25:09 Lisa
Work–life blend.
25:10 Steve
Yes.
25:11 Lisa
It’s working with family. I’m sure, you know, when it doesn’t work out, it is bad. But that hasn’t been my experience. And there is an amazing blend.
25:22 Steve
Yeah. I think the thing that—and I’d be interested to hear more about how you guys work together. Our word of… interesting point, because Nick built P10 for a decade, basically. That was his focus. And I think he was always—
25:36 Lisa
And for our listeners that don’t know, P10 is a delivery company recently sold.
25:41 Steve
It’s a food distribution company that was focused on, like, local—I kind of would call it like the minor leagues of food distribution. So, like, they start with us, then they get to Sysco or US Foods or UNFI or something. And that’s probably a flaw with our business model, because we’re nice guys. We didn’t have contracts, so our best suppliers kept eventually leaving us.
26:03 Lisa
Oh.
26:04 Steve
Needless to say, we sold it to a company that has all of those exclusive contracts and all those types of things, and they’re just more—a little bit more sophisticated in that way. But for 10 years, that was mainly his focus, and mine was more on King of Pops. And there’s a lot of overlap in the operational stuff. He’s a little bit like—he has more of the COO title—but that was a nice separation. And now we’re at this period—that was in February when that company was acquired—where we’re now more closely working together again. And it is like—we just need to kind of rethink our org chart a little bit. But figuring that out and making sure we kind of nail it—maybe “nail it” is the wrong word—but at least put some thought into it.
26:52 Steve
Yes, but how do you guys—
26:54 Lisa
Well, you know, we met in EO, which is how you and I met. So a great place to meet entrepreneurs. So Jean-Luc built a software development business to just under a hundred people. I was working in my business, which was a lot smaller. I really looked up to his entrepreneurship. And he sold his business, and really, I didn’t think he would be joining mine per se—I really didn’t. And that wasn’t so much a natural fit. His experience was with software development. I was running a marketing firm primarily for software companies. So I’d actually tried to call on him—didn’t win the business. But, you know, it was a much bigger win overall. So it all works out, you know?
27:43 Lisa
But then, when I started the venture capital firm, suddenly we were amazingly complementary. And that wasn’t in my design.
27:49 Lisa
I started the VC firm for completely other reasons. But as a software developer, I’d come to him for diligence. It became super natural that he would talk to the CTOs. And at first, I’m like, “Well, do you know a developer that’s really good at this?” And he’s like, “Yeah, I’m one of the best at that.”
28:06 Lisa
“Thanks, honey.” Like, okay, well, what’s your opinion? And so over the last almost decade now, he’s worked his way into being essentially the head of our AI diligence and expertise. So much so that he’s built our infrastructure software—mostly AI—and some of the things Valor’s known for, like VIC, an AI that can diligence your deck, our Salesforce infrastructure—which, you know, he’s an Apex coder. All of that he has built or maintains…
28:36 Steve
Yeah.
28:36 Lisa
…and so he’s been able to create an environment for us that just really helps our team be hyper-productive…
28:43 Steve
Yeah.
28:43 Lisa
…and really is helpful to our founders in a very different way. So, sort of natural. I mean, not forced—“How do we fit this in?”
28:52 Steve
Sure.
28:53 Lisa
And the division of responsibilities is crystal clear. You have all kinds of business needs or compliance issues, or I want this to work this way. But then he’s really capable of saying, “Well, this is how we could do it in code.” And because I’ve worked in tech before—in my own business—I don’t even know if I ever even told you this, but I used to do requirements gathering and project management for IT departments. Like, I worked for UPS’s IT department there at Glenlake. So I’m used to structuring things for developers to develop and then checking it and saying, “Is that good?”
29:28 Steve
It’s all been getting to this point.
29:30 Lisa
I know. So it’s been so—I mean, if we did the same things, it would not work, I’m sure. But we’re just really complementary, and so that’s been super fun for us.
29:43 Steve
Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting—the brother relationship and significant other relationship—different things, the same. I mean, it makes me think about working with Nancy.
29:53 Lisa
Yes.
29:53 Steve
And I think we would work well together. Maybe not work well together. I don’t really know, and I don’t think it’ll ever happen, because she’s a scientist and all that. But we definitely—
30:00 Lisa
But you’re very different.
30:01 Steve
We’re very different. When we talk about work, I think it’s a perspective that is appreciated and helpful. And I think, you know, that’s—in a similar way—it’s fun to be able to… You know, I know 2% of the dynamics of what all is going on over there, but sometimes that very distant perspective can even be helpful in a different way because…
30:29 Lisa
Absolutely.
30:29 Steve
…you don’t know enough to say something smart, so you kind of just say something. And maybe she’s like, “Okay, I’m kind of not listening to that,” or it’s a thought she wouldn’t have thought of. So that’s been cool. And obviously, vice versa. She’s got—
30:43 Lisa
There’s a frame of thinking that I found out recently—I went to one of Chris Conley’s kind of weeklong retreats. It was for entrepreneurs. And I learned this framework called “appreciative inquiry.” And it’s what you use—you can use it intentionally when you know a lot about something—but you just… It’s even better when you don’t know a lot about something, because then you ask honest questions, and that actually frees the other person…
31:12 Steve
Yeah.
31:13 Lisa
…to spark fresh.
31:15 Steve
Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it.
31:16 Lisa
Yeah.
31:17 Steve
When we’re at our best, that’s what we’re doing. And sometimes, like, you know—yeah, the other person’s had a long day, and you come home and you kind of want that, and they’re watching a TV show…
31:26 Lisa
Completely. Yeah, exactly.
31:28 Steve
And I put my headphones back in.
31:29 Lisa
I’m in the tub with the book. I’m Kindle—you know, like, getting in the tub, I’m with my Kindle now.
31:35 Steve
We need to respect those context clues, I guess, too.
31:38 Lisa
Absolutely. So getting back to the book, you mentioned that a lot of people—and I think this is truer now, even though when you wrote it a year ago—they hate work. Work is maybe scary. People feel they’re going to be disrupted by AI. They don’t trust the system. I think the system has abused trust in a lot of ways. And so what—I won’t repeat what you said—what do you say to those people? Because your book really has a strong message for people stuck like that. And you related it to your own experience working for AIG.
32:15 Steve
I think there’s a handful of different ways to think about it. I think there are two parts that come to mind for me right now. Having your work be enjoyable has to be something you’re receptive to, and then the place you work—and the employer—likely needs to be receptive to it. So if you’re not receptive to it and they are—or vice versa—it’s not a 50% relationship, it’s a 100% relationship. Both people have to be doing it. So I think that is one thing that comes to mind that I think—at least when I’m thinking about AIG—that I know I was not doing at that point in my life. I had acknowledged that up until that point…
33:00 Steve
So my brief story was like, you know, I started some silly businesses in high school that were fun to me—getting frisbees out of ponds and reselling them on eBay, refereeing soccer games, and then becoming a journalist. Hitting this point that I think a lot of people hit in their… maybe this age is shifting, but for me it was like 25, where I’m like, “Okay, actually, this isn’t grown-up life. I need to go make more money.” And when I did that, I gave up on the idea that work could be fun, which had been kind of a thesis of mine. That’s why I chose what I majored in and all of that.
33:40 Steve
I wasn’t making as much money as my friends were, and things were not happening as quickly as I wanted, until all of a sudden I’m like, “Okay, I was wrong. Let’s just go to work.” I think that’s where a lot of people end.
33:51 Lisa
You’re like, “I’m gonna be a man. I’m gonna just take my stuff.”
33:54 Steve
I gotta go provide. Yeah. Even though it’s just for myself. But even so. And so the—I think the way I got lucky is I went—I did that. I did not even give myself a chance to enjoy work. I mocked the idea of enjoying work. I had nights and weekends. I enjoyed them. I went on great vacations. That was what I thought life was going to be. And I got laid off. And I got laid off, like, “Okay, let’s give this fun thing one last gasp.” And so I started King of Pops. And, I mean, plenty of parts of it have not been fun, but overall, it’s been a lot of fun. I think I had that in mind, in my heart, when we started it. And it’s something that is not—it’s not a 100% success all of the time.
34:46 Steve
You know, you walk in—I think you probably got greeted with a smile today. But there’d be plenty of days when you come in and people will be like, “Ugh,” you know—it’s just…
34:54 Lisa
Yeah, it’s hard to run a business.
34:56 Steve
But I’m not sure—that’s what came to mind. I’m not sure if there’s a different… There are a few different parts of the book I’d probably relate to that. I don’t know if there’s anything…
35:02 Lisa
Yeah, I think your point—that people have to be willing to work on that relationship. It’s kind of like if you want any kind of a good relationship with your children, your parents, your partner—it’s the… the first moments of it—there might be some romance when you have your newborn, some romance when you have your new boyfriend—it’s going to develop into some level of commitment.
35:25 Steve
Yep.
35:26 Lisa
Yeah. So maybe a good place to kind of round the conversation out is—you talk about the discipline of moving on even when you’re having a good time. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about that. That’s a totally original idea. Can I get you to share more about that?
35:46 Steve
Oh, I just have this belief that there’s this part of your brain that is only going to get to enjoy things a certain amount. It’s just a seesaw balance, if you will. And you don’t really get to cheat it. People can take drugs, and then the other side of it is they’ve got a huge… drugs. You’ve got all the things. So, I mean, I think there’s this skill—which you never master—of leaving at the right time. For me, that’s at work. Like, you know, I had a decade where I worked 80–100 hours—proudly, happily—thought that’s kind of what you had to do. And I’ve now got a period where, like, at 5, 5:30, I really want to keep working. Like, that’s what I want to do.
36:39 Lisa
Well, you’ve been up since 4. “I just want to keep working.”
36:43 Steve
I want to finish what I’m doing, and I can’t actually.
36:45 Lisa
Right.
36:47 Steve
And I know that I need to just leave. And that’s still hard for me. But I do leave. I’ve kind of committed to something similar to that.
36:56 Lisa
I mean, it’s never done. And it is fun. But I now have, like you—and it took me a while to get there—but I have other fun in my life. Work used to be my only fun. It really was.
37:11 Steve
Yeah. And you have to have that. Yeah. So you have a thing that you’re going to go do—hopefully it’s fun too—but that’s going to make, like, when you get back in it, whether it’s 5 or 7 or 9 or noon—whatever time you start work—you get back in, you get that little rush. I mean, it sounds so…
37:28 Lisa
How do you make yourself put it down? What do you say to yourself? What is the—if you don’t mind—what’s the internal Steve Karst? You’re here. It’s 5 o’clock today. You’re at that desk right over there that we’re looking at, and there’s this very cool thing that you could get done if you just stayed another 20 minutes. Yeah, but you don’t.
37:46 Steve
Well, I actually—in my mind—I have to be on my commitment to be on the 5:30. So at a certain point, like, things start falling apart in life, which—that’s a pretty… I’m adjusted enough to know that the consequence of that is not worth me staying. But I do say at five—at five exactly—I say, “Is what I’m doing super important that I need to work on for the next 30 minutes? Or should I go?”
38:16 Lisa
Yeah.
38:16 Steve
And that’s like my little timer. And timers, like in parenting now—I’ve brought it up way too many times—but like, if you physically—if you say five minutes versus if you start your timer and show your kid like, “Here’s my five-minute timer. We’re leaving the playground when this beeps,” versus if I just say, “In five minutes, we’re leaving the playground…”
38:35 Lisa
From fun to fun.
38:36 Steve
Now, I guess so. I mean, I don’t know if they think bath time and dinner is fun yet. We need to work on that. We need to work on their perspectives. But we’ll get there.
There’s one thing that I think—I was in my mind—that I think is worth relating. I don’t know how it comes back to this, but at the part of enjoying work and it being fun and being a two-way street—like I was talking about—I think it’s important to say, like, corporate America is not really the problem. I think there are great bosses. There are great teams within large organizations. There’s great—a lot of purpose. There are a lot of things.
39:15 Steve
So it was me, at my stage, that was not receptive to figuring out what was going on there. Finding out what are the cool things that the company is doing for, like, you know, positive world impact. I’m sure those things existed. I didn’t even begin to investigate it. And so I think the message in the book, I hope, is—each section ends with “If it’s up to you.” And it’s not up to you. For most people, it’s not up to you. And I hope the message does not come across as, like, “Everyone go start your equivalent of a popsicle company,” because I don’t think that’s the right choice for most people. And I also think it’s the riskier path.
40:08 Steve
There’s probably something good where you are, I hope—that’s the actual message. But my story that has been assigned to me—of getting laid off and starting a business—it makes it seem like the perspective is “ditch corporate America and do your own path,” and that’s kind of not the message that I want. I’m trying to kind of exit…
40:27 Lisa
That sort of “lean into your…”
40:30 Steve
Yeah. “Lean into your room.” Yeah. But kind of like—it could be fun. Yeah. It should be fun. I think the book title should have actually been—or a more accurate title would be—Work Should Be Fun.
40:44 Lisa
Yeah.
40:45 Steve
And I think I like the title a lot in most ways. And, you know, book titles are supposed to be somewhat provocative, so I think it is that. But it also is a—it’s too much of an internal eye-roll for a lot of people. I don’t know. I think I just want to make sure I’m saying that enough times out loud to whoever is listening—it isn’t about anything other than thinking about where you are spending your time and how to enjoy that time. It doesn’t have to really apply to work, but…
41:18 Lisa
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. That really resonates. I mean, it’s a lot about personal accountability for your own enjoyment of your life—this one precious life.
41:28 Steve
Yeah.
41:29 Lisa
Yeah. It’s a beautiful book. I hope people read it. There’ll be a link in the show notes. Promote it on social media. While we’re in the business of talking about what’s cool ahead—are there any events that we should talk about? This will drop basically July 4th. So looking at the back half of the year, is there anything people should be focusing on with King of Pops that they should know?
41:52 Steve
Well, we’ve got yoga going on. So if you want to do some free yoga with pops, that still exists. It’s like—we’re not letting go of things that we’ve done for a long time. So check out our website if you feel like doing some morning yoga on Saturdays with some other people. Yeah, I mean, we’ve got a lot of great stuff happening. I think—nothing is standing out for late July for me. July’s a weird month in Atlanta. It’s like… it’s incredibly hot. So in the festival world, it actually is an understandable dip. And late August, when school starts back up, we see an increase in our business. So we’ve got a lot of stuff happening in the fall. July is just kind of like, you know, find some air conditioning and lay back.
42:43 Steve
Try to stay alive.
42:44 Lisa
Yeah. Keep the water on the garden.
42:46 Steve
But yeah, I mean…
42:48 Lisa
So let me ask you about—you started this a little bit before we turned on the camera while I was still fussing with things—you were like, “You know, I think I’m just really focusing on simplifying.”
42:57 Steve
Yes.
42:58 Lisa
Yeah. And I wonder, do you have a thing you—how do you… how are you simplifying? Because your business is, in many ways, growing. You’ve got new franchisees. People are signing up to be a part of it.
43:12 Steve
Yeah. I think the idea would be—the prongs of the business are being decreased.
43:19 Lisa
Okay.
43:20 Steve
We have created a very cool business that has a lot of—like, you know, the farm is a cool story. To be able to grow your ingredients. And then the compost—CompostNow—is taking the food waste back to our farm. And like, that is a great story. And the food distribution company made sense because we were trying to distribute our product around town. And we talked about, like, lessons learned—I think one of them is, like, maybe we don’t need to own everything. Maybe sometimes just let capitalism do its thing and pay the person that is an expert at it instead of doing it ourselves.
44:08 Steve
So what we’ve gotten really good at is a very specific thing: taking pushcarts to events and, in a pleasant way, handing them out. So we’re really just trying to lean into that very simple idea and do that more widely.
44:14 Lisa
It’s an iconic experience. I mean, I’ll be walking in Charleston or, you know, anywhere almost in the South, see the rainbow umbrella, and if it isn’t King of Pops, I’m like, “Oh, yeah. No. Yeah. Okay.”
44:25 Steve
“I wanted a pop!” Rainbow umbrella.
44:29 Lisa
But yours is very special.
44:31 Steve
We have a special one. One of my favorite rainbow umbrella stories is—I weirdly have people that work as slingers now that were our original customers. But young kids that are in, like, the 3 to 5 age group that are used to seeing the rainbow umbrella and associating it with popsicles…
44:48 Lisa
Yes.
44:48 Steve
…and then going to the beach for, like, the first time as a conscious kind of human—they’re like, “There are 40 rainbow umbrellas here, and zero of them are selling popsicles right now. The world is letting me down.” That’s a fun one to, like…
45:01 Lisa
It’s super fun.
45:02 Steve
Yeah.
45:03 Lisa
Well, thanks for your time. It’s been great talking with you and catching up.
45:06 Steve
Yeah. Have a great day.
45:08 Lisa
You too.
Thanks for being a part of the community of courage by listening to the visionary founders and investors on the Atlanta Startup Podcast. Subscribe now so you don’t miss a single episode of the over 200 investors and founders sharing their insider tips and secrets to growth. Our regular listeners tell us we’re the briefing room for the innovation economy in the fastest-growing region of the country, the South –and when you subscribe, you become part of the inside circle.
The Atlanta Startup Podcast is proudly hosted by Valor VC. Valor is a venture capital firm that leads seed rounds in AI and B2B SaaS startups. If you like the podcast, check out more of Valor’s programs for courageous founders and investors, like Startup Runway.
Over $100M in early-stage venture capital and counting is catalyzed through Startup Runway’s grant-making program for pre-seed startups. Go to StartupRunway Dot ORG to learn more and apply directly for non-dilutive capital.
Valor celebrates VC DAY, the largest early-stage private capital conference in the region, at the end of the year. The top founders in the region, leading VCs, endowments, and family offices focusing on venture capital outperformance attend. Learn more at VC.Day.
At Valor, courage is the currency of innovation and the heartbeat of our culture. Thanks for listening and come back next week.
