 We do, you know, there's this magical thing and then it's like, okay. Know where you are and I will burn you down. This is the best explanation of my life I've ever seen. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. It's a show about screw ups, about missteps, about not quite getting it right. I think we hear enough stories about people who are wildly successful. I'm like to tell you how successful they are. Well, we're going to talk about some of the hurdles and some of the challenges and some of the things that make them tenacious enough to be successful instead of just the beautiful story in the end. And today I have Randy Harrington of Extreme Arts and Sciences. I know that we're going to be talking about consulting. We're going to be talking about working with executives, other big companies, Fortune 500 companies and how do we take what they're doing and distill it down so that it works for the public and for technology and everything that's going on now. I'm really excited to talk to them on the show. Everybody, welcome to the show. I am here with Randy from Extreme Arts and Sciences, right? It's a digital agency in Capitol Hill here in Seattle. Welcome to the show. Thank you, glad to be here. It's great to have you. Tell me a little bit more about what you're doing right now about the agency that you've got the... Extreme Arts and Sciences. Well, it's a wild agency because what we're trying to do is to find this new niche in time where strategy and digital come together in some sort of cosmic, catalytic way. Is that like a wrinkle in time? It is like a wrinkle in time. And the really good news is everybody's looking for ways to connect digital and strategy. So they're like, right on, okay. But the bad news is every time we do something, the next time we do it, it's a completely different thing. So we're sort of iterating, iterating, iterating. Because of the pace of digital. Is that what it is? Yes, because we're doing all this cool crap that was so yesterday that we have to go do more cool crap. So you get to work with executives to make sure that they kind of tie those things together. Do you do ad work, video work, things like that as well? Or is it mostly that type of coaching that you're working with? I wish there was more connections actually. One of the challenges we have is that there's just so much organizational distance between strategy and the deployment of whatever the hell it is you're trying to do. That there are two different worlds. And I would like to see them a little closer together. So what we end up doing a lot is producing collateral. There was several years where we were just producing slide decks like we were drunken pirates. That was the coin of the realm. I need a deck. I'm not even going to go to Vegas and I need a deck. And then it turns into a book, right? I need a deck. Bullet paragraph. Bullet paragraph. Right, and so there's a whole lot of education that has to go into that. We've done plenty of video work and we've done animations and we've built games and we've built registration sites and we've done webs. All over the place. So just depending on what's coming up. That's the problem. Every single client, we want to serve well, which is great, but we do... There's this magical thing and then it's like... Okay, let's go on to the next thing. I was just picturing the old Looney Tunes. The opera singing one, right? Who is it? Is it Elmer Fudd? Like singing as it comes through. This is my world. Guess Stalt. Yes, guess Stalt. Tell me a little bit more about how you got started in this world. Like, let's see how far back we can go. Back in the day... Yeah, when you cobbled as a child and then went into art so you could compete against that. How did you get started doing this type of work? Military brat, father, Air Force and we traveled all the time. Basically grew up in Hawaii. Mostly in Hawaii. Yeah, junior high to high school. Junior high to high school. Which does not suck. So it was great. It was a terrific time. It sets you into a frame of mind. It's a big Gestalt in and of itself. Hawaiian sort of sinks into... By the way, that's going to be our new word for toasting. And I'm sorry. The entire time. No, it's fantastic. It was better than Veltenshaw. And I could have busted that one out. And next thing you know, I was a competitive debater and I got a big debate scholarship to the University of Mississippi. Is that the Ole Miss? Ole Miss. It is Ole Miss. Yes, in Oxford, Mississippi. That's like Faulkner country. It is big time Faulkner country. Look at you, busting out the literary references. I know. I know. I like to impress myself. I have danced on Faulkner's grave, which is one of the things you do. Wait, you danced on Faulkner's grave? Yes. You do a little jig and you pour some whiskey and you pour some whiskey on the grave. I did not tell him that. Yeah, it's a thing you do. That sounds like a Faulkner thing. But anyway, I go to Ole Miss and that turned out to be kind of a cultural shift. Yeah. You know. Well, because it's super laid back, right when you do the stuff in Hawaii, right? Yeah, right. Right. I mean, Hawaii is good. Nobody's like, what day is it? I think it's Tuesday. And Oxford, back in the day, the guys were wearing like ties to class and whatnot. You know, and I was like, had a great time with the debate program there. Ended up coaching there for a while. Then did a master's at Chapel Hill. Started coaching debate up there. And that's a weird thing because you travel a lot and you're exposed to lots of different ideas and you just have this pace of work and learning that's insatiable. You're just kind of on it, on it, on it. But I think that those two things together kind of happened in me where it was like this kind of free lifestyle of coolness and this sense of I just need to absorb crap all the time and learn and put it out there, you know, go talk about it. So then I started organizational communication, ended up getting a PhD at Oregon in organizational communication and that's kind of how it all... Kept going. Yeah. All the way through. Hey, Jack, how are we looking? You want a drink? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Are we close? If you're serving. We're ready? Yes, sir. Okay, what is it? What do we call this one? Tonight I have the Grand Evolutionary. Top ingredient in this is going to be abuelo panamanium rum. Then we're going to use a pork barrel-aged, rapicidal tequila, hibiscus-infused from Centenario and that'll be 0.75 ounces. That'll be 0.5 ounces of Hendrick's Midsummer Solstice Limited Release. It's a very botanical forward gin. And then 0.25 each of banana liqueur, yellow chartreuse and harlequin orange liqueur. A dash of lime bitters and a dash of cardamom bitters. Actually a drop of cardamom bitters from Scrappy's. This is garnished with Northwest Flora. The drink is an idea of walking through a forest to a mountain across many countries at the same time. And here we have a little bit of dry ice. We're going to add a little bit of sweet pea essential oil to it. My elf fruit from India used as the sacrifice for the gods. Little bit of apple, dried lime and a cinnamon stick. Peach resin from peach trees. It is the sap and amber from the peach tree. And a little bit of pine honey. This is honey from a pine tree. And there you have it. The Grand Evolutionary. It's actually named after our friend here's book that he wrote. The Grand Evolutionary. And it kind of tracks his movements across the globe and across disciplines. Wow. This is the best explanation of my life I've ever seen. All right, we're bubbling. Are you down the hatch? You ready to go? Yeah, give it a go. We figure it out. It's a two-hander. It's a two-hander. I see black fruit in your future. I know. Okay, gestalt. Oh. Wow. That's delicious, actually. It's freaky delicious. It's good. It's got like 77 flavors happening all at once. Oh, yeah. The Dr. Pepper. Three Dr. Peppers. It's three Dr. Peppers. It's three Dr. Peppers. It's the original recipe that they broke up. I know. All the iterations of Dr. Pepper we now see. You're actually not far off. I think there's something there. All right. I wish. I want to take a picture of the inside of this glass because it is a piece of modern art. You went to school, obviously fantastic at communicating by going through all that stuff. What about working? Did you have day jobs? Did you do other types of things? As you went through in Oxford and... Yeah, yeah. I did some interesting things. I did a lot of work in radio for a while. In fact, when I was in Oxford, I worked at what was called New Country. It was New New Country back in the day. New New Country? Yeah, WWR FM. And I worked seven to midnight. And I got a call one night from... The station, of course, is a little shack out in the middle of a field, you know, the big old tower out there. And this guy calls me up. The guy at the crossroads selling his soldiers. I want you to play some Hank William Sr. And I had no Hank William Sr. in the control room at all. And I said, I'm sorry, you know, sir, I don't have that. And he goes, know where you are and I will burn you down. So it was a rough night for me that night. Did you have to find some Hank William Sr. I literally could not get it. So yeah, my other favorite story from that one was a woman called me on a Sunday. And she said, hey, it's very important that you play Elvis's Hawaiian wedding song at precisely 127. And I said, well, actually it's not on my playlists and I can't really do that. And she says, you don't understand. We're having our wedding here at the Sonic Drive-In and we're all going to turn on our car stereos. And the bride and groom are going to walk down the middle of the Sonic Drive-In to the Hawaiian wedding song. So by God, I played Hawaiian wedding song on 27. I wished like hell I had pictures of that. That is amazing. That's incredible. So you went from that, it sounds like you still kept like a career in that. What did you do after? Yeah, so then I went up to Carolina, got married, yay, still married, yay. So I went up and did a master's at Carolina. Then I went down and taught at UNC Wilmington. And while I was there, some guy comes up and he goes, I think you should be on the TV news. And I said, okay. So I went and was a TV news anchor for about three and a half years. CBS affiliate. CBS affiliate in North Carolina. In North Carolina. And it was a kick in the pants, it was a lot of fun. Well fast forward a little bit then. You go from there and then all the way to Oregon. Yeah, I went all the way to Oregon to do a PhD. I flew out there. I left in July. It was 172 degrees in North Carolina. I landed in Oregon and it was just... Oregon. It was Oregon. It was beautiful. It was like I got off the plane. And I was like... Oregon. It was like 73 degrees and no humidity. Yeah. And I was like... Fry and beautiful. I'm home. You do the non-secure thing. Right, eventually. Yeah. Like did you work in the real world for a while or did you really start your own thing? No, I really jumped right in. I got a gig working for the FDIC. I don't know what that is. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Washington. Yeah. I spent some time doing that and then the process learned every conceivable way that a financial institution can fail. Yeah. And that sort of began the role into consulting. Yeah. Okay. So it went into consulting. Yeah. So I started doing some keynote speeches and stuff like that. Yeah. Just like solo stuff. Yes. So it's like... Lone Wolf. Yes. Lone Wolf. Harrington Associates was my creative name back in the day. Harrington Associates? Yes. Yes. It was... I just went for it. Now why didn't you stick with it? You know, you figure it out. Moving through the ish. You know. A lawyer told me that I was working for it one time. He goes, you know, when you're working for yourself and you move the wheelbarrow all day and then you put it down, when you come back, it won't have moved at all. Oh, yeah. And that was an interesting thing to think about. So it was the first time I started thinking about maybe doing something more than just being out there. Yeah. Then moving on to doing the extreme... To do extreme art. So yeah, at the time I was really obsessed also with the idea of what Navy SEALs can bring to... I know. Wait, what? Where did they come from? So I was... I was obsessed with Navy SEALs. I had done some homework and research for an academic paper on high performance team development. Yeah. And I met a bunch of drunken sailors in Fort Pierce, Florida. Wait, wait. That's a whole other story. No, that's not true. That's my favorite kind of story. Drunken sailors in Florida. Yeah. Extreme arts is this basic idea that really small groups of people can run circles around the kind of... Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ...big, cumbersome organizations. Yeah, yeah. So we wanted to be the kind of SEAL team of consulting and intentionally be small and yet highly capable. Did it work? We've had... We've had successes and... And some not successes? Yeah. Some of the basics, I think, are the things that I've screwed up on the most. Having a company name that makes sense is one of them. Oh, right. Extreme arts and sciences. I mean, I still don't know what it means. And I'm kind of okay with that. Yeah. But it turns out to be a problem. Yeah. I actually was pitching the company to a hospital group where a nun was the main person on the board. Extreme, extreme, extreme. She said, I don't think we can do that. Extreme, extreme. She said, I don't think we can have anything called extreme. That was a sign. So I think getting the basics right is a thing. I think I struggle a lot with details and planning. Yeah. I'm a big picture person and I want to just go fast and get it done. Yeah. And I've learned to shut up and listen to the people who are detail people and who actually think through things. Yeah. Every time I've really had a major issue, it's been details and planning. It's been details. Yeah. What's interesting, that sort of maybe attraction is the wrong word, but you had this pole towards Navy SEALs and I would think that that's definitely the details and planning. It is. And one of the secrets that they will be happy to tell you actually is that one of their ways they're successful is they don't do things where they won't be successful. So they don't go do it. Yeah. Unless they're going to crush it. Yeah. And there's a certain level of wisdom there. Yeah. No, I think that's right. Yeah. Because they put it all together. Like they figure it out. They figure it out. It's not that they won't try something hard, but they'll figure it out before they go to do another thing. Exactly. Exactly. And they will rehearse and plan and rehearse and plan for days. Yeah. So still taking what other people would consider risk. Right. But plan it out and have it done. Yeah. So what are you thinking about the future? Like you're going to continue doing what you're doing. If there's something else that you're interested in or that you're thinking about trying? You know, it's one of the nice things about our whack-a-doodle business. We're having our 20-year anniversary. Yeah. Go team. But it's been 21-year start-ups is the best way I can describe it. Yeah. We have been perpetually in start-up mode. Yeah. We're going on, what the technology is, the way everything's set up. Right. So the future, yeah, I am getting to the place where I feel there are more opportunities to express more art. I want to do more art. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And be involved in more... Like, what do you mean by that? Music is a thing for me. But what type of music? Like, do you want to record? Do you want to play? I do play some music that I'm not very good at it. So I don't do that at all. I play guitar. I play a lot of guitar. Yeah. I think we have a guitar. I know, sorry. But what I am doing is I have this passion for the Delta blues. I have a passion for the Mississippi Delta. Mississippi Delta. You should have a passport to go to the Mississippi Delta. It is the most screwed up place in the world and yet it's magnificent. I mean, there are people that the poverty is desperate. You know, there's like no hospitals that work. I mean, it's just crazy. But at the same time, it's a beautiful spot. Where the blues come from, right? Oh, man. See? I know. I mean, you can't make that up. Look at that. No. It's just like Dagobah. I know. So you take the Mississippi Delta. You got that in your mind? So I go study ukulele in Molokai. Wait, is that the right way to say it? Both are correct. Ukulele. Yucca or uca? I'm saying ukulele. Ukulele. My master plan right now is to connect. I want to take artists from the Mississippi Delta to Molokai, have them learn Hawaiian, then take people from Molokai to the Mississippi Delta. Like being able to connect those two things together? Yeah, because here you've got these two worlds that are completely different, but the same. They're both desperate poverty. They both have serious problems with social issues, drugs, access to health care, you know, unemployment, diabetes, all these problems. But the music and the art coming out of both of them is stunning. So you're thinking about like a non-profit type of thing to put together? We're talking about putting together an album in a video. You've done some amazing things all the way across, like being able to do like an old miss and debating all the way through to what you're doing right now. Yeah. It's really eclectic and it's really unique. It's weird for sure. It hasn't always been great economically, but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. You know, I couldn't imagine going and doing like a jobby job, job, job. Yeah. You know, even an opportunity to come and hang out with you for a little while is pretty cool, pretty interesting. Ukelele it up, right? That's what I'm saying, G. I love it. Yeah. All right. Drink some more Daegobot. Thank you for being on the show. It's a delight. It's a pleasure. Yeah. For what it's worth. Gestalt. Gestalt, Belt and Schungen. Everybody, thanks for watching the show and if you like what you see, if you love what you see, then subscribe. Ring the bell. Ring the bell. That's the cool kids. That's how they say it. And then I'll show up or we'll show up. And if you have a screw up that you want to talk about, go to fups.com. I hope to see you on the show.