Episode 49 // Brian Mohr Building Effective Teams Through Sharing Memorable Experiences

Sep 15, 2021

In this episode, Brian Mohr, CEO & Co-Owner of Anthym, joins the crew to talk about building effective teams through sharing memorable experiences.

Today I’m super excited to have joining me – for the second time – Brian Mohr, Co-founder and CEO of Anthym. Anthym is a startup technology company focused on helping teams connect better through cataloging and sharing their life moments. With Brian’s leadership – the Anthym brand is quickly being recognized as an innovator in the team connection building space.  

Learn more about Anthym over on their website: https://www.anthym.life

You can also connect with Anthym on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Contact: Mike Jones mike@resoundcreative.com 

Discuss at https://www.facebook.com/azbrandcast/

The show is recorded at the Resound offices in ever-sunny Tempe, Arizona (the 48th – and best state of them all).

Show Transcript

Mike Jones:
This is the AZ Brandcast, where we explore Arizona’s brand and the brands that make Arizona. I’m Mike Jones.

Mike Jones:
All right, everybody. Thanks so much for coming on the AZ Brandcast again, checking us out at, hanging out with us. I am super excited today to have a repeat guest, Brian Mohr, perhaps our first repeat guest on the show, which I think is a great title that you should own, Brian.

Brian Mohr:
Repeat guest?

Mike Jones:
Yeah. This needs to go on your LinkedIn profile.

Brian Mohr:
I would just say, if you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, bring me on.

Mike Jones:
No, no, no, no, no, no. You’ve been up to a lot of things since we last chatted. Life is crazy. Life is busy, and you’re doing some new things and I thought this would be the perfect time to have you come back on and give us an update about where you’re at, what you’re working on, and particularly talk about Anthym, which is this new company that you’ve started with some great people.

Brian Mohr:
Yep.

Mike Jones:
And just for our audience, I’ll summarize. Anthym is a startup technology company focused on helping teams particularly better connect through cataloging and sharing their life moments or events. As an actual user of Anthym, in a very limited capacity, I think it’s a really cool product. I’ve been really excited to just watch the growth of the company over the last, what? Year, year and a half now? About a year and a half.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, little over a year. I mean, the idea started, believe it or not, about four years ago, but we didn’t actually begin truly executing on it until about a year and a half ago.

Mike Jones:
That’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Just for our audience sake, you are a co-founder and CEO, is that correct?

Brian Mohr:
That is correct. Yes. If we’re labeling, those would be the appropriate labels.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. If we’re putting the obligatory job titles on there.

Brian Mohr:
Yes.

Mike Jones:
Well, what do you actually do? That’s the real question.

Brian Mohr:
At Anthym or in life?

Mike Jones:
At Anthym. Well, let’s start with at Anthym.

Brian Mohr:
I’ll use an analogy. Although my time in the restaurant business was short, I am the front of the house individual and my business partner is the back of the house. Front of the house, I would say, is everything related to client relationships, client development, and execution of both the experiences that we hold, whether they’re in person or virtual, as well as we’ve been able to build a small, yet mighty community of coaches and consultants who have been certified to go out and deliver Anthym to their clients. So, we are about to launch our second cohort of certified consultants here on October 1st.

Mike Jones:
That’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. That’s been really, really exciting and an exciting growth path. My co-founder manages and handles all of the back of the house type stuff. The technology, the platform, programmers, engineers, all of the stuff that is essentially a different language for me. Well, yeah, it’s real good. Complimentary pairs big time.

Mike Jones:
No, I think those are fantastic combos to have.

Brian Mohr:
It’s really great.

Mike Jones:
That’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
It’s really great.

Mike Jones:
Tell me about Anthym. What is Anthym?

Brian Mohr:
You actually described it really, really well. It is a platform, it’s a technology platform, but it’s not about the technology, it’s about what the technology enables. It enables people to connect on a more human level at a deeper level. If you think about the world many of us have grown up, and particularly the world of work, we tended to discourage getting to know our teammates at a deep level. They were our coworkers, they were our colleagues. They weren’t really intended to, and certainly not encouraged, to be our friends.

Brian Mohr:
I’ve just had this sort of nagging feeling for many years, that thinking about, and maybe this is just part of getting older, and you think about the 24 hours in a day you have, and how many of those hours, each week, you spend with your colleagues. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of time. Why do we not allow some of those relationships to be far more meaningful and personal? Why do they have to be at arms length? Why do they need to remain at surface level?

Brian Mohr:
There’s so much data out there that supports, if you actually have deeper, more meaningful connections with the people you work with, not only will you produce better work, it actually adds more joy to your life. As we are now dealing with a whole host of new challenges brought on by what’s happened in the world over the last year and a half, and people are reevaluating in a lot of different aspects of their lives, I think we can use this as an opportunity despite it being awful gift wrapping, the gift inside is this opportunity to say, wait a minute, I spend upwards of two thirds of my adult life with these people working, pursuing a common purpose, presumably United by a shared set of values.

Brian Mohr:
Why shouldn’t I explore what exists in terms of deeper, more meaningful relationships that I could have with these folks? I spent an awful lot of time with the why not? That’s what Anthym does. Anthym creates an opportunity and a mechanism to disarm a lot of what gets in the way of us having more meaningful conversations, not based on what we are, but on who we are. So much of that is easily surfaced by moments and memories that each of us have experienced.

Brian Mohr:
Your life, Mike, is as unique as mine is. I can learn so much about you by some of those moments and memories that hold a special place of significance in your life, and vice versa, you could learn an incredible amount about me based upon my significant life moments, whatever it is we’re willing to share. That creates this amazing opportunity to, maybe not become best friends, but we could certainly have a much deeper appreciation and an understanding for the lives we’ve led, which leads to again, better work product and adds more happiness to our lives.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Not to get too far in the weeds, but from a more tactical standpoint, how are you doing that through the platform?

Brian Mohr:
Through the platform? The most common entry point for one of our clients is a team leader. They could be leading a big team, small team, the marketing team, the sales team, the accounting team, doesn’t matter. They are the type of leader that really understands how important it is to create that sense of cohesion and connection. Realizing that their responsibility is to bring people together to achieve a common goal, and that sense of vulnerability-based trust is really important to do that.

Brian Mohr:
They will engage us to typically, the intro experience is bringing one of our, either me or one of our other facilitators in to host a virtual experience. Most teams are still meeting virtually, so I say virtual, although we’ve done a handful of in-person for those that are meeting in-person. Each member of the team that’s going to participate in one of these experiences will do, essentially a homework assignment.

Brian Mohr:
They’ll take a trip down their life memory lane and they’ll think about a handful of moments and memories that hold that type of significance. They’ll document those as short little stories, and then as a way to really bring it to life, we use inspirational media sources, music being the one everyone uses as the starting point. Music has a way of serving as this universal language that everybody understands.

Brian Mohr:
The music you listen to as a kid, Mike, might have been very different than the music I did, but the importance of that music growing up, that you listen to growing up, is just as important to you as my music is to me. Those moments in your life that happen when you were a kid, when you were in high school, after high school, and even last week, music has this amazing way of both symbolizing those life moments. The same way a musical score of a movie really brings the movie story to life, our lives are much the same.

Brian Mohr:
The music we’ve listened to has been the soundtrack of our lives. Music is this disarming element. You and I can immediately engage in a conversation first about songs or bands that were important to us at different stages of our life, and that inevitably opens up the conversation too, well, what are those unique moments and memories that, that music symbolizes for you? That then comes to life in these virtual or in-person, essentially what becomes campfire style conversations.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Brian Mohr:
It’s very different than water cooler chat, which I think is the terminology that’s used most often. On a Monday morning after a weekend, you and I bump into each other in the office, “Hey, what’d you do this weekend? Hey, did you watch the game? Hey, what’d you do with your kids?” That’s all fine and good. That’s surface level. Taking that a step deeper is what we’re trying to achieve and to really help people connect at a much, much deeper level.

Brian Mohr:
The pre-work is step one, cataloging those moments, choosing the music that symbolizes it, and then step two is the experience, the workshop that we facilitate, and it really helps sort of grease the skids, if you will, to help people have far more different and more meaningful conversations with one another.

Mike Jones:
That’s so cool.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. It’s fun. It’s super cool. What’s really crazy about it, I love music, so music is a huge part of my life. I’ve listened to more artists and bands in the last year and a half, that I didn’t even know existed, that I’ve started to really enjoy, because I’m in my musical echo chamber. I like what I like. Yeah, I’m almost 50-years-old. Learning new artists and bands isn’t at the top of my list. I kind of-

Mike Jones:
You have a few other things going on in your life too.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, that too, but now I’m being exposed to a lot of new stuff, I’m like … There’s this whole new universe. That’s been an amazing sort of side benefit to this whole thing for me.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, a little discovery engine as well.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Obviously the product kind of started with music, but it’s expanded quite a bit into other categories as well.

Brian Mohr:
It has.

Mike Jones:
What are some of those?

Brian Mohr:
It has. That came from our clients. We started with music only. Then after a handful of engagements, we had a handful of clients come back and say, “Wow, this was really cool. I’d love to do this with movies or with books, or with a Ted Talk that I watched that changed my perspective on …” fill in the blank. All of a sudden, Jeremy, my co-founder, and I, are like, whoa. Yeah, there’s a lot of other opportunities here. What if we were to give people other media as inspirational symbols to use, not just music so that we’ve layered in books, Ted Talks, television shows and movies so far, and podcasts are soon to follow.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
No, that’s really cool.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. It’s really cool. It’s super cool.

Mike Jones:
Then there’s a sense too, you’re almost building this like profile, kind of memorable experiences in media profile.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
I’m just thinking of every … I’ve had some really interesting conversations in the last year with companies that are, either have gone remote or have been remote for quite some time, and how they’re dealing with culture development, how they’re dealing with creating those opportunities for people to connect, just like what you’re doing, when you don’t have a physical space and proximity to force that to organically happen. I think one of the challenges is also, what I’m hearing is kind of this, the old timers, the OGs in the company have been through that process, even when they’re all remote. And they’ve built memories together, they’ve built experiences together.

Mike Jones:
It’s harder sometimes for newer people if there isn’t a clear way for them to start connecting. Sometimes you get into the groove of your business and you’ve been around for three or four, or even 10 years in the business. You’re not really thinking about like how hard it was when you first started in that company to build all those connections. All that much more so when it’s remote, and maybe your organization hasn’t quite figured out, what are some tools and habits and behaviors that we can encourage that do that.

Brian Mohr:
That’s a keen observation and one of the utilization cases that emerged. Again, this is sort of, if you just keep your ear to the ground, the market will all often send you signals as to what it wants. In addition to the additional media, Beyond Music, the other big use case that emerged fairly quickly is New-Hire Onboarding. If you were hired in the last year, year and a half, there’s a good possibility you’ve yet to meet any of your teammates or your supervisor …

Mike Jones:
Yeah, even your boss.

Brian Mohr:
In person. Imagine if you wake up every day at your new job, you’ve been at it for a month or a year, and you’ve never met any of them. You’ve never had a chance to validate if they’re tall or short, or whatever. You’ve only seen their upper half on a video. How do you connect with people? How do you accelerate a sense of belonging, a sense of inclusion, a sense of connection? Which all of those things, when done well, accelerate productivity and reduce any risk of potential unnecessary or voluntary attrition because the new person doesn’t feel like they’ve ever truly fit.

Brian Mohr:
That’s really hard to do. So, we’re in new territory, many organizations are, and I think we accidentally, it wasn’t the plan, but we accidentally stumbled into a way to give new folks a bigger megaphone to describe more of who they are and vice versa, that opportunity then being reciprocated to them from the team that they’re joining in these cool connection opportunities, which it’s good for everybody.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. I haven’t seen the downside. Maybe I’m the glass half full guy. I lean into wanting to develop more meaningful relationships with the people that I spend a lot of time with. That’s my bias. I would rather, if we’re going to be colleagues, let’s not just park our relationship as a work only thing. Let’s at least give it a shot to connect. Maybe we don’t but not for not giving it a shot.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. There’s almost always something you can find to connect with someone on.

Brian Mohr:
Totally.

Mike Jones:
Even if you’re like, man, we don’t really share a lot of experiences, we maybe even have different sets of core values. There’s almost always something, experientially at least, that you can be like, oh yeah, I’ve been to that place or … I find it’s so interesting, like you’re basically forcing something that I’ve learned to do. I don’t know if, maybe I’m good at it, I don’t know. I just know, when I meet someone new, I have this like rough checklist of questions I go through, and it’s often a game of like finding connection points, of like, oh, where have you been? Where did you grow up?

Mike Jones:
Oh, I have family from there. Let me tell you a little bit about them. You tell me about your family, or tell me about the music that you like. Or, oh yeah, I used to … Do you play music? I play music. Just like, what kinds of can we make? I may walk away from that conversation going, do I really want to hang out with you on the weekends? Maybe not. We might not be best friends, but at least we’ve developed some kind of rapport where we’re saying, hey, there’s a connection point.

Mike Jones:
I can imagine like, and even just on our own team, some of that happens organically, but we got to work hard at it. So, to have tools, like what you’ve built with Anthym and are continuing to build, I think could be really huge.

Brian Mohr:
I think what’s interesting too about it is that, in a workplace, when you’ve got groups of people working together, you will inevitably have tension and conflict. It’s just part of the deal. I think in the absence of really having a deeper understanding of who someone is, you’ll create your own narrative for why they show up the way they show up, and that narrative oftentimes is wrong. If you have a chance to have a more meaningful conversation with them, to learn more about them, to understand their life path in some capacity, what we’ve seen is people are far more often to give the most generous benefit of the doubt when tension and conflicts arise. Because you have a window into the real narrative, not the made up narrative, and that’s a good thing.

Brian Mohr:
I think we could all use a little bit more of that in our lives. I mean, we’re in a pretty crazy time, where we don’t give generous benefit of the doubt to anyone that disagrees with us, at least most don’t anymore. We need to swing back to that middle ground where it’s like, okay, Mike has a different opinion on this than I do. This isn’t the way I would’ve approached it, but this is where we’re at. Let me actually get curious before I jump to a conclusion. I think that’s really, really important right now.

Mike Jones:
Yep. There’s an old adage about assumptions, right?

Brian Mohr:
Something like that.

Mike Jones:
They make something out of you.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, something like that.

Mike Jones:
Keeping a clean apple. I don’t even know if that counts on the checklist of beliefs or not. Tell me-

Brian Mohr:
Better be safe than sorry.

Mike Jones:
Tell me a little bit about how Anthym started. I think I have some ideas, but I want to hear from you.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. It was one of those cool serendipitous moments. It was a little over four years ago. I joined an Entrepreneur Organization Forum, an EO Forum, which for folks out there that aren’t familiar with it, perhaps they’re familiar with Vistage or YPO, which are essentially peer to peer forums, usually made up of around 10 people. Typically, entrepreneurs and founders and presidents and CEOs, who get together once a month to help each other grow professionally and personally.

Brian Mohr:
I’m a big fan of peer to peer, and joined a forum. At my very first meeting, as all new members of my forum go through, and I think most forums do, I was expected to deliver a presentation called the lifeline, which essentially is jamming the story of your life into a one hour long presentation from birth until current, which is an intimidating homework assignment.

Brian Mohr:
What do I include and how do I include what I might want to in an hour? Because at the time, I was however old, 46, 45, 46-years-old. I just jumped into the deep end. I’m like, I’m going to bear my soul, knowing that, if this grew group is really going to help me best, and if they’re going to trust me to help them best, I better be really vulnerable, raw and honest about the life I’ve lived. Not just the highlights, but the low-lights, the regrets, the failures, the losses. I bared my soul.

Brian Mohr:
What I found was, especially in a group of typically type A personalities, that the level of trust I was able to garner with this group was accelerated beyond any team I’ve ever been a part of, and we’re not even really a “team.” We see each other once a month. Yeah. All of a sudden, I’ve got this sense of vulnerability base trust that I achieved faster with this group than ever before. I clearly could only point to this willingness to share who I really am.

Brian Mohr:
Not my LinkedIn profile, like the Brian Mohr story from birth to current. One of the gentlemen in the group who had joined a year or so prior to me, also had a very similar experience. As we got to know each other really, really well in the months to follow, he had been building technology products his whole career, and as he learned about my background and the recruiting and people space, he’s like, “Man, this lifeline thing’s really powerful to bring people together. We’re not even a real team. Do you think we could sort of build a technology platform and make it mainstream enough that it could be delivered to real corporate teams that are together five days a week, eight hours a day versus us, once a month for a few hours? What could they achieve?”

Brian Mohr:
That was the question. At the time, my response was, I don’t think corporate America’s ready for this level of vulnerability. Then boom, a pandemic, a once in a century pandemic hits, and all of a sudden, everybody’s invited into everybody else’s house, or condo, or apartment, seeing their kids and their pets and their wall décor, and what they look like in a t-shirt and a ball cap. For the first time at scale, we started to see our colleagues, not in their dressed up personas, but as just their laid back like, this is who I am on the weekend persona. So, we revisited the question, like if there were ever a time test this, if it could be done, now is it. So, we got to work and here we are.

Mike Jones:
That’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
And still in the midst of what started a year and a half ago. I think this distributed remote virtual workplace is here to stay in some sort of meaningful capacity. Even when we teams go back, I was sharing with your colleague, Sam, that I think onsites will become the new offsites. When we are together, how are we going to use that time? It’s not like we’re just going to go sit at our desks. At least I don’t think. Let’s maximize our together time and do really meaningful experiences. I think Anthym has a potential to be one of those meaningful experiences that pays dividends when people then leave the office yeah and go back home or wherever it is they’re going.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. I think there’s definitely companies that are figuring that out or have figured that out. I’m not confident they all have figured it out yet as they work through, kind of, what is this? Hybrid work model because I think that’s where a lot of it’s headed. We did the, everybody worked from home thing, and again, there’s a giant asterisk on that. There’s plenty of people out in the workforce who cannot work from home. Your job demands you to be in the hotel, in the restaurant, on the road. So, we’re really only talking about 20% of the workforce when we talk about remote work that are doing office jobs. Essentially stuff you can do on a computer.

Mike Jones:
But of those, I think, there’s been a growing trend. This wasn’t a new trend as of 2020. There was a trend towards, how do we facilitate people to work best from the environment and the place that works best for them and the context of that particular day even? I think we’re headed to a model that’s much more hybrid where it’s kind of this combination. Yeah, I’m hoping that companies figure out, like man, the time in the office, or at least together in physical proximity, has huge potential value.

Mike Jones:
Although I’ve heard some stories of companies not figuring that out. My favorite was a friend of mine telling me about his company going back to work. One day a week, everyone in his team was required to go back to work in the office.

Brian Mohr:
Same day of the week.

Mike Jones:
Same day of the week. And they would have Zoom meetings in the office. Now, some of that’s pandemic contextual. There was still some fear of our being in a room together, but he’s like, literally we’re just in a giant room in our cubes having Zoom calls with each other.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, that seems …

Mike Jones:
I’m like, you’ll get there.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
You might be a little bit on the slower track with your organization, but …

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Some of that’s … That’s temporary, but …

Brian Mohr:
It is interesting. We swung from one extreme of everybody predominantly being in an office to being forced to not be. I don’t know. Our society seems to love pendulums swings from the extremes, and settling in the middle is not common territory for us, for the American society at least.

Mike Jones:
No. It’s like, if you’re going to do it, go all out. It seems to be the mantra.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. All in or all out.

Mike Jones:
But I mean, we’ve seen the benefit of remote. It’s given us a flexibility to bring on talent that we never would have …

Brian Mohr:
100%.

Mike Jones:
Had we been like, oh, you have to be in the office every day. We did that, really three years ago, I think we made a big shift towards that, and it’s benefited our organization. Our people are really happy. I would say on the flip side, we’ve run into the same challenges that you’re trying to solve, and I think solving well around, how do you build those connections? How do you build culture? How do you make sure everyone is still on the same page in a way that you get naturally in an office?

Mike Jones:
There’s break time. There’s coming in to the office in the morning. There’s leaving in the afternoon. There’s lunches. There’s the chit chat before and after a meeting. That is just, you have to be intentional about that with remote in a way that maybe you don’t if everyone’s sitting in one place.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. You can’t rely on the organic informality that a physical office just sort of helped bring about. It’s not there virtually, so you’re right, you have to almost schedule it, which is a bummer because it takes away some of the serendipity. And yet, if you can go into it with an intention, like, hey, I’m going to dedicate some time to just spend with Mike or spend with Sam, getting to know him, or having a different conversation than just about the work, which are the conversations we’re having 99% of the time. I realize some of the serendipity is missing.

Brian Mohr:
If we can figure out how to make it serendipitous, great. Maybe that’s coming, and hopefully it will. But in the meantime, not making time for it at all, I think, it’ll hurt. It’ll hurt retention. It’ll eventually hurt productivity. There’s already all this chatter around this great resignation. I mean 11 and a half million people have voluntarily quit their jobs since April of 2021, and here we are in September. It’s a lot of people. That means a lot of folks are reevaluating, finding new jobs. I think it’s yeah, it’s a fascinating time.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. When the limits to where you can work or how you can work are taken away, there’s just a lot more opportunities out there.

Brian Mohr:
There really is.

Mike Jones:
I think everyone this year was like, oh, okay. Now I see how it works. We’ve had a year and …

Brian Mohr:
I can do this.

Mike Jones:
I can do this. Maybe I can go look for a better place with better pay and more the things I want, and maybe for a company that I maybe enjoy more.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, people that I want to spend more time with.

Chris Stadler:
Vice versa, we’ve had, I’ve got family, and we’ve got several people on our team who realize like, oh wait, I could actually move across the country and still work for Resound. That’s cool. Let’s try it. And we were like, yeah, sure, let’s give it a shot, and it’s worked pretty well.

Mike Jones:
It was that casual of a conversation, wasn’t it? It was like, yeah, whatever.

Chris Stadler:
Yeah, whatever.

Mike Jones:
No, it was more like, let’s think about this, make a plan. Let’s see how it goes. It went great.

Chris Stadler:
Yeah. And we had contractors too, who were local here that would come in every once in a while, and they were like, we had one who was like, “I’ve always wanted to move to New York and now’s the best time.” We’re like, go for it, do it. She’s excelling.

Brian Mohr:
That’s awesome. That’s super cool. I mean, you see a lot of these really neat, I think, very optimistic, happy stories, whether it’s on social media, of moms and dads like, wow, I actually get to now drive my kid to school or I get to help them get dressed and have breakfast with them in the morning. Some of those things, and not to simply call out uplifting stories about parents only. It’s happening for folks that don’t have kids as well, where they’re able to now, hey, I can actually go work out in the morning because I don’t have to commute for an hour.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, you’ve freed up at least an hour or maybe an hour and a half of your day.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, and possibly for some folks, if you lived in a big city, like a San Francisco or an LA or a New York City, where your commute was hour to two hours each way. All of a sudden, you’ve added a lot of capacity to your life that was usually eaten up by commute. Not that, that wasn’t productive time if you used it well, but-

Mike Jones:
Productive in a different way.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. It’s interesting. How do you reorganize and prioritize what matters most to you if certain elements that served as a nuisance have been removed? I think it’s, again, it’s just everybody, not everyone, many people have had an opportunity to just simply take a step back and evaluate. What does matter most to me? It’s not often in life that we get those opportunities, and that again, the gift wrapping sucked, but the gift is there if you choose to, to engage with it.

Mike Jones:
Yep. Yeah. In terms of, obviously the pandemic created kind of an opportunity for you guys to start this journey with Anthym. Has there been other impacts as you’ve launched and grown the brand just in the midst of a pandemic? I think obviously the clear one is that there’s, maybe a market demand that maybe wasn’t as clear before.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. I mean, I would say that’s the biggest impact, hands down, is this realization that connection does matter. Like many things in life, we, as humans, we get in our comfort zone, our autopilot zone, and we inadvertently take for granted things that really do matter. It’s not until they’re taken away from you, do you realize, wow, those chit chats in the conference room before and after the meeting, and the occasional run into somebody in the hallway and turning the lights out and walk into the parking lot back to our cars to drive home, and I would chat with Sam for five minutes.

Brian Mohr:
Those meaningful moments, for many people, vanished. To be able to resurrect them, to bring them back is super cool. It’s really cool. It’s interesting too, because we get asked often, or at least, maybe I’m the one asking myself, it’s like, what business problem are we really solving? I wonder, do leaders lay down at night and just are tormenting themselves with this being a problem or is this really about unlocking a new possibility that wasn’t really … it didn’t show up the way it’s showing up right now?

Brian Mohr:
That’s just the question that I have for myself. I think the black and white Xs and Os business folks out there would be like, oh, this thing’s just the touchy feely, and it’s rainbows and unicorns, and at the end of the day, if you can’t show me the ROI, it doesn’t matter. Listen, I’m not going to say they’re wrong. On the flip side, I could look at all the data, whether it’s the research Google did in the importance of psychological safety, or Gallops data over the past 26, 27 years at the importance of having a best friend at work, and knowing that somebody cares about you as a person are two critical elements of their Q12 survey and what leads to employee engagement.

Brian Mohr:
Or the importance of a sense of belonging and all of this important work that’s been elevated around belonging and inclusion. I don’t know, this feels really important, and even more so when again, the proximity-based relationships that an office offered are gone. So, is it a business problem? I think so. More importantly, I think we’re unlocking a new possibility that the workplace didn’t encourage, and sure as heck didn’t celebrate in the world we just came from.

Mike Jones:
It wasn’t intentional. It was wasn’t planned for, probably wasn’t designed into the business because it just was an after effect of being in an office.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Chris Stadler:
Well, there’s the sense of like it’s automatic when you’re together.

Brian Mohr:
Yes.

Chris Stadler:
You naturally, like you overhear someone else’s conversation. Immediately, you know where that person’s coming from. You don’t get that when you’re sitting in your living room.

Brian Mohr:
Nope, you do not, and you don’t even get it on Zoom accidentally, in most cases, because your schedules are so tight now, and you’re jumping from meeting to meeting. I mean, when I walked into the studio here today to chat with you guys, Sam has a jazz album on, and immediately we launched into a conversation about jazz. That conversation wouldn’t have happened otherwise, where we would’ve talked about a business project or whatever it is we were collaborating on, and we would’ve went right to business.

Brian Mohr:
Yet the jazz conversation, while perhaps not interesting people, is to me, is to him, and all of a sudden, it’s like, oh cool. I know a little bit more about Sam now than I did before. That’s a puzzle. You keep putting pieces and pieces together and that’s how you build trust.

Mike Jones:
Yep. That’s really cool. Related to this challenge, the business challenge that you’re trying to solve or identify, as you’ve gotten to marketing and you’re moving into pushing and promoting the Anthym brand, I know you and I have had conversations around, what’s the category, right? I know we all want to think that categories shouldn’t be there. When it comes to marketing, it’s like this … Bt they are a helpful tool for customers where, when they go, hey, how do I position you?

Brian Mohr:
Where do I put you?

Mike Jones:
Where do I put you? And how do I make a decision quicker? It helps when we have like, oh, you’re on the cereal aisle. I know where to go find you.

Brian Mohr:
Right. You’re not Ketchup, you’re cereal.

Mike Jones:
I know what you are because you’re in the context of all these other things. And at least I know you’re breakfast, even if I’m going to eat you for dinner. But that’s a challenge for new products and new brands that are kind of entering into a new space. I think that’s one that you guys are working through. Tell me a little bit about that. How has that gone? Where are you finding that category?

Brian Mohr:
Well, we-

Mike Jones:
Not to put you on the spot.

Brian Mohr:
No, we get immediately pegged as team building.

Mike Jones:
Okay. Yeah.

Brian Mohr:
Which I get it. What gives me heartburn around that is that, I think most people, if not all, when they think team building, immediately think escape rooms, laser tag, bowling, trust falls, things that-

Mike Jones:
A little bit silly.

Brian Mohr:
A little silly, a little fun, typically involve a cocktail. Listen, I’m not bagging on those things. They’re fun.

Mike Jones:
So, you’re going to have a cocktail button there. I think that’s what I’m hearing.

Brian Mohr:
We’re going to integrate time for cocktails. To get together with your teammates and to go offsite and to go do an escape room, listen, there’s a time and a place for it. It’s fun. At the end of the day, though, the question that we ask ourselves is, when that team then goes back to the office after that experience was over, what did you really learn about your teammates? How are you more deeply connected to them? Is it going to produce greater results because there’s a deeper level of relationships that were formed?

Brian Mohr:
I think most people would probably answer, no, I think. Other than learning that Sam doesn’t like to share the clues in the escape room because he wants to be the hero. What did you learn? Probably not much. As much as I don’t want Anthym to be categorized as team building, I think that’s where people put us. They put us in the team building model.

Mike Jones:
That’s the category they know.

Brian Mohr:
It’s the category they know, so they got to anchor to something. If I could dream up this category creation, which I’m assuming every new product would love to be a category creator, that zero to one philosophy, that I remember from Peter Thiel’s book, which was a great book, Zero to One, is vulnerability trust building. I want Anthym to be seen as a vehicle to help human beings, who happen to work together, build deeper levels of trust. Not just trust in, I trust Mike to do his job because Mike’s good at his job.

Brian Mohr:
That’s competency-based trust. I need that. That’s critical.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. It’s baseline.

Brian Mohr:
I don’t want you on my team if you can’t do your job.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. It’s baseline.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. I also want that, plus it’s yes, and I want to be able to trust you because you’re a good person, you’ve got my back, I’ve got your back, and that you put those two pieces of the trust coin together, now we’ve got something. A lot has been, particularly a lot around Navy Seals. I think most people, if you ask, hey, when you think of a high performing team, name a team. Besides maybe some sports teams out there, some franchises that have been fairly dominant, I think a lot of folks-

Mike Jones:
Some of them.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, some of them. I think people will go to Navy Seals. That’s a high performing team.

Mike Jones:
It’s what I had in my head as you were talking, I was like, I was thinking of military special forces.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. Special forces. People whose lives depend on each other. Having high competency, but also high vulnerability-based trust. There’s this saying, and I picked this up. I think it was in … It was in an article I read, and it was the saying that the seals now say is, I might trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my wife? Okay, so typically a male environment, a lot of these Seals environment, so not to be chauvinistic with the saying, but again, coming from the Navy seals, you have to have both.

Brian Mohr:
It isn’t an either or, and I think the seals have figured out that the difference in performance level, once you’ve become a seal, is fairly negligible. They’re all really good at what they do. They want to be on the team with the guy or gal that they could trust with their spouse or their kids. That you’ll go into battle with.

Mike Jones:
Because there’s also a level of communication and decision making. If you want to talk about it in tactical terms in your business, if it’s like, this is too touchy feely for me, it’s like, okay. I mean, Navy Seals are not known for being touchy-feely. And yet, that connection point that they make with each other, that ability to trust one another at a really deep level, allows them, in the actual execution of their jobs, to communicate at a better level, to make decisions faster, more efficiently, with a greater degree of like, when I make a decision, I know that everything else with the other team members is going to …

Mike Jones:
They’re going to make the decisions they need to make with more commitment, with more energy, because we have that level of trust. No one’s going, let me think about this for a minute.

Brian Mohr:
Or I’m just going to take care of me here.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, and go solo, go rogue.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. People lead with a selfless bend. It’s, I am going to give, I’m going to sacrifice. To me, that’s the ultimate, is when you can get a group of people working together on a team, in a business, who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of what the team is there to achieve. That’s about the antithesis of how many businesses operate, it is about how do I advance my own career at the expense of, I don’t care who, so that I can climb the ladder, make more money, be it the bigger title, this, that, and the other. Listen, that’s the world that we’ve come from. Maybe we’re still in it, but I guess I’m a bit of an idealist. I’d like to see us get out of that and start taking care of each other a little bit better.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
No, that’s awesome. Tell me a little bit about, because your team is remote, you’re kind of all over the place, but you’re here in Arizona. What impact has that had on starting a business and getting it off the ground and running this last year, year and a half?

Brian Mohr:
I mean, I love living here despite being a little warm in the summer time. I’m really-

Mike Jones:
We’ll overlook that.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. I am really proud to call Arizona home. What I love so much about Arizona is the community of people here, the business community in particular. I’ve always, and I don’t think I’m the only one, this community has always felt to me like the control-alt-delete community. People come here for their next chapter, their do over, or their …

Mike Jones:
The reset.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, their reset. Because I think so many, I mean, I came here in 1997 from somewhere else because I wanted a fresh start, and I think, because that is such a common story for so many, there’s this willingness, this sense of generosity, this sense of, hey, I’ll help you out. You don’t need to have the right last name or to come from the right click. People here are just incredibly helpful. I’m really proud that we have that spirit here. Anthym would not have been born had it not been for this forum that I joined and meeting someone who I wouldn’t have known otherwise.

Brian Mohr:
I love it. I think Arizona’s a really, really great place, and I think we’ve come a really long way since I’ve moved here in ’97 at being more of a … Starting to become more of a headquarters type destination, which is interesting. I don’t know what headquarters means anymore. That’s a whole nother topic, how important is that, but more and more businesses having some sort of a footprint here. Because it’s again, other than the heat, it’s pretty awesome place.

Mike Jones:
I would agree.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
I’m biased though.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. I am too. The heat is … This week in particular is supposed to be like back to work-

Chris Stadler:
But Brian, it’s a dry heat.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Or you just do like what Sam and I are going to do. We’re just going to take the fams and go camping this weekend.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Because you can go up in the mountains. You can get away.

Brian Mohr:
You can. It is a two hour drive. Agreed. It is cool. Yeah, the here is really awesome.

Mike Jones:
But the heat here in the desert …

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, it sucks.

Mike Jones:
It sucks.

Chris Stadler:
Yeah, you should move here. Definitely move here.

Mike Jones:
[crosstalk 00:43:48]. Don’t don’t move here.

Brian Mohr:
My big complaint is, I don’t mean to take us off tangent, but the irresponsible use of water here, it’s just shockingly, it’s shocking. If you build a, not that there’s that much new home build, you shouldn’t be allowed to have grass here.

Mike Jones:
You can pull a Tucson. That’s what Tucson does. Yeah, they limit the-

Brian Mohr:
I mean, it’s just … They need to start thinking long term. It is a desert.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, it is a little funny.

Brian Mohr:
The golf courses and the vegetation that we are forcing to grow, that really has no place here, it’s a little silly.

Mike Jones:
You mean all the … I was just talking about this with somebody. Our neighborhood was built like late ’70s. We’re over in Mesa. I’ve noticed since we’ve been there almost, I think just over 12 years now in the neighborhood, every single home had a pine tree at one point, and there’s like one left standing within like eyesight of our house. It’s my neighbor’s tree. Every time I think about it, I’m like, because there used to be, I think A, that was a part of the design build out of all these homes in this subdivision, was they each got one pine tree in their front yard.

Mike Jones:
And they’ve all since been taken out. Most of them have fallen at some point, and I’m just waiting for my neighbor’s pine tree to fall. Because I’m like, these things are not made, they’re they’re not designed for the desert at all. They don’t root down, they don’t … I was just talking with a friend of mine who was telling me, I didn’t know this, Mesquite trees, which are a native desert plant, native desert tree, actually have a tap root that goes straight down and tries to look for the actual aquifer. Pretty deep.

Brian Mohr:
To tap into.

Mike Jones:
They can go 50, 100 feet down, which actually also inadvertently anchors the tree in a way that most pine trees and a lot of other deciduous trees that are used to being in a big forest don’t have. I mean, how many times is that lone pine tree just sitting out there with wind blowing on it? It’s pretty rare in an actual like native environment.

Brian Mohr:
Totally.

Mike Jones:
Here, we plant them all right next to our homes and big winds, because it’s desert, there’s storms. It’s a big flat valley, and then they all get blown over.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. I didn’t mean to take us off [crosstalk 00:46:07].

Mike Jones:
No, no, no. That was fun.

Brian Mohr:
That’s my big …

Mike Jones:
It is a little interesting, the water usage.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. It just feels irresponsible. That’s all.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. It’s been an interesting … I’ve noticed that too, and I’ve tried to figure out like, where does that come from? There’s a little bit of an element, probably of almost everyone here can’t go back more than two generations. There are people, to go back multiple generations.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. But not that many, you’re right.

Mike Jones:
But not that many, and almost everyone comes from an environment where stuff just grows. There’s rain and there’s plenty of water to go around, especially in the Great Lakes Area.

Brian Mohr:
Totally.

Mike Jones:
You come here and you’re like, well, I kind of missed that. So, let’s put some grass in the front yard.

Brian Mohr:
Let’s run misters outside the patios of all the restaurants that’ll be sitting at Anyway’s, because we have all this exit … There’s just a few decisions that I guess I wouldn’t be all up in arms about it if water weren’t sort of critical for life, but we need it as human beings.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, and we’re not getting more of it here in the west.

Brian Mohr:
No, no, we can’t make it.

Mike Jones:
No.

Brian Mohr:
It happens naturally.

Mike Jones:
Well, there’s another business idea.

Brian Mohr:
Although I will say what zero, or excuse me, that’s not Zero Mass Water anymore. It’s now called SOURCE Global, but an amazing company headquartered here.

Mike Jones:
Very cool company.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. Cody Friesen and the team over there creating water by extracting humidity out of the air through hydro panels.

Mike Jones:
Yep, solar powered too.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, what a cool …

Mike Jones:
Very cool.

Brian Mohr:
Cool business.

Chris Stadler:
That reminds me, I’m gonna tie this back into Anthym. It reminds me …

Brian Mohr:
Oh, this is going to be good.

Chris Stadler:
Of Uncle Owen. He was a moisture farmer.

Brian Mohr:
A moisture farmer.

Chris Stadler:
On Tatooine. Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Star Wars reference.

Brian Mohr:
He was a moisture farmer?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Chris Stadler:
Yep.

Brian Mohr:
Why do I not remember that? I remember Uncle Owen.

Mike Jones:
They had evaporators?

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. I do remember them.

Mike Jones:
Those were the-

Brian Mohr:
Was it aunt Peru?

Chris Stadler:
Aunt Beru, with a B.

Brian Mohr:
Beru. Okay. I was close.

Chris Stadler:
Yep.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Not from South America.

Brian Mohr:
No. Sounds like too syllables.

Mike Jones:
But yes, they were moisture farmers.

Brian Mohr:
Moisture farmers. Well, yeah. I mean, if you’re stuck on Tatooine.

Chris Stadler:
Yeah. It was a long time ago, from the galaxy far, far, far away. Technology is cyclical. We’re going to get back there eventually.

Brian Mohr:
There you go.

Mike Jones:
That’s too funny.

Brian Mohr:
Well, if we start seeing a bunch of Jawas running around, we’ll …

Mike Jones:
That wasn’t quite the segue I was hoping for. I’m just going to jump right in what’s next for you and Anthym. What do you see coming?

Brian Mohr:
The expansion of the platform in terms of really ramping up all of the media integrations. What I’m excited about is this idea around, if I want to go learn about Sam or Mike, where can I go right now to really learn about who you are? Where do I go? If I want to go learn about all your …

Chris Stadler:
LinkedIn?

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. If I want to go learn about your credentials, I go look at LinkedIn. Listen, that is a part of you.

Mike Jones:
No, it is.

Brian Mohr:
And in a business context, an important part, but if I want to learn more about you, where do I go? All the other social media profiles or channels have become somewhat … They’ve become all their own things. I can go on Twitter and read what you tweet, but that still feels kind of more of an extension of LinkedIn in bite sized pieces. If I go on Instagram, maybe I get some cool photos of you and what you like to do on the weekends and your family. Okay, that’s better, but still fragmented.

Brian Mohr:
Personally, I’m not a big Facebook user, but I know a lot of people are. Okay, I can go there and maybe I’ll learn about …

Mike Jones:
What memes I like. Yeah, my favorite memes

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, or maybe your political views, which okay, that’s more pieces of the puzzle. If I really want to get to know who you are, I think the shortest distance between two people is learning about the moments and stories from their life. I think Anthym has a potential to become that. Whether or not it does, I think will depend on a lot of factors.

Chris Stadler:
All of those other channels you just mentioned, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, they’re they’re not designed for vulnerability sharing.

Brian Mohr:
I think you’re right.

Chris Stadler:
You go on somebody’s Instagram profile and it’s like, my life is perfect, look at all these amazing things. Twitter, it’s just, oh, look at all my angry tweets about, whatever political side I’m taking or whatever I’m interested in. There’s really no vulnerability there, and it’s not designed for that.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. At the end of the day, I think it is, when people are willing to open up, that’s when you get to know people. I think there’s a large enough group of people out there scattered or across the globe as we might be, who are like, man, I realize my time here on earth is short. I want to make the most of it. I don’t intend to do harm to anyone and I want to build meaningful relationships while I’m here with people who also want to build meaningful relationships. Why not start in the place we spend the majority of our life, work?

Brian Mohr:
It just seems obvious to me. The upside is massive and the downside feels minimal, if negligible. But I guess maybe I’m the crazy one. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Mike Jones:
We’ll find out, Brian.

Brian Mohr:
I guess so.

Mike Jones:
We’ll find out. I don’t think you’re crazy. Just my experience with Anthym, obviously with you, and kind of your passion and purpose that you’re chasing with, kind of through Anthym, I think that connection making is so important. One thing I was realizing, as we were just kind of talking here, your product is building on people’s past and the totality of their life experiences, rather than almost every other platform that’s about sharing and maybe connection making as a tangential benefit, is about what’s happening right now, right now, right now, right now.

Mike Jones:
There’s so interesting and maybe very deeply meaningful about connecting over experiences that you’ve had in the past that have had time to kind of embed themselves. So much of what we post today is … It doesn’t mean anything tomorrow, right?

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Occasionally it does. You stumble on that one Instagram post, where you’re like, oh my goodness. But even finding that post, what does it mean to you now versus then, that’s not embedded in these technologies. And yours is different. It’s very different.

Brian Mohr:
It is. Which I think is good and is also, it makes, I was again, sharing with Sam when I walked in, it makes the climb that much more steep. This is really, really hard, but I think it’s supposed to be, right?

Mike Jones:
Yep.

Brian Mohr:
I mean, that is, anything worthwhile takes time and it’s supposed to be grueling. I’m reminding myself of that. Because I think it’s such a great idea. Like, well, shouldn’t everybody else? That’s just not the way it works. That’s a hard pill for me to swallow, but it is what it is.

Mike Jones:
Well, if it’s helpful, you can take some lessons from Apple and Starbucks. I remember reading Verne Harnish’s book, Scaling Up. He talks about how it took 25 years for Starbucks to build their thousandth store. Wow. We think of Starbucks now as this just behemoth coffee shops and coffee products.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
But it took them really 25 years to hit major scale. Apple was the same way. It took them 25 years to get to the iPod.

Brian Mohr:
You’re depressing me right now.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. No, not everyone needs to take 25 years, and maybe you don’t need to get to that scale. That’s the other, but it takes time.

Brian Mohr:
It does. It does.

Mike Jones:
It takes time.

Brian Mohr:
10, 12 years to be an overnight success. Whatever the saying is, something along those lines. Listen, at the end of the day, for me, I am knowledgeable and comfortable enough in my own skin to know what really matters to me, and so I’m going to pursue that and trust and believe that the rest of it will work out.

Mike Jones:
Yep. That’s sweet. Well, I’m not ready to let you go yet, Brian, even though we’ve got less than five minutes left. I’ve got one last question for you, a little bit of a fun question. So, we play this game, I think our listeners probably know about this by now. We play a little game called name 10 things, a little improv game. If you’re up for it, I’d love to throw it at you and see if you can name 10 things.

Brian Mohr:
Has anybody ever said no that they’re not up for it?

Mike Jones:
No. No one’s said no.

Chris Stadler:
We’d kick you off.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. That’s it. We’re publishing it.

Brian Mohr:
I wouldn’t be a repeat, repeat guest?

Mike Jones:
You’re not coming back for a third one.

Chris Stadler:
Second and last.

Brian Mohr:
Let’s do it.

Mike Jones:
So, then name 10, I’m going to throw out there for you, is you name 10 musical artists, bands, solo performers, whoever, who’ve had some kind of … Are linked to some kind of memorable experience for you. Give everyone a little taste of one aspect of Anthym.

Brian Mohr:
Okay. All right. I can go in whatever order I want?

Mike Jones:
You can go in any order and there’s really no wrong answers. That’s a improvable.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. No, that’s cool. Okay. Cool. That’s …

Mike Jones:
Even if I go back and I compared your Anthym profile and I go, well, wait a minute, you didn’t mention that or …

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Chris Stadler:
You could even make one up.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, you could make one up.

Brian Mohr:
I could, but I think I’ll actually … Well, I hope I’ll be able to get to 10 in relatively short order, given the time constraints we’re in.

Mike Jones:
All right. You’re good.

Brian Mohr:
I’ll start with two bands right off the bat. These were the first two cassette tapes that I bought as a kid.

Mike Jones:
Nice.

Brian Mohr:
One of them was ZZ Top’s Eliminator album.

Mike Jones:
All right, one.

Brian Mohr:
And number two, I bought them the same day, was Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil.

Chris Stadler:
Nice.

Brian Mohr:
Those were my first two …

Mike Jones:
Those are your first two cassettes.

Brian Mohr:
Those were my first two cassettes ever purchased.

Mike Jones:
That’s that’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
The very first concert I ever saw, I went there to see the opening band, which I’ll tell you who that is in a minute, but the headliner was Kiss, Unmasked. It was in 1987. They did not wear their makeup for this particular tour. So, they were the headliner, but I went there to see the opening band, which was Anthrax. I was a big metal head when I was a kid.

Mike Jones:
You got three.

Brian Mohr:
Well, hopefully that’s four.

Mike Jones:
Oh four.

Chris Stadler:
You’ve got four.

Mike Jones:
I missed one.

Brian Mohr:
That’s okay. So, we got Mötley Crüe, ZZ Top, Anthrax, and Kiss.

Mike Jones:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Of course.

Brian Mohr:
Now, the band that I’ve seen more times live than any other band in my life, which I will say has become my religion is the Grateful Dead. I was very, very fortunate to have, as they say, gotten on the bus at an age early enough to where, not only could I appreciate it, but was able to see the grateful dead with Jerry Garcia 52 times before he passed away.

Mike Jones:
Wow.

Brian Mohr:
That band, I listen to them on a very, very regular basis.

Chris Stadler:
That’s five.

Brian Mohr:
Yep. That’s five. The band, this might come as a surprise, maybe not, I love Metallica. I’ve seen Metallica live a number of times and have had the good fortune to see Metallica live in the front row …

Mike Jones:
Oh wow.

Chris Stadler:
Wow.

Brian Mohr:
More times than any other band. They are wow. I mean, to do what they’ve done as long as they’ve done it is very, very impressive.

Mike Jones:
That’s six.

Brian Mohr:
I have two daughters, and each of us have a dad daughter song. They’re very, very different. My youngest daughter, her name’s Riley. We do a California trip every year, kind of a family vacation. We go to San Diego, and there’s a band that’s kind of the members, the surviving members of Sublime, formed a band called the Long Beach Dub Allstars, and they have a song called Sunny Hours. That is my dad Riley song. Then my oldest daughter, this is such a wide range, our song is a song by TLC, Waterfalls.

Mike Jones:
That’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
(singing).

Mike Jones:
So, you’re at eight.

Brian Mohr:
We’re at eight?

Mike Jones:
Yep.

Brian Mohr:
Okay. So, that’s that. I need two more. Here’s one. This one actually is on my Anthym profile. When I was a little kid, and even up through the majority of my life, my dream was to be a rock star. I only dreamt about it. I never took any action to pursue it up until six years ago. I started learning how to play guitar and it has been an amazing learning journey for me. I play every day, and I’m quite proud to say that, if someone were to ask me if I am a musician, I’m proud to say that I am now. I am a competent guitar player, and playing in front of people was the next step in this past March.

Brian Mohr:
So, March of 2021, I played in front of an audience, a fairly decent sized audience of people. One of the songs that I played was a song called White House Road by a guy named Tyler Childers. He’s kind of a country musician, and country’s not my thing, but this song is just a really great song, and it’s one of the songs that I performed in partnership with a buddy of mine named Jacob. That’s nine. My grand finale, let’s see. What can I top it all off with? Huh. Oh, all right. I’ll top it off with an artist that I’m so glad I was able to see before he died, and that is the late great blues player, John Lee Hooker. I saw John Lee Hooker in 2001 at the Celebrity Theater.

Mike Jones:
Oh, that’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
In the round.

Mike Jones:
That’s cool.

Brian Mohr:
And to see him, arguably, one of the pioneers of the blues and Delta blues, who has had influence on every music that exists today, was a real, real treat to see him perform live at such close proximity. Yeah, he’s had a big impact. I love the blues. Yeah, there you go.

Mike Jones:
That’s awesome.

Brian Mohr:
There’s 10.

Mike Jones:
There is the 10.

Brian Mohr:
I think that’s 10.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, that was 10.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
You made it, Brian. Whew. Thank you. Brian, just thank you for coming on. This was an awesome conversation.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah, I enjoyed it. It was super cool. It’s always great to see both of you guys.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Always good chatting, but always fun to also have you chat and be able to share that out with other people and talk to us about Anthym. If people want to find out more about Anthym, where can they go?

Brian Mohr:
Best place to go is our website, anthym.life. And Anthym is spelled A-N-T-H-Y-M, as opposed to the correct spelling of EM. That URL was not available. So, it’s anthym.life. The .com was taken and so we went with .life. So, anthym.life, and then you can always email me if they want to chat with me, brian@anthym.life.

Mike Jones:
Awesome.

Brian Mohr:
That’s the best two places.

Mike Jones:
Well, thank you, Brian, for coming on.

Brian Mohr:
Yeah. Thank you.

Mike Jones:
And for all of our listeners, thank you for joining us for another episode of AZ Brandcast, where we talk to amazing people about the amazing brands that they’re building right here in the State of Arizona. This has been another great episode. I think we’re up to 49 now in the bag and published, or soon to be published. And if you want to find more of our episodes, you can go to our website at remarkablecast.com. You can also find all of our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify. I think we’re on Pandora now, too.

Mike Jones:
If you want to check us out, we’re probably where you listen to podcasts. If we’re not, give me an email, mike@resoundcreative.com, and we’ll see about getting our podcast up on the directory that you use. We want to thank everyone for listening and don’t forget, you are remarkable.

Chris Stadler:
The AZ Brandcast is a project of Resound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with host Mike Jones and Chris Stadler. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. Music is produced and provided by Pabrid, an Arizona based music group. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at remarkablecast.com. If you’d like more episodes, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or where you prefer to get your podcast. To contact the show, find out more about AZ Brandcast, or to join our newsletter list to make sure you never miss another episode, check out our website at remarkablecast.com. Copyright Resound Creative Media, LLC, 2020.

 

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