181. How to make work fun (and still make millions), with Steve Carse
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My name's Steve Kars. I started a popsicle business called King of Pops with my brother about 15 years ago now. And I think we may have the most...

carts in the US out on the streets these days. My father advised strongly against that with a handwritten note. I think fun is such a vague word. Just truly ask yourself, like, why can't this be fun? What is the harm in just thinking about and trying to make it more fun for your employees? What would be the downside of that? It's the worst job. They hate their boss. It's just shit. How did you make it not shit?

It's the type of book too that I do feel like you'll just, you'll want to go and try a few of the things because the stakes are just incredibly low. Why not? By the end of it, there was a parrot that was kind of with us on my shoulder and we had like just a ragtag group of people that were like kind of cheering for us on this escapade of trying to sell all of our pops and wheeling and dealing. It's not going to make yourself more successful

to not acknowledge you're having fun. That would terrify most managers. So how are you reconciling this? Do you have a management layer? Or should we just talk about something else now? Oh, gosh, good question. We actually just broke one of our things that we said we would never do after 15 years.

Hello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning psychology podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a chartered occupational psychologist. My name is Al. I'm a business owner. And we are here to help you simplify the science of work and create amazing workplace culture.

Today, today, we're joined by a proper character, someone who fundamentally believes that work should actually be fun. Yes, our guest today is Steve Kass, co-founder of King of Pops, who turned a post-recession layoff into what's now a $10 million ice pop empire. He built one of Atlanta's most beloved brands on a refreshingly radical notion that work should actually be fun. And he's captured this philosophy in his upcoming book aptly entitled

What I love about Steve's approach is that he's not just making vague claims about workplace happiness. He's built an entire business model around it. After being laid off in 2009, instead of jumping back into another corporate role, he chose to pursue something different. Now, King of Pops has expanded beyond ice pops to Christmas trees, cocktails, farm produce and more.

all while maintaining a culture where enjoyment is intentionally designed into the business strategy. All the workplace research consistently shows that positive workplace environments lead to better retention, higher productivity and stronger customer relationships. But implementing this in practice, well, that is the tricky bit and that's where many organisations struggle. Steve has taken these principles and created something genuinely distinctive. So after this very short break, join us as we discover how you can make work fun again.

Welcome back. Let's go and meet the amazing Steve Kars. My name's Steve Kars. I started a popsicle business called King of Pops with my brother about 15 years ago now, and we didn't plan on having carts, but that's what ended up happening. I think we may have the most carts in the U.S. out on the streets these days, so that's a

little stat claim to fame that we're working on. You said you didn't plan on having carts. So what was the plan? Yeah, we were planning on having a little shop. We were inspired by the paletas of Latin America. We envisioned kind of a shop with a beautiful glass case and all these colorful pops where people would walk in and

select their flavor and then walk out and we would be in air conditioning and all those types of things. And just didn't, I had about $7,000 saved up when I was laid off. And instead of going into debt, which I kind of not really considered, I asked the folks where I was going to set up my store if I could, hey, can I just have a cart on the corner instead to like make enough money to build out a proper shop?

And they said, sure. And the cart ended up being the thing. Kind of haven't looked back since. So a lot easier to add carts than stores. It also just allowed us to be in a lot of cool, you know, community-oriented places that very much fits our brand. Now, looking back. We're going to get onto your brand, your culture, and everything in a second. I just want to know, talk me through, is it 2009 you were made redundant or...

or sorry, laid off is the American term, isn't it? And you're sitting there and you're like, it seems like you must have had two options. Either go and find another corporate job or do something else. Talk me through what you were thinking. Yeah, that exact moment, I had been through a couple layoffs. I was probably the cheapest employee they had in the building or at least in the cheaper building.

side of things so i made it made it longer than most people i kind of knew it was coming but i had time to wrestle with that a lot and um i was 25 at the time i felt like if i was going to do my own thing that was the right time i didn't really have any responsibilities and i also felt like i was in the insurance industry and if the insurance industry is not a sure thing

Perhaps there are no sure things. So with those two things in mind, I gave myself a one year pass to do something that seemed quite foolish to everyone I talked about at the time. But I wanted to have a good story to tell. So I figured even if I blew through my savings and, you know, got some sun damage from being outside too much, at least I'd have a good story to tell.

And it took off. Like, it took off weirdly quick. And the rest is history. Lucky enough to still be doing this 15 years later. Tell me about, you went from insurance, which is all about minimizing risk, to one of the riskiest things you can do, which is start your own business. What was like, what was the culture shocks for you? What did you have to change? I came in with low expectations and the benefit of having an amazing family.

like as a safety net. So I think like I kind of did the exercise of imagining the worst that could happen. And I was pretty comfortable with it. I was pretty comfortable with this being a utter failure and me laughing about it for the next decade of like, what was I thinking? Um, I think that was a big piece of it. And I won't say that that didn't make it less scary and all of the, uh,

all of the sleepless nights of worrying about things and trying to figure out things you've never done before. But I think I was just comfortable at that point with failing. I don't know. It's a lot of the inspiration of the book that I have coming out is really around like, I didn't give that job a chance to be fun because I had resigned to the fact that I was doing this for pay and not for enjoyment.

And what I realized after I have kind of built this Popsicle company into things that isn't always just like, you know, eating sweet desserts and, you know, fooling around. It's kind of all the same stuff. And I really wish I could go back, even if I wasn't still there, and inject some of kind of the things that I've learned into my approach instead of just like feeling like I needed to cram all of my thoughts

into weekends and holidays. So let's go back to that thing you were just talking about there. So you were saying that you were basically living for your weekend in the corporate environment. You wish you knew what you knew now for the corporate environment that work can be fun. Is there anything, any advice for someone who's listening who does work in that kind of environment? Can they control it themselves? Can they make work for themselves? Does it have to come from an organizational level? You definitely are 100% responsible for what you're doing. So...

Uh, that is where I think you need to start instead of just kind of complaining about your, uh, unpleasant boss or work environment or whatever. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think that the easiest kind of first steps when I'm chatting with people about this are to find a project that you can take ownership in. Um, and it doesn't have to be like even your core thing, something that you feel like if you said, Hey, can I just own this? Can this be my thing?

I think that's really the fastest way to begin the process of making things more fun because there's a lot of downstream effects on that. You get to kind of inject how you would do it. You'll start to take pride in it, which is kind of the positive result of once you do own something and you enjoy how that is going. I think the other thing that is worth saying is just it's not ever perfect and it's not

It's a process. Just like anything, we work on our relationships with our friends and family. We work on our relationships with money. We work on our relationship with our health and what we eat. And work is this thing where we are devoting such a large portion of our time to, whether we want to or not. Why wouldn't we also work on and try to figure out how to make that be a more enjoyable process?

So let's get onto when you took your first employee. If I've understood this correctly, was you and your brother started this? Yeah. So, um, yeah, we started, he was a lawyer. So he was, uh, employed much different, much riskier for him to, uh, quit his job as a lawyer to, to join in the popsicle trade. My father did advise strongly against that with a handwritten note, which I think he's maybe written a couple of notes total to each of us in our lives. Um,

So yeah, he joined and then yeah, first employee, really none that first year. And then the second year we hired a few people. Our first employment was a thousand bucks a week, which was pretty good. And it was basically like, we know we're going to be closed in the winter. So save some money because we're not going to be able to keep paying you basically once November is here. And yeah,

It's going to be a lot of work and we don't exactly know even what we're doing. Phil will have to figure that out together. I want to come back to what you thought workplace culture was when you had your first two employees, even if you even did think about them. But let's talk about the seasonal work because a lot of stuff I see on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it. There's articles about people who work in seasonal jobs and they always say it's the worst job. They hate their boss. It's just shit. Yeah.

how did you make it not shit? I think it's important. First of all, like a big part of writing this book for me was like, I need to do better. So I don't want to paint the picture that we have every slinger, like high five and each other and doing little shimmy dances out to their popsicle carts every day. Um, but I will say there is a feeling every year. And I've heard our managers compare it like to a feeling of like summer camp where like

You know, you have like some flings happening. You've got like some people that become friends that may not have kind of run into each other otherwise. So I think that part is completely out of my hands, but makes our seasonal work, I think, pretty fun. We intentionally have quite a bit of variety. So there are some spots that we send our carts to in the parks like every single day. And as much as it would kind of behoove the customer and sometimes to like

you know, this is Jennifer. She's going to be at this cart every day. She's going to know that you like banana pudding and your little kid isn't allowed to have a full-size pop to only tell them that you have the

no sugar added fruit pops. That would be like a, that's like always what every year I come back to this or every couple of years, I'm like, we really just need somebody that is dedicated to this spot. But I found that the variety is really unique about our job and makes it really, really fun as well. So some of that is just built into what King of Pops is as like what our brand offering is. I think those things I went through, I'd say one last bit would just be

on the ownership side, like when we go through our weekly meetings or if it's a team meeting and somebody expresses interest in something like truly just giving them ownership of it. And that can feel like two way scary. It can feel scary for the employee receiving that. Like they expressed, they expressed interest in doing it, but then you just say like, okay, yeah, why don't you just do X, whatever X is like, you know,

figuring out how to repair the trucks or something. And the production team might leave making a new flavor with this ingredient. But once they have that and they've left the meeting and they kind of like relax and reflect on it, that ends up being a lot more fun. So we're pretty intentional about that at every level. Other than food safety, the worst thing that can happen in our business is like somebody doesn't get a Popsicle and those steaks, luckily. Thinking back to maybe somebody who...

A manager in your insurance company, for example, what have you described the way that you work, where it is predominantly fun, variety, no predictability of anything, and that you can just give people projects and say, just give it a go.

what's the worst that can happen that would terrify most managers so how how are you reconciling this do you have a management layer oh we haven't have not i'd say right now it's pretty much it's fairly flat um it's like my my brother and myself pretty much yeah there's a layer i guess between like we call them pop slingers um on the slinging side and frosty freaks on the uh production side so there's a layer between basically a total of three layers um

You know, I think it is an interesting point. And I think like, it would not be wise of my manager at AIG to say, just give it a go at making the rate for, you know, motorcycle insurance in Utah. That would be like kind of reckless, but there are also things here that would be reckless if I said like, yeah, just update our food safety plan or just close our books. So

I think those there's always going to be kind of those extreme examples. I think in every industry, there is something that can be taken on that the stakes are not, you know, going to bankrupt you or injure anybody. I'm acting as if my manager or any of these people would ever get a list of this. But I think I think they were probably doing some of this stuff. But I think I probably wasn't receptive. So going back to that point earlier of like,

It's a two-way 100%. So it has to be, the company has to be 100% trying to make a place fun, and the employee has to be 100% willing for that to be fun. You just talked about maximizing profits. Now, there is a, what sounds like a huge risk, which I sound like an insurance company here, but it sounds like a huge risk to your business in that you said that winter you kind of close. So you're having to reconcile this idea of making...

figuratively pops while the sun shines knowing that you're going to have some dark days yet keeping it fun that's got to be a difficult line to walk yeah it is a difficult line so i mean a couple of things um we've tried that i think are just worth stating and probably kind of interesting first uh we tried to not be seasonal and we've kind of achieved that we have a

You'll kind of scratch your head about this initially, but a Christmas tree delivery business called Tree Elves, where we dress up as merry elves and deliver Christmas trees and pick them up. It doesn't really have much to do with Pops other than we force them to receive Pops along with their tree. And that's a popular service and it kind of extends the seasonality. So there's a little bit of just like entrepreneurship, creativity there.

And then I think the other piece, most businesses have some bit of seasonality. I think ours is a little bit more extreme than others, but we probably are not the best paying organization in the world, but there's quite a few benefits. And there's, uh, we've kind of toyed with different ways, but quite a bit of flexibility in the winter period. So, uh, we had a surf break for, for years where, um, there's kind of a period where you were going to take an extended vacation, which is probably quite, quite common.

outside of the U.S. and a lot of places, but a little bit more uncommon here. And that was a unique perk that helped attract talent and kind of encourage people to go do something kind of outside of their, what they might not normally do during that kind of extended break. I would, you know,

be lying if I said it. It is stressful. It's stressful for ownership. It's stressful for the team because if you're a part-time employee and you're used to having 40 hours and then you're getting overtime some weeks, you have so much stuff going on, and then it goes down to 10 to 15 hours, even if you're a great planner, that's still a tough thing to manage. I talk about this in the book as well, acknowledging the tension of work and that there are hard parts that are

not fun that will always have to be solved. I think that's real and that's important. And you can't ever fully get away from it. Got to kind of be ready for the less fun part. So for me, that might be like having a sit down with some of our slingers and saying like, hey, we're not really going to have many hours for you guys for the next two or three months. And, you know, we'd love to have you back next spring, but

Certainly understand if you've got to go find something else, which that's never a fun conversation. So is that kind of an expectation or something that you say up front when you take on your seasonal workers? Look, it's not going to last all year. Yeah. And there's a path. I mean, there's a path. We have a couple of things. So we have a franchising business. So during COVID, our big pivot was going from 300-ish employees. So we had a lot more of these types of conversations.

And then when COVID happened, we were like the Atlanta Braves, the big, big, big account for us. We were at that stadium. We were doing a lot of stuff with Delta and the universities and all of these things that closed where, you know, there were large gatherings where we make a lot of our money stopped happening. And so we got calls for, you know, 10 years at that point about like, Hey, can I just buy a cart from you and go sell your pops to my neighbor? And I think we would both make a lot of money where I was like, Oh, that's a nice,

That's cute. Thanks for asking, but we're doing fine. And then when COVID happened and we're laying people off and we feel like the business may not exist any longer, and someone calls you with that idea, you're like, yes, let's do that tomorrow. And so we offer that program to folks. If they work for us basically for a season, a thousand hours, they get an 80% discount on that franchise fee.

Uh, so that's something we're always kind of talking about. If you really love this, let's go figure out a way to do that. Um, and they can, they can then use the kind of the off season to set up their business. And there's a lot of kind of, you know, things that once you're, once you're a owner operator, um, you can stay busy even when you're not in the sun trying to,

Just playing. Don't even think about going anywhere because after this very short break, I promise it's very short. We'll be back with Steve and Al as they talk more about actually implementing a policy of fun in the workplace. Welcome back. I told you it'd be short, didn't I? Let's rejoin the interview where Al and Steve get down to the nitty gritty of implementing a culture of fun. Let me ask you a little bit about this concept of fun because your book is called Work is Fun. And it's

I have a sense that there was a particular point where you were like, do you know what? Fun is actually a business strategy, not just an outcome of making a business like this. Yeah, I think that's 100% right. I think the idea of somebody walking up to one of our pop carts and having a grumpy pop slinger, it didn't really ever connect or even seem like an option. This is where I can either lose people or I can get people to nod along with me. And I've had both happen. It's like,

A lot of people are like, sure, you know, you work at a Popsicle company, so this is all just kind of table stakes and very easy. But the reality is like it isn't. And it's all of the same challenges of like our truck not having air conditioning and then complaining about, you know.

how long the shift is and dah, dah, dah, dah. Like I think it, I think it is all still this very similar challenges. Um, but yeah, I think I really, the realization for me, strangely enough, um, I knew that the brand had to be fun and I was thinking about it more in like a brand, um, us making money perspective. And the real shift for me was when I had my first kid, um, she's almost four and, and, uh, going from like,

getting to work as much as I wanted, um, and feeling a bit like a martyr about it. Like, oh man, I'm at work at nine 30 and, um, you know, all the things to like, okay, I've got a responsibility actually now at home going to leave at five. It just, I'm excited to go home and hang out with my family, love it on the weekends, have a lot of fun. But I would say I'm equally as excited to get into the office and be there and, um,

you know, get to work on all the, all the work challenges and opportunities that we have. And I think that, that piece really put it into perspective for me, like how much fun I was actually having doing the work when it wasn't like, when it was a little bit constrained. I think it's really healthy and valuable. Were there any kind of inspirations to you when you were like coming up this idea of let's make it more fun? Were there any organizations you thought, yeah, they're doing it right? I think fun is such a vague word. Obviously,

It is, you know, like the play fun, but it is also like engagement and flow state, I think is also fun. And I think trying to create those, the organization that most impacted me and the co-founder Ari wrote the foreword for my book is Zingerman's. And I went there at a fairly impressionable kind of two and a half years into our business. It seemed like it was going to be kind of successful there.

And I was just blown away by what I would say is fun. And they were selling, you know, Rubens instead of pops. And, you know, they had a bunch of, a bunch of cool small businesses that were kind of a family of businesses, but seeing the engagement and, um, they'd been at it for, you know, almost 30 years at that point, that was super inspiring to me to want to create that for other people. Um, and for myself selfishly, but.

So I think that was the one that really inspired me from an organization side. And lucky I got to see it firsthand fairly early. There's an amazing book called Small Giants that I think has aged really well that I discovered them in and probably kind of a common path, but such an inspiring group. And when people have done it for that long, it's like,

to watch it, you know, and I'm sure they go through their ebbs and flows of, of, of things, but just to, from the outsider's perspective, you're like, this is like a,

fairyland like what's going on here and you just want to be a part of something like that they were extremely successful they had the opportunity to you know expand that all these investors interested i think the most hard to know they said was to to walt disney which they like guarantee that's going to be your best location of anything but early on they had written in their vision for themselves that they wanted to stay in the ann arbor business so you want to go zingerman's uh you

You're going to Ann Arbor and then they've made up a family of businesses there. Everything from like a candy company to a creamery to a farm. Really cool. Let's talk to the skeptics. I think there's going to be a lot of people sitting there going, work is fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how are you going to make it fun but also keep people productive? Are they thinking the wrong way? Yeah, I think people think of work and fun even like just to put it more directly, oftentimes as opposites. And

Yeah, I think that's a big argument of the book is that if you just truly ask yourself, like, why can't this be fun? Or why can't this be more fun? Maybe it's not going to be your Warren Buffett. I think I already said tap dancing once. I love that I said it twice. But I think that's actually why that was in my mind. I think he talks about tap dancing to work each day. And he's obviously wealthy and

uh, still loves to go to work and we don't all have to be that. I mean, I think I think I want to be in that bucket and, and feel like I am there right now, but I don't think that I'm under the illusion that everybody is going to find that all of the time. But what is the harm in trying to make it 5% more fun? I'd say that to the skeptics, what is the harm in just thinking about and trying to make it more fun for your employees?

what would be the downside of that? Obstacles, I've already said it on the podcast, not that serious in the grand scheme of things. So yeah, brain surgeon, should they be being silly while they're doing surgery? Probably not, but that's probably a small percentage of their time and they're probably actually having fun when they get to that part. That's probably something they studied for and

probably lit up their brain is probably ticking on all cylinders and I think they're probably enjoying that part it's probably like the whatever the cleanup is or the prep some of the parts that they probably could enjoy figure out ways to enjoy more if they weren't already having fun they might be having fun already those guys are

Great. I always think the measure of whether you are doing something right in life is whether you wake up in the morning thinking about the problem you're trying to solve at work. I think that people are saying that problems are bad, but actually good problem. Some problems are really good to work on, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like the way you said that. And I think one thing when we're going through our, our meeting structure, um,

And sometimes I think this goes to like the point of tension or like the naysayer. So I think if you ever just feel really frustrated, and this is another thing I borrowed from Zingerman's, but when furious get curious, like if you're really mad about something, it's probably like, it's probably a pretty good issue. And you probably need to kind of like check in on like, why are you mad about that? Like it's a piece of the business that maybe you want to improve or a piece of your work that you want to improve. But if you're getting mad about it,

it's worth checking in on that emotion like why why am i getting mad on that and it'll probably help you improve it or solve on to some people might feel like no rules so do you have rules yeah we have rules you have to show up on time so if we have a wedding at seven o'clock and the slinger decides to sew up at eight o'clock like the bride's not going to be super

Super stoked about that. In terms of business then, what are your rules for business? And there can be fun, there can be stuff I'm just never going to do, but have you got like a no list or anything like that? I want to be proud of what I am doing. So pride is kind of the result of ownership, I feel like. And you don't have to be an equity owner to have ownership. I think pride is kind of what comes out of it. So I want to feel pride in what I'm working on. And whenever I'm not, I kind of like to check in on that. So

I've got a, one of our core values is wear the shirt and it's like, it's pretty cheesy. I'm currently double dorking, which is actually triple dorking because I've got socks on. So three brand items. It's called double dorking. If you've got two, three, triple dorking. And I'm not just doing it because I'm on a podcast. I just wear the merch every day.

And for me, it's a bit of a litmus test for like, how am I feeling about the brand? And if I'm ever like feeling icky about putting it on either for a day or like going to a specific event, um, then I'm like, oh man, I just don't want to be a King of Pop person today. But I think the equivalent most people can probably relate to is like,

If people are asking you about work, which I've listened to plenty of things like very common in the US and maybe less common as the first question in other parts of the world. But if people ask you about your work and

you're just like ready to get that part of the conversation over with and you don't really want to talk about it. I think that's a similar idea. It's a similar litmus test for yourself of like, Ooh, I probably need to be aware of that and be working on that a little bit. So that's one of my roles. I think that's a pretty big one. I think I want to have a story that is, I think is interesting and valuable. We have like such short existences and you know,

I've, I don't, I don't achieve this, but I want to be, um, feeling like I'm, like I'm moving things forward and enjoying and fulfilling and all that good stuff as much as I can. Um, but I check in on myself and my writing a story that kind of, I want to be a part of and then intentionally being a part of, I think those are the two.

And they're pretty related, but the two that come to mind for me. Yeah, I mean, the genre of books that I think I've written in isn't, you know, it's not the great Greek philosophers or the deepest points ever that you haven't imagined. I think it's just a nice...

reminder and uh kind of encouragement or kick in the butt to like do some things that are only going to help you and the folks that are around you um and it's the type of book too that i do feel like you'll just you'll want to go and try a few of the things because the stakes are just incredibly low why why not like why not try this why not do x so the book sounds amazing tell me what's your favorite story or lesson from the book

There's a lot of, there's definitely a lot of stories. So I think that's kind of the backdrop of each of the lessons is the King of Pops story. My favorite is about kind of getting outside of your comfort zone. I was at a drive-in movie theater festival for, I don't even know how to explain it. It's called the Drive Invasion. It's an interesting festival. A lot of tattoos, a lot of kind of Betty Boop type folks. It was at a parking lot and I was running out of pops.

I got dropped off by, um, with my friend and, um, it, the pops were in the early days. You don't really know how dry ice works very well. It's a mysterious being. Um, but it basically, um, evaporates over time and dissipates based on all kinds of conditions. And, uh, I was there, the dry ice poof vanishes, the pops are starting to melt, uh,

I had about 500 of them as probably, you know, 10,000 people at the festival or something like that. I can't afford for these to melt. Um, I'm used to just like sitting in my cart and waiting for people to come to me, but I have to sell all these probably in like the next two hours.

So my friend and I, um, who had kind of coaxed to come and hang out with some interesting festival with me, we went on like this, you know, journey by the end of it, there was a parrot that was kind of with us on my shoulder. And we have like just a ragtag group of people that were like kind of cheering for us on this escapade of trying to sell all of our pops and wheeling and dealing. And we kind of sold the last one at, um,

When they didn't melt, we didn't lose any. We probably didn't sell them all for full price or whatever, but it was this super, super hard, physically hard, out of my comfort zone experience that was like my favorite moment of the year.

I love it. I love it. So I think I've read somewhere, and I'm going to just check I'm saying this right, that there's a quote by you always trying to slow down, enjoy the ride, and realize these are the good old days. But is that something that, I mean, is that what you're telling your employees? Do you call them employees and team members? Is that what you, do you say, oh, just slow down? Or are you like, oh my God, these are going to melt. You've got to sell these today. Yeah, I thought I came up with the phrase. I've got it written on my wall behind me, as you can see there. And, um,

After saying it, it came to me like a couple years into the business at one of our field days, which is like we have just a party at the end of the year to give away all the pops we had left that we couldn't sell in the early days. It's kind of evolved a little bit, but I just had an overwhelming feeling of gratitude that what I was in right then was amazing. And usually we're looking forward to something in the future or we're kind of, you know,

Thinking about, oh, that last year was amazing. I just felt it in real time. And I started to realize, like, and it's hard. Like, I have a hard time with this because the truth is when you're in a weird time, whether it's a weird time.

uh personally with what you're going through with your yourself or your family or your friends or your country is in a weird time and politically it feels like everything's coming undone um we get so much news we're a part of all of these things that it's hard to sometimes give yourself permission to like feel like you can enjoy what you're going through um but the the philosophy that i've adopted is like

This is my life that I have gotten. And it's at this, I think, pretty special time in the world. And I want to appreciate that rather than only hope for something better. Yeah, I think it's just a little bit of a reminder. You got to be grateful and appreciate where you are right now. Not looking forward too much for the future, not kind of fetishizing or

overvaluing the past but living in the present. You mentioned there Zingerman's and they said no to a standard Disney. Is there, have you got a kind of a Disney thing where you're just going to say we are never doing that?

Oh, gosh, good question. We actually just broke one of our things that we said we would never do after 15 years. So we sold a, we call them car entrepreneurs. We make up, I guess, words for everything for some reason. But we had always said we want to be in the South and of the South. So our vision statement says that. And I think, I guess the point I want to make on that is we broke our rule.

Um, yet I think the rule still served a lot of value for a lot of time. And I think it's okay to break rules. I think it's, uh, if you want to write a vision and, um, you realize five years in or two years in or whatever timeframe that something has changed, but you're, you're kind of so true to your word or stubborn about it that,

you're not accepting that. I think that's why a lot of people, people don't write stuff down. And I think still there was a benefit for us to do what was right for quite a long time. I mean, 15 years until we broke that rule, uh, was still valuable, but that's one that we, that we recently, recently broke. I said this before, we were so inspired by Zingerman's. I think we like kind of just copied a lot of the stuff without like really thinking about it. We're like, we don't want to do just Atlantis and maybe we'll say just the South. Um,

And we also like just got, we did a lot of stuff. Like we were not focused. We did, I already mentioned the tree elves. Um, we, we have a farm where we grow some of our own ingredients. We compost a lot of our waste. Uh, we have a, we started a distribution company, which we, uh, just recently sold. And so I think the new rule is like, let's focus on the thing that we are really good at. Um, so whatever amount is reasonable. So it's,

We're still doing tree elves, even though that's not focusing on popsicles, but it is related because it's allowing our, our staff to like have more seasonal employment. So really trying to get a bit more focused. Um, I wish that could be put into a nice rule. Um, maybe I feel like the opposite a little bit right now. Um, rules are valuable to make, um, but don't be afraid to change them or, um, update them or break them. Um,

And don't not make them because you think that might be the case at some point in the future. If you do something long enough with the setting is going to change somewhat. You said a few minutes ago that your yardstick for whether your work is fun and whether you're on the right track is that you feel proud to wake up in the morning, put your merch on. You called it triple dork, didn't you?

So let's go back to these notes that your father sent you. So the tone was the sort of the, the inference was that these notes were not always positive in the past.

Do you get notes from him or have you spoken to him and has he given you any idea of how he feels about what you've built? Oh, yeah. Well, the note was to my brother to urge him not to join me in the business. Little did he know, my brother had already put in his two-week notice, but he is incredibly proud. He and my mom both in the early days were working for us, with us, kind of semi-post-retirement, I guess. He was our first...

wholesale slash delivery driver. Uh, yeah, very proud. Um, I'm a, I'm the youngest of three. So we've got, um, my oldest brother is an anthropologist and was kind of the,

The way that I was introduced to the Pilates to begin with was he was positioned and he was doing field work in Panama and Ecuador and Mexico. And I would go and visit him and he would show me around and we would always end up kind of buying these pops. And we got really excited about the idea and fast forward, we're doing it. But yeah,

The reason I bring that up is he's kind of the odd man out for like five, six years. I felt like family vacations were probably a little bit too much focused on King of Pops. And, um, you know, he was like, all right, we did this for a couple hours. Can we just talk about something else now? But yeah, dad's super proud. Um, doesn't really write very many, uh, notes ever. He is starting to write a few more sappy text messages and just kind of

uh going back and reminiscing on some stories which is which is really cool um but yeah i think they're both pretty proud of of the of the work that me and my brother have done i think a lot of people get passionate about something they tend to be either working towards something they've seen as a child or going away from something you've seen the child so perhaps i mean is what was was there a parent who did not have fun at work or is this just you've just discovered fun

Yeah, I think they both enjoyed it quite a bit. My dad worked for Hormel, which is a meat company, pretty large meat company. He worked there for his 30 plus years, famously moved our family, I think 10, 10 ish times, sometimes for like $12 more per week or something. I think my mom likes to famously when she's kind of barbing him. I mean, my mom was a dental hygienist.

and you know as her hands all in people's mouth and is getting their life stories out of them and i think we would hear about these people that we had never met at the dinner table every night and she just that was the part of it that she really loved so i don't think that they were conscious um not much about the day-to-day being something that they were really making sure they enjoyed but it was clear that they were um getting a lot of fulfillment out of it uh

And I think that probably soaked in, in one way or another. I guess another thing, they kind of empowered me to have fun. So they wanted me to work or make money, but they allowed me to kind of be creative with that. They kind of gave me the latitude to work creatively, which I think obviously had a big influence on me in my life. I think they were always kind of, they had it in them somewhere, whether they

I hadn't yet written a book about it, but not too late. So let's just imagine that future you in a kind of a weird back to the future moment, future you is sliding to a booth with 2009 Steve, who's just been let go. The cliche question would be, what advice would you give? But...

Forget that. What would you say to him? Would you tell him the story of what's going to happen? Would you not? Because that might ruin things. I think if I knew it was going to work, it would have been rest relieving, but less fun. I think I wouldn't know. I would have kept that a secret. I would have been like, I couldn't have been wearing my merch because that would have given away the, that would have given away that it still probably existed. So I'd have to be incognito. I think I would just really,

talk about the people. Um, and this is, you know, we talk such a cliche to see the thing to say, but the people that came through those early years and each phase, I think we're just such amazing, you know, like unique blessings of, of people, I think just appreciate those relationships and maybe even hold on to them a little bit more. I think like

uh i wish i would have done a little bit of job better job staying in touch with some of the people that worked for us in the first three or four years and then on the the fun part i i do think i would want to urge myself to give myself the permission to have fun with it i think i felt like it needed to be a grind and it needed to be hard um for most of the period most of the last 15 years probably i'd say 10 of the last 15 years i think i felt that way you're kind of going back to when you felt like you might lose it i think that was kind of an

eye-opener for me, but I think I just want to tell myself like, you know, it's not going to make yourself more successful to not acknowledge you're having fun. I wish I would have said that more early and often. I was worried about it from the culture standpoint and the brand standpoint, like I said, but I don't think I was

uh, focused on it personally or internally. If people want, well, people will want to buy your book. So when can they, when can they buy it and where can they buy it and where can they find out more about you? Yep. You can find out more about me on stevecars.com. More about King of Pops at kingofpops.com. Uh, the book will be available on April 1st, um, on all,

all the internet places that books are made available, and hopefully in some bookstores near you as well. I am doing a speaking tour. I've got a special Work is Fun pop, so I'll leave it mysterious as to what Work is Fun might taste like. And I've been doing both virtual and in-person speaking. If you're looking for a way to do something fun with you and your team, we can bring our pop cart and our pops together.

maybe not everywhere in the world but some places in the world and do something fun with you guys that was the amazing Steve Koss now I want you to go and do two things first number one thing

thing one go and pre-order his book will ya it's called work is fun it's out on the first of april and it's an absolute must read it's going to be a fun read second think about one person who needs to hear this story and send them the link yes and if i can ask one more favor if you have enjoyed this interview and you've not yet subscribed wherever you're listening to this or watching this click that so click that subscribe button if you wouldn't mind and if you really like our podcast then maybe you could leave a review

Fun fact, we get a little notification every time someone leaves a review and it genuinely makes our day. It really does. It really does. Anyway, enough about that. We will see you on Tuesday for our regular Tuesday episode because that's what we do on Tuesdays. It's our weekly news roundup, our spicy take and our world famous workplace surgery where I answer all your questions. Shall we go? Bye. Bye. Bye.