YouSaid · the spoken record

Dan Gertsacov

lines on the record: 82
first: 2024-07-01
most recent: 2024-07-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Happy 4th of July to you as well. Hope you're all cooking on whatever apparatus you have in your backyard by, I really hope it's a big green egg.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we are hearing, may not be right. Oh, I just want to add charcoal and light a fire. That's what I want. We hear you. This isn't the place for it. So I don't think we need to lower the standard to let more people in. I think we got to make it more aspirational to be part of the standard that we're at.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not on our plan. I think we should have a quality of product and it can be a great customer experience similar to. But you can put firewood on a big green egg. You could put charcoal on a big green egg. You can put natural briquettes on a big green egg. They're just going to create more ash, but that's an HR briquettes. But you're not going to put artificial briquettes on a big green egg. You're not going to put lighter fluid on a big green egg. All you're going to do is damage your egg. And you're going to damage your food. Who wants that in their food? There's a great quote from Danny Meyer, you know, the eternal restaurateur. I got to know a little bit over the years. Danny says customers aren't always right. They just need to feel heard.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're never going to lock in DRM and charcoal. Like, I see this from other companies where they're like, we have a proprietary fuel that only works in ours. We at Curig famously DRM'd the pods, right? That's not, you don't, you don't see that coming.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a trade off that I'm unwilling to accept, and I think that that is what's going to make us either, you know, I'll be out of a job in a couple years or we'll be really successful, but I'm going to stick with that plan.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got stopped in the airport. I put this up on my LinkedIn. You know, the stewardess on the plane. She's got four eggs at home. The entire flight from South Africa to Atlanta was about what she likes to cook and pictures of what she did for her family. And this is an experience that you don't get from any other, even a rabid fan base. You don't get the same. So to answer your question, our recurring revenue, there are spices and rubs and the spatula piece. There is charcoal, which is a big piece. Our charcoal was at a quality that's consistent with the quality of our ceramics. And I think that that is an opportunity to grow. I think that the bigger opportunity is to put more people under the umbrella, be a more inclusive brand, be able to get away from this tyranny of the ore of either its hard in old school or it's easy and new.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Both. So we do have space to grow on the eggs because given the nature of folks that feel like it's a lot of work, I can't do it. I think we can, like I said, we can recoup a lot of that group. I don't think we'll get everybody, but there's a lot of that group that we can get back. So I think there is an opportunity to grow in the ceramics. I do from a recurring revenue standpoint, we believe in fuel and accessories, right? So you're not buying a new furniture, but we have a mod system where you add on where you house it and then you add on another table and you add on another. We do have a lot of folks that buy a larger grill and then they want to buy a smaller one. We have seven sizes.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of them have been forced to make short term decisions that are putting the long-term customer experience at risk.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be around an experience, it takes a little bit more. Like, I can't overstep it, but it takes a little bit more time. And for the folks that are like, I don't want to do that. That's too much work. You're not going to be part of this community. I have room on the bus for everybody, but you got to get decide to come on the bus. And if you don't, we're not the brain for you. There's other, you want to replace your product every two years. Go buy that product. We are not that product. Yeah, we're more expensive. You're making a lifetime investment. We'll stand by that for a lifetime. But we are not going to kind of go to the lowest common denominator because we have an investor group that needs to get out their LPs. We have a quarterly earnings call, and we're down. We have a strategic acquirer that this is no longer their priority. We don't have to make those short-term decisions. And I respect all the folks in our industry. I'm in it as a passionate lover of the space. I study this as my...”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We need to own that accountability of the channel, you know, both backwards to our manufacturers and forwards to distributors and dealers. Do I, to vertically integrate more than that, we don't need to tip over the Apple cart in order to grow? I do think that this is a 50-year playbook. Like literally, you don't get enough, you don't get, because of equity structures, you don't get enough, you're not allowed to think over a longer period of time. I can tell you this idea of being owned by a foundation and then a regenerative capital, that is something a lot of our competitors are willing to do a lot of the things stuck up to us. Very few will follow us down that path. You know, and that is something that makes us not only unique, but is core to the value system of the company. So I think that having a longer term view”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Down the road where there's access to content that you would be able to where software bridges into the hardware and you make it easier. Some of the investments I made in my food tech investment career was along those lines. I think that those are going to happen in commercial instances first before they happen in residential. I think we're five or ten years away from that in a residential. So the answer is I am not betting on that in the short term for the company. I do think that we, you know, we made reference to the size of the company. You go down this route, you know, your call center on a shift may be bigger than our entire company because the number of folks. So this is where you have to make trade-offs on what is, I was talking about seats on the bus, you know, what you're willing to outsource or what you want to do in-house. I believe that we need to own the design, the marketing, or purpose driven efforts, which is why I was describing makes us different.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that there is a model where people look what people are willing to pay for and the most scalable of these recurring revenues is content, access. I think that there is a model down the road. I don't think we're there in the short term.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Now here comes back to the typical build buyer partner. And we go in the decisions we've made to date, and I think they're the right ones, is to partner. So we have a third party developer who's responsible for that Wi-Fi app. We have a third-party, you know, for that digital thermometer, that wireless thermometer. And I think that those things are changing so quickly, we will need to continue to kind of analyze it as it build by our partner like what is the best way to go.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To inside and outdoors of the home, but inside the home environment to make that experience better. And that's my set of beliefs. Now, I am the first person to go to a restaurant for, you know, that special occasion or I'm in a city or I'm traveling. Clearly there are occasions and restaurants will continue to dominate, but there's certain occasions that the outdoor kitchen needs to claim because food does taste better outside. I'll tell you that. And the home itself needs to evolve and adapt to make it easier for people to feed their friends, family, and neighbors.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So let's not get lost in the sands of time that everything is taken out an easy and convenient, and millennials only care about this. That's the easy Fortune cookie summary of what's going on. There's a broader thing. Look, when the radio came out, people said, oh my God, it's the end of newspapers. And when the TV came out, and look, all those things have shifted in media. Clearly, but they still all exist. And that's on the entertainment. Sorry, I get a little nerdy here, but the Baslow pyramid at the base of it is being able to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a snack every day of your life. You can only do it in two places. You either do it inside the home, prepared food inside, or prepared food outside. That's it. You get to choose. In the United States, 60% of the occasions are inside the home, and it's 40% of your budget. And they're 40% and 60% for outside the home. I think that we can make it easier, healthier, and better.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“has in common with the 58 year old male that they both believe in entertaining their family and friends, they come together and they can use maybe the 58 year old wants or doesn't want the technology. Maybe that 32-year-old wants or doesn't want the accessory. But the core is around that belief. And I've got a lot of feedback of saying, yeah, but you're growing the industry for other people in ceramic cookers or you're growing the industry for other people that are in this is where the 10x of the industry versus the 5x of our share i'm fine with doing that i think that there are more people that have to understand and really discover this isn't a teaching but this is we've as a species of acted like this for thousands of years we've only acted the way that we think is normal for two or three generations”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a real issue. It exists. I also think that there is a presumption that there's a kind of reference to, in this case, back to Collins on the tyranny of the OR, that it's got to be one or the other. I think there are examples that where people create an AND, that they're able to reinforce the core customer, and they're able to expand the usage. And I think if you put it around a what, you're always going to come back to, does it have an auger? Does it not? How does a fan work? That's the what. If you focus on the why and the beliefs, if that 32-year-old and female who's buying her first home”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're going to have to piss them off somehow, right? Like, and this is, you can see, like, even a newer, simpler to use big green egg might piss off the power users. Do you think about that challenge that your community right now looks and acts one way? It is largely older. It's largely male, and you want to grow into younger people. And you want to get more women using the product. And you might have to make some concessions that irritate them.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the insights, they're a lot closer to the customer. So we've literally designed our whole team around these communities of folks. I think we are one of the original and still one of the most authentic cult-like brands that exist. And we needed to figure out a way to curate, if you will, that cult and be able to communicate and recognize that cult. I don't think that cult wants a discount. That cult wants recognition. They want to be part of something.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever accounting software and how do I create communities of those people that manage accounting software. We're doing that within. So there's a community manager, if you will, around some of our social channels. We have a community manager around our egghead community, which is these millions of fans and being able to communicate directly with them. So independent of how you bought it through a distributor or a dealer, you'd be able to be able to have a direct communication with the brand. I have a different community. We have those trained salespeople that I reference. We have 15,000 of them around the United States. 15,000 people have gone through a training, participated, maybe have an egg at home. They're part of this community. We're now communicating directly with them. So not only getting from them, but we're giving to them or pushing, but we're pulling. That's where I'm going to get a lot.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We call it our brand pyramid where we look at our different constituents and each role that we've remapped is to manage one of those constituents. So as an example, a close friend of mine from, I just saw her two weeks ago, my 20-year reunion, and we sat on a panel together as a COO of Reddit. We have an enormously engaged Reddit community and in a good way, we have not participated because it's organic and it's no commercial. And in a bad way, we have not participated because we have not been learning and listening from that community and incorporating. So we just remapped a role that's going to be responsible for those social media channels. And they're going to not be like, can I come up with a quippy thing to say on Twitter or, sorry, X, but can I engage in this community? Can I curate this community? And this is a playbook out of B2B, right? That's how a lot of B2B companies are set up. Like, who is the person managing?”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Zero moment of truth where people do research and do they try the food, then they look online, then they see it in a store and so forth. I think most of our decisions and interest in the egg happen before they go into the store. And then people want to go to talk somebody who's an expert. That's why we've created this authentic experience in a local independent in your neighborhood. To get to the question around how we think about marketing, you asked me how I designed the broader team. Let me talk to you how I designed the marketing team. The playbook here is direction of the bus, seats of the bus, and people in the seats. This is a seats on the bus conversation. So the seats on the bus, first you decide what you're going to do in-house and what you're going to do outside the building. What are you going to turn to agencies for? What are you going to turn to tech tools for? What do you buy, build, or partner? So that's a first filter on that. The second is the design of the team itself. So specifically on the marketing team,”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You think about how products are marketed online today, right? It's fandom based, it's community based, Reddit and TikTok and people talking about it. You've talked a lot about your customers evangelizing your own product or people just eating the food and thinking, okay, I got to get one of these. Is that your channel? Are you thinking about the communities that have formed around the product and how you need to serve them directly? Well, I'll give you one example, Roger from Blackstone was on the show. And I asked him the same question. I was like, look, in the pandemic, I saw a million TikToks about Blackstone's. I'm assuming this is your biggest channel. And he was like, no, no, it's still TV ads. There's a split there between sort of what is perceived online and then the actual things at work. Do you have the same sort of split or is it that online fandom that community that's still driving it?”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not years nor weeks. We're just right now in that process. This is the kind of thing you want to measure twice and cut once. So we are literally talking to the folks that designed it at Patagonia and designed it at Newman's own and trying to learn the pros and cons of each model. If we were going to sell for the quick buck, that would have already happened. And this is a situation where Ed Fisher and his foundation, the Ed Fisher Foundation, really is mission driven around making sure Big Green Egg holds on to its unique way of doing business for generation to come.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On. And so the benefit of the prophets when you're supporting big green egg and the big green egg community, you're supporting a purpose that goes beyond a product. And that's the legacy that we want to leave behind. So that's how we're going to be structured. Currently, it's the model we're moving towards. And we've got all the intentions of being around for the next 50 years and 100 years beyond that because people believe what we believe. Cooking for their friends, family, neighbors over live fire.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So our founder has turned 90 years old as the company turned 50 years old. Another story of starting a business when he was 40 years old and being a mid-career entrepreneur. And he still owns it. It's still privately held. The plan for his estate and his legacy is that his shares would pass to this foundation. There are a lot of different models, and luckily a lot of different companies that we are looking to for inspiration. One of them is Newman's own. And Newman's own actually changed the tax code to allow for a foundation to own 100% of a company. Another model, which is a variant of it, is Patagonia, where they have both a trust and a foundation that the trust benefits. There are other opportunities, some cooperatives and other models. We are right now, and luckily he's in great health. We don't have any rush. He will be the first. We're going to transition this in his lifetime so that he can see the benefit of his legacy live on.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think over a period of time it will be. We could expand under the big green egg umbrella, things that are not an egg. I think all of the things will be related to live fire, so you'll still have to contend with the smoke. I think there is technology that would be able to draft out the smoke or figure out a way of dispersing that and turning it into vape or whatever you may do. So I think there's an opportunity not only to expand in the outdoor market, but to eventually go indoors. But what's important is having that relationship and trust with a customer so that you can expand and that when you talk about quality, one of our core values is never settle on quality. And that is quality of our relationships, whether it's our go-to-market, quality of our products, quality of our communications. And if we've fallen down, it's because we didn't hold ourselves up to that bar and we brought ourselves back up to that core value. So I do believe, and look.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On a big green influence. When you look at the segment of let's just pick millennials, right? They are coming into home ownership at higher and higher rates now. It is the biggest generation that is coming into that kind of ownership. Famously, millennials destroy everything in their wake, right? I mean, like there was story after story 10, 15 years ago when millennials were coming into the workforce. Now they're coming into homeownership and they are largely choosing cities or they're choosing more walkable places to live. They're not choosing big suburban houses necessarily. Well, now you got to sell a product for a deck on an apartment. Is that a different product than the big green egg you have to”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And because it's going to rust out, it's not going to be protected from the elements. You are buying when you're stepping up this equivalent product for a big green egg could be $1,000 or $1,200, but you're buying one that you're going to pass down to your kids. And so that is a decision that I think it's up to marketing to tell those stories. Marketing to engage in that and to be able to create, like I said, this is creating an inclusive brand, but it's not for everybody. If you think it is a hassle to host friends and family and neighbors, there's other products. Nobody cooks on a big green egg for themselves.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is what I learned about McDonald's in Latin America. McDonald's in Latin America is an aspirational brand. Latin America is one of the highest street stall indexes in the world, even surpassing as a region Asia. So like informal street food throughout Latin America is hugely. So McDonald's goes to a competitor or a guy or a woman and their family open up the trunk of their car selling incredible food, right? And they don't pay rent. They don't pay taxes. They don't pay anything, that whole segment. So what does McDonald's do is makes it an experience that's great value for money. And that's different than making it cheap. So when you, and I hear this one all the time, yeah, but the Weber by name, the charcoal kettle grill cost $200, $300. I can buy it at the grocery store. That's right. And within two or three years, you're going to be buying another one.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“By taking a low margin, we're going to make it easy and simple, and there's nobody talking about how much ever they love their microwave. That doesn't show up in their obituary. This doesn't exist. And so I think part of that work that's required, I think we can make it easier. I'm not saying that, you know, we have to make you run a gauntlet to be able to cook for your friends and family. I think we can bring it down and make it easier, and that's what our product team is for. But there is going to be some time invested. And I think people are yearning for it. I think you are looking for a place to disconnect so that you can reconnect.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, he doesn't communicate. He does this at their corporate events, and you taste his pasta, and it's fantastic. It's fantastic. So I think that there's a companies have made, and I think in this case, you know, there's been a lot of companies made a lot of money, continue to make money for microwaves, but they've kind of painted themselves into a corner. Yeah.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The latest one in the last hundred years. Now, people say, no, no, no, I love my air fryer and I love my Vitamix. And I love all those are great products. None of them have gotten over 70, 80%. And the reason that the microwave oven was able to do that in 1962 it launched, 1982 it only had 10% household penetration. By 1992, it had 90%. And the way that it did it was hot dogs in 30 seconds, right? It went the convenience route to get penetration. What's happened, and you've seen this from David Chang and some other folks say, wow, the microwave is actually a more sophisticated cooking device than people give it credit for. And because they've never been able to, but people won't. I met the executive chef for Ferrari North America as an Italian right from Italy, a fame chef. He cooks for Ferrari.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mentioned that Goldilocks moment, I'm not too hot, not too cold. This is an example of it. I think our accessories are in a place to make it easier and make it more consistent, make it more predictable and so forth. And we have a role to play in that and it exists and we're getting better at it. Now on the flip side, if you look at, this is happening in the restaurant industry. It's happening in retail. It's happening in entertainment. And it's happening in the grill industry. There's a bifurcation between experience and”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, to answer your question is that we have a set of core values. And if you look at any of the stuff, Collins and Poras from Bill to Last to Good to Great, the definition of core values, it's something you're willing to, it may be the reason why you fail, and yet most often it's a reason why you succeed.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Literally outspend 50 to 1, and yet the same kind of affinity for the brand doesn't exist because it is the people that are proselytizing the brand. My job in our marketing orientation right now, the playbook that we're running, is to convene that cult, recognize, and reward them. I do not want to turn it into a transaction and like, you know, affiliate codes and how do I make an extra buck, customers see right through that.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, very little debt on the business. This has been a very much business that's grown in people's, you know, literally grown out of people's backyards. I wanted to make a connection to say, how does Google's business have anything to do with how Google converts and makes money to how Big Green Egg does? There is a moment that Google, when they turn information into advertising, is how they make money. You're searching for something and the right information pops up. And because it looks like information, you click on it and get a good experience and that ad quality score and all that stuff, every SEM, SEO guy knows great. What happens in our experience is that people are over for a Thanksgiving meal. They're over in their backyard of their neighbor and they try the food and they say that was incredible. This is the biggest word of mouth advertiser or brand customer acquisition that I've ever seen. It's always been we get like, you know, a couple of our competitors, as you mentioned, are.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, and this is a tribute to the prior two CEOs who were in my seat because they got multiple calls a week to be able to do exactly that. And the company held out not for the quick buck or for the, even if you would say euphemistically they could have all that capital to grow, they took the slower route to growth because they believed the core values, this would be a pump and dump. We'll grow and literally by the definition of private equity they have LPs that need to get out over a period of time and they only get out with liquidity. You could say in a strategic acquisition you'll be around doing the same thing. They always say that in the courting period very few does that happen in fruition. And this company did not want to be one of those other companies roadkill by the side. And so they took a slower route to growth. They took a slower path. It's been organic. There's never been any external investors.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to talk about that Google experience and the McDonald's experience together in kind of the next piece of the puzzle here, which is Google is an advertising company. You led some aspects of Google's advertising and television and its growth in other markets. What it does is it goes and finds people with interests and targets them relentlessly until they convert into a purchase. Big Green Egg, it markets itself at the high end, right? It's one of the more luxury products in this market. People know it, right? You have this enormous mindshare for the brand. It's hard to convert, right? Like for the reasons you've said, you send people to local distributors, you have this extremely hands-on approach to selling a product and supporting the product. One of the biggest decisions I imagine you're facing is that the McKinseys and the private equity companies of the world are showing up at your door and saying, let's just blow this out. Like, let's just make all of the money. How do you resist that pressure?”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good thing start to happen. That's how a franchisee of McDonald's gets to 2,500 restaurants because he's thinking through scale and growth and bringing people on who've been there for 25 years. So it was an incredible experience. I didn't think McDonald's would have such a shift on my way of thinking as it did. I went from Google to being a fintech CEO, you know, venture-backed, one of the first ones, Silicon Valley had invested in Latin America. And then I went to McDonald's thinking that this was an old school company. And would I be there for a year or two at the Max? And I ended up staying for five years and continually learned and reinvented myself and realized that the food industry is where my future would be. And I think I finally found really my place to leave a legacy here at Big Green Egg.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Front with every person in the organization that you're playing a game of chess and you're moving around folks get influence and leverage on your relationship so you can get help from the customer service team or the product team or marketing so you can accomplish your goals which go up to the”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's the good, bad, and ugly of working with Dan. Here's what I've learned about myself, here's so forth. Tell me about what it's like to work with you. One of the things that I put in my good, bad, and the ugly or the way that I like to work is that I want them to be playing their game of chess and moving me around their chessboard rather than them being my pawn and I'm playing the game because I'm sitting up high is that they are in a position if you're leading CRM on our team CRM is owned by you and if you need me to do something to remove an obstacle out of your way push me to do it and you don't need to be leading CRM you could be the analyst on CRM to be able to own that and feel like you're playing and that's what I've done in my entire career I was thinking through what I thought was my game of chess even though I was clearly not in the most visible position of leadership in the company so I try to create that environment”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be a vision that, from my unique experiences in life, I can bring to the table and then make a decision. Now, that's the bottoms up, tops down is that first listen and then decide among the alternatives. And the biggest question when I'm trying to make a decision is that the team and I can both identify and mitigate the risks. There is risks and downsides to every decision. You can't anticipate them all. But if you anticipate two or three of the biggest ones and then come up with a couple of plans to mitigate them, you can get yourself comfortable with when you have incomplete information. Let me talk about the chess game, which is a different analogy when we're onboarding. I finalize interviews. I've got interviews on Friday to bring in, I need somebody to support me in an admin role. I sent them yesterday an exercise that says, hey, I have this idea, how would you execute it? And secondly,”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My framework is both bottoms up and tops down. I'll include a third, which is called a game of chess. Let me explain each one. From a bottoms up, it is listening. The first thing I did when I took on the president role, I'd interviewed 86 individuals all across the organization, from the guy lifting the forklift to the owner of the company and everybody in between. And I asked everyone the same five questions. I had a professor in business school that literally wrote the book the first ninety days, the same five questions to all 86. And that was a strategy decision making piece. And I do the same when we go into a meeting. So it's a bottoms up to here and listen from all those different perspectives. And thus the importance of having diversity in all of its different forms in the room. But the tops down comes from, you know, nobody told Steve Jobs that the Walkman wasn't working out and he needed to invest.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That the company's been known for. That's why we show up and people choose to include it in the obituary when they're talking about a loved one.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Life, that's what drew me to this opportunity. We don't have to exclude men in order to include women. We don't have to exclude 55 plus to include 30 plus. I look as a brand model, the example I've used internally is Harley Davidson. They figured out a way that both Hell's Angels and Soccer moms fitt under the same umbrella because they both believe in the open road. They can live different lives, but they believe in the open road. And we believe in gathering friends, family, and neighbors to cook over live fire. And so you can be of any age, any demographic. We're in 50 countries, so you can be in a lot of different places around the world and share those same beliefs. And that's what we're going to market with on our why, you know, the why, how, what conversation. This is really the why of our brand. If we compete on the what or the how, it's a race to the bottom. We can really occupy rarefied air on that why, that aspirational brand value.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I came on, I started asking a question about the woman. We have some great female part of our influencer community and we have great fans and not only people that are using it, but people are making the decision, especially around all the big holidays, whether Christmas or Father's Day or some of those big holidays drive gifting and there's a lot of women involved in that decision as well as cooking on those decisions. But when I looked at the gloves, we have these high heat gloves that you can use. You don't burn yourself when you're adding it. And the gloves were designed for bigger hands. They weren't considered from a product design. A woman with smaller hands would use it or a man with smaller hands would use it. So I think that these are things that from a design, a product design, we need to incorporate into our set. And that's why reinforcement and taking down some of those stereotypes. Now, I'm a man. I enjoy cooking outdoors. I've been involved in food for my entire life.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Referencing a longer term goal. I do think in the short term we have an opportunity to grow our share with the products that we've got. But I don't think this is kind of a Coke Pepsi battle to be able to define it. I think that there's a we can grow our share by just being top of mind with our core customers.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Privately held company, so it's been that way for 50 years. Our owner is 90 years old and still owns it. So I can't talk specifics, but we have less than 1% share. Being the third most recognized brand in the industry, I've been around a lot of fragmented industries, and that's why I'm so, so optimistic about the growth ahead of the company. We are a well-known, loved brand. I wouldn't be able to leave this episode without sharing with you one of the things that I have on my Google alerts is Big Green Egg referenced in people's obituaries. And I have at least once every two or three weeks, not only for, you know, I track this for ourselves and some of our competitors, we're the only brand that you get 300 words to talk about, you know, Aunt Jane. And three of those words is that she loved to cook for her family and friends on the big green egg. That is rare.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Into the center of that tripod. You know, if I talk about the distributor, the dealer, the manufacturer, or the brand surrounding it, what I had to insert was, yeah, but we're all revolved around the customer because now they do have more options and they do. So we're making changes before from a customer service standpoint, one of the things that we, you know, believing in our own team, we'd say, look, on the weekends, our team's home resting. Well, the reality is on the weekends you may need help with your cook. So we're going to now extend off hours where we've got another team that can take your phone calls and emails on the weekends. So there's some of these things that I think the tech companies can learn from more traditional companies. And a lot of things that more traditional companies can teach tech companies.”
2024-07-01 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · How Big Green Egg CEO Dan Gertsacov is getting zoomers into the cult of kamado cooking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT