“The ultimate luxury, at least for me, is having a remote position. Whether you have a job or you have a business, being able to do something remotely and having a little bit or full control of your time, that's everything to me.” – Marshall Haas
Marshall Haas (@marshal) is co-founder and CEO of NEED/WANT, a family of brands that includes Peel and Shepherd. He started his entrepreneurial career at age 21, and has continued to create businesses and products since then. He is an investor in Tiny Capital and Loop Internet, and he’s currently building a collection of cabins in Texas under his brand ofHaas.
Chapters
- Building cabins, context switching, and delegating
- Habits, routines, and time tracking
- Podcasts and tools
- Success, failure, and gratitude
Transcript
Daniel Scrivner:
Marshall Haas, thank you so much for coming on the show, it's wonderful to have you.
Marshall Haas:
Thanks for having me.
Daniel Scrivner:
So this should be a lot of fun. We try to keep these conversations under 20 minutes. So they're a little bit faster paced and we'll ask you the same 10 questions we ask every guest. Are you ready?
Marshall Haas:
Yeah, let's do it.
Daniel Scrivner:
Okay, the first question is, what have you been excited or fascinated about recently, it can be anything?
Marshall Haas:
The cabin my wife and I have been building has been super fascinating. It's like the culmination of, I just want to be an architect, my wife's an interior designer, just love design as a whole and nature. So it's been fun to dive in and just get the blank slate, get to design something from scratch. Definitely been the most excited for that and then as we were just talking about before the recording is it's going to be a really fun excuse to invite people I admire out, just bring five to 10 cool people out and do a makeshift little event of interesting people. It's going to be my excuse to do that. So yeah, super excited about that.
Daniel Scrivner:
On that project, were you the architect, and how deep in the weeds did you get on architecture and design details?
Marshall Haas:
So we designed it from elevation floor plan side, but then hired an architect to button it all up. There's probably a few little things that we screwed up. And then, of course, to build out the remainder, we did the first two pages, floor plan elevation, and they did the rest of it, definitely looped in some professionals.
Daniel Scrivner:
You did the fun stuff and they make sure it doesn't fall down, which is a good reason to hire an architect. When you think about yourself, what do you think are your superpowers and how have you harnessed those strengths or how do you harness those strengths?
Marshall Haas:
I think I'm pretty good at bouncing between things and context switching, whether that's from just doing a lot, with practice, I've gotten good at it. All entrepreneurs at some level have ADD as far as shiny object syndrome and want to start all these different ideas. I think I've just leaned into that and figured out a way to make that work for me, build a model where I get to do that and really try to figure out how to make that work for me. In the early days, before we're figuring out, I think I just had a knack for jumping between very different problems and things.
Daniel Scrivner:
Just given that obviously, you talked about that shiny object syndrome, are there barriers, constraints you put on yourself to try to limit that desire to just go and do everything?
Marshall Haas:
Yeah, today there is. I was way less disciplined five, 10 years ago. I mean, I'm still an optimist, but I think I was just like even more so, where now I'm way more objective about things. Do I want to even take the time and start a new business? And now I got this thing that needs to be managed.
Marshall Haas:
Honestly, a good example of that, very recently, I killed something off. I was building out what we would do with profits, I was starting to buy rental properties, single-family rental homes for long-term tenants, and had four properties and one fourplex and percentage return was awesome on paper. I was patting myself on the back. And I track my time still pretty religiously just to see where time's going. And when I finally looked at it, I realized that the time I'm putting into this thing, forget what the return is, percentage of what I invested is, it just wasn't worth it. That's a part of wanting to be more disciplined. Now, I've got a family and I've been selling them all off, getting out of it completely, putting money elsewhere that I don't have to mess with, less return, but it's a worthy trade-off.
Daniel Scrivner:
Super interesting, that's a great example. On the flip side of the coin, what do you feel like you've struggled with and maybe it's that same thing, and how have you improved or worked around those things over time. But I think for you, if you reflect on your journey, what has felt like the biggest learning curve?
Marshall Haas:
I think delegating things. I think I've gotten pretty good at it recently, but it was something I was aware of. At least I had... just good enough enough to know I want to be good at it, but I was terrible for a very long time. I think the way I fixed it is I took a really conscious approach to it and started studying people that are really good at delegating things.
Marshall Haas:
And the other part of it is getting businesses to a point where there was enough profit to be able to hire people and plug them in. So it was at first realizing I shouldn't beat myself up because there wasn't enough money in the business to do that in the first place, realizing this is a means to an end, let's get it to this point, then I can plug in maybe a operations person or something and then you track it down far enough down the line, is bringing on a general manager or eventually, a CEO into something, I think is the ultimate get there. And we're plugged in general managers into all but one of the businesses. That's all happened very recently too, I've been pretty terrible at it up until recently. So yeah, that's been the key to be able to scale stuff, I think.
Daniel Scrivner:
I'm sure it's been exciting and probably also terrifying.
Marshall Haas:
Yeah, here's the reins, yeah.
Daniel Scrivner:
When it comes to habits, routines, what habits have you experimented with over time that have had a positive impact on your life and performance? It can be anything, from meditation, working out, what have you experimented with, what's worked for you?
Marshall Haas:
Yeah, I think just sticking to a regular routine as far as exercise, getting enough hours of sleep in the night, going to bed at a consistent time, waking up at a consistent time, and eating healthy, back-to-basics kind of stuff. By far is that had the biggest quality of life improvement and just feeling sharp in everything. And I didn't use to be disciplined when it came to that kind of stuff. Before I got married, I had an artist's schedule, sloppy bachelor schedule, however you want to frame it, but just dive into a problem, 12 hours later, I realize I'm moments from death, I need to eat something. Stay up all night, sleep in all day, take 24 hours off, see a friend, then go back, all that.
Marshall Haas:
I was terrible at consistency and schedule and then meeting my now wife and being married, that puts some healthy schedule in place. She's quite healthy as well, as far as food goes, so that's been good for me. And then, becoming a dad as well. You're up at 6:00, 7:00 AM every single day. And I've grown to enjoy that, that's consistency there in all aspects. I just feel sharp for lack of a better word.
Daniel Scrivner:
We talked about it a little bit, but on the health side, what is your approach to diet, exercise, sleep, and how has that evolved over time? Is there anything novel there or anything you do religiously?
Marshall Haas:
I used to be one of these people that track a lot of different stuff. I was in the quantified self-movement or whatever. And I didn't really see a ton of benefit. I realized one day, I was like, "I don't know, I'm not changing my habits when it comes to sleep knowing that I got seven and a half versus eight." I try to just look back and realize like, "Okay, yeah, I got enough sleep, good job and I feel good today."
Marshall Haas:
I don't necessarily think I have a good answer for that. I think the one weird thing that I do is that I track my time. None of our businesses, we bill by the hour or anything like that, but just for me, nobody else in the company we require to do this, I just track my time. I've got a little Harvest app going, I just tag what I'm in, am I working on Peel? Am I doing personal finance stuff, or opening snail mail, and stuff? And miscellaneous, am I working on the cabin? Just kind of those buckets and then I'll look back, and one, how much time do I work in a week, in a month, in a year, and then how much time am I putting in each of these businesses? And honestly, that was the reason why I realized I should sell off those rental properties. So that's the one thing that I do look back on and I do adjust my life based on what I see.
Daniel Scrivner:
Yeah, super interesting. On the idea side, what books and podcasts have had a striking impact on the way you think? And we talked before about some of those early inspirations, like 4-Hour Workweek, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, is there anything more recent, that's really shaped the way you think?
Marshall Haas:
I think the only podcasts that I really listen to these days, at least consistently, I'll see an interview pop up of someone I like, and I'll listen to that or whatever, but is My First Million Podcast from the guys at The Hustle, Sam Parr and Shaan Puri, I think [inaudible 00:51:03] name, which, for those who haven't listened to it, it's just the two of them, for the most part, riffing on different ideas that they have and then other businesses that they see that pop up through their investing, or just being close to Silicon Valley, talking through what they would do. And I get so many ideas for my own stuff, for new businesses from that. It's weird how hearing other people talk about ideas gives you your own ideas, weird how that... you start forming your own stuff as you're listening to someone talk about a totally different idea, that's been fun to flex that idea muscle on a regular basis and just hear how two others think through a lot of different problems and ideas.
Daniel Scrivner:
You're not the first person I know who really likes that podcast, it's a fan favorite. On the tool side, we talked a little bit about Harvest, what other tools do you use? And these can be anything, I think things, physical, digital that you use to manage your work tasks time.
Marshall Haas:
Yeah. So Peel, we use Basecamp, Shepherd, we use Airtable and Slack, Culture of One, Reseller, they want to use Slack, use Basecamp, whatever. I know our company tasks for Peels are in Basecamp. And then the Ludwig is the boutique hotel we touched on, they also use Basecamp. So all companies stuff are in those, all that lives there. But then I have like another layer for myself, everything I'm going to do for the day, as far as tasks go, whether they're for a certain business or my own personal tasks, pull it out of all those and I use Todoist just really simple task management app. And only I have access to it, my assistant doesn't have access to it. It's just my little area for everything. I'm pretty simple, I use live-in email calendar, iMessage people these days, Todoist has been a favorite of mine, personally.
Daniel Scrivner:
I love just the notion, the idea that you can run entire businesses on just basically two tools Basecamp and Slack, Airtable and Slack. There's obviously other things are involved but I mean, I feel like it speaks to the simplicity approach.
Marshall Haas:
Yeah, dude, have you used Airtable? It's awesome.
Daniel Scrivner:
I am addicted to Airtable and I was so against trying it out and now I use it for everything and I pay enormous... Every single month that I see the invoice, I cringe. It's also probably the single most valuable tool that I use.
Marshall Haas:
Yeah. It's our database basically, customized database for all the candidates that we track for Shepherd to team time off and track. It's like can build so many different things out that I would want to use a developer to spin up our own custom thing. We can get it at 80% of the way there with the Airtable, it's awesome.
Daniel Scrivner:
I think it's very similar to why Notion has been so successful.
Marshall Haas:
Exactly.
Daniel Scrivner:
You've had these companies that have been able to build actually great products that you can use to build almost anything, which is extremely difficult to do. When you think about success, what is your definition of success? And that can be one for business, one for life, just a definition overall, how you think about that?
Marshall Haas:
There's the monetary game side of just money and all that, no denying, that's important to me. Building profitable businesses and building wealth is definitely a motivator for me. With that, it's with the asterisk of, I want to do that and still have a good family life. You look at guys like most recently, Elon Musk is who everyone is looking at. The guy has a terrible personal... I mean, maybe he's fulfilled, he's been through a lot of divorces, and he's at the office living there constantly. I don't want that level of success that it means that's the lifestyle I'll take. I'm a fraction to his whatever, that mix of those two if I have to now take away from being a good dad and a good husband, I don't want anymore if that's the trade-off.
Marshall Haas:
So those two going together well is definitely important to me. Today, I think I touched on this in our last conversation, which the ultimate luxury, I think for anyone today, at least for me, is having a remote position, whether you have a job or you have a business being able to do something remotely and having a little bit or full control of your time, that's everything to me.
Daniel Scrivner:
When you think back on your life, in the previous conversation we had, we talked about some of these things that you tried, that you didn't think would work out or that did work out for a while and then didn't, is there a favorite failure? And I think what we try to look for there is, something that didn't work out for whatever reason, but that taught you something valuable, propelled you in a better direction. How do you think about that? And is there something in your mind that sticks out?
Marshall Haas:
Yeah. I think the most painful experience gave me a laser focus on what I needed to know for future stuff. And that was the Smart Bedding fiasco with Kickstarter. I was spending an hour of the whole story, we basically did a Kickstarter campaign for an e-commerce product, raised money, used that money to then fund the production. The factory basically goes dark on us and we're in this horrible in-between position where our customers want product, they're mad at us, rightfully so and we want to do it right, and deliver, and have integrity, but we don't have the funds. And then once we figure that out and had the business going, the margins on that business were quite bad.
Marshall Haas:
Both of those really put a spotlight on what's important, of how you build a solid business, not betting a farm on any opportunity. There was a lot of little things that we shouldn't have done back then that I don't have time to get into, but that business as a whole, was very much one where sell something for $2, cost you a dollar to buy more inventory of that same thing, you just couldn't grow.
Marshall Haas:
With everything, and I've had the fortunate opportunity to see a lot of different businesses and be in a lot of different businesses, I've realized, "Oh, it's a lot easier over here to do this other thing if you set it up correctly." So yeah, I think I learned some pivotal lessons there around margin, solving long-term problems, and what does, and doesn't matter as well. There's so many things that we do in business, that you could not do it and it wouldn't affect anyone. You could stop doing it and nobody would complain as far, as your customers, they would get the same deliverables and nothing changes. And so, all those different things I rattled off there, to me, have been huge lessons that I've applied to everything since I've done.
Daniel Scrivner:
Yeah. Super interesting. Last question, what are you most grateful for in this phase of your life?
Marshall Haas:
I think I touched on it, which is the balance. I'm super happy where I'm at financially, but with the balance of the family life and having time to my kids who are outside my office door, when I'm done with this, I get to go hang out with them for 30 minutes or however long before he goes takes a nap and dive back into some work, that balance there, and being able to see my family, and be a dad and be able to takeoff, if I need to, for his doctor's appointment or one day, his baseball game or whatever. I'm super, super grateful for, and I do not take for granted. I try to protect that at all costs.
Daniel Scrivner:
It's a beautiful way to end the interview. Thank you so much for the time, Marshall. This has been an incredible conversation.
Marshall Haas:
Yeah, thanks, man.
