Your fart doesn't smell that good.
CMO Charlie Hart on panic attacks and meteoric startups, and Holly's kinda near death experience
Life just got real lifey.
I am writing this horizontal. A routine procedure last week got pretty complicated and I ended up in the ER Friday night with intense internal haemorrhaging. A couple of emergency operations and blood transfusions later, I am pretty happy to be alive right now….
My God this sounds serious. I mean, it was. But Kyle’s words from last week are ringing in my ears still… being serious and vulnerable all the time is kinda exhausting. I don’t want to be that person. Yeah shit is heavy, but there is lightness to be found, always. Cracking jokes with the male nurses who were wiping my ass about how much I stanked was one way of going about it at the time…
Hey, wasn’t this supposed to be some sort of semi-professional Substack email?
I mean that was the intention. But this whole thing is really a veil-lifting on how insane and weird and HUMAN we all are, behind this front we tend to put on. Having the willingness and honesty to go beyond the front of ‘what will people think’ is probably one of my favourite qualities in others, and this week, my wise friend and brand master with outstanding hair, Charlie Hart, ventures into the lands of honesty with such gusto: on the experience of being in a meteoric start-up rise, the panic attacks that came with all the adrenaline, and why your fart doesn’t smell that good.
And from me, an offering of a song and a poem. Every Floorboard got released on Spotify (listen here) the day I got discharged and it feels rather pertinent to the time I nearly died. I’m still deep in process mode, but one of the big gifts of the last few days is how people SHOWED UP. I mean, really showed up. I had this gang of 15 angel women who were holding my hand and making me soup and singing me songs, and for the last couple of years I’ve been writing all these songs and poems about heartbreak and God and the life I desire, and this community…. MAN, I just wrote this gang of angels into being.
I’m still writing about the shit load of money and really hot, doting man, but all in good time.
—Holly Gottlieb (Founder, Whole Collective)
Corporate Counter Culture: Charlie Hart
At age 24, Charlie became the 10th employee at RXBAR. Charlie quickly rose to leading Brand and Growth, helping guide the company to a $600m exit. Soon after, Charlie founded Sign and Sapien, an agency specializing in advising and investing for early and mid-stage companies, and joined Factor75 as Chief Marketing Officer, where he steered the company towards a ~$300m exit. Today, he works as the Chef Marketing Officer for entertainer and entrepreneur Rob Dyrdek, managing and growing his media verticals and portfolio companies.
Holly: I'm actually just going to record you… so we were just talking about the adrenaline rush at work.
Charlie: Well I was talking about the context of panic attacks and when I left RXBAR, which was this insane four year journey roller coaster of highs and lows, you know the classic sweat, blood and tears of building a business and taking yourself physically and mentally to the brink. And then we sold that company and suddenly it was all done and I was off out into the world, but all that adrenaline remained.
It just sat in there, and instead of it being outwardly focused towards building a business, it was suddenly turned inward and induced a tremendous amount of panic to the point where I thought, as anyone who's gone through panic attacks and high levels of anxiety will tell you, it feels like you're losing your mind. Like you're literally dying. And that's a really scary isolating feeling because you don't want to just tell someone, “hey, you know, I think I'm losing my mind”...
There's a very big disconnect between mental health and strength and feelings of wholeness and security and all these things. So I just tacked it… I'm using that aggressive word I guess intentionally like anybody would in a business setting. I got myself to a shrink. I consulted with family. I read a book called DARE by Barry McDonagh, and that book was probably the most revealing because it immediately made me feel like this was normal…
DARE was an acronym for the process to pull yourself out of a panic attack… If anyone doesn't know this and they're having panic attacks - the best way to remove a panic attack is counterintuitive. You gotta jump into it and you say “fuck yeah, let's do this!” Like, I'm excited, let's have this panic attack, BRING IT ON. And I'm acknowledging it and I'm accepting it and I'm actually giving myself permission to have it. And in doing that the craziest thing happens, it just dissipates. It just goes away. And after a few months of doing that, for me at least it hasn't come back.
And in fact it's given me so much power and has educated me as to what my body is doing and what kind of signals it's sending to me. And instead of fearing that beginning spike of adrenaline or anxiety, I actually see that as a sign of sometimes a good thing, sometimes a bad thing, but a sign nonetheless and it helps me make decisions and track where I want to go and how I want to get there.
Holly: How did that shift away from RXBAR to what you're doing now in the way that you work?
Charlie: I think at that time and that age I was willing to just give up everything for the job because I was so excited to be in the startup and I felt such autonomy and power and those were very addictive qualities that as a 24, 25 year old… I wanted to be seen as a leader.
I wanted to be the CMO. And through the transition of going to another CMO position at Factor I think it started to move more towards how can I be a conscious player and that all the things I thought I wanted weren’t everything… and so how do I be not just a good player and leader within the business but how do I adopt a mindset that allows me to flow through the world with harmony and balance which feels very on the Cliff edge of WOO…
I think in practice it's not wanting to forfeit everything for the job. I'm very conscious of pushing my staff to do really amazing things but also giving them clear boundaries so that they know when work's done it's done and that we're not trying to fly someone to the moon… it's not that big of a deal. If something can't get done today or something fails there's not a punishment mindset. There is a nurturing mindset.
Holly: How productive do you find that in comparison?
Charlie: What happens is that people trust you and they trust themselves to be vulnerable and what a startup is, is just a plethora of mistakes… 98% mistake. 1% luck and 1% execution.
You're just making mistakes all the time trying to figure out what the right path is, especially for something that's new or never been thought of, or not necessarily new to market but a different way of branding it or styling it. And so you're going to have to make mistakes. And in that environment you have to create a culture where it's OK to say ‘I messed this up’ or ‘The thing that I thought was going to happen didn't happen… My prediction didn't end up true’.
And instead of trying to hide that this thing didn't happen the way I thought it was going to happen, you ask ‘how we can shift it or move it or change it’ and that’s where 1% execution comes in. And I've tried on different skins… I've tried being more aggressive and a dick and people just hide. And I hate to be treated that way too. So I think if you just approach it all with a sense of honesty, and are humbled and admit that you don't know everything either and that we're all trying to figure this out together, I think there's a better path in that.
Holly: What do you think is happening with this shift culturally?
Charlie: If you look at the last 10 years, there was this engineered propaganda around startups and wealth building and capitalism, which are all really important to the story of the last decade and the growth that we've seen and the amount of amazing businesses that have popped up. But one of the consequences is that people heavily attach their identities to their work.
It was like, come work for Google, come work for Facebook… 10 years ago, these were the crown jewels of the startup scene. Working at a startup meant something. And a startup in a lot of ways is kind of like a cult, right? You're sacrificing a lot of your energy and your time. You're trying to do something that's hard and by the nature of the business and the beast, there's a lot of stakes involved, right? It can be scary, which we know creates community. So there's a lot of things that point to justify why people attach their identities and their lives to it. But we're coming out of this period of growth and capital is drying up. And COVID happened and isolation happened. And now there's a lot of questioning around what is work supposed to do for me? How am I supposed to live within this work environment? And should it be everything?
And I think the resounding answer to that, right or wrong, is no.
I think there's this great sort of moral questioning of work’s place in our lives and how balanced or harmonious our lives should be with work included.
Holly: One of the many things I love about you, is the way it seems that you have this really productive business output, but you've also had a creative outlet as well. Can you share more about the creative project you’re working on?
Charlie: It’s a pseudo sexual satire adventure that takes place exclusively over the telephone. You use the one and the two to make a series of decisions that take you down winding pathways of more and more interesting, chaotic and mysterious storylines.
And I have no idea why I got there but it was years of just plain honesty that that kind of took me to that. And it's been a great teacher - really about how to get creative work done. I think there is this illusion of the muse and inspiration and this very ethereal way of thinking about creativity. And what I found through this process is that it's all diligence or it doesn't get done. Art and creativity require a tremendous amount of regularity to get anything over the finish line. Inspiration can come from chaos, but execution needs to come from diligence and setting the time to do it.
Inspiration can be a little bit of a virus sometimes, in that it takes over your senses and it tricks you into creating this vast fantasy of what your end product is going to be. And the reality is often less exciting than the fantasy created.
Holly: Any closing words for humanity?
Charlie: The cardinal rule. Just treat others how you want to be treated. I think it's the easiest. It's just so simple. And to get out of your own ass. Your fart doesn't smell that good. And that it's better to try a little harder to mold into society, I guess, than it is to just isolate and smell your own stank.
Holly: That's going to be the headline. Your fart doesn't smell that good.
Holly has 10+ years recruiting for high-growth companies (primarily in tech, media & CPG). Her focus is now working with mission-driven / purpose-led companies and founders who are building for the betterment of people & planet - ready and available for hire! She is a writer, musician, and founder of Whole Collective, championing the idea that getting turned ON to your life, is really the answer to modern woe. She has her sights set on headlining Glastonbury with her rock band, HOL. Recruiting on LINKEDIN. Art and Poetry on INSTAGRAM. Latest music on SPOTIFY.
and i told him
you can’t see the divinity in me
because you don’t see the divinity in you
and that’s your job not mine
that’s your journey not mine
because the ones that i choose
they see it all
they see the life springing through from their bones
they see the stars and the sun
and the moon and the night
they see darkness closing in
so they peer in closer to get a better look
they dig their nails deep into flesh until blood is shed
they cry rivers of tears
and swim oceans of ecstasy
beating hearts on chopping blocks
again and again and again
i choose those who want to see the view
from the top of the mountain
the ones who want the flames on their skin
i choose those who want the mud and the salt and the grit and muck
who then bathe in the waters of heaven perched on rocks in the sun
i choose the ones who speak the words that are scary
shouting their love for the world to hear
and would rather fall on their sword and have it done
than keep it hidden away and locked up so tight
i choose the ones that are mad high on life
that get up and go and dance in the dust
the ones who see what it means to be here
how lucky we are
how lucky we are
and for so long i wanted you to see what i see
for you to see me
to see this life and this god and this ocean of me
but that wasn’t to be
so what i learnt instead
is that i get to choose
i get to choose what i see
i get to choose how to be
and the NO i declared was the most powerful of all
because that was for me
it was always for me
and with that line in the sand
finally made by my own hand
the ones that i choose dropped
down from the heavens
the ones that i choose found themselves a name
a place to call home
the ones that see the god in me
the ones that see the god in them
because i choose the ones who also choose me
and they’re here
they’re all here with me
all the time
everywhere
for i see what was meant for me
i see the divinity in me
it is me
it is me
it is me
‘the ones that I choose’ (Holly Gottlieb, 12.30.21)
Trojan horsing the corporate world with profound hippie shit.
Thanks for following along folks. If you like what you're seeing so far, sharing this Substack far and wide would be very helpful.
My real intention behind growing this thing, is that no-one should not know where to go to find the help they need. At one point, I thought I was losing my mind. I didn’t know where to go and what help I actually needed. It’s not that help didn’t exist, I was just looking for it in the wrong places.
So here we are. You’re not alone. There is a way through.
—Holly Gottlieb (Founder, Whole Collective)